Putting the Dark, in the Dark Ages

[tomas]

I'm wondering if anyone here is familiar with this website here

www.jesusneverexisted.com/dark-age.htm

I am especially interested in finding out if several of the claims are true or not. Such as:

"Gregory ordered bishops to desist from the "wicked labour" of teaching grammar and Latin to lay people."

"359 In Skythopolis, Syria, the Christians organise the first death camps for the torture and executions of the arrested non-Christians from all around the empire."

"Thousands of innocent pagans from all sides of the empire suffer martyrdom in the notorious death camps of Skythopolis."

"398 The 4th Church Council of Carthage prohibits everybody, including Christian bishops, from studying pagan books. Porphyrius, bishop of Gaza, demolishes almost all the pagan temples of his city (except nine of them that remain active)."

"“Saint” Augustine massacres hundreds of protesting pagans in Calama, Algeria."

"416 The inquisitor Hypatius, alias “The Sword of God”, exterminates the last pagans of Bithynia. In Constantinople (7th December) all non-Christian army officers, public employees and judges are dismissed."

"482 to 488 The majority of the pagans of Minor Asia are exterminated after a desperate revolt against the emperor and the Church."

"556 Justinian orders the notorious inquisitor Amantius to go to Antioch, to find, arrest, torture and exterminate the last non-Christians of the city and burn all the private libraries down."

So, is this all BS or what?

[bjorn]

tomas said:

So, is this all BS or what?

Such websites (and similiar) have been around for many years and have been replied to again and again, like at www.tektonics.org/af/crimeline.htm

It speaks volumes about their research and mindset that they keep promoting stuff with so many errors.

Best
Bjorn-Are

[tomas]

Ha! I knew it. Its amazing how irrational supposedly "rational" people can be.

I have to say. The forma of the website, and the "timeline" do have quite a bit of emotional appeal and serve as very good propaganda. Which is why sites like this are dangerous.

[himself]

999 Millennium Millennium terror results in people donating money, houses and land to church in what became "history's most spectacular giveaway". Likely true. But not much relevant to our position.

No one has cited any particular events. When and where did these millennial terrors take place, and what is the source? Unlikely since a) the BC/AD calendar was not yet in widespread use and b) they would have counted the thousand years from the ascension, not the nativity.

but no "death" unless you take "extermination" too literally.

"Extermination" meant "exile", lit. "outside the borders" (ex termine)

[tomas]

No one has cited any particular events. When and where did these millennial terrors take place, and what is the source?

I'm going to take a wild guess and say the source is from the book "The Vatican Billions", another anti-catholic propaganda piece.

[fortigurn]

This particular site has been around for ages. It's a bottom feeder; almost everything there is woefully inadequately researched, and wildly inaccurate. It's what sites like Tektonics are for.

[James Hannam]

Here's is another rather spectacularly misinformed website:

www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-sciencechristianity.htm

The first endnote is a masterpiece:

"Unless otherwise indicated, all history concerning the Church's conflict with the natural sciences comes from Andrew White, The Warfare of Science with Theology (1895). This excellent and exhaustive work, whose scholarship has stood the test of time (and been enlarged by modern scholars), can be found online at www.infidels.org/library/historical/andrew_white/Andrew_White.html."

Bless. It's all part of a FAQ on liberalism....

Best wishes

James

[tomas]

Here's another nice response to these claims. I like the angle this particular author takes. He shows how it wasn't really church doctrine, but rather Ancient Greek Meta-Physics that was holding back science.

thevoyages.blogspot.com/2009/10/mythbusters-christian-dark-ages.html

[Mike D]

You really need a phrase book translating some of the terms used on these sites:

"...excellent and exhaustive work..." = "I read it and liked it"

"...whose scholarship has stood the test of time..." = "Well I've never read anything that disagrees with it"

[Mike D]

Amusing side note (well, it amuses me anyway)...

Looking at the site on the link provided by Tomas (The Voyages), the first comment on the essay is by...Charles Freeman! Is this more evidence that he spends all his time googling his own name?

;D

[wraggy]

Jun 16, 2011 6:54:24 GMT tomas said:

Here's another nice response to these claims. I like the angle this particular author takes. He shows how it wasn't really church doctrine, but rather Ancient Greek Meta-Physics that was holding back science.

thevoyages.blogspot.com/2009/10/mythbusters-christian-dark-ages.html

And C.F. chimed in.

It is true that I believe that there was a collapse in the Greek rational traditions, not least among Christian theologians when the emperor Theodosius imposed doctrinal uniformity ( see my AD 381). One result of this was the rise of the miraculous, always there, of course, ,in the pagan world but now espoused by theologians such as Augustine. My next book, out next spring (Yale), deals with the medieval relic cults and shows how they did prevent intellectual progress. The oddest thing about the apologists of the Middle Ages (Lindberg, Edward Grant and Hart, among others) is that they completely miss out on the vitality of the Italian city states during this period - these cities provide the best evidence there is for a 'progressive' Middle Ages. Perhaps it is because they did their best to keep the institutional church out of their affairs!

I have heard Charles mention the contribution of the "city states" on a number of occasions on the web. Although he has never mentioned what this "vitality" consisted of and what it achieved.

Just who or what were these city states and what did they accomplish?

What was "progressive" about them that was lacking in the institutional church?

[bjorn]

I think he is a bit in line with Rodney Stark here in "Victory of Reason", even if Stark arrives very much at the opposite conclusion:

It was precisely a Christian mind set that led to the kind of protocapitalism that enabled these city states to florish.

Though Stark could have got a tad more credit if he had not tended to overstatements and sometimes saying more than his sources seem to allow.

[timoneill]

Looks like the "Stupidest Thing on the Internet" strikes again:

debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2011/02/plato-and-augustine-are-to-blame.html

I get a mention in the comments, only to be dismissed as a peddler of Christian apologetics. And Richard "Artie Ziff" is invoked, naturally.

[wraggy]

Jun 15, 2011 8:47:03 GMT James Hannam said:

Here's is another rather spectacularly misinformed website:

www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-sciencechristianity.htm

The first endnote is a masterpiece:

"Unless otherwise indicated, all history concerning the Church's conflict with the natural sciences comes from Andrew White, The Warfare of Science with Theology (1895). This excellent and exhaustive work, whose scholarship has stood the test of time (and been enlarged by modern scholars), can be found online at www.infidels.org/library/historical/andrew_white/Andrew_White.html."

Obviously this person has not read anything on the subject that has been published in the last 4 decades.

The Conflict Thesis may be dead or terminally ill in the academy but it is alive and well within popular culture. And that may never change despite the best efforts of scholars like Ron Numbers, David Lindberg and of course Mr. Hannam.

I have no confidence in a future change of attitude when critiques of the Conflict Thesis from atheists and those with no religious commitment are written off as the work of "Christian" or "Orthodox" apologetics.

Maybe the Conflict Thesis is a meme.

[wraggy]

Jun 17, 2011 6:02:33 GMT timoneill said:

Looks like the "Stupidest Thing on the Internet" strikes again:

debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2011/02/plato-and-augustine-are-to-blame.html

I get a mention in the comments, only to be dismissed as a peddler of Christian apologetics. And Richard "Artie Ziff" is invoked, naturally.

Reputation of you as Attack Dog of Orthodox Apologetics great is Padawan.