Does God / a supreme being exist?

[fastboy21]

The so-called Dark Ages are usually referred to as the gap between the fall of Rome and beginning of the Renaissance. This is about a 1000 year period between around 500 and 1500 AD. The dating is very rough because the term (like all historical terms) are man made and imperfect.

The "Dark Ages", for example, was coined by Plutarch who was referring more to the decline of literature and advanced arts when he first used the term. Since then the term has been badly used to describe a wretched existence of the European people. This use is highly debated, and historians today (generally) agree that the Middle Ages were not really all that "Dark" anyways.

Most historians center the beginning of the Dark Ages on the collapse of order in Western Europe that occurred when the western Roman Empire collapsed and its institutions ceased to exist. In this power vacuum entered an extremely chaotic and violent power struggle.

In the eastern Roman Empire, which held out until 1453, the Dark Ages never happened. They were ravaged by the same diseases, fought wars just as violent, were Christians, etc, and yet did not enter a "Dark Age" in their own history.

So, what caused the Roman Empire in the west to fall? Sir Edward Gibbon wrote his famous work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 1776. He does state that he blames Christianity for the fall of the empire as a primary cause. Unfortunately, his work has been examined and largely discredited in the last 200+ years. It is widely known that Gibbon was an extreme anti-Catholic in his own lifetime and was most likely heavily biased when he blamed the Christian Church for the fall of Rome. Today, Gibbon is usually acknowledged as a father in the historiography for his work (which was extremely original at the time), but I am unaware of any graduate program in classical studies today that puts Gibbon on their reading list other than to pay him his hat honor. His work, simply, is unusable as a source in any academic work due to the major inaccuracies he assumed for fact in the 18th century.

While I am aware that Christianity is often blamed for the fall of the Roman Empire in popular culture, I have never seen any credible source that argues the assertion with even a small amount of believability. There are just far too many other reasons why the western Roman Empire fell that have nothing to do with Christianity.

Its also important to remember that the Catholic Church was weak at the beginning of the "Dark Ages." It was only after several hundred years after the Romans fell in the West that the Church emerged as a powerful political institution. For most of the time period that the Church held control of Europe during the Middle Ages (the High Middle Ages) there was prosperity: the quality of life increased for the peasants/serfs, the life expectancy increased due to good nutrition, population boomed for the first time since the fall of Rome.

The Crisis at the end of the Middle Ages (the Late Middle Ages) was certainly, in part, due to the corruption of the Catholic Church. It was also due to global cooling, famine, black plague, and warfare. The corruption of the Church, however, mostly occurred at its highest levels and clergy and laypeople at the bottom remained true to their faiths. The Conciliar movement, for example, was a challenge to the corruption of the papacy but was lead by priests and laypeople from within the Church.

In any case, I find it hard to understand why Christianity would be the cause of the Dark Ages---which, really, weren't that dark to begin with.

**goes back to sleep**

[fastboy21]

*petrarch, not plutarch (should wake up before writing).

[Yam]

I'm sorry. "The Dark Ages" is a very misleading term. The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe were, however, marked by gross corruption in the church. You cannot refute that the various Western Christian empires suffered horribly from infighting, intellectual stagnation, and the unavailability of Greek/Latin texts in the sciences. The Byzantine Empire (which is left out of the 'Dark Ages' label) and Arabic countries did not suffer so.

Yes, the 'Dark Ages' are largely a misnomer and not as terribly as popular culture leads us to believe, but the Early Middle Ages in Western Europe were indeed dictated by the various Christian churches and much of previous scientific knowledge was blocked by the church. Don't go all Devil's Advocate on this shit.

[Yam]

Originally Posted by Yam [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Don't go all Devil's Advocate on this shit.

Because that'll get you hung.

[Estolcles]

*steals the Religion demotivational poster, posts it to his FB wall*

[Fourthmeal]

Visit your local Taco Bell for such answers

[wodiranger]

i finally jsut figured out where Forthmeal got his name when i was at my local taco bell earlier this week, lol figured it out when drinking my baja mountain dew outta my taco bell cup!

[Akim]

Originally Posted by Brain [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Discuss.

Yes

[PoeticPixie]

The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking is a good read (remember his statement that pissed everyone off from that book?). Not that I'm strictly scientific in my beliefs, I kind of believe a little bit of a lot of different things. I'm not sure how to even put it into words. All that matters is that it makes sense to me. Spirituality is a very personal journey. I just wish some of the close-minded people I'm going to college with would admit evolution is a fact. I thought at the college level people would be smarter than this. I can understand some of the older crowd maybe being this way (older than me even/am 33). However, a lot of them are way younger than me as well! Anyways, it's nice to encounter a bunch of open-minded people (for a change). I got sick of pointless debates.

[Humerox]

Originally Posted by PoeticPixie [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Spirituality is a very personal journey.

This.

The problem is that everyone gets all discombobulated about making other people believe what they do. Who really gives a shit?

It doesn't matter what religion you follow...most have the same basic precepts. I mean look at Buddhism and the Five Precepts:


1. abstain from taking life.
2. abstain from taking what is not given.
3. abstain from sexual misconduct.
4. abstain from false speech.
5. abstain from drinking fermented drink.

Some of that should sound familiar to Christians. Live a good life and you'll be cool with whatever is out there.

Peace.