Were people in the Dark/Middle Ages dumber than other ages?

[ckafrica]

Ahh, JP1, had you only lived, the world would be a better place. One has to wonder how a man like him managed to become a cardinal in the first place.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Having read his Wikipedia entry, I'm incline to agree. He was basically a smart guy who was condemned for communicating well with the masses. It's the Middle Ages all over again.

Oh, and here's the latest in Catholic Church evil, in case anybody missed it.

[Maj]

I caught that article. I thought it was crap.

[Crissa]

The Romans had acid fog, the Greeks had fireball, the Carthaginians had Shatter Stone. And the Neanderthal had glue of which exceeds most modern glues.

So what?

-Crissa

[Bigode]

And the Neanderthal had glue of which exceeds most modern glues.

No. I ask: what?

EDIT: unbelievably enough, the following's a link:

[Lago PARANOIA]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of ... iddle_Ages

Dark Ages?

In the 19th century, the entire Middle Ages were called the "Dark Age", expressing contempt for an anti-scientific, priest-ridden, superstitious time. However, a radical reevaluation occurred in the early 20th century, based on the wealth of information from the High and Late Middle Ages. When historians now use the term "Dark Ages" to refer to the Early Middle Ages, it is intended to express the idea that the period seems "dark" only because of the shortage of historical records compared with later times.

The stereotype of the entire Middle Ages as a "Dark Age" supposedly caused by the Christian Church for allegedly "placing the word of religious authorities over personal experience and rational activity" is called a caricature by the contemporary historians of science David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers[46], who say "the late medieval scholar rarely experienced the coercive power of the church and would have regarded himself as free (particularly in the natural sciences) to follow reason and observation wherever they led. There was no warfare between science and the church".[47] Historian Edward Grant writes: "If revolutionary rational thoughts were expressed in the Age of Reason [the 18th century], they were only made possible because of the long medieval tradition that established the use of reason as one of the most important of human activities".[48]

For example, the claim that people of the Middle Ages widely believed that the Earth was flat was first propagated in the 19th century[49] and is still very common in popular culture. This claim is mistaken, as Lindberg and Numbers write: "there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference."[49][50] Misconceptions such as: "the Church prohibited autopsies and dissections during the Middle Ages", "the rise of Christianity killed off ancient science", and "the medieval Christian church suppressed the growth of the natural sciences", are all reported by Numbers as examples of widely popular myths that still pass as historical truth, even though they are not supported by current historical research.[51]

Your thoughts?

[TavishArtair]

My thoughts? On surveying this thread, they'd probably be...

They also had a better knack for organization; I may be wrong, but I understand that Roman soldiers all had to have another trade. A group of soldiers could knock up a settlement in fairly short order.

I know that armies often went whoring, et cetera, but I didn't know the Roman legions were harlots themselves!

Yes, I'm not feeling very serious right now.

I'll be over there.

[mean_liar]

I'm not surprised - the interesting stuff I keep digging up every time I run or play or contemplate an Ars Magica game is evidence enough for me.

[Caedrus]

Having read his Wikipedia entry, I'm incline to agree. He was basically a smart guy who was condemned for communicating well with the masses. It's the Middle Ages all over again.

Oh, and here's the latest in Catholic Church evil, in case anybody missed it.

Note the other headline there. "Dad found guilty of killing daughter by praying instead of seeking medical care."

Ugh. Religion is one of the greatest crimes ever committed against humanity.

[Ganbare Gincun]

Frank, I lived in the United States from years 2000-2008. We don't need any elaboration.

Based on some of the posts on this forum, it is clear that a great deal of elaboration is required.

[mean_liar]

Holy crap. Going through this, I'm astounded by how much emphasis is placed on the Catholic Church and how little is placed on nobility. It's like the Hapsburgs and Bourbons didn't exist, the Crusades were about religion rather than looting, and every baby ever killed was strangled by the pope himself.

Your perspective on history is just fucked, Frank. Caedrus, too. I love you guys, but damn, you're grinding an axe way beyond its proportions on this.

[Heath Robinson]

Nobility and religion were inseparable. The Church validated their existence, and they supported the church and bore aloft its rules. As with all power structures, they were married together until something changed the game dramatically enough that religion was no longer the highest bidder.

[Username17]

Your thoughts?

That David Lindberg wrote a book called When Science and Christianity Meet. And it gets the following review:

An outstanding volume. . . . The book can certainly be recommended as an appropriate text for undergraduates.

Now, I haven't read it. But if theologists think it's a good book to show undergraduates about the relationship between science and the religion that imprisoned Galileo, then I have no intention of reading it ever. Honestly, fuck those guys.

Holy crap. Going through this, I'm astounded by how much emphasis is placed on the Catholic Church and how little is placed on nobility. It's like the Hapsburgs and Bourbons didn't exist, the Crusades were about religion rather than looting, and every baby ever killed was strangled by the pope himself.

Your perspective on history is just fucked, Frank.

Umm.... fuck you?

It's called the HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. Kings have the Divine Right of Rulership. Blah blah blah. The monarchies of Europe were defined by the catholic church. So get the fuck off your high horse. Europe was a mediocre place until it got Christianity and then it became the worst place on Earth for a thousand years. That's the bare facts. You can bitch and whine about how that characterization is unfair, but it's seriously not.

-Username17

[IGTN]

Your thoughts?

That David Lindberg wrote a book called When Science and Christianity Meet. And it gets the following review:

An outstanding volume. . . . The book can certainly be recommended as an appropriate text for undergraduates.

Now, I haven't read it. But if theologists think it's a good book to show undergraduates about the relationship between science and the religion that imprisoned Galileo, then I have no intention of reading it ever. Honestly, fuck those guys.

That's a deflection and you know it. If you want to say he's wrong about the history, or that he's right about some parts but that's irrelevant, then say that. "He has an axe to grind" doesn't disqualify him from being cited.

[Username17]

That's a deflection and you know it. If you want to say he's wrong about the history, or that he's right about some parts but that's irrelevant, then say that. "He has an axe to grind" doesn't disqualify him from being cited.

No it doesn't. People are free to cite all they want. It's just that his conclusions happen to be ones that make theologians jizz in their pants. I have shit to do and I have no intention of reading the actual book, just as I have no intention of watching The Voyage that Shook the World.

But the thing is that they are citing Numbers and Lindberg claiming that the claim that Christians tried to suppress the knowledge that the Earth was a sphere, the practice of human dissection, and the growth of natural science are simply popular misconceptions unsupported by research. And that's fraudulent. Yeah, the Church wasn't claiming that the Earth was flat. It was claiming that the Earth was immovable and at the center of the universe. Only a small number of Christian groups actually fought against the idea of a spherical Earth. But they still fucking put Galileo in jail. They still burned people at the stake for "defiling the dead."

Hell, my medical school still has their old dissection tables with the clamps and the flipover lid so that they could do human dissections in secret and pretend to have been dissecting a pig or a dog (which was allowed, if only barely). To claim that never happened is demonstrably false. So Lindberg and Numbers can suck my nuts, and the pathetic church apologists citing him can suck my nuts too.

-Username17

[Caedrus]

Holy crap. Going through this, I'm astounded by how much emphasis is placed on the Catholic Church and how little is placed on nobility. It's like the Hapsburgs and Bourbons didn't exist, the Crusades were about religion rather than looting, and every baby ever killed was strangled by the pope himself.

Disregarding how intertwined the church was with the nobility...

Just because I say that the Catholic Church was a very negative influence does not mean that I do not also think there are other negative influences there. I certainly never said that religion was the sole cause of injustice in the world, and if that's what you're claiming, then that's a strawman argument. What I am saying is that religion itself is an injustice.

If, for example, I say that genocide is unjust, that does not imply that fraud is free of guilt. So I don't really see where you're coming from here.

Your perspective on history is just fucked, Frank. Caedrus, too. I love you guys, but damn, you're grinding an axe way beyond its proportions on this.

First off, could you show me an actual statement I made that you have an axe to grind with? Where is my perspective on history allegedly skewed? Where am I blowing something out of proportion? Give me something specific you object to.

[mean_liar]

Ugh. Religion is one of the greatest crimes ever committed against humanity.

This sounds like a sweeping, axe-grinding statement.

Yes, the church and nobility were intertwined, but I don't think that was a function of religion so much as human nature's desire for organization and tribalism. No poor person has ever been elected president, but I wouldn't call it a plutocracy either. There was a system and the folks in charge decided they'd rationalize their position. It's the White Man's Burden (colonialism), it's Manifest Destiny (genocide), it's Social Darwinism (fuck the poor)... it's a convenient wrapper for whatever bullshit is being sold.

The fact that it was dominant in Europe for a thousand years doesn't really mean shit when you consider how the philosophy itself altered in that time. Popes themselves were just nobles, and every once in a while they'd get Rome sacked and have to kowtow to someone, and that was how it was. They weren't the supreme rulers of Europe by any stretch.

Frank seems to think that the Roman empire collapsed because of Christians, or something, rather than its own over-expansion and abandonment of hardcore Republicanism for degenerate plutocracy (oops, used it twice - damnit). That its called the worst place in the world in his mind is oddball - not many people at it good at all at that period.

...

Also, Galileo's major crime was his insistence that the sun was at the center. There was already a decent understanding of celestial mechanics, it was just that it had earth at the center. Galileo's crime was that he contradicted the Bible - the explanations he came up with were basically understood already, it was just the frame shift to heliocentricism that they found horrid. Not that this excuses it, but I thought I'd point that out.

[Lago PARANOIA]

This sounds like a sweeping, axe-grinding statement.

Because I feel like picking a fight today:

http://www.infidels.org/library/histori ... White.html

My work in this book is like that of the Russian mujiks on the Neva. I simply try to aid in letting the light of historical truth into that decaying mass of outworn thought which attaches the modern world to medieval conceptions of Christianity, and which still lingers among us -- a most serious barrier to religion and morals, and a menace to the whole normal evolution of society.

He then goes on to detail how the Christian church has continually fought scientific advancement made in the 19th century and before at no benefit to others or even themselves.

[CatharzGodfoot]

This sounds like a sweeping, axe-grinding statement.

Because I feel like picking a fight today:

http://www.infidels.org/library/histori ... White.html

My work in this book is like that of the Russian mujiks on the Neva. I simply try to aid in letting the light of historical truth into that decaying mass of outworn thought which attaches the modern world to medieval conceptions of Christianity, and which still lingers among us -- a most serious barrier to religion and morals, and a menace to the whole normal evolution of society.

He then goes on to detail how the Christian church has continually fought scientific advancement made in the 19th century and before at no benefit to others or even themselves.

To selectively quote from your source:

To the religious spirit are largely due several of the noblest among the great voyages of discovery. A deep longing to extend the realms of Christianity influenced the minds of Prince John of Portugal, in his great series of efforts along the African coast; of Vasco da Gama, in his circumnavigation of the Cape of Good Hope; of Magellan, in his voyage around the world; and doubtless found a place among the more worldly motives of Columbus.[113b]

Thus, in this field, from the supremacy accorded to theology, we find resulting that tendency to dogmatism which has shown itself in all ages the deadly foe not only of scientific inquiry but of the higher religious spirit itself, while from the love of truth for truth's sake, which has been the inspiration of all fruitful work in science, nothing but advantage has ever resulted to religion.

[Koumei]

Magellan, in his voyage around the world

He got that wrong, for a start. Magellan didn't make it around the world - he died trying. It was his first mate Delcano that actually made it.

[Hicks]

[ZelotRage]

I mean, how many other religions had burning people alive, for people whose ideas they didn't like, as a common form of execution?

Real crimes like torture and murder or even downright royal treason got a somewhat more humane punishment, beheading.

The burning is meant as a terror-tactic, not only do you make a big fucking spectacle of the execution, and you get tons and tons of screams out of your victim, but you also have scared the shit out of anyone that watches from ever talking aloud about the sorts of ideas that the just auto-da-fe'd person was talking about.

Ok, that's it. I'm sick and tired of the roman mastrubatory fan wank. In this specific instance, I totally call bullshit.

FUCK[/i]
The roman empire has hands down won (like they do in nearly everything before the renaissance) the "absolute most hard-core torture and terror tactic" award. They invented a manner of death so tortuously painful and humiliating that we still use it to describe "torture unto death" after two-thousand years, excruciating. As in they nail you to a cross, untill you die not from blood loss but thirst after 2 or three days of constant, labourous suffering. Who got crucified? Anyone who fucked with the roman empire. OH! I almost forgot the Colosseum, where you can take the family to catch a show and watch christians get eaten by lions. FUCK. ANCIENT. ROME.

ANCIENT[/i]

Rome had steam engines. Actual difference engines that propelled a metal device with the power of a combustion reaction through the medium of the expansion of heated water. Really. They never built rail roads because slaves were cheaper than donkeys and the concept of investing in labor saving devices was preposterous.

And that sums it up right there. Rome was built on the (stolen) ideas and slaves composed of the enemies she conquered. All they ever did was take. It was an empire of thieves, ergo: FUCK. ANCIENT. ROME.

ROME[/i]
I see a lot of shit on the internet, and the worst is praise for a bunch of mass-murders who happened to figure out how to make cement. I know I italicized two things in the last sentence, but the real point was that rome was nothing more than a mass-murdering regime.

• Carthage sets the tone of roman supremacy, where out of a recorded 500,000 romans lived after they razed it to the ground, only 50,000 carthaginians were left after the slaughter to be sold into slavery.
  
  The romans, proving that they have to one up everybody, have the destinction of razing Alexandria's great library not once, but twice, where Julius Caesar "accidently" razed the great library in 48 BC, nigh 80 years before the rise of the rabbi/carpenter/Lord/Savior named Jesus and his reforms of the jewish faith into what later became known as christianity, and again by the roman emporer Aurelian in the third centuary. the last great burning comes by courtesy of muslims in the 600s.
  The closest thing I could find to a christian burning anything that wasn't wood in a fireplace in Alexandria was Pope Theophilus of Alexandria, and he knocked over the Serapeum (or pagan temple) filled with pagans (who had attacked christians after they had made fun of the pagan idols), not the library.
  
  Last, lets look at [url=mhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_%2870%29]Jerusalem[/url], where the romans raze the city and killed a over a million people in 70 AD.

Rome is right up there with the Nazi, U.S.A, U.S.S.R., and Nippon Empire for world spanning, totalitarian, mass-murdering regimes. In short: FUCK. ANCIENT. ROME.
[/ZelotRage]

---

Burning heritics was (erroniously) done to deny a heritic a body to be ressurrected in the new heaven and new earth.

[Username17]

They invented a manner of death so tortuously painful and humiliating that we still use it to describe "torture unto death" after two-thousand years, excruciating. As in they nail you to a cross, untill you die not from blood loss but thirst after 2 or three days of constant, labourous suffering.

Please. They tied you to a cross. The Romans didn't waste one single nail on murdering people by crucifixion. That idea was added later by Christians who thought being nailed to a cross sounded awesome.

We can harp on Roman crazed brutality, and we should. But while we can talk about putting big hooks into women's faces attached to chains and then dragging them down the street with oxen until ultimately throwing them into pits full of mastiffs trained from birth to love the taste of human flesh - we really should keep our facts straight. No one got nailed to a cross. That's Christian propaganda.

-Username17

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Also, you act as if feeding Christians to the lions was a constant, nonstop thing. Yes, Nero made Christians a scapegoat for what basically amounts to an early case of insurance fraud, but Christians were creepy little fuckers back on those days. They did Jove-knows-what during their weird rituals that they only performed in the dead of night in private, and during the say they walked around complaining how much Rome sucked.

Yes, they fed people to wild animals. It wasn't just Christians.

Also, Rome was a Christian nation, as in they executed you for not being Christians for the last couple centuries of its existence. People like to gloss over that fact.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Hicks, that's a lot of venom, but can you actually come up with a society contemporaneous to ancient Rome that was any better? There were a lot of assholes at the time who were just as depraved and who produced nothing of value.

It was the Iron Age. Everyone was a fucker by our standards. The Romans killed a lot of people because they were successful fuckers; but I'm pretty sure that if the Parthians or the Han murdered fewer people it's only because they were less successful with their particular brand of fuckery.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

The iron ages were generally a shitty time. the Romans at least bathed during those times, and did in fact get a few things right.