From John Loftus' book, "Christianity is Not Great."
It should be noted that the Byzantine empire was under constant military pressure from either muslims, Persians, Germanic Barbarians, or rebellions. It was also laid low by serious plagues which left it badly weakened in the face of the constant military pressure. The whole Roman empire reached its intellectual zenith by the early 3d century and after that was generally just putting out fires after that.
Still, Carrier's point is well taken. Xtians ruled in Byzantium and rather than save Archimedes' Codex they erased it and wrote up a bunch of stupid fucking prayers. Ignorant cunts.
Quote:The Eastern Roman Empire did not experience this same collapse and stark decline, but even it failed to make any significant advances in science, technology, logic, philosophy, or mathematics—ever—and just endured a much longer and more gradual decline into ruin. No Renaissance for them. They, too, ended up just cannibalizing away all the past glory they had inherited, then sat on and did nothing with. Just consider the Archimedes Codex: this contained many of the greatest scientific treatises of the pagan scientist Archimedes, but in the thirteenth century, within the Byzantine Empire, the ink on its pages was scraped off and the whole book reinscribed with hymns to God.2That's kind of what the Dark Ages were like in the West. Ditching science and knowledge and curiosity and achievement, and putting in its place constant mindless praying to a nonexistent deity.
Richard Carrier's Essay on "The Dark Ages" Chapter 10
It should be noted that the Byzantine empire was under constant military pressure from either muslims, Persians, Germanic Barbarians, or rebellions. It was also laid low by serious plagues which left it badly weakened in the face of the constant military pressure. The whole Roman empire reached its intellectual zenith by the early 3d century and after that was generally just putting out fires after that.
Still, Carrier's point is well taken. Xtians ruled in Byzantium and rather than save Archimedes' Codex they erased it and wrote up a bunch of stupid fucking prayers. Ignorant cunts.
