Historical attacks on Christianity - saying it against science

[phil8888]

I was speaking to someone on facebook, and he sent me the following message. Can you give me any tips on how to respond?

Here is what he said:

Western cultures are more “progressive” because of the Renaissance and Enlightenment intellectual movements: both of which were overt academic rebellions against the Catholic Church. Islam, Taoism, Bhuddism, Shintoism, Hinduism, etc. have all built schools, hospitals, charities etc. In fact, throughout most of the dark ages (remember, this is what … Read Morewe called Europe when the Church was at the height of its political power) and middle ages, European “christians” were busy annihilating one another in what were among the largest scale, bloodiest and most prolonged wars the planet had ever seen. Meanwhile, the Arab world had become the centre of science, mathmatics, medicine, and theology. From the fall of the Roman Empire, to the period following the Spanish Inquisition, Christianity (as a political force) promoted one bloodbath after another. It wasn’t until we began turning away from religion as a guiding political force that this slowed down.

 

[CGDouglas]

I was speaking to someone on facebook, and he sent me the following message. Can you give me any tips on how to respond?

Here is what he said:

Western cultures are more “progressive” because of the Renaissance and Enlightenment intellectual movements: both of which were overt academic rebellions against the Catholic Church. Islam, Taoism, Bhuddism, Shintoism, Hinduism, etc. have all built schools, hospitals, charities etc. In fact, throughout most of the dark ages (remember, this is what … Read Morewe called Europe when the Church was at the height of its political power) and middle ages, European “christians” were busy annihilating one another in what were among the largest scale, bloodiest and most prolonged wars the planet had ever seen. Meanwhile, the Arab world had become the centre of science, mathmatics, medicine, and theology. From the fall of the Roman Empire, to the period following the Spanish Inquisition, Christianity (as a political force) promoted one bloodbath after another. It wasn’t until we began turning away from religion as a guiding political force that this slowed down.

Roman Catholics even promoted education:

The first universities in Europe: University of Bologna (1088), University of Paris (1160), University of Oxford (1167), University of Cambridge (1209), University of Palencia (1212), University of Salamanca (1218), University of Montpellier (1220), University of Padua (1222), University of Toulouse (1229) and University of Orleans (1235)

Pope Alexander the III in 1179:

“forbidding masters of the church schools to take fees for granting the license to teach (licentia docendi), and obliging them to give license to properly qualified teachers”

“[T]he papal bull of 1233, which stipulated that anyone admitted to be a teacher in Toulouse had the right to teach everywhere without further examinations (ius ubique docendi), in time, transformed this privilege into the single most important defining characteristic of the university and made it the symbol of its institutional autonomy . . . By the year 1292, even the two oldest universities, Bologna and Paris, felt the need to seek similar bulls from Pope Nicholas IV.”

Both of the same source below:

(Kemal Gürüz, Quality Assurance in a Globalized Higher Education Environment: An Historical Perspective, Istanbul, 2007, p. 5)

Whilst the intellectual movement did shoot off in the Age of Enlightenment, it is no doubt that the Roman Catholic Church helped the foundation, and made it grow.

Of course the Age of Enlightenment did similiar things which he accuses the Christians of doing. The Age of Enlightenment in France saw the persuction of thousands of Christians, Jews and even Muslims.

Not to mention in the enlightenment of France, it wasn’t as public as it should have been;
d’Alembert, contrasted the “truly enlightened public with “the blind and noisy multitude”.

Also excluding women and the lower class.

Hope this helps.

God Bless.

Chris.

 

[CGDouglas]

A quotation on the persecutions of the Church during the enlightenment:

• Under threat of death, imprisonment, military conscription or loss of income, about 20,000 constitutional priests were forced to abdicate or hand over their letters of ordination and 6,000 - 9,000 were coerced to marry, many ceasing their ministerial duties.
• By the end of the decade, approximately 30,000 priests were forced to leave France, and thousands who did not leave were executed.
• Most of France was left without the services of a priest, deprived of the sacraments and any nonjuring priest faced the guillotine or deportation to French Guiana.
• the enactment of a law on October 21, 1793 making all nonjuring priests and all persons who harbored them liable to death on sight.

(Sources:
^ Latreille, A. FRENCH REVOLUTION, New Catholic Encyclopedia v. 5, pp. 972-973 (Second Ed. 2002 Thompson/Gale) ISBN 0-7876-4004-2
^ SPIELVOGEL, JacksonWestern Civilization: Combined Volume p. 549, 2005 Thomson Wadsworth
^ Tallet, Frank Religion, Society and Politics in France Since 1789 p. 1, 1991 Continuum International Publishing )

• massacre of 6,000 Vendée prisoners, many of them women, took place after the battle of Savenay, along with the drowning of 3,000 Vendée women at Pont-au-Baux and 5,000 Vendée priests, old men, women, and children killed by drowning at the Loire River at Nantes in what was called the “national bath” - tied in groups in barges and then sunk into the Loire.

(*Source: ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica Eleventh Edition “Wars Of The Vendee”
^ telegraph.co.uk/education/expateducation/4204811/What-are-the-educational-options-for-British-children-moving-to-France.html

^ nytimes.com/1989/06/17/world/nantes-journal-in-a-corner-of-france-long-live-the-old-regime.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all)*

• By July 1796, the estimated Vendean dead numbered between 117,000 and 500,000, out of a population of around 800,000.

(Source:
^ Three State and Counterrevolution in France by Charles Tilly
^ nytimes.com/1989/07/09/travel/vive-la-contre-revolution.html?sec=travel
^ McPhee, Peter Review of Reynald Secher, A French Genocide: The Vendée H-France Review Vol. 4 (March 2004), No. 26 )

God Bless.

Chris.

 

[steve_b]

I was speaking to someone on facebook, and he sent me the following message. Can you give me any tips on how to respond?

Here is what he said:

Western cultures are more “progressive” because of the Renaissance and Enlightenment intellectual movements: both of which were overt academic rebellions against the Catholic Church. Islam, Taoism, Bhuddism, Shintoism, Hinduism, etc. have all built schools, hospitals, charities etc. In fact, throughout most of the dark ages (remember, this is what … Read Morewe called Europe when the Church was at the height of its political power) and middle ages, European “christians” were busy annihilating one another in what were among the largest scale, bloodiest and most prolonged wars the planet had ever seen. Meanwhile, the Arab world had become the centre of science, mathmatics, medicine, and theology. From the fall of the Roman Empire, to the period following the Spanish Inquisition, Christianity (as a political force) promoted one bloodbath after another. It wasn’t until we began turning away from religion as a guiding political force that this slowed down.

Your response should be to

• ask for his references.
• then cross examine what he regards as evidence.

Re: education, When Islam took over much of the east by force, they also eliminated higher education. Christians in the East had to come West if they were going to study. Bp Kallistos Ware (E Orthodox) wrote a book about the Orthodox in which he devotes a chapter about Orhodox under Islam and how scholastics suffered.

 

[vocatio]

We slaughtered the Lions last Friday night at the football game.

Slaughtered? Oh my. Don’t you think that was going too far? I mean to slaughter…kill… those innocent kids. That seems a little too much don’t you think.

Oh my. let me tell my friends. They killed to poor innocent boys at the football game. What horrible kids those Vikings are. They should be put in jail, given the death penalty.

Have you ever seen a story spread into a great big lie? I have and I’ve been the victim of such a crime, sin. It’s not fun. Much of what people think they know about history turns out to not be true. But by the time someone figures it out the lie is already hopelessly spreading faster than ever. People loose jobs over such things…even when it’s not true. The power of persuation, deceiptful persuation. It happens everyday. Pick an administration you support, then one you don’t. Look at the view of the other side and compare it to the opposite view of the one you support. Jump sides and listen as if you believe, it’s quite convincing sometimes to be on the wrong side of an idea. Sure there is objective truth, but how many people bother to try to clarify what is truth and what is not.
That is why I scorn those that go over the top to, for example, dishonor Obama for example. He at least lets you konw what he believes in his view. He dishonors himself openly, but probably really believes the lies he’s been taught. The same goes for Bush and every other politician to ever cast a show over American soil. Really, who really unconditionally trusts any politician?

Christianity has been given a bad rap by those determined to see it fail…but they can not make it fail. So they try even harder…so much that they go way beyond reason and “rewrite history”. The facts get contorteed depending on who’s writing it.

Let me give you a good examply “give them cake” was supposedly said by Marie Antoinette… Historians I’ve read recently clearly state that she never stated that but that since it got around so widespread it continues to be believed. There are many other things I’ve heard in recent years that have been distorted to look like someone stated something they did not state by the way it is quoted or cut off. The Popes have been misquoted a whole bunch. I believe the same holds true for politiicians in many cases and is perpetuated by those with apposing agendas, not necessarily views.

 

[dmelosi]

I was speaking to someone on facebook, and he sent me the following message. Can you give me any tips on how to respond?

Here is what he said:

Western cultures are more “progressive” because of the Renaissance and Enlightenment intellectual movements: both of which were overt academic rebellions against the Catholic Church. Islam, Taoism, Bhuddism, Shintoism, Hinduism, etc. have all built schools, hospitals, charities etc. In fact, throughout most of the dark ages (remember, this is what … Read Morewe called Europe when the Church was at the height of its political power) and middle ages, European “christians” were busy annihilating one another in what were among the largest scale, bloodiest and most prolonged wars the planet had ever seen. Meanwhile, the Arab world had become the centre of science, mathmatics, medicine, and theology. From the fall of the Roman Empire, to the period following the Spanish Inquisition, Christianity (as a political force) promoted one bloodbath after another. It wasn’t until we began turning away from religion as a guiding political force that this slowed down.

Go to the radio archives on Catholic Answers, listen to the audio on 5/18, How to Answer Atheists and Agnostics, there are some good sources there and he does touch on your question a little bit.

 

[1ke]

What can you say to a wholesale rewriting of history without one shred of factual basis?

Not much.