Myth of the Dark Ages

An essay by Tim O'Neill calls this chart "The Most Wrong Thing On the Internet Ever". He elaborates here and here, as does OFloinn.

Similarly wrong is the conflict thesis:

The conflict thesis is the proposition that there is an intrinsic intellectual conflict between religion and science and that the relationship between religion and science inevitably leads to public hostility. Although the thesis in modern form remains generally popular, the original form of the thesis is no longer widely supported among historians.

This blog presents the view that math, science, and technology have been under continuous development for millennia. For the most part, Christianity has contributed to the development of science.

By contrast, the Marxist view is that history is driven by conflict between grand social forces, with sudden breakthrus and revolutions between these forces being key to explaining everything. So they will say that the Roman Popes caused the Dark Ages by suppressing knowledge of the motion of the Earth and by burning witches, until Galileo stood up to them and started the scientific revolution by leading the Protestant Reformation. Or some such nonsense.

If interested in the broader history, see Catholic Church and science and List of Roman Catholic cleric-scientists.

Leftist scientists are praising the Pope for Laudato si. That book endorses consumer sacrifices and boycotts in order to promote Third World population growth, and it is all justified by some supposed consensus on global warming. The science of CO2 may be fine, but the rest is dubious. The theology is outside the scope of this blog, but I would like to see more analysis of whether the science is correct.

(Now he denounces "businessmen who call themselves Christian and they manufacture weapons.")

The Dark Ages are called dark because of the dearth of historical records, compared to the Roman Empire and other periods. It is like the dark side of the Moon, which got that name because we did not see it and knew almost nothing about it. No one is saying that sunlight failed to shine on the Dark Ages or the dark side of the Moon. But the sunlight from the dark side does not get to us. Likewise dark matter is dark because no starlight is scattered off it to us. And dark energy is dark. Read this blog for the Dark Buzz.