NOGO

I never said anything about the middle ages.

I mentioned Hypatia in response to this

Radorth:
Yes, they recognized people abused it of course. So do I. The difference between you and they is their ability to see nascent Christianity as "the friendliest to liberty, science and the freest expansion of the human mind."

Which is a farce since after Christianity took over the age of repression and unenlightenment started ie the Dark Ages.

"friendliest to liberty"
Is Constantine's edict friendly to liberty and the freest expansion of the human mind?

So where does the middle ages come in?

Turns out that you are off the topic, Met!

You are also off the topic of this thread.

NOGO

Nonsense!
The Christian churches were in power for over a millenium. If they believed in democracy they would have instaured it ages ago.

The fact is that Christianity and democracy are fundamentally opposed. Democracy means that people make their own laws. "We the poeple ..." The bible teaches that laws were given by God and are immutable.

Paul said that all authority comes from God so you wont find in Paul any sense of democracy.
In Acts 22 Paul appeals to Roman law to save his neck. He was a Roman citizen who was not condemned and therefore was freed. Rights protected by law. This was totally unknown in ancient Israel where the Bible was law. Ancient Israel was like Saudi Arabia is today where the Koran rules. That is why Paul was about to be stoned by other Jews for blaspheming.

True, Roman law only applied to citizens but this was also the case for the US in 1775.

Your claim that we owe is all to Christianity is simply wishful thinking.

Show me where the NT supports
Freedom of the press
Rule by law
Rights protected by law
freedom of expression
freedom of assembly.

All these come from so called Pagan cultures.

Radorth

What are you talking about? All I ever got to read was non-Christian historians, even in the 60's. We were basically taught that all "enlightenment" came from non-Christians which turned out to be total B.S. What's blinding are the facts of history, which you have wisely avoided. All you can argue is there were few medieval non-Christians in the mix to point to, which proves virtually nothing. And of course none of them knew much more than the Pope and their bishops told them. It is those with access to Bibles which undeniably began to cry out against the evils of the establishment.

Radorth

[ October 04, 2002: Message edited by: Radorth ]</p>

Radorth

There was no press although the disciples risked life and limb to get out that truth which they believed would free all people from the yoke of sin and ignorance.

Rule by law? Excuse me, but you just don't happen to like God's law. Of course law is virtually useless for changing the ineffable human heart. The law is nothing but a "schoolmaster." Nothing is clearer in the NT.

Rights protected by law? You mean like abortion, which the early fathers were against? You mean like the right to shut God and his law out and effectively teach children to do so? Go ahead. Just take responsiblity for the outcome, which won't be as pretty as you imagine. Let's have a thread on all the benefits wrought by our more "enlightened" laws.

Since we are now removing "so help me God" from the oaths of policemen, I hope you wil forgive God for not helping them any more. I can hear it now. "Where was your God when that happened?"

Freedom of expression? You mean like Christians praying together in a public school, which right we had to go to the Supreme Court to maintain? But I'm sure you'd rid the world of that horrid freedom if you could. Right?

Criminy. Go read Locke and get back to me.

Radorth

Metacrock

</strong>


Meta =&gt;O wow! I'm sorry man. I thought someone said:

"To me the killing of Hypatia symbilzes the entry into the Dark Ages. Europe turning away from knowledge, science, democracy, freedom of speech, rights by law and dedicating all to Jesus."


Meta =&gt;So now you just don't even wait to finnish your thoughts before contradicting yourself. "I didn't say anything about the middle ages, but now that you mention them, you know Christianity started them? but I didn't mention them! Hey who is that talking about the middle ages? I don't know, but I don't think it's me...say did you know that Christianity started the dark ages? who said that?"

Come on man, obviously you are arguing that Christianity is responsible for what you take to be "dark ages." Which of course shows how lacking your understanding of history is; and that is an argument form sign. It has nothing to do with causality. You don't even attempt to asscess the causality invovled. I don't Christianity so it's responsible for all the bad things! Like the Dark ages, which I'm not mentioning.


Meta =&gt; modern science owes it's birth to the chruch in the middle ages.

So where does the middle ages come in?


Meta=&gt; they don't, historians have outgrown that history by periods mentality. We now recognize that a lot of enlightened things went on in the so called "dark ages."

Turns out that you are off the topic, Met!

Meta =&gt; Yea the top you aren't talking about.

You are also off the topic of this thread.[/QB][/QUOTE]

Meta =&gt; I guess, If I'm speaking I am. Of course that's because I'm not talking about the dark ages. Didn't mention them, and sepaking of the dark ages, they weren't that dark....

Metacrock

He was talking to me. I find that amature historians are always trying to tell us professionals how to do history. When push comes to shove they often now nothing about it. Unless of course they know less than nothing.

Vorkosigan

This thread needs to be moved. Radorth is incapable of reasoned debate, and with Metacrock added to the steaming pile....

Metacrock

[quote]Originally posted by NOGO:
<strong>

Meta =&gt; (quoted from before--performing as the graceless clod he so often is) "You know nothing about history! Come on go back to junior high! Take some history classes! My god what a shallow understanding! Christianity built western civilization. IT's as simple as that. It made democracy. Modern principles of democracy, yea started with the Greeks, big deal. The Greeks did nothing with it, they evne had slaves and women couldn't vote and poor people vote. It was christians who took it made it into the modern version of democratic rights we know today."</strong>



Meta =&gt; Yes, that's true toto, but you see the thing is, for most of that time Western culture was re-building from the fall of Rome. See Rome's fall left a power vacuum which was filled with barbaric tribes, wealthy people huddaled into their own lands for saftey and an evolving feudal system; which grew up in response to the dangerous times and the marauding bands of barbarians around them. So there wasn't much call for democracy. Learning went down the tubes because the infastructure of civilization went down the tubes. Manufacturing fell off, except in the north where the barbarians lived. So the growing barbarian hoards had technology, but no learning.

that means that the civilization that grew back was illiterate and largley ignorant of the past. Life was hard, they didn't have time for nice ideas like democracy. But over time, as they recovered more form the past, learning got going, knowledge began to be collected, and saved, and copied (in those days they had those monks with the xrox machines).

So all this means that it was the chruch in the monesteries that saved learning.But it took a long time. Democracy in its modern form began to emerge in the Reformation with Christian thinkers asking questions about what to do with government without the chruch being invovled and things like that.


Meta =&gt;Ok see like the guys who said that "we the people" (that's form a document called "the Declaration of Indepdence") were either Christains or diests. In fact those who were deists thought of themselves as Christians. That's why the great Deist thinker John Toland (England--1690s) called his book Christianity Not Mysterious because he thought of himself as a Christian, and he thought that Christianity was a matter of logic and reason.

So the "WE The People" is a Christian, thought up by Christains and that's an example of how Christianity led to Democracy.

Christianity does not actually have any doctrines that say how government should be run. This is an informal connection, not something put into creeds or chruch law.

Meta =&gt;O NOGO How you pain me! My dear friend. I hate to tell you this, mon ami, but that same "we the people" document, it says "being endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights." that means that these Christians, while acknolweding that all authority comes form God, also believed that God gives us the right to be citizens and make our own laws. That is a Christian positoin. Paul never denies that, but then this whole question of government didn't even exist in his day. No one in Paul's day understood democracy the way we do.

Meta =&gt;alas mon ami, your knoweldge of the OT is as lacking as your knowledge of American civics. The OT does provide for citizenship and rights, even for aliens, and there were courts. and even women brought their cases and got justice on the basis of being citizens of the nation of Israel.

Meta =&gt; what that Roamn law applied to us?


Meta =&gt; The very document you sites says so!

Meta =&gt; It doesn't have to! We are talking about history, not some abstract realm where things are done as you think they should be done. IN reality, in real historical world that really happend, christians started modern democracy, and the U.S. Declaration of Idepdendence is dandy evidence of that.

[ October 04, 2002: Message edited by: Metacrock ]</p>

Metacrock

Aw come on man, I'm trying. See I've turned over a new leaf. I call myself a graceless clod. I call toto my friend (what Mon ami means). I'm trying to be nice.

NOGO

Radorth:
There was no press although the disciples risked life and limb to get out that truth which they believed would free all people from the yoke of sin and ignorance.

NOGO:
How does Christianity deliver us from ignorance?

Radorth:
Rule by law? Excuse me, but you just don't happen to like God's law. Of course law is virtually useless for changing the ineffable human heart. The law is nothing but a "schoolmaster." Nothing is clearer in the NT.

NOGO:
Nothing like missing the obvious. If you would look at the context you would know that we are talking about democracy. What I meant by rule of law is withing the context of democracy that is laws voted by a majority of people not the laws of ancient priests which they have impose on everybody.

Radorth:
Rights protected by law? You mean like abortion, which the early fathers were against? You mean like the right to shut God and his law out and effectively teach children to do so? Go ahead. Just take responsiblity for the outcome, which won't be as pretty as you imagine. Let's have a thread on all the benefits wrought by our more "enlightened" laws.

NOGO:
You finally got something right. Yes, that is exactly what I am talking about and more. I am not the least bit concerned about a world without religion. And yes, I do take responsibility.
It seems that you do know why it is abusrd to say that Christianity created democracy. Perhaps you can now pass on this information to Meta.

Radorth:
Freedom of expression? You mean like Christians praying together in a public school, which right we had to go to the Supreme Court to maintain? But I'm sure you'd rid the world of that horrid freedom if you could. Right?

NOGO:
Why do you need to pray in a public school? Why not do it elsewhere? Like in church!
A public school should not be a place to endoctrinate children.

We have gotten of the subject, Radorth, How about getting back to God's plan.