Let us behave like those long-suffering Christian monks who in the days of Dark Ages barbarian invasions in Western Europe had the patience to rebuild infrastructure and culture again and again and who thus gave us the civilization we now enjoy.
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You know, this isn't a bad idea... let all the Christians go off to life in mountains and stop reproducing.
But seriously, historical innacuracies aside, shouldn't we be happy about a peaceful, moderate approach to fundamentalism?
It's not PURELY that wrong. A lot of those nations did keep getting pwned by outsiders, and kept rebuilding over and over, with the help of the Christian monks among others.
The major problems I can see are
a) he called some groups barbarians (oh noes)
b) if you read into this overmuch, you might suspect that he's saying ONLY Christian monks contributed to the rebuilt culture, and not the invaders and the everybody else there. You could make a case, but I don't really see that in the given context.
So, we should shave our heads, live in the mountains to a life of obedience, poverty and chastity, and never reproduce.
the patience to rebuild infrastructure and culture again and again and who thus gave us the civilization we now enjoy.
Only if you give all your money to the church and keep a bare minimum for sustaining yourself. Or don't you want that side of the bargain?
They mainly preserved knowledge, rather than contributing to cultural progress.
The invaders, it should be noted, were mainly speakers of non-Latin based languages, several of which happen to have been the root languages of the one you currently speak and type on the keyboard. English? Yeah, that comes from dem barbarians.
Barbarians? What barbarians? Oh, he means non-Christian/ non-Roman cultures. Got it.
Monks and the majority of learned peoples during Christianities reign were concerned about the Church and the Castle. Pray tell, how many paved roads were built in Europe once Rome fell?
All one has to do is spend four minutes looking on the internet for Dark Age art and then compare that to Roman or Greek art from, oh, let's say 1 C.E. until 312 C.E. (the beginning of the end of Rome). The only thing that monks and the church were worried about was preserving there backwards culture of ignorance. The church destroyed more knowledge and art than it ever produced. It tore down old works to build its churches. It destroyed literary works that did not glorify their god. You have to wait for the Renaissance to find sculptures that rival Greek and Roman sculpture and you have to wait for the Enlightenment for the truly great thinkers to become cultivated and free enough to not be destroyed by the church. All of this is prefaced with a decided reduction in the power that the church could maintain. The fractioning of the Catholic Church was one of the best things that ever happened to Western civilization. Well, that and the collapse of the feudal system. Yeah, I simplified the whole process a bit.
The civilization we now enjoy came about in spite of the influence of the church, not because of it.
Just for a sec. It´s true that those monks preserved the knowledge of the time, which was a lot, but from there TO SAY THAT THEY ARE THE FATHERS OF INTERNET AND MODERN SOCIETY, IT´S EXAGERATE. Second, Europe was not invaded by any "barbarian" civilisation. Spain and Greece, maybe, but it was benefitial, if you think about it, because the muslims were preserving that knowledge too and maybe the siege of Wien, but it failed. If we know enjoy now our civilisation, it´s because many rebel Christian and agnostic, through knowledge and truth, got their views recognised. Of course, we behave like those monks, we investigate. Only that we don´t take the habits.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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