Roger Pearse

If Jesus never existed, can I have the Christmas presents for all those who think so? After all, they won't want them...

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Lafcadio

100% agree. Is only that your initial position that there were no contribution between Proclus and Copernicus was too harsh and obtuse on the matter. Copernicus work crowned a millenium of increasing doubt on Ptolemy's work. We find astronomers finding errors in his tables, complicating the system just to keep it working. It was clear that one day the man who'll put an end to all these would come.

If this was your intention then you have again a point. On this topic we might remember Kepler's saying about astrology, the dumb daughter of astronomy, but without his existence the astronomers wouldn't have a job.


Very true, but this is heritage is rather thin. We have the language - lingua Romana rustica or lingua barbara developed as an opposite of the scholar latin. We have an imitatio imperii (laws, royal titles). Also with that we have the political mythology. Fabulous origins and ethnogeneses were created in those ages. The Merovingian Franks are claimed to descend from Trojans (Romans mythical ancestors, as well). Goths are claimed to descend from Getae/Scythians.
Anyway, let's not underestimate the opposite reaction which was born several centuries later after the fall of the Western Empire and existence of Byzantine empire. "Stulti sunt Romani, sapienti Paioari" this is how Bavarese thought in 8th century. Luitprand of Cremona, in 10th century, talking to Byzantines as a messenger from the Otto I, mocks them. Romulus was a fratricide he argued starting a disertation about all faults a human can have and gather them all under the name of Romans.

First, the image is not quite accurate. After 476 (though the phenomenon already started) we find a process of ruralization. The city life diminished. Second, even so the life itself as it was in those ages wasn't enough to continue an intellectual evolution like it happened in the glorious years of Roman Empire. It was already acknowledged that significant many monks (which were one of the categories having a minimal education) were illiterate. And what's more interesting, is not that only the analysis of manuscripts reveals that but also the chronicles according them harsh and probably true descriptions.
A minimal urban life is not a warrant for education. I already made a point that most of early (not to say of others, like I exemplified to another poster, the early Saxonic kings of England) Germanic rulers were not supporting culture and education. The numbers both of instructors but also of students will gradually diminish. A philosopher like Boethius is regarded with little interest in his age, living in one of the most "enlightened" reigndoms of that time. Even Cassiodorus cherishes more the translator than the philosopher. For many philosophy becomes philosophy of nature - physics and medicine.
But let's not imagine this was a salvation. A contemporary of Boethius, Ennodius of Pavia, connects strangely arithemetics of rhetorics. So much for rigor! In fact there's a tendency that anything left of ancient philosophy and science to be valued only for its applications, if any was obvious enough.
Classical culture had among its goals the formation of the character, the strengthening of the spirit and the intergration in high life society. This is one reason why the classical culture (the remains of it) in the early barbarian kingdoms will be reserved to few, the aristocrats. When this social category will have its crises, these cultural remains will fade.
The Germanic society was a society of warriors. Talking also of aristocrats, the military education was many times focused on. Then the moral education came to complete the first. This was focused on war deeds. Ostrogoths had among their models the legendary Berig (who led them out of Scandinavia) and even Theodoric after his death (I read somewhere that Dietrich of Bern is an image of this Ostrogothic king). Religion was another important aspect in their education. It was also a reason why Roman and Germanic aristocracies conflicted. Most of the Germanics were Arian. Wulfila's Bible will be copied into Codex Argenteus. What's left of the Classical education? Applied sciences (land measuring - can't find a better English term - agrimensors this is how they called the guys doing it, architecture, mechanics, medicine), law. Also it worth noticing that Roman aristocracy diminished in time. Some took the 'barbarian way of life', some became monks. This is how I can describe in few words the education's perspective at the end of 5th, beginning of 6th century. What happened now some historians compare with the reluctancy showed by Romans in 2nd century BC towards Greek culture. Both Romans and Germans were initially peasants and warriors and reacted in a similar way.

At the end of 7th century, beginning of 8th there's a political stability which backs up and perhaps causes also a cultural rebirth. In Gaul Pepin of Herstal reunites Austrasia and Neustria after the victory from Tertry in 687. In Italy, the peace between Byzantines and Lombards (680). In England, the kings of Mercia control their neighbours. Sculpture, writing, poetry came to a new life. Isn't that amazing that in the dark Normandy we find a poet using ancient tetrameters? This is just a context I pictured. The Carolingian rebirth itself develops in this context and has many aspects we can talk on. Considering I'm already at length in this reply I will keep this discussion for the next time and hope also for your implication with some questions or even some arguments anticipating mine.

I am not sure I'm following you. I found no guy in this thread to reach to a full agreement with (well, Buridan can be an exception, but his interventions were small, so I wouldn't take that as a fact). My thesis is that the facts discussed have other causes than those you named. If you followed also my quarrels with other guys in this thread you might have noticed I'm not using "good" and "bad" epithets when evaluating a situation. So here's the point from I might add you're already making a straw man. I am not talking about some moral perspective of the events that happened. I'm talking about what happened and why did it happen. Because some guys claim it's Christianity's fault. I saw little arguments in that direction and very many claims remained without support or just changed ("well, not all but most of") when they were refuted.
I am not a historian student, but I have great pleasure in reading history. Many of the events talked about here I saw them justified in so many other ways, that I really cannot fall for the sufficient speculations done in this thread.

I haven't claimed that. And I am not looking for faults but for causes. The lack of education is a cause. You cannot expect, in an absurd case, that if some tribal populations would invade New York would actually preserve American civilization. Now you can blame the religions of America for that, religions which they will eventually adopt, but IMO you will be dead wrong.

Arians. And recently converted. These things matter.

What about that site www.jesusneverexisted.com? Would you like a list of interesting snippets from this thread? Some guys in this thread blamed Christianity for a millenium of stagnation

We started to talk of the early period. I'm glad to talk of any territory of the Western Europe during Dark Ages and I expect that someone show me how Christianity augmented and not diminished the loss of culture and civilization following the Fall of Roman Empire.

At that time we had even no Plinius, Ovidius or Tacitus. Had it ended before it was even properly started?

There was no Church in Western Europe after Rome's fall. Rome was an island in a sea of barbarians. Alexandria, Constantinople and Antioch were the centers of Christianity. Western Church didn't rise by itself, it was supported by secular powers. Kings who wanted recognition. Kings who wanted two foundations of their authority instead of one. Secular reasons brought the domination of the Church. Secular affairs were submitted to the Church by secular authorities.

And even more resources were wasted in wars and later in feudal conflicts. But I didn't see that person to claim that wars kept science back because they ate resources. I didn't see that person to blame Alexander the Great for wasting his forces in Asia instead of improving the cultural life of Greece. Ucronias are not quite arguments.

Romans were hostile to Greek tradition in 2nd century BC. I already pictured above what was valued from the Graeco-Roman civilization from 5th century and what wasn't.

Nothing of what you said regards the economic crisis of 3rd century. Nothing of what you said regards the incresing weakness of their military forces and the increasing penetrability of their borders. It's an act of ignoring all the historical causes and load Christianity with all the burden resulted from the absence of the former. Needless to say, evidence is none.

We're now almost two millenia from antiquity and the church is not that hostile, and even more, the situation (the degree of hostility) differs from region to region. That's a more than obvious proof that a generalization can't solve the problem. I prefer to talk the details if you're ok with that.

Poor people. The argument is about Christianity not about social inequalities inherent in a hierarchial society.

And what's the exact evidence of that?

I don't think that the destruciton of plumbing will change people's psychology to do recreational baths instead of having them as a daily regime. Nor Christianity. On contrary, Christianity would inhibit recreational baths and restrict bathing to pure utility.

I agree, but still that doesn't relate Christianity and bathing in anyway.

The Greek medical traditions, though re-introduced couldn't solve this issue. As I already pointed out, even after the connection with Greek world was reestabilished, even after the science started to make its first steps, in the age of Enlightenment, medicine still thought water is responsible for diseases. There were some years when aristocrats used perfume instead of water. They didn't clean themselves, but at least they had a nice scent.
Greek medicine is not the answer to the water-disease assumption. Even more, according to Greek medicine there were four fluids. According to a vast part of Greek philosophy there were four elements. I don't reckon the association, therefore I hope I don't speculate too much when I say that the connection between water and some diseases might have an origin in the Greek medicine itself.

I already questioned how this Christian message affected the population. There're plenty of medieval pictures with people bathing and having fun. There're plenty of chronicles describing bathing. There's plenty of literature as well. What are these guys showing? Why would I take some ascet's position to be relevant for a society and ignore the message the society itself gives? You're showing a Christian message, not a Christian influence. And worse, none of these messages is part of the official doctrine, they are held by different monks, diferent clerics? Now will you load Christianity with every word a Christian ever said? Will the entire western Europe be backwarded because some monk said once some word? How they all fell for it?

You're not dealing with my argument. I mentioned a guild of public bath owners. You ignored. I mentioned that whores usually hang on in such places. Would whores go in an unpopular place to pick up their clients?

You keep mentioning this. Only public baths are restricted to the lucky wealthy ones. Bathing itself it's free. Even today people without plumbing do bath. It's not that confortable, but it's about its utility.

I'm sorry - can you prove that? How do you know how often or how rare people bathed in river? If you just want to show an anti-Christian agenda, or worse, an anti-Medieval agenda, you'll lose me as a debate parteners in few moves. I'm already tired.

Come on, this is Hollywood! The situation of peasants varies so much from Antiquity to 20th century, and from region to region that I would waste my time to answer this. There were so many other people than priests owning serfs that it would be another waste of time to describe you the society of a certain age and time.
While about the situation you describe, if we'd take it as an example, it would be very clear that those poor guys do not bath mainly because they are too tired or too oppressed, not that some monk told them to ignore their body as their spirited bathed in Christ.

Arabian Nights?? :rolling:

I have not heard of such a fallacy. Please refer to an online fallacy dictionary and show me "the common fallacy of anti-intellectuals". Do you suggest I'm an anti-intellectual?

This part is self-contradicting. How can he be vastly influential if he's not known by many? Do you suggest telepathy? :Cheeky:

You're wrong. Only Church scholars (like scholastics) are arisotelians. The vast majority of the population was not aristotelian. They couldn't care less about Logos or any Greek "crap". They cared about their crop

My point is that a preach itself cannot prove an influence unless the society is shown to react accordingly. You cannot say the Church limited the murder as between its preaching and the rate of murders you don't see an justified and obvious connection. Similarily, you can't say the Church influenced people to disregard their body if they don't act like that. Jerome's quote is irrelevant without a glance in a medieval society. And I'm not talking about Hollywood.

Ok

spin

That's mean. Why shouldn't they get presents like other kids? Next you'll want their easter eggs as well.

NOGO

Where do you get the idea that Yahweh set up a world that ran on consistent and predictable natural laws?

Ancient Greeks created geometry and algebra.
They also came up with the idea that math can be used to model the physical world.
A prime example of this is the work of Ptolemy.
Ptolemy created a mathematical model which could predict the position of heavenly bodies.
.... and he did this without Yahweh.

Christians, on the other hand, had Yahweh for more than a millenium and they did not budge until they rediscovered, thanks to the Muslims, the knowledge of the ancient Greeks.

The idea that the world was governved by predictable laws does not belong to Christians. It belongs to ancient Greeks.

Our society owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to the ancient Greeks and Romans not only for math and science but also our justice system, the rule of law by and for the people, rights of the citizen, our arts and literature etc.

Christians should aknowledge this instead of trying to take credit.

GakuseiDon

I'm saying that the belief that God had created a world based on predictable laws would have encouraged the rise of science, regardless of whether God existed or not.

All true. But inventions by individuals isn't what I'm talking about, it is the rise of the scientific method itself.

I agree, but it still needs to be asked, why did science take off from 1500 CE instead of from 200 BCE? Even acknowledging our debt to the Greeks, I think it is a valid question.

I'm not convinced that the evidence is there to show that the rise of the scientific method was due to monotheism, but it's an interesting idea (esp for liberal Christians like myself "Hey guys, all your sciences belong to us!" :angel: ).

NOGO

Yes, please show me how Christianity contributed to create the belief that Yahweh created a world based on predictable laws.
Then please show how this encourages the rise of science.
As I stated above the idea of modelling the physical world with math was already invented. Greeks already knew without Yahweh that the world was predicltable and followed laws.

Everything starts with "inventions by individuals" as you say.
The scientific method came about because Europeans picked up where the ancient Greeks left off. This is a continuous process, while you are trying to cut out a piece which you can attribute to Christianity alone.


It is a valid question if you do not have a ready-made answer.
Since Christianity dates from way before 1500 then the question I have is why did they wait until they rediscovered Greek documents for science to take off?


To me Christianity is a myth. To you it is the most important thing in your life.
It is therefore normal for you to seek to set Christianity apart and superior to all other myths.
Also natural to believers must be the idea that people like Newton, Kepler, Galileo and others were Christians and nothing else. In other words Christianity defined them. To me a man is more than the myths that his parents brainedwashed with since birth.

To Paul the wisdom of this world was rubbish and spent his life preaching myth. To Newton, Kepler and Galileo and others the rubbish (Pagan worldly knowledge) was fascinating and they spent their lives studying it.

Paul would have taken all Greek works and set them on fire without a second thought. 1500 years later the fire had abated and people had other interests than the bible and prasing the lord.

Lucretius

Sadly I think that if Christianity had not existed we may quite possibly be in exactly the same situation as we now are with the possible exception that we would be debating about a "Mythical Mithras " instead of a "Mythical Jesus" .
For a time it was a very close run race between Christianity and Mithraism to become an Empire wide religion and from my admittedly limited knowledge of Mithraism , I do not see that a Mithraistic Europe would have been any better or worse than a Christian one turned out to be .

countjulian

Ugh. MacMullen's footnotes are confusing the hell out of me. I don't have any time to respond to my critics (I'm being triple teamed, yay) today, but rest assured, you shall hear from me in the morrow.

NOGO

Which astronomers found errors in Ptolemy's tables?
I am not saying that they were perfect.
Europeans got Ptolemy's work after the in invation of Spain by the Muslims.
So these people finding errors in Ptolemy's work for a millenium were not Europeans.
Enlighten me here...

I challenge the statement about "crowned a millenium of ..."
Copernicus did more than just swap the earth and sun in the Ptolemaic system.

His starting point was to realize that the 24 hour rotations of every heavenly body was due to the rotation of the observer. Once you have this idea you can rebuild the solar system from scratch and get it right. This one single idea allowed him to unravel the mystery and "fix" the solar system.

He had to fudge his figures as well and the center of his system was not the sun but a point just outside the sun. The elliptical orbit was left to Kepler to discover.

Still I see no reason to believe that there was any other idea from any other source other than Ptolemy and the ancient Greek documents to guide Copernicus.

But I may be ignorant.

NOGO

Not a very useful example unless you are talking about complete massacres of people in NY.

Even after invasion people remain, their knowledge remains and their way of life remain.

Education is a problem but there was another.
Christianity!

Christians cursed the knowledge and ways of this world.
They were looking for the end of the world and how to get salvation from their God. Science was irrelevant.
I see a strong shift in focus and purpose which delayed the re-emergance of Greek and Roman civilizations.