How much did Christians hamper intellectual progress?

[DBT]

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

Well he did borrow heavily from Greek philosophy. He must have put his time in Greece to good use.

 

[DrZoidberg]

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

Well he did borrow heavily from Greek philosophy. He must have put his time in Greece to good use.

I thought that was Philo of Alexandria? As far as I can tell Paul wasn't so much a great thinker as a great networker. Growing religions need both

 

[credoconsolans]

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?

What Dr. Zoidberg said. For all practical purposes, except in the East and Africa, for most of the last 2000 years, there have been no pagans in the West.

- - - Updated - - -

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.

Except the Judaic Christianity never was a big cult and it died out rather quickly.

Perhaps the world would have been better off if Paul had not moderated it.

 

[DBT]

Well he did borrow heavily from Greek philosophy. He must have put his time in Greece to good use.

I thought that was Philo of Alexandria? As far as I can tell Paul wasn't so much a great thinker as a great networker. Growing religions need both

Paul was quite a busy fellow collecting Greek Philosophy during his visit
to Greece;
Quote;
1Co 12:25 - Paul says says “That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.”

Socrates says, that the best-governed city is one “whose state is most like that of an individual man. For example, if the finger of one of us is wounded, the entire community of bodily connections stretching to the soul for ‘integration’ with the dominant part is made aware, and all of it feels the pain as a whole”

1Cor 12:14-17
Paul explains that “a body is not one single organ, but many. … Suppose the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’, it does still belong to the body. If the body were all eye, how could it hear? If the body were all ear, how could it smell? But, in fact, God appointed each limb and organ to its own place in the body, as he chose.”

Socrates asks Protagoras, “Is virtue a single whole, and are justice and self-control and holiness parts of it? … as the parts of a face are parts-mouth, nose, eyes and ears.” Socrates then probes into the metaphor further by asking Protagoras if they agree that each part serves a different purpose, just as the features of a face do, and the parts make the whole, but each serves a different purpose–“the eye is not like the ear nor has it the same function.”


Eph 1:22,23-Paul says, “And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.”

Plato says “First, then, the gods, imitating the spherical shape of the universe, enclosed the two divine courses in a spherical body, that, namely, which we now term the head, being the most divine part of us and the lord of all that is in us; to this the gods, when they put together the body, gave all the other members to be servants.”

Acts 14:15
Paul and Barnabas say, “We also are men of like passions with you“.

Plato says, I am a man, and, like other men, a creature of flesh and blood, and not of ” wood or stone,” as Homer says.

2Cor 7:2
Paul says, “I speak because I am convinced that I never intentionally wronged anyone“.
Plato says, We have wronged no man ; we have corrupted no man ; we have defrauded no man.

Rom 12:4
Paul says, “For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office“.
Socrates says “To begin with, our several natures are not all alike but different. One man is naturally fitted for one task, and another for another.”

Thess 5:15
Paul says, “See that none render evil for evil unto any man.”
Plato says, Then we ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil to anyone, whatever evil we may have suffered from him.

1Cor 9:16
Paul says, “For necessity is laid upon me ; yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!”
Plato says, But necessity was laid upon me – the word of God I thought ought to be considered first.

 

[Random Person]

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?

I was asking a question about the intellectual contributions they made. It doesn't appear any of them are terribly noteworthy.

 

[DrZoidberg]

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

That's a huge problem today in computer systems. Especially with systems that have worked fine for 50+ years and now need updating. I once worked in a huge project which was about replacing a system that had gone on just fine since 1955. At the time they built their own computer language. At the time it was simpler. There'd been a number of attempts to replace it, and when I got onboard we were down to one old geezer they'd wheeled in from retirement. But once I was involved it all sorted itself out. So it was a success. It was for Sweden's biggest phone company.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I thought that was Philo of Alexandria? As far as I can tell Paul wasn't so much a great thinker as a great networker. Growing religions need both

Paul was quite a busy fellow collecting Greek Philosophy during his visit
to Greece;
Quote;
1Co 12:25 - Paul says says “That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.”

Socrates says, that the best-governed city is one “whose state is most like that of an individual man. For example, if the finger of one of us is wounded, the entire community of bodily connections stretching to the soul for ‘integration’ with the dominant part is made aware, and all of it feels the pain as a whole”

1Cor 12:14-17
Paul explains that “a body is not one single organ, but many. … Suppose the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’, it does still belong to the body. If the body were all eye, how could it hear? If the body were all ear, how could it smell? But, in fact, God appointed each limb and organ to its own place in the body, as he chose.”

Socrates asks Protagoras, “Is virtue a single whole, and are justice and self-control and holiness parts of it? … as the parts of a face are parts-mouth, nose, eyes and ears.” Socrates then probes into the metaphor further by asking Protagoras if they agree that each part serves a different purpose, just as the features of a face do, and the parts make the whole, but each serves a different purpose–“the eye is not like the ear nor has it the same function.”


Eph 1:22,23-Paul says, “And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.”

Plato says “First, then, the gods, imitating the spherical shape of the universe, enclosed the two divine courses in a spherical body, that, namely, which we now term the head, being the most divine part of us and the lord of all that is in us; to this the gods, when they put together the body, gave all the other members to be servants.”

Acts 14:15
Paul and Barnabas say, “We also are men of like passions with you“.

Plato says, I am a man, and, like other men, a creature of flesh and blood, and not of ” wood or stone,” as Homer says.

2Cor 7:2
Paul says, “I speak because I am convinced that I never intentionally wronged anyone“.
Plato says, We have wronged no man ; we have corrupted no man ; we have defrauded no man.

Rom 12:4
Paul says, “For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office“.
Socrates says “To begin with, our several natures are not all alike but different. One man is naturally fitted for one task, and another for another.”

Thess 5:15
Paul says, “See that none render evil for evil unto any man.”
Plato says, Then we ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil to anyone, whatever evil we may have suffered from him.

1Cor 9:16
Paul says, “For necessity is laid upon me ; yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!”
Plato says, But necessity was laid upon me – the word of God I thought ought to be considered first.

What Philo of Alexandria did was to fuse Jewish and Greek thought. If true the above makes perfect sense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo

 

[DrZoidberg]

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?

I was asking a question about the intellectual contributions they made. It doesn't appear any of them are terribly noteworthy.

You don't seem to get it. What progress could they have made? Making intellectual progress, at the very minimum requires a brain. They didn't even one. Greek paganism was utterly and completely obliterated. The only place paganism survived (in the world) was Russia. And that is a paganism more akin to what the Vikings believed. That's a different type of paganism. They're more into avenging blood feuds than musing about the universe.

Mediterranean style paganism were completely wiped off the face of the Earth.

 

[DBT]

What Philo of Alexandria did was to fuse Jewish and Greek thought. If true the above makes perfect sense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo

Paul appears to have fleshed out his own teachings by using Greek Philosophy.

What is the sequence of events? Was St Paul's 'work' prior to Philo, or after?

 

[DrZoidberg]

What Philo of Alexandria did was to fuse Jewish and Greek thought. If true the above makes perfect sense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo

Paul appears to have fleshed out his own teachings by using Greek Philosophy.

What is the sequence of events? Was St Paul's 'work' prior to Philo, or after?

You don't get it. Philo didn't merge Jewish and Greek philosophy passing it off as new ideas. Philo was open about the sources. Which is why Paul could read Philo and know the sources. Which is why they match.

What Philo introduced was a system of thought that allowed Christian thinkers to draw upon Greek philosophy. Which Paul did. Without Philo, Paul, most likely, hadn't done that.

It should also be pointed out that Judaism underwent monumental theological shifts around the time of the birth of Christianity. There had been gradual changes to Judaism 500 BC to 70 AD, which eventually created a crisis that led to the dominance of the Pharisees. After 70 AD. What we today call Orthodox Judaism is exclusively based on Pharisiac Judaism, which only existed as a tiny sect before that. Before the Pharisees the only way to talk to God was in the temple of David. Assuming the right offering were made. That God certainly wasn't omniscient. The Rabbi's of the temple of David controlled how Judaism was to be read and interpreted. Philo changed all that. He opened it up, so that it became ok for Jews to muse about God much the pagans had done. Which is what Paul did.

 

[DBT]

Paul appears to have fleshed out his own teachings by using Greek Philosophy.

What is the sequence of events? Was St Paul's 'work' prior to Philo, or after?

You don't get it. Philo didn't merge Jewish and Greek philosophy passing it off as new ideas. Philo was open about the sources. Which is why Paul could read Philo and know the sources. Which is why they match.

Don't get it? I didn't say that Philo passed off Greek philosophy as new ideas, I made no mention of Philo. I gave an account of St Paul using Greek philosophy to, apparently, flesh out his own work, rephrasing the words of Greek Philosophers without references to his source material. The issue of usage without source credit appears to be related to St Paul's letters.., and as a consequence, the credibility of the NT.

 

[DrZoidberg]

You don't get it. Philo didn't merge Jewish and Greek philosophy passing it off as new ideas. Philo was open about the sources. Which is why Paul could read Philo and know the sources. Which is why they match.

Don't get it? I didn't say that Philo passed off Greek philosophy as new ideas, I made no mention of Philo. I gave an account of St Paul using Greek philosophy to, apparently, flesh out his own work, rephrasing the words of Greek Philosophers without references to his source material. The issue of usage without source credit appears to be related to St Paul's letters.., and as a consequence, the credibility of the NT.

Paul came after. Philo introduced all the Greek philosophical concepts into Christianity first. He wasn't attempting to create a new religion. He just wanted to reform Judaism. By the time Paul came along Philo's ideas were well established.

 

[credoconsolans]

I was asking a question about the intellectual contributions they made. It doesn't appear any of them are terribly noteworthy.

You don't seem to get it. What progress could they have made? Making intellectual progress, at the very minimum requires a brain. They didn't even one. Greek paganism was utterly and completely obliterated. The only place paganism survived (in the world) was Russia. And that is a paganism more akin to what the Vikings believed. That's a different type of paganism. They're more into avenging blood feuds than musing about the universe.

Mediterranean style paganism were completely wiped off the face of the Earth.

And that we know of.

The Christian emperors and local bishops started closing pagan temples and academies of learning, burning libraries and books, saving only what they thought they could use. We don't really know what the pagans might have written in the early years before the West became Christianized, because a lot of it has been lost or destroyed.

So to try to conclude the pagans did not contribute much in the intellectual sphere in the last 2000 years is moving in the direction of an argument from silence.

 

[Kharakov]

The Christian emperors and local bishops started closing pagan temples and academies of learning, burning libraries and books, saving only what they thought they could use. We don't really know what the pagans might have written in the early years before the West became Christianized, because a lot of it has been lost or destroyed.

You know.. I've always had this fear that the corrupt powers that be would destroy historical evidence of biblical inaccuracies and re-write the bible after atheists point out all the inconsistencies within the bible.

Like the whole "fundamentalist creationist trolling atheists" thing on the internet was just douchebag Christians using other people to refine a book that their offspring will use to subjugate others after this generation has passed.


Then they would just hinder the development of other groups they want to enslave... like they do today.

 

[DrZoidberg]

You don't seem to get it. What progress could they have made? Making intellectual progress, at the very minimum requires a brain. They didn't even one. Greek paganism was utterly and completely obliterated. The only place paganism survived (in the world) was Russia. And that is a paganism more akin to what the Vikings believed. That's a different type of paganism. They're more into avenging blood feuds than musing about the universe.

Mediterranean style paganism were completely wiped off the face of the Earth.

And that we know of.

In the Renaissance secret societies were all the rage, as well as pagan religion and philosophy. So they tried recreating pagan cults. In secret. We can conclude from what survive of those accounts that whatever inspiration wasn't any surviving tradition. It's patch-work religion. IT's all over the place. Same with the revival in the 18'th century. It's pretty clear that they just made shit up. This time with a heavy Egyptian slant. Also, often wrongly interpreted. We know now. This is what survives today as the freemasons. And then again in the 19'th century. Which was all about spiritualism. Which was a new thing entirely. We can contrast this with how the surviving pagan traditions have evolved. It's evolution. Not this jerky hopping about following trends.

The Christian emperors and local bishops started closing pagan temples and academies of learning, burning libraries and books, saving only what they thought they could use. We don't really know what the pagans might have written in the early years before the West became Christianized, because a lot of it has been lost or destroyed.

That's an excellent point. But, these Christian convert rulers were very often convertees of political reasons and were well aware of the value of the works. I think it's safe to assume that they understood which works were significant and took steps to protect them. Christians continued to be sort of pagan more than a thousand years on. Even longer in some parts.

I don't think the main threat to these works were Christians. It was lack of funding. Parchment desintigrates, if just left alone. It needs to be regularly copied. Monks did a stellar job of this. And considering what works have been allowed to survive, I don't get the impression that they were trying to destroy the pagan heritage. How the hell could a book like Ovid's Metamorphosis survive in that case? Every other page is blasphemy or some other abomination.

But good point. We have no way of knowing what has been lost. All the oral traditions for one. The Illiad and Odyssey is full of references to other stories, that you just sort of have to know. We have no idea what any of these are in their full form. Only these two survived. Greek Paganism was predominantly oral. Some of them had strong ideas about that thoughts were corrupted when written down.

So to try to conclude the pagans did not contribute much in the intellectual sphere in the last 2000 years is moving in the direction of an argument from silence.

Or an argument from stupid statistics. For a monkey to write the complete works of Shakespeare in infinite time, you at the very least need a monkey that keeps trying.

 

[ronburgundy]

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.

The multiple inquisitions from the 12th all the way through the 19th Centuries were primarily an attack on any all ideas not sanctioned by Christian Orthodoxy. "Witch Hunts" were in large part an effort to stamp out early medicine and scientific approaches to understanding nature.

The monks didn't "keep alive ancient teachings". They kept those teachings hidden and controlled and out of the hands of the public in Western Europe. In the 15th century, Greek scholars fled into Western Europe due the the fall of Byzantine to the Ottoman Turks. These scholars brought the knowledge of the ancient Greeks with them. Within a few generations of this pre-Christian knowledge re-entering Christian controlled society, Copernicus published his seminal work and modern science was born and spread like wildfire.
The fact that science took off only after people looked to pre-Christian knowledge from almost 2000 years earlier is very telling about the extreme degree to which the development and impact of reasoned, evidence-based thinking was hampered by Christian domination of Western Europe.

It is no coincidence that the same Enlightenment that got science off the ground also got secularism and democracy off the ground. Secularism, democracy, and science go hand-in-hand and have reinforced and advanced each other (along with moral progress) for the last few centuries.


Also, I think you have the causality reversed regarding slavery and science. Science had seen massive progress by the mid-1800's. In part, the amassing of wealth that slavery created helped to fund early science. The industrial revolution began about a century prior to the end of slavery. The science-based industrial revolution had a complex causal impact on slavery. At first, early manufacturing machines like the cotton gin greatly increased demand for raw materials and thus larger slave workforces. But as more people moved to the growing northern cities and large companies means more people became wage-laborers, there was a push back on slavery.
Its complicated, but I don't think its valid to say that the end of slavery was the spark igniting modern science.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

When Rome was demoted from being the capital of the Roman empire, it soon drifted away from being in complete control of the emperor at Constantinople. Wars and internecine strife followed. Papyrus became hard to come by so scholarship stagnated. Without writing material, literacy dropped. Paper was invented in 600 CE by the Chinese and became important to Islam and helped create Islamic science by the nominally Islamic civilization, while paper was very expensive and available only in limited supplies to the West. Animal hide codexes were rare and very expenisve.

The dark ages, were a product of the near collapse of civilization in the West. Charlemagne was the first HRE emperor who tried whole heartedly to revive learning in the West.

It wasn't until 1200 CE that paper making was introduced in the West in Italy. Paper making only reached England in the early 1400's. Up to the time of Charlemagne, Europe was not united but was a hodge podge of smaller states often fighting each other.

The Dark Ages was a complex creation of several trends. Christianity does not actually deserve all the blame.

 

[DBT]

Don't get it? I didn't say that Philo passed off Greek philosophy as new ideas, I made no mention of Philo. I gave an account of St Paul using Greek philosophy to, apparently, flesh out his own work, rephrasing the words of Greek Philosophers without references to his source material. The issue of usage without source credit appears to be related to St Paul's letters.., and as a consequence, the credibility of the NT.

Paul came after. Philo introduced all the Greek philosophical concepts into Christianity first. He wasn't attempting to create a new religion. He just wanted to reform Judaism. By the time Paul came along Philo's ideas were well established.

I didn't mean to suggest that either Philo or Paul were attempting to create a new religion, just that in his letters Paul uses quotes from Greek philosophy in a way that gives the impression to his readers that these are his own words and teachings, that this is his own work, when it is neither his own original thoughts or as some happen to believe, scripture inspired by God

 

[DrZoidberg]

Paul came after. Philo introduced all the Greek philosophical concepts into Christianity first. He wasn't attempting to create a new religion. He just wanted to reform Judaism. By the time Paul came along Philo's ideas were well established.

I didn't mean to suggest that either Philo or Paul were attempting to create a new religion, just that in his letters Paul uses quotes from Greek philosophy in a way that gives the impression to his readers that these are his own words and teachings, that this is his own work, when it is neither his own original thoughts or as some happen to believe, scripture inspired by God

Yes, Paul is different than Philo. Paul was writing to the general public. Philo was writing to the educated Jewish elite. Paul was a rhetorician. Philo an academic.

 

[credoconsolans]

The Christian emperors and local bishops started closing pagan temples and academies of learning, burning libraries and books, saving only what they thought they could use. We don't really know what the pagans might have written in the early years before the West became Christianized, because a lot of it has been lost or destroyed.

You know.. I've always had this fear that the corrupt powers that be would destroy historical evidence of biblical inaccuracies and re-write the bible after atheists point out all the inconsistencies within the bible.

Like the whole "fundamentalist creationist trolling atheists" thing on the internet was just douchebag Christians using other people to refine a book that their offspring will use to subjugate others after this generation has passed.


Then they would just hinder the development of other groups they want to enslave... like they do today.

According to pagan writer Celsus in his "The True Word" quoted in Origen's "Contra Celsus" says that happened with early Christians too. Celsus says early missionaries went out to the 'ignorant' people and children because they were uncritical. And Christian missionaries were warned to stay away from educated people who could easily refute them. He also says it was reported that after getting their asses kicked in religious debates, the early Christian missionaries could be seen changing the wording of their message to be more readily defendable against the same argument next time.