(October 22, 2010 at 12:58 pm)Minimalist Wrote:Quote:How so?
Xtianity set back knowledge in the west by suppressing thinking for 1500 years. It was not until the west began to throw off the dogma of you jesus freaks that we began to progress.
Think how different the world might have been were it not for the Dark Ages...if you can.
One might easily argue that while Christianity held back western progress starting from 14th or 15th century, but it would seem to me harder to argue that Christianity had the same net effect before the crusades.
It seems to me that before this era, Christianity preserved at least a core of cohesive, literate civilization with some tenuous access to cosmopolitan intellectual menu, however saddled with an overpowering illiberal superstition, when much of the west could easily have descended completely into totally illiterate and completely fragmented iron age tribal morass. Free thinking starting on a basis of total illiteracy and complete provincialistic outlook would not necessarily bring one scientific enlightenment in less time than opporessive atmophere that does provide the basic tool of literacy and access, however tenuous, to much wider intellectual menu from around the western world as well as Byzentine and near near east.