Is christianity really that bad? Or was?

[Cabra West]

..
It also laid the foundations of national principles and laws we have now in just about every country. ...

To some extend, yes. Which unfortunately means that we've got a lot of work to do in changing these laws now.

[Lucky Bicycle Works]

An assertion made on Family Guy is a really, really bad place to start a thread.

Agreed. It's asking for spam.

"Christianity" is far too wide a category to call good or bad. It can't even be said to have "caused" anything. It's mixed up with so many other historical factors.

And right from my subjectivity: it is so difficult to say what "the world" (my life and experiences) would be like without Christianity, you may as well ask me if the Medieval Warm Period was good or bad.

[Pope Joan]

I thought it was the Muslims that were the major technological power in the dark ages.

Sure, them and China, with whom they traded.

[Peisandros]

*snip

Ahh Arch, I enjoyed that.

An assertion made on Family Guy is a really, really bad place to start a thread.

Eh...I honestly disagree.

Feel free to disagree. But my over four years of NSG experience says otherwise. I respect your questioning attitude though.

[Chateau Chevalier]

Define this Christianity you are arguing about.

[Libertarian Governance]

Christianity preseved culture during the dark ages.
It promoted literacy, and cultivated the ideal of chivalry as a way to turn the ruling bullies and thieves into gentlemen with a sense of noblesse oblige.

Not actually. They destroyed every trace of Greek and roman classical civilization. The only reason we know of those great stories today are due to the muslims. They horded knowledge and largely kept the populations dumb in order to rule over them.

[New Manth]

Not actually. They destroyed every trace of Greek and roman classical civilization.

Newsflash - The Greeks were Christian.

The only reason we know of those great stories today are due to the muslims.

I'm sure you have a good reason for discounting the contribution of the (Christian, not to belabor the point) Byzantine Empire in preserving classical knowledge. Right?

[Ifreann]

Christianity is....ok, I guess. Could be better. Did it cause the dark ages? Hardly. Christians, maybe, but the religion itself? I'd be surprised.

[Dododecapod]

No, they already had the "vibrant culture" part. And it didn't take long for many of the tribes to become highly civilized under Roman influence.

When Belisarius reconquered Rome for the Byzantine Empire in the 300s, the Byzantines (who called themselves Romans, of course) wore a combination of Hunnish and Greek dress, and spoke mostly Greek. The Visigoth "invaders" they defeated wore togas and spoke Latin...

While I wouldn't dispute the basic point about the syncretic nature of late classical Mediterranean civilisation, your history is off on several counts - and by at least two centuries.

Belisarius (500-565 AD) lived in the 6th century, and the Gothic War took place between 535-554.

The Gothic War was against the Ostrogoths, not the Visigoths; while the majority of the population of the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy were Latin-speaking, the small Gothic ruling elite remained largely Germanic in language and material culture until Belisarius' conquest (which was greatly facilitated by the bubonic plague).

Theodoric, the greatest of the Ostrogothic kings, was, however, aiming for a syncretic combination of Latin and Gothic culture, and mutual tolerance between his own Arian Christian Ostrogoths and the Catholic majority of his kingdom's population. Ultimately, he failed.

The Visigothic kingdom was in modern Spain.

Greek had always been the majority language of administration in the Eastern Roman Empire, so there was nothing unusual in the forces of the Eastern Empire speaking Greek in the 6th century, just as they would have been doing for the last 500 years; the governing class of Constantinople in the early to mid 6th century, however, was nonetheless still often Latin-speaking, and Justinian himself was a native Latin speaker from what is today the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Belisarius' native language is unknown, but he was born in what's now southern Bulgaria, which had a mix of Latin and Greek-speaking communities at the time. Greek would not finally be made the formal language of adminstration at the expense of Latin in the Eastern / Byzantine Empire until the reign of Heraclius (reigned 610-641), partially in response to the final loss of most of the non-Greek speaking regions of the Empire under dual attack from Arabs and Slavs.

Boy, I don't usually get things quite that off. I should stick to my specialty (modern history).

[Lucky Bicycle Works]

Not actually. They destroyed every trace of Greek and roman classical civilization.

Newsflash - The Greeks were Christian.

I parsed that as "Greek classical civilization and Roman classical civ." Not "Greek and Roman (combined) classical tradition."

The only reason we know of those great stories today are due to the muslims.

I'm sure you have a good reason for discounting the contribution of the (Christian, not to belabor the point) Byzantine Empire in preserving classical knowledge. Right?

Both had a role.

Given the propensity of so many civilizations for burning books they disagreed with, religion can be considered a good thing in that it preserves at least some books in a spirit of "know your enemy."

Books hidden away for the elite (those who can be trusted to read them) are books saved for posterity.

[Lucky Bicycle Works]

Boy, I don't usually get things quite that off. I should stick to my specialty (modern history).

There's no shame in being pwned by The Archregimancy.

[New Manth]

I parsed that as "Greek classical civilization and Roman classical civ." Not "Greek and Roman (combined) classical tradition."

Uh, it's not true either way you read it?

[Abdju]

Generally, the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire was sowing the seeds for problems further on, and certainly made it a less flexible and harder institution to govern, and ultimately led it, as Byzantium, to ossify.

Whilst that did preserve classical knowledge, it did nothing to build on it, and the Byzantine empire was, culturally and intellectually, a gutted shell.

That said, Christianity isn't the sole source for those problems. Rome was never the greatest cultural and intellectual power. However, prior to Christianity it was aware of that and openly emulated and sough tot build on Greek achievements in the humanities, whilst recognising its own strengths in administration and organisation. These worked well together, but Christianity complicated this by being unwilling to build on classical (non-Christian) Greek foundations, and ultimately led Rome, then Byzantium, to effectively sleepwalk it's way to obsolescence.

It's not that simple, an obviously there were a myriad of factors at work, but from the religious perspective, it's how I see it.

[New Manth]

Generally, the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire was sowing the seeds for problems further on, and certainly made it a less flexible and harder institution to govern, and ultimately led it, as Byzantium, to ossify.

Gonna have to back this one up. Especially since if I had to name a reason for Byzantium's long term decline, I'd name "losing Africa and being cut off from the Eastern trade routes due to the Islamic conquests," not "Christianity."

[Tybra]

I think the problem lies much deeper, with the first real emperor of the Roman Republic, Augustus. Romans were as nervous with the word Monarch as rigth-winged conservationists with communism. So Augustus had to do everything possible to look like a ordinary roman. Due to this façade of a roman republic there was no real heir to the emperor throne, the people of Rome simply knew who to choose, almost always someone close to the previous emperor as he could choose who to place in which position.

This system worked fine until 300 years, then the dynasty fell and there wasn't anyone to follow, Rome became chaotic with no real emperor to lead. Senators picked their own emperor, then armies picked their own emperor until you have 35 emperors in 1 year. Finally a new system came but that didn't seem to be working either. Then finally Constantine came who saw Jesus in a vision and became an unofficial Christian giving massive amounts of land to the Church.

Would augustus or the dynasty had an actual heir then the crisis could have never existed and Constantine would never be in power to make Christianity a state religion.

Although the germanic people north played a factor in this crisis,there were also the Neo-Persians in the east who were causing trouble, the real enemy was a certain plague who decimated the Roman population (due to the bathhouses and public toilets the disease found paradise). On the other side of the Mediterranean things never went better. The economy flourished and buildings were built through decoration.

[Cybach]

Christianity preseved culture during the dark ages.
It promoted literacy, and cultivated the ideal of chivalry as a way to turn the ruling bullies and thieves into gentlemen with a sense of noblesse oblige.

Not actually. They destroyed every trace of Greek and roman classical civilization. The only reason we know of those great stories today are due to the muslims. They horded knowledge and largely kept the populations dumb in order to rule over them.

I call bullshit.

The largest part of the reason we as Western Europeans know about the Greek and Roman times are because of monks and monasteries. During the dark ages, the Monasteries served as anchors of stability and knowledge in the chaos of anarchy that ruled Europe at the time. The monks of western Europe painstakingly copied and re-copied most of the old scriptures from the olden days for keepsake for the future generations. In the end accumulating a larger collection than the Muslims ever possessed. There is a reason the Vatican library gives almost every historian a hard-on. Since the Library of Alexandria burned down, the library of the Vatican possesses the largest volumes of ancient texts and textures in the world.

Not to mention it was the Church establishment that kept quite a few Roman traditions going. Latin being the language of the clergy, not to mention the structure of the clergy strongly imitated that of old Rome. With the monks democratically electing their prior, a structure which was mirrored throughout the whole establishment up to the Pope himself who was elected from a collegium of his peers, the College of Cardinals. Very much like the election of the Consuls by the Roman Senate, on which the model seems to be loosely based.

Even then. Monasteries were centers of learning. With many people sending their children there to be educated. And what did the Monks educate the children in? Oh. Greek philosophy [ the humanitarian writings of Socrates/Plato/Aristotle], old Greek, Latin and Mathematics. Yeah. They definitely tried to erase every trace of Greco-Roman culture. Not to mention the Church was also the first establishment in Europe to offer education to women, with their nunneries. Where women were also taught to read, write,...and yes again. Taught Greco-Roman history. Whereas the first secular Universities only started accepting female students in the 18-1900s, despite the oldest universities opening up during the late middle ages. Even today many Christian, or Church, centers of learning and universities are considered among the most elite and best in the world. Attending schools run by Jesuit clergy is still a sign of prestige, and considered to be a sign of a strong education. What do Jesuits specialize in? Oh wait, yes. One of the fields is the teaching of the humanitarian, intellectual and philosophical aspects of old Greece, which is seen as compatible to Christian ethics, as well as the birthstone to Western European culture.

So I think it is a very naive and biased view, to blame the failings of society solely on a religion. It smacks of scapegoating.

Now while Christianity and the Church has quite a few skeletons in it's closets, the hysterical blaming of the Dark Ages on it is simply ludicrous. The dark ages of Europe are more to be blamed on anarchy as a result of a collapsing world Empire, the roaming of barbarian hordes, Vikings [Who most definitely were not Christians] and the backward concept of feudalism than on Christianity as a whole.

[Abdju]

Generally, the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire was sowing the seeds for problems further on, and certainly made it a less flexible and harder institution to govern, and ultimately led it, as Byzantium, to ossify.

Gonna have to back this one up. Especially since if I had to name a reason for Byzantium's long term decline, I'd name "losing Africa and being cut off from the Eastern trade routes due to the Islamic conquests," not "Christianity."

As I said:

1. Not the only factor, but since we are talking religion I'm focusing on primarily on religious factors.
2. I am also referring specifically to cultural, not economic and military decline. These things do not necessarily go hand in hand.

[Blouman Empire]

Not actually. They destroyed every trace of Greek and roman classical civilization. The only reason we know of those great stories today are due to the muslims. They horded knowledge and largely kept the populations dumb in order to rule over them.

You sure about that?

Many of Aristotle's teachings survived and the Byzantine Empire came off from the Roman Empire despite the main religion changing to Greek Orthodox.

[Blouman Empire]

*Waits for Arch to waltz in and set everybody straight about what Christianity did to the Romans and Greeks*

[Ifreann]

*Waits for Arch to waltz in and set everybody straight about what Christianity did to the Romans and Greeks*

All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?

[Blouman Empire]

*Waits for Arch to waltz in and set everybody straight about what Christianity did to the Romans and Greeks*

All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?

You're alright.

[Zatarack]

Generally, the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire was sowing the seeds for problems further on, and certainly made it a less flexible and harder institution to govern, and ultimately led it, as Byzantium, to ossify.

Whilst that did preserve classical knowledge, it did nothing to build on it, and the Byzantine empire was, culturally and intellectually, a gutted shell.

That said, Christianity isn't the sole source for those problems. Rome was never the greatest cultural and intellectual power. However, prior to Christianity it was aware of that and openly emulated and sough tot build on Greek achievements in the humanities, whilst recognising its own strengths in administration and organisation. These worked well together, but Christianity complicated this by being unwilling to build on classical (non-Christian) Greek foundations, and ultimately led Rome, then Byzantium, to effectively sleepwalk it's way to obsolescence.

It's not that simple, an obviously there were a myriad of factors at work, but from the religious perspective, it's how I see it.

Uh, didn't the medieval philosophers love thaat Aristotle dude?

[Rogernomics]

Depends by what perspective and how it is implemented. I do not see Christianity as harmful if you enter it freely are not indoctrinated in it from birth, when people are forced into it or have limited freedom of action however that is the main issue with it though. Christianity by itself is no more harmful than say Islam, Buddhism or any other religion, its how it is implemented which matters (as with any belief system). When you have a situation where you regard people as inferior, evil or destructive because they do not follow Christianity (or the belief system you follow) can become dangerous and be used as a tool for persecution and violence.

[The Archregimancy]

Generally, the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire was sowing the seeds for problems further on, and certainly made it a less flexible and harder institution to govern, and ultimately led it, as Byzantium, to ossify.

Whilst that did preserve classical knowledge, it did nothing to build on it, and the Byzantine empire was, culturally and intellectually, a gutted shell.

That said, Christianity isn't the sole source for those problems. Rome was never the greatest cultural and intellectual power. However, prior to Christianity it was aware of that and openly emulated and sough tot build on Greek achievements in the humanities, whilst recognising its own strengths in administration and organisation. These worked well together, but Christianity complicated this by being unwilling to build on classical (non-Christian) Greek foundations, and ultimately led Rome, then Byzantium, to effectively sleepwalk it's way to obsolescence.

It's not that simple, an obviously there were a myriad of factors at work, but from the religious perspective, it's how I see it.

I'm sorry, but I seriously dispute this outmoded Gibbonian view of the Byzantine Empire as some sort of cultural and intellectual 'gutted shell'. No longer do historians or archaeologists dismiss the 'Bas-Empire' (to use the dismissive French phrase) as some sort of inflexible cultural fossil doomed to obsolescence. That's an outmoded 18th-century conceit of Edward Gibbon who was personally hostile to Byzantium, largely on the back of his equally outdated (though beautifully written and argued) hypothesis that Christianity destroyed the Roman Empire.

Byzantine civilisation was both vibrant and influential for centuries, and indeed reached one of its pinnacles of artistic and cultural development in the late Palaeologian period. The Empire's state institutions may have been in terminal decline post-1354, but its cultural life was anything but. The flowering of Byzantine artistic life and scholarship in the Palaeologian Renaissance of the 14th century was a crucial influence on (though not, as other equally mistaken individuals have argued, the cause of) the acceleration of the Italian Renaissance.

Byzantine history is a tale of ebb and flow, and institutional flexibility, not inevitable gradual decline brought on by institutional sclerosis. From Justinian's reconquests to Heraclius' wars against the Persians and Arabs, through to the glories of the Macedonian dynasty through to the decline of the eastern themata that led to Manzikert, through to the Comenian revival through to the Fourth Crusade, through to the Palaeologian restoration, through to final collapse. Its history is not easily understood in a Western European historiographical paradigm that expect states to have definable borders or some sort of ethnic national identity, but it was hugely successful in its time.

What ultimately finished Byzantium was a complex interaction of forces, but the end of the Byzantine Empire was never inevitable until the last 100 years of the Empire's existence. As Michael VI proved, even the Fourth Crusade wasn't terminal. As late as 1354, it was entirely possible that a truncated Byzantine state could have survived in Europe and the Aegean, and final decline only became inevitable following the combination of the disruption caused by the civil war that brought John VI Cantacuzene to the throne almost simultaneously with the outbreak of bubonic plague. Even then, Byzantine society continued to flourish outside of the borders of the collapsing Byzatine state.

A case might be made for an inflexibility of world view contributing towards an inability to understand the full implication of the relative decline in Byzantine military strength compared to its neighbours (something which Byzantium perhaps shared with Manchu China), but the collapse of the thematic system between the death of Basil II and Manzikert was partially brought about by the channelling of state funds towards the brilliant cultural peak of the late Macedonian period, and the favouring of a court-dominated state over the army - not ossification of cultural life.

In Western Europe, we tend to undervalue the importance of the Byzantine Empire, partially because we find its achievements so alien to our experience (we find Christian theocracies unfashionable in this more secular Western European age), and partially because we judge it harshly for ultimately collapsing. But for much of the Empire's history, it was the single most vibrant and important centre of Christian and/or European thought; Western Europe only generated a similar body of philosophy centuries afterwards, and even the Catholic church recognises the central role of the Byzantine church fathers in the development of Christianity. An ossified gutted shell could never have given us the 10th-century Patriarch Photius, arguably the greatest polymath of the period between 500 and 1000 AD, or the brilliance of the 11th-century scholar-monk, philosopher and historian Michael Psellus. An ossified gutted shell in constant decline could never have given us the extraordinary 300 year revival from the end of the Heraclian Dynasty in 711 and the death of Basil II in 1025.

The broader influence of Byzantine civilisation is visible across Eastern Europe, or anywhere where the Orthodox Church is influential. You need not find that influence necessarily wholly beneficial to acknowledge its millenia-old impact. For better or for worse, Russia is unimaginable without Byzantium. The Byzantine state lasted, by most measures, over 1000 years; it was easily the longest-lasting and most successful Mediterranean or European state of the late classical and medieval periods. Its cultural achievements live with us still.


I urge you to read a more modern work of scholarship on Byzantium, such as Warren Treadgold's definitive A History of Byzantine State and Society (1997, University of Stanford Press) in order to realise just how outdated your perspective on Byzantium is.

[Yootopia]

OK. So according to family guy (Yes I know. But they're normally spot on with that kind of stuff.) So Christianity caused the dark ages and stopped the advance of technology right in its tracks right?

Incorrect, the fall of then-Christian Rome led to the Dark Ages.