Christians created Freedom of Speech; Atheists caused WW1

[Stahlseele]

No. Please do let him have access to some . .
We can't actually sustain this growing of humanity, especially now that china has abolished the 1 child policy for a 2 child policy.
We need a near extinction level event to keep going.


@RobbyPants
Never trust a god that can't make a rock so heavy he himself can't lift it.

Scandianavia, Japan, Canada and the tribes in the rainforrest get to survive.
Room enough for expansion, tech level and society survives. The world will thrive.

[Blicero]

In general, what are some good sources on the hellscape of dark ages Europe, as I've been getting into more arguments about that stuff lately

There's also a weird meme where medievalists like to say things like "The Middle Ages were not as bad as was commonly supposed; therefore, they were actually an okay time for Europe." Which doesn't really make sense, but w/e.

But in a more direct reply Tuchman's a Distant Mirror is a really good depiction of how France was a total hellscape during most of the fourteenth century.

Edit Also, Bryan Ward-Perkin's book The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization gives some archaeological evidence as to why the early Dark Ages were indeed super shitty for more of Europe compared to the prior centuries. It's a relatively short and tight book that provides some useful talking points.

[name_here]

Things changed quite a bit during the Middle Ages. For instance, the Catholic Church was actually only a dominant political force for a relatively short time period. Pope Urban was probably the most powerful Pope ever, but that wasn't terribly long after the Investiture Controversy, where the Papacy obtained the power to appoint bishops. Before that, secular rulers appointed the bishops in their territory, and guess who their appointees tended to side with.

Go back to the time of Charlemange, and Italy was largely under the control of the Lombards, who weren't Catholic. Look a couple centuries after Pope Urban, and when the Pope ordered the Holy Roman Emperor to go on a Crusade, the Emperor decided to go on a diplomatic mission instead.

The First Crusade itself was ironically in part powered by the Church's successful efforts to tamp down on violence and protect civilians, because it left them with a military aristocracy with no one local they were allowed to fight, so Pope Urban decided to tell them all to go way the hell over there and fight people there instead of here.

[Almaz]

@OgreBattle: Many historians who study the dark ages generally like to insist on the fact that they were not "dark" ages and were generally speaking pretty okay. Not sure why nor if they're right, but I've heard this many times from people who are supposed to know the topic, so it might not be completely untrue.

A lot of it is not how "the Middle Ages were not terrible," but rather simply condemning it as the Dark Ages ignores that some important cultural and technological developments arose during this time. Like, a lot of the fighting left in Rome's power vacuum was pretty terrible and damaged places for centuries, but importantly... Rome was the place which definitely got the worst of it. Many other places... weren't so that great in the first place, so they didn't get that much worse, and it wasn't like there was this huge, uniform, across-the-board downgrade. And really, Byzantium/Constantinople in particular wasn't that much worse off, and kind of basically viewed itself as "Rome, as if no 'collapse' had ever happened," up until its eventual capture by the Ottomans. So by "Rome" being worse off I mean specifically "Western Rome/Italy."

Writing it off as the Dark Ages also ignores, how, you know, Arabia arose and became an important hegemonizing force of culture and learning... during the "Dark Ages." How a lot of knowledge that was "lost" was still present in Arabic libraries. A lot of knowledge that is very important to today was developed at that time... in Arabia, and throughout the larger Islamic empires.

... of course, if you were in Western Europe... buckle in, because a lot of people stabbing people is going to characterize the Middle Ages. A lot. Most of it in the name of Christ.

[Mistborn]

No. Please do let him have access to some . .
We can't actually sustain this growing of humanity, especially now that china has abolished the 1 child policy for a 2 child policy.
We need a near extinction level event to keep going

[Occluded Sun]

Edit Also, Bryan Ward-Perkin's book The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization gives some archaeological evidence as to why the early Dark Ages were indeed super shitty for more of Europe compared to the prior centuries. It's a relatively short and tight book that provides some useful talking points.

Yep. The material culture of Europe collapsed, with mass-produced goods like common earthenware vanishing from the archeological record. The building techniques of the Romans were so thoroughly forgotten that a few hundred years after the collapse of the Empire, the Saxons attributed the Roman ruins to the work of giants, since they couldn't imagine how human beings could have lifted such large blocks into place.

The Romans were an awful, awful people whose society didn't care about most of the things I do - like scientific inquiry, most forms of literature other than history and Latinate poetry (which doesn't translate well because it's based on vowel length), and art other than the purely decorative. They destroyed ancient Greece, possibly wiping out the ethnicity that previously populated that country through the dilution that results from taking large segments as slaves and distributing them across the known world. In the process, they crippled Greek art forms and abolished their proto-sciences. But the collapse of their civilization destroyed everything they did manage to bring about, from building techniques to manufacturing technology.

Ultimately their loss was arguably to humanity's benefit, but the cost was remarkably high.

[Stahlseele]

i wonder where we would be nowadays, if the knowledge of concrete and other such stuff had not been lost way back then . .

[Occluded Sun]

We'd probably be less advanced. The Romans didn't continue Greek sciences - they sat around mostly, were continued a bit by the Arabs when they were in their relatively less pious Golden Age, and weren't truly revived until the Renaissance.

If the Roman Empire had never collapsed, there's no Renaissance. No sciences other than the immediately practically useful would have developed at all, so no calculus. Just applied engineering.

[PhoneLobster]

Look a couple centuries after Pope Urban, and when the Pope ordered the Holy Roman Emperor to go on a Crusade, the Emperor decided to go on a diplomatic mission instead.

So... guess which part of Holy Roman Emperor kinda undermines your whole "Catholics weren't running stuff" argument.

I can only assume the gigantic blind spot people have for wrapping their heads around the place of monarchs within Catholicism is somehow because of modern assumptions about secular government that they just don't understand were very much NOT a thing back then.

[name_here]

The population of Europe was nominally Catholic, yes. There was a fairly short period of time in which that meant the Pope was actually in charge.

[Kaelik]

The population of Europe was nominally Catholic, yes. There was a fairly short period of time in which that meant the Pope was actually in charge.

So what you are saying is that when "nominally" Catholic leaders who believe in all the catholic tenants except that the Pope should boss around kings, and believe that they are entitled to do whatever they want because personally loves them and put them in charge decide to do something, that is the fault of atheists, because religion is perfect?

I know that wasn't what you were actually saying, but arguing about whether people were "real" Catholics or "nominal" Catholics in a thread when the subject only came up in regards to how the crusades are fucking terrible, and definitely the fault of religious people is sort of annoying.

[name_here]

What I mean is that the population of Western Europe fucking well had a society that lionized killing people and taking their stuff before they became Catholic, they continued with this general societal pattern, and there was only a brief period where the kings did what the priesthood said instead of the priesthood saying what kings wanted them to, and boiling down a thousand years of history across an entire continent to "evil Catholics killing people for Catholicism" is exactly as stupid as blaming all the violence associated with the French revolution on atheism.

The Catholic Church did back and support the Crusades, and the earlier ones were in fact religiously motivated. The Catholic Church also imposed restrictions on massacring civilians in internal warfare in Europe. They should have done less of the first thing and more of the second thing.