Bede

A little consistancy please, ipetrich. When have I ever called 'x' a heretic and when have I ever denied that 'y', inquisitor or not, was a Christian? It is Malachi who is engaged in the NTS fallacy at the moment.

Roger, sorry to miss out Severus Sebokht, especially after our recent exchange.

Best wishes

Bede

Malachi151

From "The War Against Reason":

Unfortunately this is from a journal that requires university access, so you can't just read this whole thing:

http://muse.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/access.c...llianatos.html

I have access to Project MUSE, perhaps you do as well...

I've already quotes various aspects of the Junstinian Institutes, which clearly indicate MAJOR restrictions on thought.

Now, are you going to deny that many schools of "classical" thought were shut down by Christians. I've already also posted another referece to different schools that were shut down in the east prior to this, and we can also get into the schools shut down by Theodosius, and I'm sure we can find more.

Bringing up abscure figures, whose works have were msotly lost for centuries, and sometimes banned by the Church, doesn't help your case.

You are trying to defend the idea that "Christians had nothing to do with the 'deminishment of reason, science, and philosophy' in the Roman Empire / former Roman Empire after their rise to power".

It simply won't fly.

Bede

Malachi/Geoff,

I don't know what journal that rant comes from, but no academic historian would write such stuff. It's not history but polemic. Done some digging: the author appears to be an environmental activitist. Sorry it won't fly.

You have consistantly refused to supply references for your accusation. You were wrong about the transmission of Galen (ten times), wrong about the burning and banning of Greek science, wrong about Philoponus who was hughly influencial in the Middle Ages, wrong about the lack of Christian men of science in the 5th to 10th centuries, wrong about Greek science in Ireland, wrong about the lack of schools in the Christian Empire, wrong about the copying of Lucretius, wrong about the loss of all Hero's works.

On top of this, you have never had the grace to admit you are anything but the ultimate font of knowledge and never admitted a single one of your numerous mistakes.

Finally, you have frequently been insulting. I've only seen what the mods left behind and that was bad enough.

For these reasons, I'll drop out of this. Feel free to have the last word.

Best wishes

Bede

Clivedurdle

Is not the effect of the trinitatian takeover one of at least benign neglect, with clear instances of direct serious damage?

The focus changed from the pagan - note "pagan" is a xian propagandist term - intellectual exploration (agreed admixed with gods and fate) to concerns of theology, worship and church order, from a concern with the natural real world to the "fantastic" supernatural world.

Even benign neglect over centuries does lead to serious losses of how to do things and understanding of why things work. (So heavenly minded no earthly use).

And I would love to see a parallel critique of Islam - how can expending scarce resources on religion and jihad help humans to understand the earth, the universe and how we work?

Is the problem that the hubris of religion makes us assume they have had more power than they actually have had? Yes they can cause huge damage by winning hearts and minds to superstitio, but mybe there have always been macchiavelian power hungry characters who like a fight because they want power and seekers after understanding.

Clivedurdle

Bede, as you started this thread I am not sure you should just bow out!

How does anyone know they were xians?

An interest in science was always looked at suspiciously - what are you doing thinking and not accepting what the priests say and attending church?

Secondly, once you had been conquered by Islam, a get out of jail free card was to profess xianity - children of the book. You had disadvantages, but you were not dead or a slave. You were valuable because you could read and write, what is the loss of your male bits compared to the loss of your life?

Compare that with xian treatment of jews in Spain, who were forced to convert. One religion does look more humane, but both are awful compared with modern standards!

Would a caliph be able to judge your orthodoxy as a xian?

Bede

I'm not. Just ignoring M.

It's usually obvious from their works. Moslems refer to the Prophet every two lines and Christians have their own theological language which is a dead give away.

Actually, this is what we are arguing about. I disagree.

Why not convert to Islam then? No taxes, not a second class citizen. etc. I think it is a bit odd people pretended to be Christians AFTER being conquered by Islam. Anyway, the Sabetians didn't.

The Jews were forced to convert after 1492. Moslem Spain had been subject to bouts of intolerance such as when Averroes was exiled and Jews kicked out from time to time. England also exiled Jews in about 1300.

No. But he would probably allow the Christian authorities to judge who was in and who was out.

The last chapter of Edward Grant's Science and Religion: 400BC - AD1550 (or via: amazon.co.uk) contains a critique of Islam's attitude to science.

Finally, you might want to check out Rodney Stark on why Christianity triumphed in the first place. It did help in practical ways - hospitals, charity etc. Neither was the current pagan philosophy terribly scientific. Malachi goes on about the atomists, but we already saw how they were off the pagan philosophical menu by 300AD anyway.

Best wishes

Bede

Roger Pearse

Well, I have found that the facility to add posters to my ignore list is highly useful in these circumstances. May I recommend it? (You already have two candidates!) Why waste words on people who aren't listening and just want to fight (so long, that is, as they run no personal risk -- the urge of these heroes of atheism to fight with Moslems being very low, curiously)?

If you are confronted with such people, why bother to respond? Just hit that button and ignore all posts by the poster.

Around half the posts in this thread are invisible to me, I should add.

It's the only way.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Malachi151

Not only what Clivedurdle said, but these were not Christians that were accepted in the Greek and Latin speaking world for the most part also, which is why they were in an Arabic region.

This just shows the type of nonsense that Bede tries to get into.

"Oh no, Christianity didn't hinder science, see I can point to a handful of Arab 'Christians' - Nestorians, Apollinarians, Marcionites, etc., who were all delcared heretical in the Catholic world, which was all of the Roman and Former Roman Empire, and whose works were never a part of that cutlure.

Now, are we talking about what happened to the West or not?

Pointing to some 6th century Arabic writing by a heretical Christian who was considered anathema by The Church BECAUSE of his views, is hardly coming up with evidence of a "Christian embrace of Greek science and philosophy". :wave:

mirage

I don't have any particular problem with the thesis that the church did wonders for "the West" other than the general problem with all counterfactual analyses (compared to what alternate universe?).

However, whatever power structure and tax system is present in a society will generally be the thing to "rebuild civilisation". Does the fact that it happened to be the church (or be highly influenced by the church in the case of monarchs) say anything much about Christianity, beyond that it wasn't rabidly anti-civilisation?

It seems to me pretty clear that civilisations are built whenever a society becomes rich and transportation allows a broad exchange of ideas and technology. And in an environment of surplus production sufficient to support reasonable intellectual and artistic activity, all you need to do to encourage creativity is not ban and persecute. It seems to me that Xtianity hardly shone in that regard, though clearly it wasn't totally oppressive. And the importance of preserving Classical works is overrated. How long do you think it would take to cover the same ground in society far more populous, richer and technologically advanced that ancient Athens? About ten seconds. Their importance is mainly historic. Did the horse collar, the ploughshare, policed roads, efficient sails, crop development all require some ancient Greek's musings to be transmitted by laborious hand copying?

People often mistake the origins that frame the context of a modern debate for the necessary cause of that debate.

Malachi151

I disagree with this completely, but only because it was the Greek works that showed to the Christians that there were other ways to look at the world. It is well know that most of the ideas of the Enlightenment are simply built on the older Greek ideas.

It it were so easy to just come up with modern civilization and knowledge then a lot of other cultures would have done it.

The Greek did all of the heavy lifting over a 500-800 year period of time, which built the intellectual fraemwork that modern society is founded on. This was ONLY able to happen BECAUSE OF the openness of the society, the focus on philosophy by at least some class of soceity, and the lack of DOGMA.

If you started with Christianity, and DIDN'T have these other pre-Chirstian ideas to counter against it, its doubtful that any advance would ever happen, the ideas of the Greeks woudl never develop on their own in a Christian world, its only their pre-existance that made an eventual breakdown of the Christian theory possible, and as evidence fo this we can simply look at other cultures, who remained stagnant in their worldviews basically forever, until they met with the West.