pop morality

[athrock]

Well, I majored in biochemistry, but I minored in history, so... yeah.

Also, you left out this paragraph from the article:

Which is precisely what they proceeded to do. Far from being a stagnant dark age, as the first half of the Medieval Period (500-1000 AD) certainly was, the period from 1000 to 1500 AD actually saw the most impressive flowering of scientific inquiry and discovery since the time of the ancient Greeks, far eclipsing the Roman and Hellenic Eras in every respect. With Occam and Duns Scotus taking the critical approach to Aristotle further than Aquinas' more cautious approach, the way was open for the Medieval scientists of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries to question, examine, and test the perspectives the translators of the Twelfth Century had given them, with remarkable effects:

Emphasis mine, of course. Also, it's well known that the Church preserved much of the ancient knowledge (by being almost the only literate people other than the nobility, for one, except in isolated instances like Charlemagne's attempt to resurrect the concept of the university) that we have today, and that the collapse of the Roman Empire led to people having little to do other than serve their Lords/Kings in a hardscrabble existence that led to people becoming accustomed to being told what to do and what to think (because they really had little choice), a role the clergy were happy to adopt.

O'Neill has carefully crafted a strawman by ignoring the rise of religious domination of thought--"How many angels can dance on the head of a pin", indeed--which led to the collapse of the flowering of thought in Greek culture (which spread though Europe and lands which would later become Muslim via the Roman appropriation of their philosophies/religion, prior to the rise of Christianity as the state religion) and focusing on the fact that society eventually recovered from that collapse via men who were religious thinkers because there really was no other type.

That's not to claim the Greeks or Romans were somehow magically different from people, today... Socrates was famously executed for his corruption of students by having them question the gods. I certainly agree that many of the known events of persecution have been mythologized and are often misused, as pointed out, but I'm afraid I think the book O'Neill champions verges on hyperbole in the other direction. The battle between magical thinking (this-and-that happen because of god/gods) and philosophical naturalism predates Christianity, but the rise of Christianity/Catholicism brought it to impressive heights, and the battle continues to this day.

As for "real discipleship", I'd just be happy if people started listening to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, and started ignoring the cult of Paulianism which is the predominant form of Christianity today, both Protestant and Catholic. That said, I really, really don't feel like engaging on the issues you wish to contest. I've been there, done that, and I'm sick to death of it. I'll maintain my primary role here-- setting cultists straight when they try to tell atheists why/how we think, and arguing with Biblical literalists about their misconceptions/ignorance regarding science.

Duns Scotus? Blessed John Duns Scotus, O.F.M...the Catholic?