@Xotan
I support you 100% on what you said above in post #1608094 and some, but not all, of what jsonitsac said in post #1608175.
The view so often posted here on FSTDT about the so-called Dark Ages and how Christianity was oppressing everybody and everything and keeping them down and preventing any and every form of progress is just plain nonsense.
For one: what does the "dark" in Dark Ages mean? It simply means that this was a period with very few surviving written records, if they ever existed in any substantial number. It is "dark" in the sense that we know very little about it from contemporary documents. Historians describe the end of the so-called "Dark Ages" as a curtain being opened, with a sudden plethora of documentation. The term "dark" has absolutely nothing to do with "evil" or "terrible". Today historians prefer the term "Middle Ages" to describe the period from about 650-1420 (or so abouts).
If fact, the church, mainly through the Benedictine style monasteries, had an immense influence on cultivating and forming Europe as we know it today. De-forestization and agriculture, economic and civil structuring, social stability, etc.
Of course, it wasn't democratic and chuck full of human rights and equality as we expect our life today to be, but beside the negative influences of the church, which mainly came about **after** the so-called "Dark Ages", the positive influences of the church where dominant.
This isn't a religious view of opinion; this is simply history. Cussing out the church and blaming it for a "Dark Age" is ignorant. Do your research first.
Having said that, I know it will be ignored and things will go on as usual. Xotan, we'll both have to live with that.
