Amen-Moses

The "Dark Ages" actually end around the late 10th century and depending on which country you are referring to start somewhere from 300-500 CE.

The "middle ages" start from the 10th century and end around the 16th (again depending on which country you refer to).

The reason they are called "Dark" is purely due to the lack of historical material, in some countries they don't really even exist as we have plenty of historical documents for those countries during the period in question (mostly but not exclusively "Arab" run countries for want of a better term.

So "early middle ages" to me would usually refer to the period 900-1300 CE. Or to put it another way the Norman period (again depending on which country you are talking about).

Relativism in archeology, who'da thunk it!

Amen-Moses

lpetrich

That's not what I was asking about. I was asking about concern for natural law vs. concern for miracles -- which was considered more important and more worth studying and chronicling?

Present-day apologists tend to downplay miracles and try to claim credit for the concept of natural law, because it is clear that natural law has been a MUCH more successful paradigm than the occurrence of miracles.

For example, in the early 19th century, Uranus's motions showed some discrepancies from what was calculated for it from the effects of the known planets. It could have been attributed to divine whimsy, but that would not have told us much more. Instead, it was attributed to an unknown planet -- and the sizes of the discrepancies allowed prediction of the planet's position. And Neptune was found very close to the predicted spot.

But in the Middle Ages, accounts of miracle-working were VERY common; saints were described as having worked LOTS of miracles.

Furthermore, a major genre of literature in the Middle Ages, especially in the Dark Ages, was hagiography, the biographies of saints -- "biographies" which were largely fictional. Saints would be pictured in idealized terms, and they would often experience very stylized sorts of incidents.

Andrew Dickson White had described how stories of miracles had appeared for a certain St. Francis Xavier; That saint had complained about the difficulty of certain languages, but one of his supposed miracles was fluent multilinguality. And even a crab bringing a dropped crucifix to him!

And Bede romanticizes that time as some sort of Good Old Days of theological science.

[ November 11, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

lpetrich

I wish to note that cases like St. Francis Xavier are relevant to considering the growth of accounts of miracles in the Gospels.

If that saint's admirers could invent stories of linguistic competence and crab helpfulness, then Jesus Christ's admirers could invent all those stories of miracles that JC had worked.

Vorkosigan

Good point, Ip. It's not like Xavier was living in some ancient time.

I've seen his body at the Church in Old Goa in Goa. Quite a beautiful collection of Churches all with a few hundred yards of one another. A reminder of one of the most important and destructive weapons of European colonization.....

NOGO

Let me try and rephrase your point.
Bede claims that since the Christian God gave man laws then Christians went looking for laws in nature as ways of discovering God.

Miracles are by definition acts of God which defy the laws of nature.

Therefore a religion which glorifies deviations to the laws of nature as acts of God cannot possibly encourage people to discover the laws of nature as acts of God.

This is a very good point in my book.

Here is an example.
After Copernicus came up with the heliocentric model of the solar system Tycho Brahe modified to place the earth back at the centre with the sun rotating around the earth and all the planet rotating around the sun.

This is called geocentricity and is exaplained in detail in <a href="http://www.geocentricity.com" target="_blank">www.geocentricity.com</a>

On this site you will find the claim that even the distant stars rotate daily around the earth. Most of us will say, IMPOSSIBLE! just think of the forces required to keep distant stars in orbit around the earth.

But God can do anything. So planets revolve around the sun by natural law but the sun and all the other stars revolved around the earth by miracle. This is Biblical astronomy.

The point is why should anybody bother to look for natural laws when God can set them aside at any time just to have it His way? Science is based on the principle that laws apply everywhere, through space and time.

Dr. Bouw is a quack for most of us but one has to admit that if miracles are possible then his theory is as good as any. So Joshua did order the sun to stop and everything is back on track in fairyland.

By the way the Church accepted Tycho's model which shows two things. They accepted most the advantanges of the Copernicus system (to think that Bede says it is a mystery why Copernicus even proposed it) and they believed in miracles.

[ November 12, 2002: Message edited by: NOGO ]</p>

NOGO

Obviously Bede does not know the meaning of the word dogma. To him anything that is thought is dogma since the students are asked to accept it.

Dogma is not just something that you are told and asked to accept but something that you are asked not to question. Somehow this bit has escaped our friend Bede. Also contrary to science dogma is without evidence. You are asked to accept without understanding.

Dogma is also repeated over and over again, in words, in songs, in poems etc. They want to make sure that it is permanently etched in your brain.

Bede must have had pathetic professors, but bad teaching has really nothing to do with science.

Science demonstrated quite well that it is capable of changing in very big ways. Going from classical physics where cause and effect are as simple as billiard balls colliding, to modern quantum mechanics and relativity is one hell of a change in outlook. Dogma simply does not allow such big changes.

Simply put, Einstein was not burned at the stake for suggesting that Newton was wrong. On the contrary.

Another piece of nonsense from Bede. Your comment is not only pathetic, it is ignorant.

[ November 12, 2002: Message edited by: NOGO ]</p>

lpetrich

Actually, Einstein did not claim that Newton was wrong in some absolute sense; only that Newtonianism is an approximation that is inadequate in certain circumstances. In efftect, relativity subsumes Newtonian mechanics.

Likewise, quantum mechanics subsumes Newtonian mechanics in a different way; and relativistic quantum field theory subsumes both relativity and nonrelativistic quantum mechanics.

In fact, I believe that the successful subsumption of old paradigms by new ones is an indicator of mature science; it is a tribute to the success of a paradigm if an improved one treats it as a special case.

In religion, however, subsumption is a totally different story

Both Xianity and rabbinic Judaism have presented themselves as subsumptions of OT Judaism; Islam has presented itself as a subsumption of all of them (Abraham, Moses, and Jesus were prophets, but Mohammed was the greatest one of them all). Bahaism goes even further, claiming to subsume the teachings of not only these gentlemen, but also those of Krishna, Buddha, and Zoroaster.

There has also been backdoor subsumption, as in the numerous pagan features that have slipped into Judaism, Xianity, and Islam -- Moses having a snake staff, Jesus Christ the savior god, his mother the mother-goddess, the Kaaba's Black Stone in Islam, ...

However, religion has not progressed in the fashion that science has...

Butters

After reading several of Bede's essays, I find that he does what many Christians do, he tries to portray science as another religion. with ststements like "their beloved scientism", or "their own faith of scientism" it is clear that he has failed to make the distinction between a belief system, and a method of examining the world objectivly. Strange words for someone that claims to be a physicist. "Science" is not professers sitting in ivory towers dictating what is or is not true, spouting dogma. Those men may consider themselves scientists, but teaching is not doing science.

"Science" is a word used for a particular way of examining the world. My favorite definition:

"Science is the systematic enterprise of gathering knowlage about the world and orginizing and condensing that knowlage into testable laws and theories. -E.O.Wilson

The success and credibility of science are anchored in the willingness of scientists to obey two rules;
1)expose new ideas and results to indepentent testing and replication by other scientists
2)Abondon or modify accepted facts of theories in the light of more complete or reliable experimental evidence. -Dr. Robert Park

Science and religion are not two seperate but equal world views. Religion has it's Dogma, and it's claims of why the world is the way it is. Science examines the world, and determines why it is the way it is, in a manner that,(in the end) can be agreed on by anyone willing to examine the facts and abandon Dogma.

I see that this conversation has gone from Christianity being a prerequisite for science to, well Christianity didn't hold back science as much as skeptics would claim. This may be true, but only in the sense that Christianity helped restore civilazation to the west. Indeed, if another more tolerant religion had been choosen, perhaps things would have progressed faster.
Bede attempts to show that science flurished under Christianity, and not under other religions, this is clearly false. While religion is indeed an inpediment to discovery, early Christianity was no more or less so than any other. What Europeans had was a large base of knowlage built up by the Greeks, but also Arabs, Asians, and Egyptians. They also had technology developed by these earlier civilazations. The fall of the Roman empire but a halt to orginized discovery, but the restoration of civil order is what restarted the scientific engine.
Of course Bede also completly discounts science done by Arabs, Asians and others. I also note a complete silence on the works of Alchemists and their contrabutions to science.

NOGO

You are talking science here. You are saying what I already stated earlier and that is that models are models and not reality. Models can be refined but will never be "true" as in the theological sense.

But my point here was to show that science has shown a willingness to abandon old ideas and embrace new ones. So, calling science dogmatic is an attempt at confusion, ie it's all the same religion and science each have their dogmas.

You are saying that each new religion subsumes the old. I disagree. I think that they only pay lip service to this claim in order to gain credibility. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are inspired religions, each claim direct inspiration from God. Their truths cannot evolve. Evolution of beliefs means that they were not inspired by God.

A fundamental problem I have with Christianity is that although Yahweh revealed himself to Moses and provided laws etc. there was still a need for a second revelation, through Jesus, so different from the first. One must believe that God has trouble communicating.

NOGO

How did Christianity help restore civilization?

How does one verify such a statement? What would Europe have been like without Christianity? There is no way to know.

If the Roman empire was built on Pagan ideologies, philosophies and religions then it would have happened again.

My guess is that Europe would have emerged from the Dark ages much earlier without Christianity.

Christianity usurped the intelligence and abilities of so many people in a quest for futility.
Christianity brought a sense of reliance on God rather than man's abilities. This influenced people in varying degree but none of it was very useful.

This idea is alive and well today in people like Bede who is trying to show that science stems from God himself. This is for him the ultimate proof that God exists, that Christianity is true and that man cannot do anything without God.

Just look even today how much effort is spent in religion. At the start Christians spent all their efforts converting eveyone in sight. I would like to know how many man-hours were spent in preaching and converting rather than rebuilding civilization.