NOGO

This is a good arguement and I would accept it if it were not for three things.

1. The kind of zeal and passion by which people were murdered in this era was not unique in the history of Christianity. The witch hunts, the inquisition and the way that the church dealt whith heresy throughout the middle ages. We can also see this kind of zeal and passion in the OT with the extermination of the Baal sect and others events.

2. Since the reformation new Christian sects seem to appear like mushrooms and their numbers ever increasing.

3. The end result of it all was that all non-Christian religious practice was wiped out.

Radorth:
"I have said many times that the church turned to $&$# when Constantine was converted, and this is no coincidence."

Yes, but there is another simple explanation. The conversion of Constantine meant that Christianity switched from defence to offence. That should also be obvious to you.

Radorth

You were arguing something else, now you 've conveniently changed the subject. Actually Constantine and other leaders, particularly Julian, in some cases permitted pagan temples, so your history is goofy anyway. You are reading into it that which fits you anti-Christian world-view, which might be all right if you could get your facts straight. And I did say the church turned to crap at this point anyway, so why are you harping on the problems?

Nobody really forced anybody to believe the Nicene creed at the time and in any case nobody is forcing us now. There were still a lot of sects here and there. That's the fact. Another fact: I've never heard any but a totally outer fringe Christian deny the creed. Have you? Why would Protestants and Catholics still agree on something if it was made to stifle people? The fact that there were heretics is a side issue and some were stifled or excommunicated, is a side issue. Many sects survived.

Rad:

1. You miss the point. When people did not know the word, they did things Jesus never said to do, and in fact said not to. When the church became large and had problems, it became like all bureacracy's. Inaccessability of the NT to the average person coincides precisely with the Dark Ages. That's no coincidence either.

Until the NT was widely disemminated again, 1300 years later, they did not even know what a Christian was, and most all those who broke off did so because they believed they had discovered something spiritually efficacious. All you can come up with to disprove what I am saying is a few minor exceptions.

2. So? Free thought is bad now? You say this but in L.A pastors from every denomination you can name get together monthly, work together on major projects. You have Catholics and Lutherans agreeing on a "Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification by Faith" previously a major stumbling block.

3. Huh? Ever heard of Muhammed? Christianity was not meant by Jesus to be forced on anyone. That is why the crusades failed so miserably IMO. "Shake the dust off your feet" and move on, was all Jesus said to do.

Using you folks simplified logic, I can blame Marx for the actions of Stalin, right?

Thank you.

Rad

[ October 13, 2002: Message edited by: Radorth ]</p>

Radorth

It is, but when you have phonies and power grabbers in the church now, you have an imperialist-minded king, there are precious few New Testaments and the benevolent fathers of the church are all dead, what would YOU predict would happen?

It wouldn't make a damn bit of difference what Jesus said, would it?

Radorth

NOGO

I do not blame Jesus for what the church did but I do blame Christianity the same way you and I blame communism for what Stalin did.

Believers will say that REAL Christianity and REAL communism is not like what the church did and whay what Lenin and Stalin did etc. but to put it in a familiar phrase, I look at the fruit.

My basic beef with the history of the church is that it displaced all Pagan beliefs and it turned turned the intellectuals (ie anybody who learned to read and write) towards faith and away from anything useful like science and technology.

People will claim that the church preserved Pagan documents. Was it really the chruch or indivuduals who sought to preserve their cultural or intellectual heritage.

Radorth

Nogo, you might well argue that religious freedom and "pagan practices" were wiped out by the church, but I would argue that the smart pagans simply set up their idols inside the church.

The question is whether Christianity as Jesus intended it ever got a foothold. Ironically, G.K. Chesterton, a Catholic, and I agree. In effect "It is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting. It is that Christianity has never fully been tried."

Rad

Bede

Nogo,

Look, I have got to ask - what science and technolgy? Do you mean the neo-Platonic mysticism that the pagan world was awash with when the Empire was converted? Or do you mean the science and technology that, after failing to appear in every other civilisation in the world, finally turned up in the wholly Christian and Christianised seventeenth century in Western Europe when all the main players were Christians, when the church was responsible for nearly all education and academic institutions and scholars had finally thrown off the dead hand of Aristotle?

As for the preservation of pagan work, you might find <a href="http://www.bede.org.uk/literature.htm" target="_blank">this of interest</a> and I would welcome comments and any facts you think I have missed.

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede's Library - faith and reason</a>

Kantian

Aren't you confusing correlation with causality? That Christianity was dominant in these centuries has little to do with the fact that secular thought grew from the prevailing ideology of the times and consequently replaced it, given people's inclinations towards pragmatism. Thanks to this link, <a href="http://web.mit.edu/mitmsa/www/NewSite/libstuff/nasr/nasrspeech1.html" target="_blank">you can stop chest-thumping now, Metacrock</a> Apparently, in the book Religion in the Secular City: Towards a Postmodern Theology Cox presented a 3 tiered argument:

• "With the passing of the modern age, the epoch of 'modern theology' which tried to interpret Christianity in the face of secularization is also over." What do you make of this, Metacrock?
• "The essential rudiments" of "postmodern theology" are "already appearing," borne by the two "vigorous antimodernist religious movements" indicated above.
• This new theology must "appreciate and use the accomplishments of modern theology"

Yes? You did not address my post.
Wrong! Science most certainly is an ideology, since there is no single procedure, nor does the scientific tradition follow a single method. In its early days it was an underdog, thin and swift, and brought down the monolithic ideology of the Church. But in these days, its' just as political and authoritarian as the Church ever was.
~Transcendentalist~

Ted Hoffman

Radorth,
Just to remind you, when you are done here, I will be interested in seeing your take on <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=51&t=000629" target="_blank">Radorths Challenge</a>.
Thank you.

Vorkosigan

Leo Donald Davis. Chritians didn't really start focsuing on killing each other until the Empire stopped focusing on killing Christians.

My understanding is that this is incorrect. Quite early on the Christians got a reputation for riots and fractitiousness. I was just reading a history of Gaul the other day that discussed the problem of Christian social behavior.

Vorkosigan

Look, I have got to ask - what science and technolgy? Do you mean the neo-Platonic mysticism that the pagan world was awash with when the Empire was converted? Or do you mean the science and technology that, after failing to appear in every other civilisation in the world, finally turned up in the wholly Christian and Christianised seventeenth century in Western Europe when all the main players were Christians, when the church was responsible for nearly all education and academic institutions and scholars had finally thrown off the dead hand of Aristotle?

Oh please, Bede. Modern science grew up in a West that was tossing off the Church. Previous cultures developed powerful empirical and technological traditions. The west's major contribution lay in areas diametrically opposed to Christian tradition: freedom of thought, free exchange of information, peer review, methodological naturalism, a separate social status for knowledge producers. Christianity's major stimulus to science was negative: it failed to provide useful explanations of reality, its moral system was revealed as bankrupt, it failed to mention huge swathes of the world, its Holy Book could not be reconciled with history and reality, and its long and bloody record of suppression and murder was an active stimulus to the development of peaceful secular traditions and alternative traditions that emphasized tolerance and diversity, ones we are still struggling to teach Christians.

More to the point, the west had been Christian for 1200 years prior to the emergence of Western (Modern) science. 1200 years of falling behind everyone else on the planet. When Europe emerged from obscurity in the late 15th century it was the most socially, intellectually and technologically backward of the major civilizations. Obviously the changes that created western science had very little to do with the idiotic fantasies of Christian theology and its wretched, nihilistic moral thinking, and everything to do with the increasing complexity of late Medieval society, the flow of ideas and technology from China, India, and Arabia, the discovery of the Americas, the rediscovery of Greek thought, the influence of alchemical tradition, the development of modern capitalism, the stimulus of European contact with more advanced civilizations, and other factors too numerous to list here. The technological toolkit that facilitated Europe's rise in the 16th century came almost entirely from China and Arabia, what the Europeans supplied was organizational skills, a driving need, and a terrifying ruthlessness.

But if Christianity was so wonderful, what happened to Eastern Christianity? I note that proponents of the Christianity-caused-science thesis invariably ignore the feudal ignorant mess of the East. And let's not forget the roaring successes of Catholic Spain and Austria, two of Europe's most Enlightened and Progressive states, due entirely to the benign influence of Christianity...er...wait.

The fact is that Christianity's most profound influence on the rise of science was negative. Positive effects of Christianity are few, and in any case, one need only look at the glorious scientific achievements of Eastern Christianity to understand that your thesis is bankrupt from the get-go. Christianity's influence on the rise of science was nil, and less than nil.

BTW, Bede, by now a "professional" would have mentioned Merton's Science, Technology, and Society in Seventeenth Century England and the so-called "Puritan Hypothesis" that continues to be much debated among scholars. That's the sort of thing a professional would be expected to know. If you are going to deploy the "professional" label against others, you damn well better be able to back it up.

Those of you who want to see how real professionals (as opposed to people who toss labels around) handle teaching the Scientific Revolution might want to look here <a href="http://depts.washington.edu/hssexec/newsletter/1997/westfall.html" target="_blank"> at a discussion of major works, and suggestions at the bottom for six lectures on the SR</a>. Note that none of the lectures has anything to with Christianity as a causitive factor, and note also that of the books reviewed, few have anything to do with Christianity and its alleged role in the fostering of modern science.

Vorkosigan

[ October 14, 2002: Message edited by: Vorkosigan ]</p>