[Originally Posted by Glory in print:
That is why the 'Dark Ages' are called the Dark Ages. They locked up the Scriptures so no one had access to them.
61 comments
Yes the Catholic Church made it so that the Bible was only printed in Latin and that the only people who could read Latin were the priests, this way there would be no differing interpretations and there could be some semblance of uniformity in Christianity. Then the Reformation came and the Bible was open to interpretation and then there hundreds of different churches each calling the other "Heretic!"
I picture a tall blonde guy putting them in a large wardrobe, securing it with a padlock, and brushing his hands off... kinda like, "Well, my work here is done."
And if they could read, well, only a small educated minority could read latin.
I think it waqs a step into the right direction when Martin Luther translated the bible. Maybe we still were firm believers in the sanctity of the catholic christian church, ghad they never been translated (and access had been still restricted to a small educated minority because of the language barrier)
The Gutenberg press wasn't invented until the 15th century numbnuts. Before that common folk couldn't afford a Bible, because it was written down page by page.
Which is what amazes me about fundies, that with the availability of the printed AND electronic word they still don't read their own bible, instead relied on the biased teaches of their own pastors. Just like the Dark Ages. ;-)
Yep, there just wasn't ENOUGH Jesus in the Dark Ages. In fact, I think that everyone was an athiest and the scientific method ruled the day. That's why there was so much disease - homosexuals having sex with rats and spreading the black death. The LORD was angry and sent a great plague, just like He's doing with the AIDS!
It's a good thing Bible-believing, fundimentalist christians brought modern physics, rocket science, medical science, antibiotics, computers, 4-wheel drives and tractor pulls, Televisions, and everything else we need to live comfortable. If fact, we don't need no books at all anymore, except for the BIBLE!
You can thank CHRISTIANS for that! What have they teached in evolution school that has been of any use?! In fact, they keep trying to use evolution to send us back to the Dark Ages, by increasing athiesm.
Mark my words, if we do that, God will punish us and we'll be living in caves again. THANKS ATHIESTS!
Blind Beyond Belief... dude, so wrong. What they locked up was advanced knowledge of medicine, and herbal treatments, and philosophy, because these things interfered with "God's will".
EDIT: @Big Chicken Dinner -- I hope to the gods that was sarcastic.
@WMDKitty
Blind Beyond Belief... dude, so wrong. What they locked up was advanced knowledge of medicine, and herbal treatments, and philosophy, because these things interfered with "God's will".
Sometimes they also burned the books containing this knowledge.
They locked up the Scriptures so no one had access to them.
Before the printing press, no ordinary person would have had access anyway, even if they were one of the rare people who could read. A note to my favorite edition of Chaucer comments on the scholar who was said to have 20 volumes bound in black and red. The editor said this couldn't literally be true in 1390 because 20 books would have cost about as much as three middle-class houses of the day (so figure about $30,000 - $40,000 a book, in today's money).
This is why it was called the dark ages. BTW the 'dark ages' were ruled by the Christian overlords, I just want to try and prevent another one
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@ John ~ for some reason fundies believe the world has always been about the way it is now, except happier.
"That is why the 'Dark Ages' are called the Dark Ages."
Uh, noooo. They're called the Dark Ages because everyone was ignorant. Again. Well, except for the Chinese and Muslims. Basically everyone but Christian Europe knew what the hell was going on.
They locked up the Scriptures so no one had access to them."
Well, that's true at it's most basic. The Scriptures were in Latin for a very long time so the common folk wouldn't read the OT or any of those other nasty bits and start asking problematic questions like "why the hell would I worship this monster?"
You want the dark ages so bad, fine, have them. As far as I know those times sucked massive dirty donkey ass, but have you way.
There was a time before a printing press. Before that, books had to be hand made and many were one of a kind.
The catholic church had their monks copy Bible passages one a time by hand. Some of these monks couldnt even really read and just drew what they saw (some also added artwork which created illuminated manuscript).
Thus during the Dark ages, a church fortunate enough to have a Bible chained it down because they needed the stupid thing for thier services. People literally beleieved it had magic powers and a poor peaseant who knows nothing but drudgery would leap at the opportunity to get his hands on the this magical book.
It's not even called the Dark Ages because the competing religions imposed abject poverty and ignorance upon Europe to maintain a supply of shock troops for their various petty wars. It's called the Dark Ages because the "Light of Knowledge went dark". The knowledge of the Classical World, including all existing science and history, was forgotten. Intentionally suppressed by the various pseudo-religious factions. And so the Dark Ages remain, largely, a black hole of knowledge with a perverted past and little positive effect on the future.
Not surprisingly it was various Eastern and Mideastern cultures which preserved civilization while Europe fell to near total barbarism. Far too many Americans don't realize that many of those cultures exist to this day and, to them, we are primitive upstarts. They never had a similar Dark Age.
I would not have believed, before Falwell's Moral Majority, that American Evangelicals would have made such strides in creating a new Dark Age. And if a Dark Age with nuclear weapons doesn't scare the shit out of you? You're probably a stupid fundy.
@John
It could have been possible if the volumes had been handed down for generations... then again, people seem to have been impossibly rich and impossibly poor in these days.
For example, the ransom that liberated Richard Coeur de Lion would have been worth anywhere from five to ten BILLION dollars today.
Not surprisingly it was various Eastern and Mideastern cultures which preserved civilization while Europe fell to near total barbarism. Far too many Americans don't realize that many of those cultures exist to this day and, to them, we are primitive upstarts. They never had a similar Dark Age.
Unfortunately, with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, there's a significant chance that the Eastern lot might have one at some point. (Or a "grey age", at any rate - the sheer saturation of the planet with literate people, information repositories and mass communication channels should make a true dark age impossible. They might not actually become more stupid and ignorant than their predecessors, like the original Dark Ages, but it might bring a halt to any further increase in knowledge)
I believe the library of Alexandria was destroyed for the last time by Christians.
"Dark" is accepted to mean "in a state of abysmal ignorance, superstition, and paranoia". The church thrived without wants or cares (except for perceived threats to their oligarchy) through those ages, preserving nothing useful to humanity.
[Whatever. It was dark because they didn't have electricity back then.]
The dark ages are so called because after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West learning, including the skills of reading and writing were lost to the general population. The quality of life deteriorated. Rome's population fell from over 1 million to less than 10,000. The only places where learning was kept alive was in the monasteries. The monks there copied the bible over and over again - Catholic monks, byw. They preserved your precious talismanic bible for you. How about that for shutting the gates of heaven in your face, you ignorant, bigoted something that I would carefully wipe off my shoe. And one of the reasons that the bible was kept out of peoples hands was they couldn't read. Another is that they couldn't affort to buy them. But it was preached to them in their churches. When the bible was translated by the Reformers in the 16th century, then christianity fragmented because every gobshite who thought he could read had his, or her own interpretation of the text. This is one of the reasons why there are so many protestant sects nowadays. And they are still proliferating. Christianity is supposed to be on Church - it's many. Division is a sure sign of the work of the Devil. His title is Lord of Discord! Think on that. Why, your very own pastor could be the Devil incarnate.
@Brain_In_A_Jar #554322
Perhaps I should have been clear. I don't count modern day fundies: Christian, Muslim, Jewish or other, among those ancient cultures which have preserved the BEST aspects of civilization. And even though modern Mideastern Fundies are extreme, they don't display the incidental hate of practical knowledge their Christian counterparts display in America.
I guess what I decry is the ignorance of modern fundies. If they actually cared about important issues they would realize that Western civilization wouldn't exist without Eastern civilizations and we are very much alike in most important ways.
I think fundies are trying to revive the Dark Ages.
Fundies, try, try, try to actually think for once. You might just figure out why I wrote the previous sentence, and then you will know why that time in history was referred to as the Dark Ages.
I only rated this a "3" because in a way, she is right: not until the Renaissance and the invention of moveable type did the population at large begin to be able to read the Scriptures and say "Hey, why are there two Creation stories? Why did Paul, who never met Jesus in the flesh, become more influential than James?" and so forth.
Once the literacy rate exploded, the Dark Ages ended (okay, not for just that reason, truthfully, but it certainly helped.)
Actually, the "Dark Ages" are called that because an Italian monk by the name of Petrarch, who lived in the early Renaissance, had a massive hard-on for ancient Rome, and he called all the time between the fall of Rome and his attempt to revive the classics a "Dark Age"...
This is, of course got two good arguments.
.The scriptures weren't widely available (and most couldn't read.)
Yada yada Crusades, Yadda Yadda Inquisitions, witch hunts, Yadda Yadda Early America Protestantism, Yadda KKKada Yadda Tea Party,,,some things never change.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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