Science 2

Checking snopes.com, this can’t be verified as something Albert really said, but I understand the sentiment, even though it is poorly worded. First off, every generation looks at the next one coming up and says they are idiots. That’s been going on for generations. It can be found it writings from ancient Greece. I don’t think we have actually been getting stupider for 3,000 years.

One way to look at it is the older generation just doesn’t understand the younger. They have different technology, which doesn’t make sense to them. And, when you grow up with something already in place, like a phone, or a TV, it is hard to appreciate all that went into creating it. Another way to look at it is, at some points in history, we do regress. There are golden ages and there are dark ages.

I’ve been reading lots of Richard Carrier lately. He calls these phenomena, science₁ and science₂. Science₁ are those times and places where new inventions are popping up all over and great progress is made in knowledge and health. Science₂ are the times when people just use those inventions without making much if any improvements in them. We could be entering a science₂ phase or we could be already there.

In the 1950’s, we cured polio, now we make Viagra. In the 1960’s we had a green revolution and fed the multitudes in Asia, but we still have cycles of famine in Africa because we didn’t finish the job and figure out how to apply those lessons in different climates. 1969 we landed on the moon and since then we have passed the dates of major science fiction movies that predicted moon bases, space stations and commercial travel to space without achieving those visions.

Some of my previous posts mistook the science₂ that was going on in the Islamic world as if it were science₁. They may have advanced the art of the astrolabe in that time, but they did not advance the science of it. They may have rediscovered some of the math about calculating the size of the earth and made excellent use of Greek knowledge of medicine, but very little can be counted as advances. They should be acknowledged for keeping science alive, but credit for inventions should only be given where it is due.

We still live in a time with more people dedicated to scientific discovery than ever before, so I don’t really believe we are sliding back toward some dystopia. At the same time, we have people who are using the new technology to promote the ideas that intellectualism is harmful and that only bad can come from scientific progress. Because the older generation gave us a world of instant global communication, they can be quite successful at that.

Theological malpractice

I was in an online, ummm, discussion, about whether or not Jesus actually existed. Such discussions require a certain amount of googling. In my travels I stumbled on an iTunes course titled, “The Historical  Jesus”. It turned out to be pretty good. You can hear the student’s voices asking questions. There was at least one Middle Eastern woman and an older guy, possibly from Texas, plus a few more. I would have loved to go out for a beer after that class.

The teacher has been around for a while. He talks of knowing about the new archaeological and textual evidence back in the 1960’s. Much of that went underground somewhere in the decades to follow. Some of it resurfaced with “The Jesus Seminar”, but much of it is still ignored. I only listened to the lectures, but here is the reading list, including the professors own work, free online.

New American Bible: St. Joseph New Testament Study Edition [ISBN 0899423116]

Thomas Sheehan, The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/thomas_sheehan/firstcoming/

Paula Fredriksen From Jesus to Christ, 2nd edition, Yale-Nota-Bene [9-780300 08457]

Bernard Scott, Re-imagine the World Polebridge [0944344 86 0]

Robert J. Miller, The Apocalyptic Jesus: A Debate, Polebridge [0944344 89 5]

Dominic Crossan Who Killed Jesus? HarperSanFrancisco [0-06-06141803]

Stephen J. Patterson, Rethinking the Death and Life of Jesus [0-8006-3674-0]

By the way, Thomas Sheehan, the professor, is Catholic born, raised and still attending. He would often repeat that he doesn’t intend to challenge anyone’s faith, or change anyone’s mind on that topic. He does note that if you approach Jesus as he does, through his course, you may find yourself challenged, but that is not his intention. He would occasionally let his views on religion be known, they were more about people working together to find community for themselves, within God’s creation, but not as a way to win favor or avoid punishment. He would also argue that this was the message that Jesus, who he calls Yeshua, his Aramaic name, actually taught.

If you have some different ideas about what Jesus/Yeshua taught, you should take that up with Mr. Sheehan. He can explain where the theology that you espouse originated. Much of it came well after the death of Yeshua. He would argue that Yeshua did not see himself as the vessel of the message, or as divine. But I don’t want to get into those details. They interested me once, but no longer hold me for more than a few minutes.

What his course builds up to is the moments when the preaching of Yeshua was scrambled and turned into something more like history. Today the people who try to treat the Bible like history are called fundamentalists. At the time, they were people who had a message of their own, a political message, and were using the oral history of Yeshua to tell their story. They mixed the parables with the liturgy and said that these things; the virgin birth, the resurrection, actually did happen.

This does not trouble him. He understands that it was how it was done back in the latter days of the Roman Empire. What troubles him is that we have spent a few hundred years unraveling this, we have been lucky to recover ancient papyrus at Nag Hamadi, we have people who dedicate their lives to learning languages that are no longer spoken, and yet, we still have preachers telling the stories as if they are St. Augustine.

I have a study Bible that clearly states that the last chapter of the book of Mark was tacked on by later editors. They had to do it to harmonize it with the other gospels. Mark leaves you with an empty tomb and suggests you go back to your homes and live a holy life like Jesus. That is how you will bring the Kingdom. It makes for terrible liturgy on Easter Sunday. By the way, this is the New International Version, not some agnostic’s guidebook to Christianity. These are facts only disputed by those who refuse to look at the evidence.

For Sheehan, much of the evidence is “source” analysis; what were the authors of the gospels looking at, what were they reading and hearing. He also uses “literary” analysis; what type of writing were they doing and what message did they intend to communicate. So he looks at the book of John that has Thomas being an unbeliever. Now that we have recovered the gospel of Thomas, one that didn’t make into the canon, we can see how different it is, and guess that the author of John was giving a snub to the community of Thomas. Sheehan relies on the “textual” analysis from the people who translate the words, assemble the fragments and comment on the authenticity of the source documents.

This analysis does not end with the writing of the original documents. As he traces the formation of the early church, he shows how the Easter story, as presented in John, is “read back into” Matthew and Luke, then that reading is gathered together and read back into Mark. This proved difficult and thus the adding of the extra chapter. All of that is in turn read into the few comments about resurrection found in Paul’s letters. When St. Jerome translates the Greek into Latin he takes subtler meanings of words about waking up from sleep or being lifted up and uses the Latin for “resurrection”. From then on, we have a fabricated historical account of what happened in those three days after Yeshua died.

Sheehan steps out of his professor role at this point, about the middle of the 9^th class, and says, this is, “…the stupidity, frankly, of it all.” And he notes, it has given “the village atheist” all the ammunition they need to say it is stupid. He continues,

“And the fact that it is performed by people with doctorates and people who have the authority to preach from pulpits, doesn’t make it any less ignorant. If you went to a doctor and she didn’t know about the latest treatments for cancer, you’d probably find another doctor. And if she treated you with information about cancer from 10 years ago, you would sue her for malpractice. But preachers get a pass. Even though they are dealing with issues that concern the existential commitment of people’s lives, ‘does my life have meaning, will I end up in hell if I do this, that or the other’, even though they advise on those based upon their alleged knowledge of scripture. They get away with it.”

And the people in the pews let them.

If you’re interested, the course is in iTunesU. It is from Stanford University, 2007, given by Thomas Sheehan. That should be enough to find it if you have iTunes. Or try this link.

New Year's Day

Glad you all made it past the end of the Mayan calendar. Let’s hope those who believe that it is the dawn of a better world are right. I wasn’t worried about the world ending so much as I was that it would continue more or less how it has for the past few decades.

I put books at the top of my Christmas list again this year, although a very different list from last year’s. Last year was mostly theology. This year covers philosophy, psychology and history. There is one “A”-theology book in there, The Christian Delusion, a collection of essays edited by John Loftus. I bought this one at the suggestion of Richard Carrier, a historian whom I have read and heard lecture. I emailed him and asked for comments on my recent blogging, and he wrote back. It was not really flattering, but that is his style, and I took it as constructive.

He recommended I read his entry in this book. So there may be corrections coming soon. In his essay, he covers earlier history of science than I do, but notes that many of the claims made by Christians and Muslims about discoveries of science were already done by the Greeks. So although not directly addressing the Islamic Golden Age as I did, his comments are quite relevant.

Others are:

381 AD by Freedman, a history of the shift into monotheistic governing

The Republican Brain by Mooney, recent science on how conservatives think

Answers for Aristotle by Pagilucci, I’m not sure exactly what that one is about, but Aristotle interests me and I wanted to find out more about the author

The Structure of Scientific Revolution by Kuhn, this is an old one, but I see it referenced and recommended often.

Hard to say exactly what this year will bring.

Yep

The Secret

I found an interesting piece of sarcasm recently.  I am trying to cut back on sarcasm, too often it is only funny to myself, so I will let you find it yourself.  Consider it a quest.  When I found it, it was the top customer review for the book “The Secret” in hardcover on amazon.com.  Over 6,000 people found it useful, so I assume it will stay on top for a while.  I wasn’t planning on buying the book myself, but I was looking for some insight into what it was about.  I have been on my own quest for the secret most of my life and I am always fascinated by the latest popular claim to know it. 

I’ll save you the $17.49 and tell you that there is no secret, and the paradox is, that is the secret.  The book frames it along the lines of attracting good things by having thoughts, but that’s just another way of saying that you get out of life what you put into it.  You might also want to look at the companion DVD about Abraham, some kind of channelled spirit that helped write the book.  That is the point I knew I was not going to put anything in my cart.

I don’t expect that your life will change, or that you will experience enlightment from what I just said, but I have read the so-called secrets of many cultures and philosophers throughout history, and that’s pretty much it.  I have never personally created that experience for someone else, but I would suggest some much better sources than this one if it’s what you are looking for.  In the end it is a personal experience.  You may be wondering why I’m bothering to write this.  The reason is, I find books like “The Secret” not just a waste of $17.49, but harmful.  They go from something that can be dismissed to soemthing dangerous when they explain how the secret works, then go on to point out what is wrong with you that keeps the secret from working. 

I have had my own ah-ha experiences.  Those moments when everything came together, made sense, and I knew what was next for me.  Usually any attempt to write it down or explain it was futile.  Sometimes, I realized after a while that I wasn’t so sure.  When I was nearing the end of my college years, I went for an early morning walk in a park near my home.  I was in a hollow and I stopped and looked up and saw the most beautiful cascade of water coming down one side of the hollow, it dripped off the moss and skimmed around the rocks. It was caught by the filtered sunlight giving it the look of gold and copper and diamonds.  I was mesmerized.  I saw my whole life before me, I knew my future mission and felt the confidence of having done everything I needed to in the past.  I knew everything and at the same time knew that I knew nothing.  It felt as if the water in my body emptied out of me and this water was filling me again.  My life was over, and it was just starting.

I would like to take you there and give you that experience, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t do much good.  I have been back myself and it has never looked like that or felt like that again.  It’s really more of a drainage ditch coming off of a golf course than it is a hollow.  If I could simply tell you the location, and have it work for you, I would gladly do it.  To discover your own mission, you need to go on your own quest. 

What is unfortunate about books like “The Secret” is that they actually do work for some.  If you are unfamiliar with the concepts in the book, they seem very logical, and they are.  If you apply them, you might be successful, and the author deserves some credit for that.  If you have some success, then some failure, you might come back to that author looking for the DVD version, or the new workbook to refresh you, and that’s when it gets dangerous.  From the reviews, it appears this author is aware of that phenomenon, and plays on it very well. 

I don’t know if there is a name for this phenomenon, but I suspect there is, possibly in psychology.  When someone has an experience like the one I described, one that is difficult to explain, it is natural to associate it with a place, or perhaps a book.  For me, that little crack in the limestone with the cascading water is sacred, for others that place is just a parking spot, or a place where they lost their golf ball.  There was something there that tipped me into that sacred space, but I would have never got there without a lot of friends, a lot of effort, and many failures.  

Before you go off on a quest of your own, I hope I haven’t made it sound like it has to be a big struggle.  My college years were actually pretty easy.  There is no one way to go about it, and it doesn’t even require leaving home, although living in your parent’s basement until your 30 may not be the best place to start.  Important factors to include are a desire to learn, considering all viewpoints, pushing your limits, nothing shocking here I hope.  Some reading may be involved, but please skip books like “The Secret”.  I highly recommend “Siddhartha” by Herman Hesse.  For younger readers “The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream” by Paulo Coelho is quite good.

I hope no one is getting from this that I am recommending that each one of you needs to pull yourself by your own bootstraps and get out and figure this out for yourself.  We need groups of people watching out for each other and helping us to go beyond what we think our limitations are, and sometimes telling us to pull back.  If you have a group like that organized just because you live near each other, then you are lucky.  If you are doing well maybe it’s you who should start the organizing and find someone who needs a little help.  If you want to get together with people who have interest in the same book you do, that’s great. 

Some of you may be seeing some similarities with something else and I want to address that.  Some of you may want to quit reading at this point, I understand.  I recently came across another piece on the Internet, actually it was on You-Tube.  It started very slow, with classical music, using typed words, no voice.  It said that it was about to tell me something that would change my life.  It said I might experience feelings of great peace as I read the words that were coming.  Many of you would have moved on to the American Idol or UFO video, but this is my hobby.  It took a few more minutes, but eventually it told the story of Christ’s death and resurrection.  My only experience was disappointment.

The parallels here are that many people have had positive experiences with the New Testament.  Many of them organize groups based on those books, or join existing groups.  Some of them turn to that book whenever something goes wrong, looking for an answer.  Some of them want to convince everybody that this book is the only one with the right answer.  Some of them figure out that they can make a lot of money off the previous two groups just mentioned.  Some people think going to see the places referenced in the Bible is what they need.  Some claim to have seen visions of people from the Bible. 

The person who made the You-Tube felt that I only needed to hear the story and I would get the same experience they had.  I have never known that to work.  Any conversion story I have heard always began with a story of falling deep into a hole of degradation or egocentrism, or addiction to money.  Only then do they see the statue of the Virgin Mary crying or something else to shake them out of it.  There are of course many other paths to the same conclusion that are less dramatic.

Despite all that, I recommend leaving the Bible on your reading list.  I have heard a lot of bad things said about religion, but I have never heard someone complain about a criminal who found Jesus while in prison and now has a steady job and healthy children.  Unless of course his job involved coming to your house and trying to get you saved.  The difference between “The Secret” and the Bible is that it is only the interpreters that want to frighten you into putting their book above others.

A lot of people believe that the Bible tells them that they must get other people to believe.  I haven’t found that part.  I found something that says it’s a good idea to share the source of that which has helped you.  So, my work is done.  A lot of people believe that the Bible tells them if they don’t believe it, bad things will happen to them.  I found some things about seeking good things and good things will come to you, but also some stories about how that doesn’t always work out, and what’s really important is that you keep seeking the truth and living that truth. A lot of people believe that you have to believe all the miracles in the Bible or you don’t really have faith.  I can’t find that anywhere, in fact it seems like you need the faith first for the miracles to happen, or if you are lucky enough to witness a miracle that will help you get some faith.

A lot of people believe that God has a certain name and a definite schedule and you had better get on that schedule.

There is a preacher on TV who reads from the Bible and interprets as he reads.  He talks about the Hebrew translations and the meaning words had in the context of thousands of years ago.  Every now and then he stops and tilts the Bible up to the camera and says, “the answer is in here, if you just read it, have you read it?”  I have read it, and I have come up with much different answers from him, and I have read works by Bishops, priests and scholars that agree with me.  The TV preacher talks as if he wants me to study for myself and form my own conclusions but if I told him about those answers, I’m sure he would say, “well, you need to read it again”.

The Common Era - Modern Science

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Although I prefer to focus on the cultural matters, sometimes the things that history books spend most of their time on, Kings, Queens and military conquests, really do matter. One of those items that I have omitted so far in this story is the Mongol invasion. It is peripheral to my discussion, but played a central role in shaping the 13^th century.

Covering more territory than either Islam or Western Europe, the Mongols were conquering the Far East with rapid precision. Their military tactics were far in advance of anyone in the rest of the world at that time. Genghis Kahn had little interest in nation building or new technology, only conquering.

By 1240, his armies had reached Europe. He had come near Islam, but went over it to the north instead of through it. Whether or not he could have taken all of Europe remains one of those interesting questions for historians to ponder. Polish armies were on the run after the Battle of Leignitz, but then the Mongol invaders suddenly packed up and returned home, a 6,000 mile journey. This was not from fear, but from a decree by the Kahn himself. Upon his death, a new leader must be chosen, and that must be done back in Mongolia.

After that process, battles continued, but infighting weakened their armies. They began to integrate with the countries they had come to rather than dominate. Unfortunately for Islam, one of their last advances was into Baghdad. In 1263, the city was sacked and rivers ran black with the ink of the books that were thrown into it. Both of these empires had spread themselves too thin and both were now in decline. Unfortunately they were able to inflict a lot of damage on the good that had come out of their rising.

Western Europe was just getting its act together and now it had a lot less to worry about. The problems on the western edge of the Islamic empire, in Al-Andalus would get no help from Baghdad. As Christians conquered Spain and Jerusalem they claimed that they were taking back what was rightfully theirs. But they did more than take back land that was once Roman territory, they found riches of knowledge. It was based on Greek texts, so they claimed that as theirs also, ignoring what had been done with them over the last 1,500 years.

I began this search with the question of why did science thrive in Western Europe and nowhere else. The Chinese have many inventions, Baghdad was a center of learning for centuries, but Europe gave us telescopes, the printing press, the crossbow and eyeglasses.

The answer is, it didn’t. The roots of science are nowhere near Western Europe. It was NOT the sense of a universe with a creator and immutable laws, or the concept of free will, or a tightly administered university system that gave rise to science. It was a spirit of openness and willingness to doubt. It required a tolerance of other cultures and a recognition that intelligence is widespread and not related to a particular worldview. It required contributions from entire known world brought together under one roof. And it required a financial commitment from the highest levels.

The reason we believe science came from Europe is that’s what the history books say. In this case, the adage is true, history is written by the victors. Europeans copied from Middle Easterners and Northern Africans who had gathered knowledge from the Far East. They stole their homework and called it theirs. Then they beat them up and took their lunch money. When their money ran out, they found some new kids and took theirs too. There is no one person to blame for this, but speaking metaphorically, Western Europe was the bully of the world.

They had successfully created a system that had all of the appearances of a system of checks and balances. The military needed the authority of the nobility and nobility was crowned by those who knew the word of God. God had come down to earth, humbled himself and declared himself one with all of us. According to this myth, the meek had inherited the earth. Dominion over all the earth would soon be achieved and 1,000 years of peace were at hand. Right after a few more savages were killed off.

Even learning had become an expression of the Almighty. Making sacrifices was primitive, but God was all knowing. Learning about nature was a path to understanding the glory of creation. God still had a plan, now it could be discerned not just by prayer, but by reading signs in nature. If nature seemed to be contradicting something in the Bible, it was best to consult the theologians. Once they had spoken, you could get back to your test tubes and telescopes.

It doesn’t help that science at the time was primitive. Some of what Galileo did during his lifetime has been labeled alchemy. The ideas of peer review and repeating experiments were not established. Early science was performed by people who had the time, money and resources, often funded by the Church or for the purposes of military expansion. You got published if you could afford to fund the publishing, not based on the merits of your discovery. Accusations of this continue to the present, and too often they are true.

The authority of science is often questioned and compared to the authority of the Bible as if they are equal. Ironically, questioning authority is a value of science. Scientific teaching, when done correctly, tells you what is unknown and tells you the weak points of its arguments. Scientists, if they are doing it right, acknowledge the discovery of new information and welcome changes to their understanding. That some scientists and some teachers get it wrong, does not make the scientific method wrong.

Like the Buddha said, “Believe nothing merely because you have been told it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings - that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.”

I know of no other religious leader who says this and truly means it and means it to apply even to their self. It can’t be called a belief system because it is telling you not to believe, but to question. Only after examination do you take what you have found as a guide. Even then, if new information is discovered, examine again. That’s the modern world view that will solve the problems that the old world view got us into to.

The Commone Era - Tusi's Couple

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Tracing philosophy, like I did last week, is fairly easy. Commentators build on each other and reference each other. Tracing how science moved around the world in the Middle Ages is not so easy. The idea of a copyright did not exist yet. There were no international scientific publications.

Recent historical research into this has been much like detective work. If you look at De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (go ahead, grab your copy, I’ll wait) written in 1543 by Nicholas Copernicus and compare it to Al-Tusi’s Tahrir al-Majisti (Amazon.com might carry it), you will see diagrams of Tusi’s couple that are almost identical. Maybe Copernicus arrived at this independently, but it seems unlikely to me. And even though the work and data from the 9^th century Muslim, Al-Battani, is mentioned by Copernicus in that same work, that fact is rarely mentioned in history or science classes.

In case you have forgotten, Copernicus came before Galileo. He published his ideas about the earth rotating around the sun late in his life because he knew it could cause trouble for him with the Pope. He is often credited with beginning the scientific revolution. More often, I am seeing this credit come with the qualification “in the West”, but this is a recent phenomena and even when used, no mention of where else in the world scientific ideas came from. Sometimes there will be a vague reference made to translations of Greek works by Arabic scholars. The growth of the university system is also credited without mentioning where they got their books.

Why have we lost this connection? There is at least one technical reason. The Arabic language is very ornate. When written, a slightly more or less pronounced curl of a symbol can carry meaning. This does not lend itself well to being reproduced with movable type. Invented around 1439, Queen Isabella funded the increased use of the printing press. It could also have something to do with the over 1 million Arabic books that were burned after Spain was “reconquered” in 1492.

Even before gaining back the territory of Granada, the last Muslim Kingdom in Spain, rules were in place to enforce the conversion of everyone to Catholicism. The most famously brutal leader of the Spanish Inquisition, Tomas de Torquemada was appointed Grand Inquisitor in 1483. It was common for Jews and Muslims to fake their conversions to Catholicism. It was the job of the inquisition to insure they were authentic and expel, torture or kill them if they did not comply.

1492 is famous of course in the Americas because that is when Columbus arrived. Whether he was the first European there or just the last one to make a big deal out of it is not my concern here. More important is that he claimed a land that was already inhabited by the Lucayans, Tainos and Arawaks for his God and his country, thinking nothing of taking seven of them back to Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand and having them baptized. Immediately the Spanish and Portuguese began to draw lines on the map, with their authority secured by the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI, laying claim to these new worlds that they barely understood.

On his second voyage, Columbus was escorted by an Apostolic Delegate and missionaries with clear orders to evangelize. In 1494, Columbus sent 500 slaves to the Queen but she refused them and continued to advocate for good treatment of the natives. This did not slow the pace of conquest and did not stop Columbus from enslaving the natives to work in mines and plantations on Hispaniola. By 1496, Columbus’ brother Diego had secured the port of Santo Domingo. In 1510, Balboa founded Santa Maria la Antigua del Darien on continental America. By 1515, the conquest of Cuba was complete and other Caribbean islands were under Spanish control. The wealth that came from these adventures shifted the focus of Europe from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.

Throughout, it was important that these conquerors had official authority behind them. It seems unlikely that those authorities were not aware of the mistreatment of people in the New World. They were most likely more concerned about the gold, timber and cotton flowing to them. Ferdinand and Isabella were always careful to receive a Papal Bull that authorized their claims. This idea of the rulers of the people having the blessing of the religious leaders had been fermenting for centuries. Two centuries earlier, Thomas Aquinas had revisited the work of Augustine of Hippo to create justifications for war.

Augustine had said, "The commandment forbidding killing was not broken by those who have waged wars on the authority of God, or those who have imposed the death-penalty on criminals when representing the authority of the state, the justest and most reasonable source of power"

So, if it was criminal to be anything but a Christian, then killing people who refused to convert was not a problem. It is doubtful that this was Augustine’s intention, but over the centuries the Church had increased in power and figured out what they could say to their followers and what they could get away with. 900 years later, Aquinas clarified and added criteria for when killing was justified:

• First, war must occur for a good and just purpose rather than for self-gain (for example, "in the nation's interest" is not just) or as an exercise of power.
• Second, just war must be waged by a properly instituted authority such as the state.
• Third, peace must be a central motive even in the midst of violence.

Again, leaving much open to interpretation. If the Pope says it is good and just to bring Christ to the New World, nearly anything is acceptable. The motive of peace can be claimed when any kind of conflict arises. Simply claim that you are the one who is going to bring peace, as soon as you kill off a few of the non-peaceful ones, and your actions are just in the eyes of the Lord. Go wherever you want, as long as you carry the right flag with you, you are justified.

With these rules in place, the acquisition of knowledge from one declining empire and the acquisition of resources from a much weaker tribal culture, the pattern for the development of the Americas was set in motion.

Regardless of what was officially stated, it seems clear that all were aware of what was happening in these far off conquests. Even after Columbus was arrested by Francisco De Bobadilla and sent back to Spain in chains for his mistreatment of the Arawaks, his punishment only lasted a couple months and he was returned. Conquest and mistreatment of natives was not limited to Columbus or the rulers of Spain. The patterns that began here would last for centuries.