laughing dog

Are you referring to our planet Earth? Other than the literacy point - which is partly true - the rest is a pure misreading of history. Rome fell before the Dark Ages. The rest is pure wishful projection.

Apologist

I am not sure if that is entiretly valid.

Wikipedia article on the subject.

From what I understand, it is more or less as following:

Rome begins to decline. Germanics move in. Germanics overthrow Rome. Rome Falls. Order is lost. Society and culture stagnate until Charlamagne. Charlamagne establishes his kingdom. Enter fuedalism and thereby the end of the dark ages.

Astreja

I have a different take on it.

Northern Europe doing just fine till Charlemagne, who had thousands of people murdered because they refused to convert. My kin and my partner's kin were essentially stripped of their rights and their lands under the old laws, and made into peasants under the thumb of Rome. Old culture went underground, except for Christmas trees, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and coloured eggs.

And, appropriately, it was Northern European Christians who poked Rome in the eye with the creation of the Protestant church. This subsequently fragmented into many churches, allowing me and my kin to recover our ancestral culture and allowing Scandinavia to become a leader in the promotion of universal human rights. :thumbs:

Apologist

You mean the illiterate, cultureless barbarians who remained as such until Christian Missionaries should them a better way of life?

InquisitorGeneralis

Of course you think it's funny. The Appeal to Ridicule is all you have. People following the traditions of their ancestors must be just hilarious to you.

InquisitorGeneralis

Actually, you've rejected your ancestral culture. Your ancestors were Catholics, and before that they were pagans. You haven't revived either of those things.

BMSMCMAM

Like how best to spread sexually transmitted diseases?

Apologist

Abstinence and monogomy spreads sexually transmitted diseases?

Risiko

Abstinence? Are you thinking of the pedophiliacs of the RC?

Monogamy predates christianity (at least in my part of the world - the Illiterate, cultureless, barbaric Northern Europe). Monogamy is an advantage in societies based on farming, where owning land is the key to survival.

Many wives -> many children
Many children -> too little land for each child to inherit

Avatar

A better way of life that included the supression of herbalist medicine, the notion that somehow being filthy dirty was healthy, and the active effort to wipe out history and traditions in favor of their own? Not to mention the spreading of diseases all over Europe.

The Dark Ages were dark for a reason. The Church's power was out of control, it actively kept the common people ignorant, deliberately supressed any efforts to advance culture or science, and let its authority figures get power-drunk and corrupt without raising a hand to stop it. I'll take "clueless barbarians" over a totalitarian occupation, thanks.