More Shit For Creatards To Swallow

[abaris]

I think Ingersoll's take on it simplistic. Theologians have never governed the world. They've had a function in legitimizing the political rulers who do govern the world, in western history most notably in connection with the divine right of kings.

You're sure about that? The excommunicated kings, emperors and dukes of the Middle Ages would disagree. A ban by the church included that every oath sworn to the particular ruler was null and void. Henri IV didn't go to Canossa for fun to prostrate himself before the pope.

Theologians called the shots till the Age of Enlightenment and they brought us crusades, witch hunts, widespread illiteracy and a general decline in civilization coupled with a generous helping of superstition.

[Hatshepsut]

The excommunicated kings, emperors and dukes of the Middle Ages would disagree...Theologians called the shots till the Age of Enlightenment and they brought us crusades, witch hunts, widespread illiteracy and a general decline in civilization coupled with a generous helping of superstition.

Henry VIII laughed when the pope excommunicated him, and didn't lose power as a result. Pope Urban II did call for the First Crusade in 1096 though it was up to kings or nobles holding military retainers to respond, and most of them responded somewhere between half-heartedly and not at all. I'm not saying that religious people don't mess with politics or cause problems; in our own American day we remember the Scopes Monkey trial and Falwell's Moral Majority.

But the Crusades have nothing to do with the question at issue here: The question is whether the presence of religion significantly retarded advances in science, technology, the economy, or living standards throughout history as a whole. I say it did not, and have pretty good backing for my view as it's shared by a majority of serious historians and anthropologists. Illiteracy was caused by the huge cost of books and the need to survive by growing your own food until recent times, and not by religion.

[Minimalist]

I think Ingersoll's take on it simplistic.

Ingersoll also said:

“In all ages hypocrites, called priests, have put crowns on the heads of thieves, called kings.”


― Robert G. Ingersoll

I think he nailed it.

[Hatshepsut]

As for priests often being hypocrites, yes. Few were more venal than Pope Leo X. Religion hasn't cast a benign influence over the mindset of civic leaders either. But I still contest the scenario where religion alone holds the human race in darkness for millennia, unable to progress beyond bending over a shaduf in the emmer wheat fields until a white knight in atheist armor liberates us during the Enlightenment era. Religious influences in history are a mixed bag, some good, some bad. It's likely that religious thinking was an early motivator of compassion toward strangers. Aristotle's Ethics didn't completely neglect the gods. Machiavelli, who made some attempt to do so, isn't widely admired today.

I feel the basic reason progress was so slow is that it is inherently difficult regardless. People aren't wired up to be rational technocrats. We had to develop a culture for impersonal governance which could overcome the cultures of aggrandizement that naturally emerge when you put some people over others in societies larger than a band for the first time.

[Minimalist]

Yeah, well Leo makes this list of the worst 7.

http://www.livescience.com/8606-7-unholy...ndals.html

7 Quite Unholy Pope Scandals

But he isn't only talking about the church.  The priests and the kings they were in cahoots with lived in luxury off the labor of the commons and the commons were invited to STFU and do what they were told otherwise the King would punish them in this life and the church would punish them in the next life.  It's a pretty effective con when you look at the general intelligence level of believers.

[Thumpalumpacus]

The latter.  They understand that science is the enemy of their bullshit...and they do so love bullshit.

We have already compared the benefits of theology and science. When the theologian governed the world, it was covered with huts and hovels for the many, palaces and cathedrals for the few. To nearly all the children of men, reading and writing were unknown arts. The poor were clad in rags and skins -- they devoured crusts, and gnawed bones. The day of Science dawned, and the luxuries of a century ago are the necessities of to-day. Men in the middle ranks of life have more of the conveniences and elegancies than the princes and kings of the theological times. But above and over all this, is the development of mind. There is more of value in the brain of an average man of to-day -- of a master-mechanic, of a chemist, of a naturalist, of an inventor, than there was in the brain of the world four hundred years ago.
     These blessings did not fall from the skies. These benefits did not drop from the outstretched hands of priests. They were not found in cathedrals or behind altars -- neither were they searched for with holy candles. They were not discovered by the closed eyes of prayer, nor did they come in answer to superstitious supplication. They are the children of freedom, the gifts of reason, observation and experience -- and for them all, man is indebted to man.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll, "God In The Constitution"

The era when Europe was ruled exclusively by Christians is referred to by historians as "the Dark Ages".
What else does one need to know?

[Longhorn]

The neanderthal? No, no, it's totes the devil playing pranks on us

[*Deidre*]

Yep they are shitting themselves and you know what they are going to say god put that there and or you guys made at up.
Interestingly enough some of us actually do have neanderthal DNA.

Maybe God’s a Neanderthal…never know! 

[Hatshepsut]

The era when Europe was ruled exclusively by Christians is referred to by historians as "the Dark Ages".
What else does one need to know?

One needs to know that the term "Dark Ages" was coined by later historians to reflect the fact that the period between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance offered sparse written records. It was largely invisible, or "dark" as it were. Then this term acquired a pejorative connotation. However, the people actually living at that time had no special term for their own era. (That goes for "Renaissance" as well.) These terms chop history into neatly defined eras for convenience, but they can be misleading. Many historians don't feel the Dark Ages were so dismal as popular imagination paints them. Commoners didn't live too well, but they weren't much worse off than they were under Roman rule. Significant advances in trade and transportation methods took place in the Carolingian period ca. 800 AD, possibly in response to the rising Viking challenge.

[Minimalist]

Oh, the Dark Ages was pretty dark in a socio-political setting, too.  The Moors overran Iberia.  The various barbarian tribes which overran the Western Roman Empire were settling their individual quarrels, there were 3 centuries of Viking raids, there was a climate collapse in the mid 6th century, but always the nobles and the fucking church were there scarfing up whatever they could from the commons.

One of the underlying causes of the Crusades was to get bickering nobles out of Europe and off killing muslims instead of xtians.