[OT] Plato's Pub and Philosophical Society

[Captain Kwok]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not supporting the church or religion or anything like that...

The main factors that held back advancement in the dark ages was war, famine, and disease. People who are struggling to survive aren't as interested in 'science' or technology. The church was not a major factor and didn't really interfere with much until the late middle ages through the renaissance.

[ZeroAdunn]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Umm... no. Debate is not served by violent confrontation.

That sounds like a weakling talking! You and me buddy, right here, right now, bare knuckle boxing, twenty rounds!

Fyron: You do realize that you are doing several things right now that you always complain about others doing.

First, you keep making a claim without any support material, while others are telling you you are wrong and using support material.

When other people offer counterpoints, you just restate your previous point which has no bearing on the new points.

[Fyron]

First, you keep making a claim without any support material, while others are telling you you are wrong and using support material.

No, they do not have support material. I have seen them post no supporting material.

When other people offer counterpoints, you just restate your previous point which has no bearing on the new points.

The only counterpoints where I did that were when they posted something that I had already said or talked about earlier in the discussion.

[ March 10, 2003, 06:05: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Narrew]

Ha, this is something that I have thought about a few times.
I do agree that Religion did hamper "Growth". True, they did copy selected "texts" that they deemed worthy, but the peasants were NOT encouraged to be literate, if they were, the Churches power base would weaken since they were the only ones that could give the word of GOD (which that was just their point). All in all it came down to POWER, the Church throttled freethinking, there were many good things that they did, but the bad/evil/ignorant things surely made up for it, such as the Crusades or the Inquisitions.

I think of the Great Library in Alexandria which had many documents from all over the known world. One thing was a simple working steam power device. What would have been if the library had not burned down?

I do think that we can look at history and draw more than one conclusion, hence the conflict of opinions (at least we wont go to the stake for them). If we do look back over the Last 2000 years, the Last 300 years have been amazing and the Last 80/90 more than astonishing (of course we all know that).

That all said, I am with Fyron. The Church was not everything in the power base of Europe, but it was a major part of it and the things it did to stifle knowledge (and I contend anything other than what THEY thought was true knowledge was ignored) had a long Lasting effect on Growth, otherwise how come when America won its freedom did we really start to see growth?

[Ruatha]

Didn't the monks erase Aristoteles works and use the pergament for prayer books instead?
Thereby eradicating valuable knowledge, some of which has been independetly discovered so late as in the 20:th century.

[Captain Kwok]

Originally posted by Ruatha:
Didn't the monks erase Aristoteles works and use the pergament for prayer books instead?
Thereby eradicating valuable knowledge, some of which has been independetly discovered so late as in the 20:th century.

They did not. In fact, they copied his works preferentially because of their divine implications, i.e., that everything in the universe is striving for its perfect state, etc...

If we are talking about the European dark ages ~500-1400 then war/invasion/disease were all primary causes of technological stagnation, not the church! The church didn't really start to take control until the 1200s etc, and that was after the Europeans were able to manage a bit of stability. The church in 1500-1600s is more what you guys are referring to - but even to some degree, it was the thinkers who were stuck on Aristotle and not open to new possibilities that kept new thinkers from making a bigger splash then they did...

[Mephisto]

Originally posted by Narrew:
...such as the Crusades or the Inquisitions.

You see, Inquisition is just a good point to proof that the world isn't black and white.

You thinks "fair trail" is good thing? Who thinks the sentence "innocent until proved guilty" is a good one?
Well, you might be surprised but this fundaments of our (western) societies were laid down by the Inquisition. It's highest principle was that under no circumstances a innocent person could every be convicted. If there wasn't 100% proof of the guilt you had to release the accused person. And the only 100% proof was a confession. So, without a confession by the criminal himself you had to release him. I think this is quite remarkable and a very high standard.
Well, the same system created to prevent the punishment of the innocent let to torture. Without confession no conviction so they tortured you to get it. The system itself was build to give you security and ended in horror. The faults of us humans...
But after we abandoned torture it became the fundament of your punitive law systems…