# Bryan Ekers Sociopolitical impact of Christianity on Pagan Europe **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 8, 2008, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271 "2008-12-08T17:47:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Syntropy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/65b543/32.png) [@Syntropy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Syntropy)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271/21 "2008-12-09T21:43:48Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > You do understand that ‘Athens and Jerusalem’ are common metaphors to describe the debate between logic and faith right? Faith and Philosophy, actually, yes. But you are asserting that religion, and religion alone, gave birth to the European renaissance. So far you haven’t given much cause for why you think that’s a working hypothesis. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271/22 "2008-12-09T21:56:03Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Repeatedly insisting that “any wealthy group could have done that” is a dodge. There were wealthy people and groups all over the world in every civilization that ever existed. (Okay I haven’t checked every single one but I assume it’s true.) So why did the scientific revolution occur in Christian civilization and not in any other civilization. To repeatedly suggest that it was random, and that it could have occurred anywhere, does not match the facts. The facts it _does_ match are spelled in Diamond’s _Guns, Germs and Steel_, lest you’re under the impression I’m just making stuff up. Diamond makes a strong argument that the geography of Europe contributed mightily to its rise rather than any alleged superiority of its people (or their religion, I assume). Besides, your claim conveniently ignores contributions made by Jewish, Arabic and Asian philosophers. > [@](#): > > I’ve laid down three specific contributions, unique to Christian civilization, that were vital to progress in science, technology, society, politics, and the arts. Do you have any specific objections to my reasoning? If so, I’d love to hear them. I’m just pointing out that there’s nothing specific to Christianity that makes it “vital” to this progress. That a Christian discovered something doesn’t mean Christianity is crucial to the discovery. > [@](#): > > But again, _why didn’t it happen anywhere besides Europe_? Do you suppose that every nation, city-state, or tribe in history has a certain number of scientists milling around, and that progress would automatically take off as soon as they were unleashed from social controls? Well it just isn’t so. The vast majority of peoples on earth never had any science. No conception of it whatsoever. It only came into existence in its full form in Europe, and in lesser forms in Arabia and the eastern civilizations. Not necessarily true, but okay. Aztecs, after all, had some fairly impressive engineering skills which speaks to at least some inkling (conception, if you will) of physics. I’ll just reiterate what I asked earlier: what are the major tenets of Christianity, and what about them makes them vital to science? > [@](#): > > Christianity was vital to the three phenomenon I listed and to many others. > > 1. Secrecy vs. openness. Christianity views all of its followers as the Body of Christ, a people united towards a common goal of building a better society. Hence the desire to share discoveries for the common use, rather than hoarding them for personal glory. During the period you’re claiming as when Christianity invented science, heretics were burned and original thinkers needed the patronage of the wealthy who certainly _were_ interested in personal glory. When, if ever, was the generous communal existence you describe the norm in Christian Europe? > [@](#): > > 1. Education. It’s easy to understand why so many ancient societies wanted to keep education properly contained and limited. In a society based on strict differentiation of people into superior and inferior groups, education must always be restricted to the upper levels. Let the lower levels learn too much and they’ll get uppity. We can find examples of this phenomenon in Ancient Greece, in India with the caste system, and elsewhere. This is by no means restricted to Christianity. Heck, Judaism required literacy (at least among its male population) long before it became the norm for Christianity. [quote] The Christian view of all human beings lowered social barriers. With the need for absolute, cast-in-stone divisions between social classes lowered, widespread education was no longer a threat to the social order.[/quyote] Class systems in Christian nations persisted well into the Renaissance, arguably the Enlightenment. It took 18th-century philosophies and the rise of Deism for people to start discarding the bible and its mythologies as explanations of the physical world. This, in combination with diminishing reverence for the divine right of kings, undermined class systems. > [@](#): > > 1. Gender issues. I’ve already explained the relationship of this to Christian beliefs. Well, when there’s a female Pope, I’ll be impressed. > [@](#): > > 1. The rational universe. Among the most fundamental tenets of Christian doctrine is that God created a universe that operated in a rational and consistent way. Well, if this was true, I don’t see room for miracles involving the sun dancing around the sky and such, so the rules of the universe evidently _can_ be broken, if God wants to. > [@](#): > > This contrasted sharply with other religions. The Ancient Babylonians, for instance, saw the cosmos as essentially chaotic and undesigned. According to the Buddha, physical reality is illusory and the true reality underneath is in ceaseless flux. The ancient Babylonians are, of course, ancient, but modern Buddhists can and do advance science and were doing so well before Christianity found its way east. Anyway, I see nothing to seriously challenge my contention. It was the gradual diminishing of religious power in Europe that allowed the rise of reason, and it doesn’t critically matter what exactly the particular dogma of that religion was. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271/23 "2008-12-09T22:46:01Z")
> [@Syntropy](#): > > Faith and Philosophy, actually, yes. But you are asserting that religion, and religion alone, gave birth to the European renaissance. So far you haven’t given much cause for why you think that’s a working hypothesis. I’m not asserting that, that’s a straw man. Glad that was easily settled. And it’s logic and faith. Not philosophy and faith, that implies that philosophy is inherently western. ---
**Author:** ![Syntropy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/65b543/32.png) [@Syntropy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Syntropy)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271/24 "2008-12-09T22:53:25Z")
Silly me for quoting a philosopher (Strauss). Certainly if you’re going to assert that Athens is the seat of logic, you are asserting logic itself is inherently western. Which is it? And are these your words in [post #14](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10549637&postcount=14)?: > [@mswas](#): > > And the idea that Christianity coincided with the Enlightenment is laughable nonsense. It BIRTHED them. I do believe they are. Perhaps you’d like to rephrase? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271/25 "2008-12-09T23:10:50Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > You do understand that ‘Athens and Jerusalem’ are common metaphors to describe the debate between logic and faith right? I’ve never seem them so used before, but I’ll take your word for it. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271/26 "2008-12-09T23:13:04Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Well, when there’s a female Pope, I’ll be impressed. [Ain’tcha heard?!](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Joan) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271/27 "2008-12-09T23:21:49Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > And the idea that Christianity coincided with the Enlightenment is laughable nonsense. It BIRTHED them. Secular Humanism is a direct descendant of Christian morals with Greek Pagan logic. It is the child of Athens and Jerusalem. It’s not even worth discussing an alternate theory to that. Christianity in Europe predated the englightenment by a millenium. “Preceded” != “birthed.” From [“Which Civilisation,”](http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2001/which_civilisation) by Michael Lind (published in \*Prospect, 2001): > [@](#): > > My claim is that the civilisation shared by most Prospect readers is humanist, a relatively young global civilisation based on the post-medieval, Italian-Dutch-Anglo-American tradition of the constitutional, commercial society. Needless to say, this definition of humanist civilisation differs dramatically from conventional catechisms about the “rise of the west.” > > For example, the familiar idea that there is a unitary liberal “west” that is defined by the RRE tradition – Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment – is untrue. Renaissance humanism is incompatible with Reformation Protestantism, while Enlightenment rationalism is alien to both. The fact that these three traditions have coexisted in Britain, the US and other countries does not mean that they are three phases of the same tradition. > > Another version of the “rise of the west” story, more sympathetic to Catholicism than the RRE approach, holds that the “west” is a synthesis of the “Greco-Roman” and “Judaeo-Christian” traditions. In fact, the “Judaeo-Christian” tradition has little to do with the tolerant, individualist, commercial society. > > Consider the claim that Christianity is responsible for the liberal ideal of political equality. In reality, early-modern liberal republican theorists derived this from Cicero and the Stoics. Christians and Muslims believe in the equality of believers before God, a conception which was not interpreted until recently to mandate equality. Indeed, Paul admonished slaves to return to their spiritually-equal masters. The Christian churches only turned against chattel slavery after secular philosophers like David Hume had begun denouncing it. Southern Protestants in the US defended slavery throughout the civil war, and the Catholic church defended it until it was abolished decades later in Catholic Cuba and Brazil. > > Popular sovereignty, republicanism, democracy, the rule of law rather than the rule of men, the idea of a natural law transcending the conventional law of nations – these, too, are part of a pre-Christian, Greco-Roman heritage familiar to educated Europeans and westerners from the Renaissance until the 19th century. Credit for these concepts can no more be given to Moses and Jesus than to Muhammad. > > But didn’t Protestantism produce capitalism? The intellectual historians who vulgarise Max Weber’s nuanced discussion of the affinities between Protestantism and capitalism into a cause-and-effect relationship are easily refuted. Commercial capitalism, in a remarkably familiar form, evolved in Catholic Europe, particularly in northern Italy, for half a millennium, between the 1100s and the 1500s. Only the political repression of Italy by counter-Reformation Spain gave the lead to northwestern Europe – and there capitalism and industry burgeoned in pluralist Holland and in Britain after the invasion of “Dutch William” in 1689. It did not happen in Puritan societies like Calvin’s Geneva or Cromwell’s England or the Scotland tyrannised by the kirk. In the US, the centre of capitalism has been not Puritan New England or the Southern Bible Belt, but polyglot, secular, permissive Manhattan – formerly known as New Amsterdam. > > What about natural science? Christian apologists nowadays claim that Christianity cleared the way for natural science by demythologising the world. This would come as news to Pope John Paul II, who in September 2000 performed a 30-minute exorcism on a 19-year-old woman who began shouting at him during a public audience. Evangelical Protestants, as well as Catholics, believe in demons and engage in exorcism. The conservative Protestant JF Cogan says that the growth in the human population, relative to the fixed number of fallen angels, means that some overworked demons are forced to commute among a number of possessed individuals at “the speed of electricity.” Even more innovative is the Rev Jim Peasboro of Savannah, Georgia, who in his book The Devil in the Machine: Is Your Computer Possessed by a Demon? explains that “any PC built after 1985 has the storage capacity to house an evil spirit.” All this is justified by reference to Jesus whose many successful exorcisms are recounted in the New Testament. > > Modern natural science was built in the last several centuries on the surviving foundations of ancient Hellenic science – the atomism of Leucippus and Democritus in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, and the heliocentric theory of Aristarchus (310-230 BC). Like Muslims, Christians repeatedly have tried to repress science when it threatened their dogmas, from the days of Galileo until the present, with Protestant fundamentalists in the US still waging a campaign to ban discussion of Darwinian biology from classrooms or to pair it with Biblical “creation science.” According to Stephen Hawking, who attended a 1981 Vatican conference on cosmology, “the Pope told us that it was fine to study the evolution of the universe after the big bang, but we should not inquire into the big bang itself because that was the work of God.” > > So, does liberty of conscience have Christian roots? It was only after they failed to create theocracies on the territories that they controlled in the wars of religion that Catholics and Calvinists resigned themselves to the idea of a secular state (to this day, ultramontanist Catholics and Protestant theologians dream of theocratic government). After Mussolini came to power in Italy, Pope Pius XI declared: “if there is a totalitarian regime, it is the Church regime, given that man belongs wholly to the Church.” (The Vatican did not make its peace with liberal democracy until the 1960s.) The major Protestant reformers were just as tyrannical. “Those who object to the punishment of heresy are like dogs and swine,” Calvin thundered. Martin Luther was moderate by comparison, writing in 1528: “I can in no way admit that false teachers should be put to death: it is enough that they should be banished.” Of the Jews, the relatively tolerant Luther wrote: “Burn down their synagogues… force them to work, and deal harshly with them, as Moses did in the wilderness, slaying 3,000 lest the whole people perish… There it would be wrong to be merciful.” > > Apart from maverick Christian minorities like Quakers, Anabaptists and Jehovah’s Witnesses, the major champions of freedom of thought and religious tolerance have been secular thinkers and statesmen like Voltaire and Thomas Jefferson, who wrote, “our civil rights have no dependence upon our religious opinions more than our opinions in physics or geometry.” Jefferson stated that the legislators who passed the Virginian statute protecting religious freedom “meant to comprehend within its protection the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination.” > > Far from being the source of humanist civilisation, then, Christianity in its traditional forms is incompatible with a liberal, democratic, secular society that has an economy based on applied science and commercial exchange. Indeed, conservative Christianity, in both its Protestant and Catholic forms, has always had far less in common with humanist civilisation than with orthodox Islam. Both orthodox Christianity and orthodox Islam are intolerant religions which divide humanity into believers and infidels. Both Christianity and Islam hold that reason must be subordinated to irrational faith. “Reason is the Devil’s whore,” Luther declared. Paul said, “the wisdom of the Greeks is the foolishness of God.” The true source of humanist civilisation, including natural science, democracy and the spirit of free inquiry, can be traced back through the Romans to the ancient Greeks, who first replaced mythological thinking with reasoning about humanity and the universe. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271/28 "2008-12-09T23:22:45Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > I’m not asserting that, that’s a straw man. Glad that was easily settled. If I understand it, your assertion is that a combination of reason and religion created the Enlightenment. Even granting that (and it’s a stretch) I don’t see why that religion need necessarily have been Christianity. Sure, Europe was Christian and Europe became a (not _the_) hotbed of science. Maybe if Europe hadn’t been Christian it would have become a hotbed of science 300 years earlier. Or 500 years later. But never? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271/29 "2008-12-09T23:29:54Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > [Ain’tcha heard?!](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Joan) The apocryphal is the enemy of the flippant. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271/30 "2008-12-10T02:12:03Z")
Christianity is an adaptation of Judism for pagans. It is significant in that it spread an Axial Age religion throughout Europe and parts of Asia. Where it met other Axial Age religions (eg Buddhism), it enjoyed less success. For an illustration of the humanizing aspects of Christianity, one can read some of the original versions of Aesop’s Fables. Not only are they brutal, but they accept and condone cruelty in a way that modern ears find striking. Readers of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and viewers of Shlock Horror know that fictional brutality didn’t go away of course. But in the Fables, “…there seems to have been no public consensus that compassion towards one’s fellow human beings had anything to recommend it.” [Cite](http://books.google.com/books?id=ZB-rVxPvtPEC&printsec=frontcover&client=firefox-a&source=gbs_book_other_versions_r&cad=2_0#PPR17,M1). Now maybe the rise of the middle class in general, and the increasing status of women in particular, had something to do with this trend. If so, Christianity is more effect than cause: it appealed to a constituency that, while hardly predominant, was growing more powerful. (h/t Brainglutton) I’ll also note that while the ancient world was strong in philosophy and mathematics, it wasn’t especially adept at technological development and adaptation, relative to those of the medieval age. So an emerging upwardly mobile class -empowered by Christianity perhaps- had other implications as well. As for events occurring 1500 or more years after the birth of Christ, I’m partial to something like Jared Diamond’s POV. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271/31 "2008-12-10T03:43:23Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > If I understand it, your assertion is that a combination of reason and religion created the Enlightenment. Even granting that (and it’s a stretch) I don’t see why that religion need necessarily have been Christianity. No, I am claiming that from a foundation of Christian morality philosophers reasoned a moral philosophy that became known as secular humanism. Philosophers such as Liebniz (Christian), and Spinoza (Jewish) laying the ground work for that. If Secular Humanism is the plant the Christian society was the fertile soil in which it was planted. Obviously it evolved as contact with other cultures occurred. The rest is a straw man. I am not making any argument regarding singular cause and regard all singular cause arguments to be too simplistic to be worthwhile. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271/32 "2008-12-10T03:46:25Z")
We’re not discussing the way it MAY have happened but the way it DID happen. But also discussing the enlightenment is about 1000 years later than I wanted to examine. If Christianity is the source of much evil and suffering in the world such that it is a blight upon humanity then we need to demonstrate that what came before it was better. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271/33 "2008-12-10T05:34:35Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > No, I am claiming that from a foundation of Christian morality philosophers reasoned a moral philosophy that became known as secular humanism. Okay, then secular humanism is the key to progress, once the ritualistic trappings of Christianity and other parent religions were downplayed or discarded or in any case were no longer viewed as an adequate explanation of how the universe worked, forcing the advent of empiricism. > [@](#): > > Philosophers such as Liebniz (Christian), and Spinoza (Jewish) laying the ground work for that. If Secular Humanism is the plant the Christian society was the fertile soil in which it was planted. Obviously it evolved as contact with other cultures occurred. Just to clarify, the point I’ve attempted to make is that _any_ fertile soil would do. There’s nothing specific to Christianity that was absolutely necessary for science, and if Christianity were to cease to exist, science would continue. As far as I can tell, your argument consists of: [ul][li]Something good happened in a Christian society - proves Christianity is crucial.[/li][li]Something bad happened in a Christian society - doesn’t count.[/li][li]Something good happened in a nonChristian society - doesn’t count.[/li][li]Something bad happened in a nonChristian society - proves Christianity is crucial.[/ul] [/li] Amusingly, I recall a passage from Carl Sagan’s _Cosmos_ that suggested that but for the Catholic church, humanity might have had spaceships 500 years earlier - only the lettering on the sides of the ships would be Greek. > [@](#): > > We’re not discussing the way it MAY have happened but the way it DID happen. I can’t offhand recall the correct word for this - the assumption that a current situation can only be the result of what proceeded it, i.e. humans are comfortable (for the most part) in the temperate ranges of Earth’s environment, therefore Earth’s environment was designed for human comfort. If human history DID happen some other way, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Somebody else might be having it, and debating the ramifications of THEIR history. Maybe those alternatives versions wouldn’t be using the internet to carry on the conversation because it hadn’t been invented. Maybe they wouldn’t be using the internet because it’s so quaint and obsolete and unsuited to a conversation between a colonist on Mars and one killing time in the middle of the Jupiter run. > [@](#): > > But also discussing the enlightenment is about 1000 years later than I wanted to examine. If Christianity is the source of much evil and suffering in the world such that it is a blight upon humanity then we need to demonstrate that what came before it was better. Well, I personally figure Christianity’s no more destructive, obtrusive and hindering than any other state religion. Better than some, worse than others. I’d like to have seen a religion that had no use for virgin births and such and had as its central revelation from God (or whatever): > [@](#): > > _Go ye forth and learn of the wonder of My creation. Walk without fear into the shadows of mystery and bring forth light. Nothing I have created is beyond your ability to understand. In truth, ye shall struggle and fail along the journey. I shall shew thee miracles of insight and prophecy, burning in the minds of men. Some may inspire fear, some may prove false, ye must learn strength and truth and build miracles of reason to My glory and go forth and reclaim the universe._ I have to figure that if God exists, he’s giving me that insight and it’s just as valid as anything Yeshua bar-Yussef ever said. Disagree? Feel free to prove me wrong. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271/34 "2008-12-10T07:20:11Z")
> [@Syntropy](#): > > IWhat? _What?_ No. The T’ang and Sung Dynasties in China are most famously noted as periods of “Chinese Renaissance” but there are others as well. Eastern philosophy flourished during both. Have you never heard of Buddhism? Sun Tzu? The Tao te Ch’ing? Traditional Chinese medicine goes back 5,000 years. Texts proving they were using advanced mathematics date back to the Han Dynasty in 246 BC. India and Japan went through similar periods of enlightenment. It is preposterous to assert that ONLY in Europe was there ever a full fledged renaissance with so much evidence to the contrary. Well, why don’t you define what you mean by a full-fledged Renaissance? An individual does not make a Renaissance. Neither does a book. Even a system of mathematics does not. (And the mathematics of India and Japan were not that impressive.) I assume that a full-fledged Renaissance has to be exactly what it the word means. A Renaissance is a rebirth, literally. So the historical period generally called “The Renaissance” is so called because of the birth of lines of thought in art, literature, science, philosophy, and religion that keep going to this day. It’s only a Renaissance if it produces something meaningful and lasting. There were cases in Asian civilizations, as already mentioned, where we had the beginning of something that looked like it might match the Renaissance. But it never actually did. There was no event that reshaped any Asian civilization the way that the past 500 years have reshaped Europe. Rather, the reshaping that started in Europe spread outward to the rest of the world. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271/35 "2008-12-10T07:36:10Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > The facts it _does_ match are spelled in Diamond’s _Guns, Germs and Steel_, lest you’re under the impression I’m just making stuff up. Diamond makes a strong argument that the geography of Europe contributed mightily to its rise rather than any alleged superiority of its people (or their religion, I assume). Besides, your claim conveniently ignores contributions made by Jewish, Arabic and Asian philosophers. I’ve read _Guns, Germs, and Steel_, and I am not impressed by it. Like many critics, my main feeling is that Diamond cherry-picked a small number of historical examples that he could fit into his thesis. I suspect that the book’s popularity arises mainly from his shameless kissing up to the far left by endlessly insisting that his thesis is just so totally egalitarian. > [@](#): > > During the period you’re claiming as when Christianity invented science, heretics were burned and original thinkers needed the patronage of the wealthy who certainly _were_ interested in personal glory. When, if ever, was the generous communal existence you describe the norm in Christian Europe? First of all, I’ll await your cite to establish the fact that burning of heretics was common across Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. An enlightened person such as yourself surely knows that the idea of the Spanish Inquisition burning heretics is a myth, invented by Spain’s political enemies many years after the supposed event, so you’re going to need something else. You’ll surely accompany that with a cite for the claim that “original thinkers needed the patronage of the wealthy who certain were interested in personal glory”. After all, didn’t Galileo depend on the Catholic Church for financing for much of his career? And Issac Newton certainly didn’t depend on anyone’s patronage. There were universites operating throughout Europe at the time. Oxford got started in the 12th century, if I recall correctly, and by the Renaissance they were popping up like mushrooms. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271/36 "2008-12-10T07:53:18Z")
> [@Bryan Ekers](#): > > This is by no means restricted to Christianity. Heck, Judaism required literacy (at least among its male population) long before it became the norm for Christianity. I’d be interested in seeing proof of that. In any case, though, I still claim that the Scholastics were the first to assert education as an aim in itself, rather than merely as a job skill strictly confined. That breaking of barriers allowed the spread of educational institutions, and of an attitude more favoable to education. Without those institutions and that attitude, there’s no particular reason to believe that the Renaissance would ever happen. > [@](#): > > Class systems in Christian nations persisted well into the Renaissance, arguably the Enlightenment. It took 18th-century philosophies and the rise of Deism for people to start discarding the bible and its mythologies as explanations of the physical world. This, in combination with diminishing reverence for the divine right of kings, undermined class systems. Class systems exist to this day. My point was that the rigidly defined class systems, such as India’s caste system, did not exist in Christian Europe because Christianity would not allow it. Modern schools of course teach that Europe was populated by serfs laboring under the merciless feudal system until the enlightened teachers of the enlightment came and liberated them, but reality was somewhat different. > [@](#): > > Well, when there’s a female Pope, I’ll be impressed. Should I take it, from this bit of snarkiness, that you have no meaningful response to the point? > [@](#): > > Well, if this was true, I don’t see room for miracles involving the sun dancing around the sky and such, so the rules of the universe evidently _can_ be broken, if God wants to. Many people do see such rules, and it doesn’t prevent them from doing science. Galileo, Kepler, Newton…all firm believers in the miraculous. > [@](#): > > The ancient Babylonians are, of course, ancient, but modern Buddhists can and do advance science and were doing so well before Christianity found its way east. I’d be interested to see documentation of this. Exactly how much science was advanced prior to contact with Christian civilization? Anything to match 17th century European science? > [@](#): > > Anyway, I see nothing to seriously challenge my contention. It was the gradual diminishing of religious power in Europe that allowed the rise of reason, and it doesn’t critically matter what exactly the particular dogma of that religion was. The arrival of Christianity in Europe was the arrival of reason. I suppose you could get out of that by redefining reason as the absence of Christianity, but that would hardly be a rigorous argument. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271/37 "2008-12-10T08:12:15Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > From [“Which Civilisation,”](http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2001/which_civilisation) by Michael Lind (published in \*Prospect, 2001): Michael Lind is a lying sack of ahem. Let’s take a look at the claims of Michael Lind. > [@](#): > > Consider the claim that Christianity is responsible for the liberal ideal of political equality. In reality, early-modern liberal republican theorists derived this from Cicero and the Stoics. I bet John Locke would be surprised to hear that. > [@](#): > > Christians and Muslims believe in the equality of believers before God, a conception which was not interpreted until recently to mandate equality. Indeed, Paul admonished slaves to return to their spiritually-equal masters. The Christian churches only turned against chattel slavery after secular philosophers like David Hume had begun denouncing it. Hume was born in 1711, at which time Christian movements such as the Quakers had been working to oppose slavery for a long time. The Methodist movement was started by Wesley brothers in the 1730’s and based on explicity Christian demands for an end to slavery. It was that movement that eventually brought the end of the slave trade in the British Empire, and many other examples social progress. Many people from the Church of England and the Presbyterian church were involved as well. > [@](#): > > Evangelical Protestants, as well as Catholics, believe in demons and engage in exorcism. I’ve somehow missed the exorcisms at my church. I guess they’re all done at the 10 o’clock service. > [@](#): > > Like Muslims, Christians repeatedly have tried to repress science when it threatened their dogmas, from the days of Galileo until the present, I’ve already shown that the claims about Galileo are atheist myth-making. > [@](#): > > The Vatican did not make its peace with liberal democracy until the 1960s. Actually the Vatican has many publications engaging with the governments of democratic nations from long earlier than that. I’m sure a person more knowledgable than myself could pinpoint many more examples of his dishonesty, but I think this short lists proves the point. In order to buttress his claim that Christianity has prevented the spread of modernism, he needs to ignore the facts and make up fictions in their place. Hence we can safely conclude that anyone who ignores the fictions and focuses on the facts must agree that Christianity was conducive to modernism. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271/38 "2008-12-10T08:18:05Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Amusingly, I recall a passage from Carl Sagan’s _Cosmos_ that suggested that but for the Catholic church, humanity might have had spaceships 500 years earlier - only the lettering on the sides of the ships would be Greek. I recall that passage too and was delighted by it when I first read it. Years later I actually studied the issue in depth. Guess what? Sagan is very impressed by a group of Ionian philosophers who lived (maybe) in various city-states along the Turkish coast, some centuries before the golden age of Athens. In reality we know very little about these philosophers. Anaximander is known by only one fragment of a text, for instance. His claims, such as the idea that they had the theory of evolution all worked out, are dubious at best. ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271/39 "2008-12-10T10:22:45Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I recall that passage too and was delighted by it when I first read it. Years later I actually studied the issue in depth. Guess what? > > Sagan is very impressed by a group of Ionian philosophers who lived (maybe) in various city-states along the Turkish coast, some centuries before the golden age of Athens. In reality we know very little about these philosophers. Anaximander is known by only one fragment of a text, for instance. His claims, such as the idea that they had the theory of evolution all worked out, are dubious at best. And Democrit had the whole Atom-theory worked out too by looking at flecks of dust. The Ionian philosophers were impressive not so much for what they accomplished, as for trying. But Christianity – and in particular the Catholic church - had nothing to do with ending their experiments. They were all dead and buried centuries before Jesus. Christianity certainly did have a civilizing influence on Viking Scandinavia. Sure, many of the Vikings merely switched from invading Britain to joining the Crusades, but we did stop with things like human sacrifice and it did take the top off the most belligerent side of the Vikings. Also it probably helped with abolishing the worst forms of slavery. Gibbon – no fan of Christianity – also believed Christianity helped civilize the various German tribes overrunning the Roman Empire. ---
**Author:** ![Syntropy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/65b543/32.png) [@Syntropy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Syntropy)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271/40 "2008-12-10T13:00:35Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I can’t offhand recall the correct word for this - the assumption that a current situation can only be the result of what proceeded it, i.e. humans are comfortable (for the most part) in the temperate ranges of Earth’s environment, therefore Earth’s environment was designed for human comfort. If human history DID happen some other way, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Somebody else might be having it, and debating the ramifications of THEIR history. Maybe those alternatives versions wouldn’t be using the internet to carry on the conversation because it hadn’t been invented. Maybe they wouldn’t be using the internet because it’s so quaint and obsolete and unsuited to a conversation between a colonist on Mars and one killing time in the middle of the Jupiter run. Affirming the consequent. > [@ITR Champion](#): > > I’ve somehow missed the exorcisms at my church. I guess they’re all done at the 10 o’clock service. Good to know nothing happens in the Catholic church without your PERSONAL attention. The Archbishop of Canada probably had a little brainfart and forgot to call you when he [appointed two new exorcists](http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=e2988ac6-b56f-4e85-841a-341ad7b523ee) this last April. > [@](#): > > Well, why don’t you define what you mean by a full-fledged Renaissance? An individual does not make a Renaissance. Neither does a book. Even a system of mathematics does not. (And the mathematics of India and Japan were not that impressive.) > > I assume that a full-fledged Renaissance has to be exactly what it the word means. A Renaissance is a rebirth, literally. So the historical period generally called “The Renaissance” is so called because of the birth of lines of thought in art, literature, science, philosophy, and religion that keep going to this day. It’s only a Renaissance if it produces something meaningful and lasting. Yes, those flighty, flighty Chinese. If only they’d documented some of their history and held on to a tradition or two. [ahem](http://chinese-history.suite101.com/article.cfm/china): > [@](#): > > The Song Dynasty ranks along with the Tang in the aspects of economic growth, artistic and intellectual achievement. This dynasty has been measured with the Renaissance in Europe. Song government consisted of centrally appointed officials which gave the Song emperors more control than the Tang emperors. Song cities developed into notable centers of trade, administration, and industry. Paper money was established along with a unified tax code. > > The Song dynasty may have been the start of a Chinese industrial revolution. Industry such as iron multiplied as much as six times over some two hundred years. Mass produced products included products for agriculture and construction. During this dynasty the Chinese enhanced gunpowder, the cannon, and flamethrowers. Refinement of the arts continued and was seen in painting, calligraphy, and porcelain. Expansion of the printing technologies increased supplies of printed materials, which lead to increased literacy. From the Song Dynasty we see the development of the obligations of obedience to rulers, fathers, and husbands, a trait still practiced in modern China. Your Eurocentricity is a little misplaced. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bryan-ekers-sociopolitical-impact-of-christianity-on-pagan-europe/476271.md?page=3)