Bede

Nope, classical learning was maintained by Christians in Byzantium. Also, claiming that the Goths were Arians is true and might explain why Theodoric the Goth kept the Roman administration in Italy intact while most of the other barbarians made no effort to do so. The schools in Alexandria and Constantinople were kept going by the Christians and important work done. You probably haven't heard of John Philoponus, Leo the Mathematician or Photius as Byzantine intellectual history has been airbrushed out of western history. But they were both significant and Christians.

I think you'll find a lot of the chiselling was done by western museums in the nineteenth century. They also used dynamite.

Best wishes

Bede

Bede

Ipetrich and Wads4, this sort of content free silliness doesn't belong on a thread where we are arguing about facts and evidence. Kindly keep the "Yaa-boo sucks" comments elsewhere. Thank you.

Wads4

Great posts! :notworthy

Wads4

I am being serious,-afterall there is a new recent book, the Book of Mormon, why should there not be others in the future? -sorry if I touched a nerve.

Bede

The Stationers' Company was set up by Elizabeth I in 1576 to control book production in England. In return for a printing monopoly, it had to register all books to be printed and control imports of foreign books. Books that did not appear on the Stationers' Company whitelist were de facto banned and private presses were constantly being raided and shut down. This system broke down during the civil war but was reimposed afterwards when Milton's Paradise Lost was among the books censored. The Catholic Church lacked the secular power to control printing and imports so had to resort to a black list of banned works. Apart from being considerably less effective than the English policy, it also presented a gift to later English historians wanting to paint their own country as the land of the free compared to those wicked Catholics.

There was absolutely nothing 'free' about 17th century England or 18th century France, but both managed to produce the greatest men of science of their day. France was also Catholic to the core. Mr Lawyer's constant carping about the RCC begins to look like bigotry and ignorant bigotry at that.

Because it isn't true? Have you read any academic history on continental science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? What are your authorities for all these claims or do you have to keep running back to the discredited AD White?

In historical studies we call this nuance. It is part of what makes the subject what it is. We reject blundering bulls who straight-jacket everything into boxes to fit their preconceptions, who divide heroes from villians and insult foreigners. What you call nitpicking is actually getting to grips with the facts, carefully examining the evidence and rejecting explanations that do not do it justice. We historians like to think a close engagement with the truth is a virtue. Perhaps lawyers don't.

Best wishes

Bede

Wads4

"I think you'll find a lot of the chiselling was done by western museums in the nineteenth century. They also used dynamite."

They were 4th and 5th century chiselings actually, and aimed in particular at pagan religious texts and "obscene" images, eg of fertility masturbation depictions by Amon-Re and other Gods. Are you suggesting that the 19th century dynamite users were all atheists? I thought your theme was that all scientific endeavours and expeditions were promoted by Christians.

Philadelphia Lawyer

And what do you and your learned colleagues say about the book bannings, the Inquisition, the scientists burned at the stake, etc.? Was that all done in the service of science? How do you account for the Church not taking Gallileo's book off the banned list until 1822? What does that say about the Church and its opposition to science in general and heliocentrism in particular?

You've done nothing of the kind. You made a claim about the dissection of corpses that was shot down almost immediately. You made another, totally unsupported, claim that the Church's opposition to vaccinations was somehow related to a ban on praying for people who intentionally made themselves sick.(As if that would excuse or justify the opposition.) You haven't addressed at all the Church's opposition to surgery. Nor have you addressed how that opposition stemmed from the fact that (as in the cases of astronomy, meteorology, geology, etc.) the Church had its own explanation for disease (will of God, evil spirits, etc.) and its own regime of "treatment" (prayer, exorcism, holy relics), both of which were threatened by medical advances.

Now, your true colors are showing. You don't give a damn about science; your only real concern is to see that religion is not "denigrated". Well, I'm sorry if it offends you and your Orwellian Trexmaster, but since the Renaissance Christianity has been a hindrance to science. Just, as you've already practically admitted, it's been a hindrance to the humanities and social sciences.

Bede

As far as I know, no scientist has ever been burnt at the stake. That's why the conflict myth had to pretend that Bruno and Servetus were scientists. Certainly the church opposed heliocentricism, and other things too. But it did not oppose a great deal of science, certainly not science in general, and helped in all sorts of ways. If the conflict myth is true, why do you think all the canonical examples are false? No one shot down my point on dissection (Clive gave us an irrelevant quote, but he's wisely not decided to defend it). Still, I know you don't care about scholarly sources that contradict you, so we'll leave it there. You are clearly not listening to a word I'm saying, couldn't care less about evidence and historical sources, and are behaving like the worst sort of fundamentalist. You can keep your myths, I'll stick to my history.

Best wishes

Bede

Philadelphia Lawyer

What nonsense. The Church kept its list of banned books until 1966. So let's not compare it to the regimes in place in England and France in the 1500's or 1700's. And where did I say that the pre-19th Century English and French regimes promoted freedom of the press? How does the censorship of these monarchies justify that of the Catholic Church? Is it "ignorant bigotry" to point out the fact that the Church maintained its censorship system well into the 20th Century? How about the fact that the Catholic list was not filled with pornography, but the works of Chaucer, Kant, Hume, Spinoza, Erasmus Darwin, Gallileo, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Gide, etc.? Am I allowed to mention this, or would that be anti-Catholic bigotry?

Maybe, in all your nuance, you miss the forest for the trees. A scientist is burned at the stake. But, with your nuance, you say, "Hey, well that's OK, because the Church only burned him for his theology." A great work of science is banned for 200 years, but that's OK because there was some technical reason for it.

Philadelphia Lawyer

Stick to your apologia, you mean.