How much did Christians hamper intellectual progress?

[DrZoidberg]

Paganism is often held as intellectual, and encouraging of new thought. While Christianity is seen as anti-intellectual. And when the world Christianised it prevented innovation.

Me, I'm not so sure. Slaves prevented innovation. There was no need to innovate. So they didn't much. It wasn't until we stopped using slaves that things took off scientifically.

Universities, which are the core of teaching the new generations of world leaders and innovators, most started out as religious seminars. Monks kept alive ancient teachings. Those monks needed feeding. Christianity did that.

It's funny to read about the 13'th century attempts to ban Aristotle. It was a hundred years of continually issuing bans against teaching it in the universities. Obviously they kept on doing or they wouldn't have kept banning it. Eventually they stopped banning it.

And the Gallileo Gallilei thing was politics. They knew the world was round before and after. Rich people had access to good information and don't seem to have been prevented in gaining access to it.

It makes me wonder exactly how much Christianity as a whole has hampered progress. If at all? Thoughts?

Just to clarify, I'm not saying Christianity encourages intellectual thought. I think it's is anti-intellectual. But smart people, in all societies, have had to navigate around the idiots. That was no different back when Christianity was the dominant faith in Europe.

 

[Lion IRC]

Slavery didn't inhibit innovation - it enabled it.

A low-cost underclass of cheap or free labour - allowed rich people like the ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman upper class to have the free time to hang out and engage in intellectual pursuits.

The Arts. Science. Literature. Philosophy. Medicine. Universities.
Subsistence farmers and nomadic hunter-gatherers ain't got no time for dat.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Slavery didn't inhibit innovation - it enabled it.

A low-cost underclass of cheap or free labour - allowed rich people like the ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman upper class to have the free time to hang out and engage in intellectual pursuits.

The Arts. Science. Literature. Philosophy. Medicine. Universities.
Subsistence farmers and nomadic hunter-gatherers ain't got no time for dat.

Progress is when new knowledge is applied IMHO. Until then it's blue skies speculation. The Greeks invented the steam engine. They also invented the railway. But they only made them into toys for children. And they never thought about combining them. I'm not so sure about that. I maintain that necissity is the mother of invention. Not that I've figured out what my iPad is for. But anyway.

You're wrong about hunter gathers. They had plenty of free time. It was actually a quite pleasant existence. It was made a hell of a lot less pleasant when we became farmers. Early farmers had a horrible life. It's just one of those things that anthologists have struggled to explain. ie why did people knowingly chose a less pleasant life. The theory I like is that you need farms in order to make beer. See... necessity!

 

[Random Person]

What have Pagans introduced to intellectual thought in the last 2000 years?

 

[DrZoidberg]

What have Pagans introduced to intellectual thought in the last 2000 years?

Whatever's going on here. I'm pretty sure the ancient Pagans did nothing remotely resembling this nonsense:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwrHapcDbhk

You didn't say, "what have the introduced of value".

 

[Sarpedon]

The answer to both agriculture and slavery is the same, simple one. Both create a powerful upper class, which can perpetuate itself and destroy less powerful competitors, by creating a surplus of food. I recently read the autobiography of William T Sherman, and his big insight on the Indian wars was that with a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, the warriors had to stop warring at a particular time of year to hunt and gather food, whereas the agricultural Americans could war all year round. He found it was easy to exploit that advantage by mounting operations during the gathering time and attacking the food supply. The misery of the people involved is not a factor. The more powerful system prevailed. These confused Anthropologists are mistaken to think it was a 'choice.'
Back on subject:

In Medicine, the christians inhibited it by more than 1,000 years. Not only were Roman physicians superior in ability to the Christian witch-doctors who replaced them, but by their bans on dissecting human beings, the Christians effectively crippled medical science until people finally started to disregard it, well into the Rennaisance. This is especially significant when you look at how instrumental Medicine was as a catalyst to the other sciences.

 

[DrZoidberg]

The answer to both agriculture and slavery is the same, simple one. Both create a powerful upper class, which can perpetuate itself and destroy less powerful competitors, by creating a surplus of food. I recently read the autobiography of William T Sherman, and his big insight on the Indian wars was that with a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, the warriors had to stop warring at a particular time of year to hunt and gather food, whereas the agricultural Americans could war all year round. He found it was easy to exploit that advantage by mounting operations during the gathering time and attacking the food supply. The misery of the people involved is not a factor. The more powerful system prevailed. These confused Anthropologists are mistaken to think it was a 'choice.'
Back on subject:

Interesting. And being a farmer meant you were more dependent on protecting your resources. Hunter Gatherers could attack, call off an attack, on a whim. They didn't have so much to lose. Farmers always had everything to lose in every battle. So they were pushed in to constant military preparedness. And if you've got an assembled army..... why not use it?

I think it's pretty telling that are earliest cities we have found are all built like fortresses. Open villages you can just walk into is a pretty late thing. Chatal Huyuk you need a ladder to enter. Imagine collecting crops with that arrangement. They must have really valued it.

I didn't find it now, but I heard a great lecture from the LSE where a guy made the argument that the relation between the number of people and the scarcity of resources will define how unequal it is. And this is why we get very stable levels of inequalities between technological paradigm shifts. I think it just works itself out. If there's a more optimal way to organise in a given economy whoever does that will win, and dominate the economy.

 

[Sarpedon]

In engineering and architecture, the fall of the Roman empire could be regarded as stimulant to the practice. Even though the Romans were great engineers, they tended to do things everywhere in their empire in the same way, which was quite profligate in materials and labor, with no great advances in labor saving devices. Once the collapse of the Empire made labor and materials scarce, engineers were forced to use innovation to make up the difference. Politically, there was incentive as the christian kings felt the need to build on the scale of Roman buildings, without having the same means. The great cathedrals of Europe were designed and built to be as large or larger than any Roman building, but not as massive, with structural forces dealt with in expressed, minimal systems of Gothic architecture, rather than simply absorbed in the mass of the building and strength of the materials.

Aside from the brief period where there was little large scale building (which can hardly be blamed on the Christians) the Christian era was one of continuous advancement and innovation, with no interference worth mentioning from ecclesiastical authorities. Indeed, it was the ecclesiastical authorities who were the primary drivers of architecture through the era. While certain things, notably sanitation, were neglected, it can't be said that Christianity negatively affected the sciences of engineering and architecture.

 

[Sarpedon]

The main challenge of history seems to be to create a society that is both happy and strong.

 

[Random Person]

What have Pagans introduced to intellectual thought in the last 2000 years?

Whatever's going on here. I'm pretty sure the ancient Pagans did nothing remotely resembling this nonsense:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwrHapcDbhk

You didn't say, "what have the introduced of value".

So nothing from the pagans intellectually.

 

[DBT]

Greek thinkers, being Pagan, appeared to be making progress in both science and philosophy.

 

[Juma]

It's funny to read about the 13'th century attempts to ban Aristotle. It was a hundred years of continually issuing bans against teaching it in the universities.

Reading Aristotle had nothing to do with science. It was just following authorities.

And the Gallileo Gallilei thing was politics. They knew the world was round before and after

"the Gallileo Gallilei thing" wasnt about the earth being round, it was about the right to do and intepret empirical observations.
(Mostly about sunspots really)

navigate around the idiots. That was no different back when Christianity was the dominant faith in Europe.

Of course it was. You wasnt event allowed to do and publish empirical findings!

 

[DrZoidberg]

Whatever's going on here. I'm pretty sure the ancient Pagans did nothing remotely resembling this nonsense:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwrHapcDbhk

You didn't say, "what have the introduced of value".

So nothing from the pagans intellectually.

It certainly didn't help matters that their entire culture was obliterated and all the Greek Pagans vanished. Any progress is hindered by not existing. Aren't you basically going to a graveyard and calling them all losers?

 

[DrZoidberg]

Reading Aristotle had nothing to do with science. It was just following authorities.

And the Gallileo Gallilei thing was politics. They knew the world was round before and after

"the Gallileo Gallilei thing" wasnt about the earth being round, it was about the right to do and intepret empirical observations.
(Mostly about sunspots really)

navigate around the idiots. That was no different back when Christianity was the dominant faith in Europe.

Of course it was. You wasnt event allowed to do and publish empirical findings!

Publishing in a world without the printing press creates it's own limitations.

Pagan society was very different from out modern open society. In Pagan society you had to be in the in-group to get access to stuff. There was constant rings upon rings upon rings of circles you needed access to to read stuff. If you published, that meant, is accessible by rich people in the know. The basic technology, hand copied parchments put a pretty definite limit on your audience. I also know that information was kept from people in very complex social systems. Members of certain mystery cults would have access to knowledge, and they were duty bound to keep this from outsiders. And the Pagan world was all about mystery cults. The authorities didn't have to make any effort to withhold damaging information. It was like the entire culture was in on it.

Just read the story of Socrates. It was ok having wild ideas in the philosophers club, with the "elite", but once he started expressing the same idea to the riff-raff = death.

 

[Sarpedon]

The Byzantines had a weapon called 'Greek Fire' a napalm like weapon they could use in naval battles like flamethrowers. They used it to defeat a viking invasion that came down the rivers from Russia, among other things. They kept the secret so jealously guarded that only two people at a time knew how to make the stuff. Then, one year, these two people happened to die at the same time, and the secret was lost.

While this can be regarded as military secrecy gone too far, it was well in line with premodern attitudes towards knowledge: that it was a treasure to be hoarded rather than a seed to be spread and cultivated. There was no appreciable difference between early christian vs pagan culture in this. Again, it was during the rennaissance when this attitude became challenged.

 

[repoman]

This is a slight tangent, but as far as the religion influence on western culture would it be more that we have more of a Greco-Roman/Pauline Christianity or a Judeo-Christianity? Seems like the Judaic aspects are more primitive than the Greco-Roman aspects.

Paul was fairly cosmopolitan. As much as I dislike Christianity, I am glad Paul helped temper some the sick Judiac ideas.

 

[Malintent]

Slavery didn't inhibit innovation - it enabled it.

A low-cost underclass of cheap or free labour - allowed rich people like the ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman upper class to have the free time to hang out and engage in intellectual pursuits.

The Arts. Science. Literature. Philosophy. Medicine. Universities.
Subsistence farmers and nomadic hunter-gatherers ain't got no time for dat.

Progress is when new knowledge is applied IMHO. Until then it's blue skies speculation. The Greeks invented the steam engine. They also invented the railway. But they only made them into toys for children. And they never thought about combining them. I'm not so sure about that. I maintain that necissity is the mother of invention. Not that I've figured out what my iPad is for. But anyway.

.. and the Chinese used load stones and black powder as toys for centuries... the Europeans conquered the world with them (compasses and cannons)

 

[Sarpedon]

I can't remember my source for this, but I read a very convincing article that suggested that the labor shortage caused by the Black Death caused a revolution in labor saving devices, directly leading to the Industrial Revolution. (though not immediately, of course)

Of course, as I point out before, there was also a huge labor and materials shortage after the collapse of the Roman Empire, which led to architectural and engineering advances. Could it be that these collapses can in certain circumstances trigger leaps in technology? China had its share of massive civil wars, plagues and famines. Did they have corresponding leaps and advances?

 

[bilby]

The Byzantines had a weapon called 'Greek Fire' a napalm like weapon they could use in naval battles like flamethrowers. They used it to defeat a viking invasion that came down the rivers from Russia, among other things. They kept the secret so jealously guarded that only two people at a time knew how to make the stuff. Then, one year, these two people happened to die at the same time, and the secret was lost.

While this can be regarded as military secrecy gone too far, it was well in line with premodern attitudes towards knowledge: that it was a treasure to be hoarded rather than a seed to be spread and cultivated. There was no appreciable difference between early christian vs pagan culture in this. Again, it was during the rennaissance when this attitude became challenged.

That's not a problem restricted to pre-modern attitudes; The US military did the same thing with key components of their nuclear weapons. A material known by the code-name FOGBANK was developed and used in warheads up until the 1980s; However the manufacturing process was highly classified, and when the warheads in question required refurbishment some twenty years later, long after the plant had been decommissioned and the people who worked there had either moved on, retired, or died, it was found that nobody knew how to make the stuff. It took eight years and $69 million to re-develop a material with the same properties as the original. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOGBANK

 

[rousseau]

Christianity, above all, was a pre-scientific intellectual system, with physical institutions in various carnations around the world.

The question 'did it hamper progress' is a bit incoherent, because Christianity was formed in a world of multitudes of competing religious sects. If Christianity didn't come to global power, it likely would have been some other sect, and the result would have been the same: an over-arching intellectual framework in medieval Europe, with some form of institutional body exerting control over the populace in some form.

I guess one could make an argument that religious development could have occurred in a vastly different way, which is true, but even then it didn't, so our past just.. is what it is.

Anyway, my argument is basically that a pre-scientific, theistic intellectual framework was a necessary conduit between the ancient and modern world. It's not that it hindered or helped anything, it was just the only way people understood the world during that period of time.