Did Christianity really cause a 1,000 year dark age of scientific repression?

[Physics-Man]

Yes

No

[hellionthesagereborn]

No, that's idiotically stupid. The religious institutions where the ones who where keeping the history alive, not suppressing it. The grand irony is the thing that caused the dark ages was Rome and its collapse. The reason why this is ironic is because its the very thing that so many people (mostly the ones who claim this is religions fault) are supporting in our current society. It was the welfare state, decadence and inflation that caused the collapse of the roman empire.

Decadence was the problem because not unlike our current society people began to fixate on entertainment instead of building something, so instead of building things and making it better or at least maintaining what was their they distracted themselves with casual sex and games and entertainment.

This allowed a decay to set in that started to erode not just the physical empire itself but also eroded the culture and values of the culture. In fact people started to criticize Rome and all it did, claiming they should feel guilt for building their empire, guilt for being successful and pointed to every outside group as being superior and who romans should emulate them (sound familiar? It should, this basically describes the European migrant crisis).

This decadence led to casual sex which itself eroded marriage, eroded the gender roles of the couples which made both parties less happy and in order to cope led them to look for entertainment to hide from their issues rather then doing something meaningful. This generally resulted in more casual sex which itself created broken homes and single motherhood. This in turn created poverty and crime.

The government attempted to alleviate this with free grain for the poor which of course just allowed them to continue this cycle for the next generations making it worse (this is your welfare programs). Those programs started to cost money which required more taxes so now those who were doing all right where now poor and thus on welfare requiring yet more money. So they started to lace the silver denarius with lesser metals making its over all value lower. Eventually they did this to the pointe where the "silver" denarius wasn't even silver any more it was so watered down with nickle and other metals making it worthless.

However with such an empire they needed an army and that army wasn't going to do their job for fake money so the empire started to demand gold so they could pay the army, this gave the military greater power and authority because now they had money that others didn't and they had greater leverage. This created greater and greater corruption both amongst politicians and the military. It got so bad that those running for the senate where spending so much money trying to get the job that some of them where running debts they couldn't pay (sound familiar? Our current politicians spend tens of millions and become indebted to companies in order to pay these debts. This was no different for politicians in rome).

Eventually they couldn't maintain the empire and it started shrinking because again, they didn't have the money to maintain it and where going into debt. This hit hard at home as people began to sell themselves into slavery because they couldn't afford to pay off their debts their taxes where so high. It was so bad that eventually they made selling oneself into slavery to avoid debts illegal (just let that sink in. they took slavery as preferable to the crushing debt that they could not escape and it was so bad that the government wouldn't let them take that extreme option.).

[hellionthesagereborn]

This is the foundation of the feudal system, where you have the surfs/peasents bound to the lord of a land. They where essentially slaves who worked for the lord. You had three groups, one that was free (these where rare), those who where half free (they owned their own tools and house but required land to grow food on which was given to them by the lord who owned the land) and you had those where defacto slaves (they owned no tools nor land so they relied on the lord to provide them with both to grow crops). This should sound familiar, if you look as welfare states grow more and more of their populace becomes dependent on them for housing and healthcare and resources (hence public housing, socialized medicine and welfare/universal income). They are the modern form of the surf, doomed to never grow or develop something and to always be dependent on their new lord, the state.

This is what caused the dark ages, the welfare state, inflation, and the complete collapse of the culture that created so much and we are all seeing that happen right now in the west. Like I said the grand irony is the people who are placing the blame at the feet of religion are the very people who call for all the things that actually caused the collapse and dark ages to happen to begin with.

[nightdrot]

Well, the question is a bit more complicated that can be squeezed into 4,000 characters. Not least because the sharp distinction that the modern mind makes between science and faith was not as pronounced as it is in contemporary times.

In fact, it is a premise of the Roman Catholic Church that faith and reason are ultimately compatible. That if man's reason were perfect and uncorrupted, science would affirm faith and each would reveal its reality and relationship to the other.

Thus, to this day, Vatican City has one of the world's foremost astronomical observatories. A place engaged in understanding the way the universe works as a way to grasp more fully the complex nature of the God's creation.

To be sure, the RCC has had its bad moments with science. See also Galileo. However, believe it or not, that was because the Church believed that he was contradicting science. The mistake the Church made was a tool literal understanding of the compatibility of faith and reason.

The Church reasoned that because man was the center of God's creation that therefore - literally - the sun, the stars and the planets must ultimately as a PHYSICAL reality revolve around the Earth. Thus Galileo fell afoul of the Church to his great price, but ultimate vindication. This was not a refutation of science as it is perceived now, but is rather a split within - and debate about the nature of - science, based on what it was understood to be at that time.

The Middle Ages, typically seen as an era of superstition, were more about the depressed conditions - especially economic - conditions of the time. This being born of the collapse of the Roman Empire.

With the fall of Rome, the connection of peoples to each other and the infrastructure that supported it was gone. Thus, knowledge atrophied - indeed, much information was lost in the barbarian invasions and such as villages were destroyed and records were destroyed and an era of stagnation set in. Into this vacuum, the remnants of past knowledge was lost and isolated populations fell back not so much on religion as superstition.

This was about more, then, than simply religion vs science. In fact, the one in some ways led to the other and it was not until the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Age of Reason - coming out of the discoveries of Newton - that the sharp distinction between science and religion began to develop.

In effect, Christianity - much as it had with Galileo - believed that it was affirming the science of its time. As the Reformation took hold it began to modify its understanding of science, but this only became possible as other social and economic conditions began to change. In this, religion was a reflection of its time as much as a cause of them.

[Dargil]

I am an observant, faithful Christian.
Can't speak for 1000 years but the answer in principal is yes.
But guess what? It was religious political correctness. Many knew that the earth revolving around the sun way more logical objectively, but the (Catholic) Party Line was geocentric. Christians did not trust The Creator's General Revelation to include the Scientific Method. Some "fundamentalists" still don't.
But now "science" attempts to suppress the apparent supernatural creation of the entire universe from a point of light and lamely ridicule clear evidence of Intelligent Design appearing everywhere. The reality, is that there are both natural and supernatural forces.

[Girther10]

@Physics-Man- being a science guy, I understand why it appears you haven’t done much reading about history have you? I’m just the opposite, I’m more of a history or poli sci guy, than science. Or math. It seems most people excel in one or the other, as they don’t really overlap so much... lol

[Physics-Man]

That's correct my brother. I know science but not much about history. I also know a lot about guns, martial arts, the military, languages, different cultures, video games, dinosaurs, the ocean, and other topics, race realism, and political ideology, but history isn't one of them unfortunately. So is it true? Did it cause a repression?

[Girther10]

As to your question: 🤷🏻‍♂️ how the hell should I know? That’s why I came in on this one- to learn... 😅🤣

[Physics-Man]

It's because you said you were a history guy...

[Girther10]

But not that part of history. More of history after like the 1600’s , when my ancestors came to this continent.

[Daniel_Dano]

No , before christianity it was paganists who did the most damage, they were oppresing everyone , christianity saved the people from oppression and also saved the scientific community, but several decades after that christians got corrupted and they did the same thing as pagans did , oppressing everyone , then Islam came which fought the crusades and freed the opressed from them , now corrupt muslims do the same, history repeats itself.

[Panzer_Trump2016]

There was no dark ages. What happened was the Roman empire in the west collapsed and was invaded by Germanic tribes that took it over, various plagues reduced the Latin worlds populations.
There was no real dark ages in the eastern empire, and the Islamic invaders who conquered the eastern roman empire inherited all that greek/Egyptian/Roman knowledge as well as the wealth.

[October808]

And they preserved it.

[wankiam]

thats a good question... im not sure the good book mentioned you can't invent stuff but i do see where you are coming from and it was certainly an uphill challenge for the likes of darwin

[ChiTown33]

Christianity didn't. Man did. But i know what you mean. When the masses are illiterate. When your form of gov't is fuedalistic. It leaves a power vaccuum. The only real supreme power was the church. But only had moral control of the masses.

[Savage_Wisdom]

Yep. Because the Pope had absolute power and didn't want to give it up.

[Liam_Hayden]

It could be argued that false Christianity, which is what the church leadership was at the time, was a major contributing factor.

[zagor]

No. There were a lot of places that didn't have Christianity and if anything they did worse.

The Inca's weren't buzzing around in flying cars.

[Girther10]

So who is the sage Hellion?

[ZeussLightningBolt]

I don't think it lasted 1000 years
And people were obviously still practicing science anyways...

[888theGreat]

It did not cause wars either, another lie that has passed around. Muslims? Sure they caused wars. Guys like Hitler started wars , but not Christians.

[October808]

Hitler didn't declare war first.

[ShellyShocked]

No i think the black death had something to do with. Christianity is stupid but its not the cause of EVERY bad thing in history

[cute_short_nerd]

You turn a blind eye to what is around you and decide to follow someone you can’t even see.

[Girther10]

So does that represent a dark age of repression? Just wondering, following someone o something you can’t see or prove it exists, is that scientific repression that the Asker speaks of? Maybe is taking it backward? What’s your opinion...

[cute_short_nerd]

Son, I am too young for my opinion to matter, so whatever I say won’t be taken seriously.

[Pete671]

Christianity and all other religions deny free thought imho,,,

[ColdBlood99]

Yes, it did. It also contributed to the fall of Rome.

[MannySimms]

Sure did. Ask Da Vinci.

[Deft_maiden]

How is that even a question?

[bangyourhead]

sent from my iphone

[Physics-Man]

I don't get it.

[Plitty-Tank]

No. Christianity did not spark that.

[zooomer]

The church literally founded our universities lol.