The Tragedy of Theology: How Religion Caused and Extended the Dark Ages
- Thread starter Probius
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I know exactly where it is and I go to it a couple times every day. It's one of the smallest rooms in my house, has a single throne, and all the knowledge is collected into several tomes stacked on an enclosed water vessel on the back of the throne. I call this room "The King's Star Chamber". Much knowledge is imparted there.
Well, it was basically just a government-subsidized program to shore up the slave and sandstone industries...
most scholars think now that there were not slaves used on the pyramids
http://news.discovery.com/history/ancient-egypt/pyramids-tombs-giza-egypt.htm
Haven't read the article and probably won't, but the Christian religion did not cause and extend the Dark Ages, human beings did. The perception of human beings in doing what they seen as God's will at the time may have had a big hand in it but not the faith.
I think Jesus wanted his followers to go and preach the good news of Gods coming righteous kingdom where God and his armies would set things straight but not for humans to take that matter into their own hands. Anybody can claim and call themselves a Christian, even Hitler, but that is not the faiths fault.
I think Jesus wanted his followers to go and preach the good news of Gods coming righteous kingdom where God and his armies would set things straight but not for humans to take that matter into their own hands. Anybody can claim and call themselves a Christian, even Hitler, but that is not the faiths fault.
You're welcome. Certainly many men use religion to excuse their wrong doings, but that wasn't really the point of the article. The problem during the dark ages is that The Church favored faith over reason, and because of this it prevented free inquiry. For six centuries the most intelligent citizens were studying theology instead of science, and therefore no progress was made. St. Thomas Aquinas spent most of his time studying angels, which is a total waste of time.I actually read the article, which was actually very good. Thanks for posting it.
I found Bernstein's argument interesting. It made me think.
I did have some critiques, however.
First off, the calamity that was the collapse of the western Empire in the fifth century was enormous. With wave after wave of illiterate ultra-violent barbarians sweeping over western Europe, life became very dangerous and uncertain. Western Europeans, finding no signs of light in public life, turned inward seeking solace in the next life. Bernstein seems to be conflating the effects of the "Dark Ages" (lowered standards of living, illiteracy) for the causes (Huns, Vandals, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Lombards, Vikings, etc.)
Historian Ralph Raico of Buffalo argues (persuasively, in my view) that the existence of the Church as a separate public institution not under state control was a key factor in the rise of the West.
Saint Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, prohibiting Emperor Theodosius from going into the Church.
This was different from the east (e.g. The Abbasid Empire, Safavid Persia, Imperial China), in which the church and the state were one. He seems to conflate religious and civil liberty, but, if you keep them separate, the problem is solved, the Church has no power to execute or silence anyone. What really helps liberty, including liberty of inquiry, is decentralized political authority.
Next, while he mentions it, he underestimates the value of the work of the monasteries in keeping ancient texts alive in the west. While there were obvious abuses of authority that Bernstein mentions, he undervalues the work of the Monastics in breaking out of the intellectual doldrums of the Medieval period.
I do not see an inevitable dichotomy between the Monastics and Aristotle.
As for the savagery in the sack of Beziers, I attribute that to a lack of Christian pity or charity and to the general savagery of warriors of the day. The fact that they resorted to a religious excuse says more about those soldiers than it does about the Church.
Religious differences are resorted to and exacerbated for political purposes worldwide. Look at Catholic France fighting on the side of the Protestant Dutch against Catholic Spain and Austria in the 30 Years' War, or France's alliance with the Muslim Ottoman Empire 1534-1798, or The Troubles in Northern Ireland up to the last couple of decades. Were these religious matters or political matters with a religious veneer?
Finally, I have to agree with Nate (which is surely a sign of the Apocalypse), Professor Bernstein went into this with an ax to grind (not that he dies not make many excellent points).
It is also a little ironic that he teaches at an institution founded by a Catholic Brotherhood.
Overall, though, I found this paper intriguing. Thanks for posting it.
In today's world religion and civil liberties are separate, because church and state are separate. In the dark ages this was not the case, and there was no concept of civil liberties outside of religious doctrine.
Certainly the fall of the Western Roman Empire hurt Western Europe tremendously, but it did not necessarily have to lead to six centuries of stagnation and misery. Shutting down the study of Greek Philosophy hurt the intellectual landscape of Western Europe, and killed love of nature, which prevented progress in science for centuries.
I put most of the blame on Augustine of Hippo, who demanded that reason be a handmaiden of faith. His ideas put the western world into stagnation for centuries.
The reason people spurned reason was their faith in faith. And this was because of The Church, not men. Joining The Church changes the way a man thinks, I can tell you that first hand.
so does leaving it.
For a while most think religion is all bad when they leave their church.
What you'll find as time passes is that like all issues it simply isn't black and white. Religion is both good and bad.
Right now, there are Christian fundamentalists actively supporting and propping up a regime in Uganda that is passing laws calling for the execution of all Homosexuals.
At the very same time, in the very same country there are Christians feeding the poor, building wells and generally just doing good things to help people because they can.
I hadn't heard of your first statement. That is the worst of the worst.
But, it exemplifies a very true point. Regardless of ideology, belief system, ethnicity, sexual preference, etc., there are good people and bad people. Horrible people wear every badge. So do the good people. Well, except Westboro Baptist. Don't see any good people wearing that badge. Or Nazism. Ok, there are a few exceptions.
There is virtually no limit to what man has done and continues to do in the name of god. God would not approve.
My biggest issue is that the author starts out with an unprovable statement. At least from the aspect that there is no measurable means to actually test his supposition.
The dark and middle ages, as defined by the author, roughly span the time between 500 and 1000AD. This would have had much more weight with regards to how a society could grow without the shackles of religion.
For example from a really cursory search.
Clocks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escapement
China's first clock with an escapement system - 725
Europe - 13th century
Gunpowder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder
China's first recorded account of gunpowder - mid 900's
Europe - 12th century
Block Printing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_Dynasty#Science.2C_technology.2C_and_medicine
China's first recovered dates to - 650
Europe - 15th century
I guess my point is that while I don't necessarily disagree with the author, I believe he could have made his point much more succinctly if he had not seemed like he had such an axe to grind.
There are many things that could have impacted the rise of the west, to attribute the majority of that slow pace to christianity makes it seem as if he has an axe to grind. I would have had a lot more respect for his position had he say, attempted to compare to a civilization unburdened by the weight and brain drain of a religion that actively persecuted people thinking outside the book.
The dark and middle ages, as defined by the author, roughly span the time between 500 and 1000AD. This would have had much more weight with regards to how a society could grow without the shackles of religion.
For example from a really cursory search.
Clocks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escapement
China's first clock with an escapement system - 725
Europe - 13th century
Gunpowder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder
China's first recorded account of gunpowder - mid 900's
Europe - 12th century
Block Printing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_Dynasty#Science.2C_technology.2C_and_medicine
China's first recovered dates to - 650
Europe - 15th century
I guess my point is that while I don't necessarily disagree with the author, I believe he could have made his point much more succinctly if he had not seemed like he had such an axe to grind.
The author explains why he thinks Christianity held society back.
"Augustine (354–430) was the period’s principal influence and intellectual spokesman. His philosophy, though complex in some respects, is, in essential terms, quite simple: Knowledge requires acceptance of authority—God’s first, then the Church’s. Reason is, at best, a supplementary faculty, perhaps able to explicate what is antecedently believed, perhaps not."
With this sort of mindset, progress will not be forthcoming.
"Augustine (354–430) was the period’s principal influence and intellectual spokesman. His philosophy, though complex in some respects, is, in essential terms, quite simple: Knowledge requires acceptance of authority—God’s first, then the Church’s. Reason is, at best, a supplementary faculty, perhaps able to explicate what is antecedently believed, perhaps not."
With this sort of mindset, progress will not be forthcoming.
I hear what you are saying. I just think that the collapse of the west and its replacement with ultra-violent, largely illiterate anti-intellectual groups of barbarians explains the west's decline and stagnation much more than the Church's opposition to Aristotle. Nobody gives a hoot about the Pope's official position of scientific inquiry when you are running for your life from Vandals or Vikings and deathly ill from the lack of safe water because the Romans aren't there any more to repair the aqueduct.
The Dutch benefiting from political decentralization (secession from the Spanish Hapsburgs) allowed them to print (in just about any language) what Catholics saw as heretical treatises, both religious and scientific. The Dutch in the seventeenth century would print anything, for money. And that did not mean the Dutch weren't religious at the time. They were mostly committed Christians, but political decentralization enabled them to further scientific inquiry.
Pervasive, uncontrolled violence in the early medieval period and political centralization and the wedding of church and state in the late medieval/early modern period were the problems holding back the West.
I agree that the problem was the marriage of church and state, which goes back to AD 381 with the Edict of Thessalonica, which made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire.
Certainly the fall of Rome lead to many problems in the West, but those problems didn't have to last so long. The innovation from the Roman Empire came as a result of intellectual advancement, which was made possible because of free inquiry. That sort of technological advancement did not come back until the renaissance when free inquiry began to make its way back.
It was fundamentalism which led to the dark ages, and not just religion itself. The same sort of fundamentalism destroyed the Islamic Golden Age, and has kept Muslims in the dark for centuries. From the 8th to the 12th centuries Baghdad was the intellectual center of the world, then Islamic philosophy changed and away went the Golden Age.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age
The Golden Age was characterized by its tolerance, coexistence, and freedom of expression. I don't completely agree with wikipedia's stated reason for the end of the golden age, but it gives good information on the age itself.
Neil de Grasse Tyson gives a great speech on the Islamic Golden Age.
http://youtu.be/6oxTMUTOz0w
I am not against religion in se, but rather fundamentalism, which prevents individual Liberty and freedom of expression. Individual Liberty and freedom of expression are goods in themselves, but they also lead to technological advancement and the progression of civilization. These things do not happen under centralized government and heavy handed dogma, which The Church imposed on people for centuries.
What he said. You also had several outbreaks of bubonic plague during the period, on of which may have reduced the population of Europe by close to 50%
The latter end of the Middle Ages, however, gets something of a bad rap, in large part because of PR. For instance, England became a world power towards the beginning of the English Renaissance, and made a concerted effort to paint the ER as massive step forward, when in fact, there was a fairly steady progression of development during the late Middle Ages that naturally developed into the Renaissance. That latter period--the age of Chaucer, for lack of a better term- basically built the economic, cultural, intellectual, and artistic infrastructure for the Renaissance.
The bubonic plague happened because people lived in squalor. The bubonic plague would not have been nearly as bad during Roman times because the Romans had public baths and bathed frequently. Simple cleanliness would have cured the bubonic plague, but Europe was too backward and poor to live in cleanliness.
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