Muzman on 6/8/2011 at 08:36
Don't you mean the decline of the Roman Empire? And guess you don't mean secular in the modern sense.
I should add I agree with the general point, from what I've read. I just can't recall a period when the church's influence truly declined in Europe until prior to the Reformation.
Azaran on 6/8/2011 at 09:08
@Ccctoad, thanks that's a good article. However, there's no denying the Christian destruction of knowledge in the late Roman-early Byzantine empire. In terms of literature, Pagan works were often laid aside, rejected, destroyed, or replaced by Christian works. Macmullen's book mentions lost works by Cicero that were sponged out by Christian scribes to make room for another copy of Augustine's meditations on the Psalms. Book burnings, which sometimes did occur in Pagan Rome sometimes as well, became a regular occurrence in the Christian empire.
"Non Christian writings came in for this same treatment, that is destruction in great bonfires at the center of the town square. Copyists were discouraged from replacing them by the threat of having their hands cut off. Together with the destruction of unwanted books, unwanted fact itself might disappear even in those books that were not destroyed, because of their partisan reporting. The father of ecclesiatical history, Eusebius, in a particularly serious aside, disclaimed the telling of the whole truth. Rather, he proposed to limit his account to 'what may be of profit'. His example found favor among successors, by whom all sorts of details were bent out of shape or passed over, events were entirely suppressed, church councils deliberately forgotten, until in recent times even the wrong saint and pope might vanish from the record or almost" (Macmullen, pg 4)
And remember that the Platonic academy in Athens was shut down in 529 by the Christian emperor Justinian, who would no longer tolerate the diffusion of Pagan philosophy in his holy empire. Most of the academy's members fled to Harran in Syria where they continued their studies safely outside the borders of the Byzantine empire. Harran continued to be a center of Pagan learning even under the Islamic conquest - Islam was back then much more tolerant of Pagan philosophy than the Church. The 12th century Renaissance mentioned in your article was thanks to Arabic writers who preserved Pagan writings that then found their way back into Europe.
CCCToad on 6/8/2011 at 10:23
There is some truth to that. Though to some degree it was a product of the times. Its not entirely unexpected (though still not excusable) that Christians would react that way in light of the persecution they received.
To me what was most interesting about the article was described towards the end: how towards the end of the middle ages reason in the context of faith was replaced with an illogical obsession with "signs". Notably, that was the intellectual root out of which modern fundamentalism has grown.
Syndy/3 on 6/8/2011 at 12:28
Quote Posted by CCCToad
As, uh, interesting as that is about the beatles, its not really any different or less obnoxious than the way humans have to go about the same thing. It generally requires one to go about in institutions where music is blasting at a volume designed to make you deaf, dressing up and acting like a pretentious douchebag (or as some call it, "peacocking" and acting "cocky"). Human females will try to ward off lesser males by acting like a bitch to any approaches from males who, as judged by their demeanor, don't seem to make the cut.
You probably just haven't met the right girl yet.
Inline Image:
http://i55.tinypic.com/j0y73b.jpgQueue on 6/8/2011 at 13:06
I would love a spike in my penis. :(
WHY WON'T GOD ANSWER MY PRAYERS?
demagogue on 6/8/2011 at 13:40
Quote Posted by Azaran
There's a very simple creationist refutation for that: it wasn't natural selection. It's simply the Devil making it look as though evolution is at work, in order to lead people away from Christianity[/IMG]
If that's the case then it's still a very good theory in terms of explanation & prediction. If Satan or God created a situation that exactly mirrors the results of natural selection, then there shouldn't be any difference, or even any fact of the matter as to what its actual source was. Or as Russell liked to say, paraphrasing, the universe could have been made 5 minutes ago and all our theories & knowledge wouldn't change. So there shouldn't be any argument against taking it out of school, since the theory still does the job advertised on the tin, explaining how our world is how it is.
Also, I was reading a book on the history of the Byzantine empire recently and it gets a bad rap for the so-called hatred of knowledge. Many emperors were rather tolerant, including of "pagan" texts, and scholarship flourished under it. Or I mean it was an empire that lasted for 1000+ years through entirely different epochs. You can't just sum it up in a sentence. The general problem was less a disrespect for ancient sources as being so beholden to their forms they didn't generate new knowledge. But the Roman empire itself was completely beholden to Greek ideas and lagging in philosophy & knowledge-generation, only innovating administrative functions. There was just something really unique about classical Greece that made it special.
(BTW, I read the steam engine was developed in ancient Egypt somewhere in the Middle Kingdom. The reason it wasn't used for industry, so the argument goes, was because they had so much slave labor there was no need for it, and it would have put power in the hands of the people & threatened the power structure. It's not just a matter of "knowledge"; the social & political circumstances matter too.)
CCCToad on 6/8/2011 at 13:56
Quote:
You probably just haven't met the right girl yet.
You're assuming that I'm looking. For me, I have a rule: don't even think about it until at least 30.
On a serious note though, it wasn't my intention to bitch about it because it really isn't a problem for me. Its intended to quickly drive off guys that have either too much aggression(creeps) or guys that have too little (boring nice guys). Defusing it isn't that difficult.
SubJeff on 6/8/2011 at 14:04
Quote Posted by demagogue
If you want to crash their party, simply point out
There is no reasoning with creationists. Don't bother.
Muzman on 6/8/2011 at 14:04
Quote Posted by demagogue
If that's the case then it's still a very good theory in terms of explanation & prediction. If Satan or God created a situation that exactly mirrors the results of natural selection, then there shouldn't be any difference, or even any fact of the matter as to what its actual source was. Or as Russell liked to say, paraphrasing, the universe could have been made 5 minutes ago and all our theories & knowledge wouldn't change. So there shouldn't be any argument against taking it out of school, since the theory still does the job advertised on the tin, explaining how our world is how it is.
Perhaps this is exactly the point you are making, but of course that isn't all there is to it. If it stayed so utterly vague then yeah it would be theoretically unassailable as an explanation. We might, however, want to know how we know that god and the devil did all this? Well, of course the bible tells us so. And how does it do that? Well it's quite specific about a number of things. ..and so it all unravels.
The refutation doesn't really represent the creationist theory. It's just one thing that can be pulled out when reality doesn't appear to reflect it .
(One of the more popular ones, rather than just dismissing it it as the devil's work, is really to make up a completely different explanation that fits the narrative somehow. Like vegetarian T-Rexes).
Starrfall on 6/8/2011 at 14:14
Quote Posted by Syndy/3
Just to see if it makes a dent in your scientific foundations, God has doubled one of the paragraphs in your quote. I know, it's unbelievable. How did he get into the database?
You mean failed to protect me from god?? Those bastards said they HAD the technology :mad:
