Why Does Scotland Want To Be Independent?

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

“Yes, because for 2000+ years the world really progressed well under hereditary dictatorship er Royalty and a cabal of the misinformed er Religion leadership.”
"One would think that minimising the stranglehold anyone individual or group has on the rest of society would be a good thing."
Well, agree as most of the time it was against the will and desire of these "elites", the ones who knew better what was good.
The Magna Carta was imposed to John Lack lands for having been defeated by the French, and Louis XVI was against the Revolution. And History of Religions shows you how much the road to Knowledge, Freedom and Enlightenment was welcome by all religions…

Conveniently ignores the fact that you can only type that because religious houses preserved writing and knowledge.

[Brenus]

"Conveniently ignores the fact that you can only type that because religious houses preserved writing and knowledge" That is because you conveniently ignores the fact that the religious houses destroyed others writing and knowledge from others sources and origins.

[HoreTore]

Conveniently ignores the fact that you can only type that because religious houses preserved writing and knowledge.

Are you suggesting that if not for religion(christianity), we would not have a written language today....?

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

"Conveniently ignores the fact that you can only type that because religious houses preserved writing and knowledge" That is because you conveniently ignores the fact that the religious houses destroyed others writing and knowledge from others sources and origins.

Not true - Aristotle, Plato, Lycan, Cicero, Caesar, Catallus, all preserved in Monastic Libraries.

Christian book burning was a Renaissance, post printing, activity.

Now, despite being the likely culprit in Alexandria and definitely being responsible for some burnings in India Islam also preserved Pagan, Christian, and Jewish texts.

Are you suggesting that if not for religion(christianity), we would not have a written language today....?

Not at all - but the story of Linear B, Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Babylonian script demonstrates that the ability to write can be lost. That's exactly what happened around 1200 BC in the Meditaranian - imagine if, after Rome fell, the religious houses had not spirited away the libraries of the Great and the Good to remote places like Ireland and Pictland?

The Romans had to rediscover aquaducts, something the Cretans had been building a millenia before, but by the 13th Century (800 years after the collapse of the Western Empire) the Medieval City of Exeter had a new built plumbing system on Roman lines, piping water into the City in lead pipes and using Roman techniques to filter the water before it was fed up to fountains and wash houses distributed across the city.

http://www.exetermemories.co.uk/em/undergroundp.php

That's practical application of Clerical learning, right there.

[Sir Moody]

PVC is dead on the money - the Dark ages could have been utterly devastating to Western civilization if the Church hadn't squirreled away all the teachings of the past - and the same is true in the Middle East, Islamic scholars preserved and improved upon the works of Plato et al.

The Booking burning encouraged by the Christian churches was a reaction to Printing which basically broke their monopoly on the control and circulation of books allowing ideas (even those considered heretical) to circulate to a much greater audience.

[Brenus]

The problem I see is you have a complete wrong idea of what were the Middle Ages.
This idea of the Churches protecting culture (especially Christian ones) was built by the Christians. The recent discovery of Wicking Hoards in UK and Archaeology show how the so-called blood-thirsty Vikings were in fact building towns and markets.
The barbarians were the Christians who razed to the ground all Pagan Cultures, annexing their beliefs and symbols in order to subdue the locals: Killing their Priests and destroying their monuments, as they will do again in South and Central America, then in Africa. Same things than the Taliban did later. The Baltic States were not Christian and had books, culture as well, and researchers. And same can be said for the Chinese, Indians and others Asiatic populations.

[Sir Moody]

The problem I see is you have a complete wrong idea of what were the Middle Ages.
This idea of the Churches protecting culture (especially Christian ones) was built by the Christians. The recent discovery of Wicking Hoards in UK and Archaeology show how the so-called blood-thirsty Vikings were in fact building towns and markets.
The barbarians were the Christians who razed to the ground all Pagan Cultures, annexing their beliefs and symbols in order to subdue the locals: Killing their Priests and destroying their monuments, as they will do again in South and Central America, then in Africa. Same things than the Taliban did later. The Baltic States were not Christian and had books, culture as well, and researchers. And same can be said for the Chinese, Indians and others Asiatic populations.

who was claiming the Christians of the Dark Ages were "civilized" or the Vikings "barbarians" (a silly word really since it literally was termed to mean anyone who wasn't Greek (and later re-purposed by the Romans to anyone who wasn't Roman)) - you seem to be putting words in mine and PVC's mouths there...

you are entirely correct - after the initial wave of Norse Raiders there was a large influx of Norse SETTLERS most notable in Northern France and Northern "England" (England didn't really exist at this point) - contrary to popular belief most of them were not blood thirsty warriors and were just family men looking to settle in what was more climate lands.

The Christians of the Dark ages were certainly not saints either - especially throughout Britain where Christianity was spread by the point of a spear...

none of this however changes the fact that the teachings of Plato et al were preserved by the Christian church (and the Islamic scholars in the Middle East) - if they hadn't then a vast amount of Scientific knowledge which forms the basis of a lot of our Sciences may have had to have been "rediscovered" which potentially could have set back our progress by quite a bit...

[Slyspy]

The problem I see is you have a complete wrong idea of what were the Middle Ages.
This idea of the Churches protecting culture (especially Christian ones) was built by the Christians. The recent discovery of Wicking Hoards in UK and Archaeology show how the so-called blood-thirsty Vikings were in fact building towns and markets.
The barbarians were the Christians who razed to the ground all Pagan Cultures, annexing their beliefs and symbols in order to subdue the locals: Killing their Priests and destroying their monuments, as they will do again in South and Central America, then in Africa. Same things than the Taliban did later. The Baltic States were not Christian and had books, culture as well, and researchers. And same can be said for the Chinese, Indians and others Asiatic populations.

Do you not consider modern science to be a product of history?

[Brenus]

“Do you not consider modern science to be a product of history?” And your point is?

“who was claiming the Christians of the Dark Ages were "civilized" or the Vikings "barbarians" (a silly word really since it literally was termed to mean anyone who wasn't Greek (and later re-purposed by the Romans to anyone who wasn't Roman)) - you seem to be putting words in mine and PVC's mouths there..” And pretending that the Churches were the ultimate shelter of books and knowledge is precisely doing this.
As in modern language you probably note that the use of “barbarian” had an extension of meaning than purely “non-Greeks”.

[HoreTore]

Not true - Aristotle, Plato, Lycan, Cicero, Caesar, Catallus, all preserved in Monastic Libraries.

Christian book burning was a Renaissance, post printing, activity.

Now, despite being the likely culprit in Alexandria and definitely being responsible for some burnings in India Islam also preserved Pagan, Christian, and Jewish texts.



Not at all - but the story of Linear B, Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Babylonian script demonstrates that the ability to write can be lost. That's exactly what happened around 1200 BC in the Meditaranian - imagine if, after Rome fell, the religious houses had not spirited away the libraries of the Great and the Good to remote places like Ireland and Pictland?

The Romans had to rediscover aquaducts, something the Cretans had been building a millenia before, but by the 13th Century (800 years after the collapse of the Western Empire) the Medieval City of Exeter had a new built plumbing system on Roman lines, piping water into the City in lead pipes and using Roman techniques to filter the water before it was fed up to fountains and wash houses distributed across the city.

http://www.exetermemories.co.uk/em/undergroundp.php

That's practical application of Clerical learning, right there.

Horribly euro-centric.

And proving that something happened one way is no way of proving that it was the only way, as you well know.

The recent discovery of Wicking Hoards in UK and Archaeology show how the so-called blood-thirsty Vikings were in fact building towns and markets.

Danes don't count as proper vikings.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Horribly euro-centric.

And proving that something happened one way is no way of proving that it was the only way, as you well know.

I'm talking about Europe - and how it actually happened. The Dark Ages in Europe prove Brenus wrong - Christianity was responsible for the preservation, advancement, and dissemination, of knowledge prior to the Renaissance - it was not an impediment to it.

That's not to say it was a universal good but - to take one example - the study of anatomy was held up by scholastic adherence to Galen (who never dissected a human) when the Church had allowed the dissection of human corpses for several centuries. A clear case of the clerical authorities allowing a taboo practice in order to advance medical knowledge, and then academics quite literally refusing to look at what the Church was offering them.

Bashing Christianity as a weird anti-intellectual mysticism is an Enlightenment thing - which explains why the French do it - but it's still not justified.

[Papewaio]

The Dark Ages was post the fall of the Roman Western Empire.

A fall precipitated by Odoacer.

Odoacer being a Hindi, A Jew, A Pagan or a Christian?

A Christian. The Dark Ages was a time of infighting between different Christian sects tearing Europe apart and only stopped once one sect had enough of a dominant majority to gain control.

Of course all the other sects are written off as heretics. But they were still Christians.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

The Dark Ages was post the fall of the Roman Western Empire.

A fall precipitated by Odoacer.

Odoacer being a Hindi, A Jew, A Pagan or a Christian?

A Christian. The Dark Ages was a time of infighting between different Christian sects tearing Europe apart and only stopped once one sect had enough of a dominant majority to gain control.

Of course all the other sects are written off as heretics. But they were still Christians.

The Germanic tribes stayed primarily Germanic. Like most pagan peoples they were willing to accept another new and powerful god and get his help. But they really weren't christian in any meaningful sense of the word, that came much later.

Here's from the saxon heliand:

There were many whose minds urged them
to begin the reckoning of the runes,
the word of God, those well-known accomplishments
that Christ the mighty achieved among men
in words and in works.
...
But among all these were only four,
out of the many, granted the might of God,
help from heaven and the Holy Ghost,
strength from Christ. They were selected,
they alone, to inscribe the evengelium,
to write in a book the rules of God,
the holy heavenly word. Of all the heroic
sons of men alone they were to attempt it,
since the power of God had picked the four:
Mathew and Mark, so were these men named,
Luke and John, loved by God,
worthy of the work. The all-wielding ruler
placed the Holy Spirit in their heroic hearts,
with many wise words, and as well
an attitude of holiness and a keen heart,
to raise their voices, repeating the Gospel.
There is nothing in words comparable in the world.
Nothing could glorify our great Lord more;
nor can anything lop each loathed thing,
or wicked work; nor withstand better
the aggression and enmity of the enemy.
...
At that time the Lord God granted to the Romans
the widest of kingdoms. They conquered all nations
for he granted strength to their soldiers.
Those warriors from Rome
had seized an empire. Their overlords
were in every place, and they possessed power
over the nations, each noble folk.