rocketpig said:
My point exactly. It's not a coincidence that during the period when religion held more sway over people than any other time in the past 2,500 years, scientific progress didn't only stop but it actually went in reverse for several hundred years. |
I disagree. It's not like religion just suddenly took over and everyone got stupid. The fall of the Roman Empire is what I attribute to both religion taking more control and scientific progress collapsing.
The splitting up of city states did far far more damage to scientific progress and well everything. This occured well before religion was a driving force and actually at the time reliegion was less of a driving force then it had been under the old roman empire. Including economy which in turn effect science since back then a lot of science was just conducted by people who liked to research with out there being much monetary ties. Not to mention things like libraries and academys cost a pretty penny and a strong infostructure.
That and the fact that even before hand things were slipping out of hand in some fields. For example the medical communty. After Galen it seems roman medical science hit a brick wall as everyone took him as the definitive soruce and that nothing more could be figured out... and his knowledge kept lost.
To be fair though, I do believe Christians did abolish what surgery survived i believe. However they still supported the teachings of Galen. (What survived)
Not sure I can blame people though Galen was a freakin genius though as he was a brain surgeon and eye surgeon... and also had the basics of germ theory down. Or at least understood the point of sterlization before anyone else. Man was waaaay ahead of his time.
The historical evidence seems to show though that it was the breakup of the infastructure that promoted scienftific achievements is what lead to the dark ages and not the rise of religion.
If anything, I think it would make more sense to say the rise of religion happened because of the breakdown of science.
In the High middle ages technology and science actually started to right itself again as far as i can tell.
So the real question is... is it any coincidence that a time dominated by religion followed a period where technology took big steps backwords.
