Benefits of religion

[The Atheist]

In an endeavour to educate, I'm going to note some of the good things which come about through religion/s.

This one today caught my eye - Anglican women attacking family violence (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10498938). They have arranged an impressive speaking list of local heroes and I imagine the event will be well-attended. Whether it works or not is anyone's guess, but it's a bloody good target.

Note that the Anglican trust involved is interacting with 5000 Pacific families a year.

Anyone still doubting the fact that churchgoers live longer (http://longevity.about.com/od/longevityboosters/a/religion_life.htm)than non-churchgoers needs to wake up (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/05/990517064323.htm)as well.

I'm kicking this off as a result of dogdoctor's fundamental atheist thread for reasons which may or may not become apparent.

[bokonon]

Cool. The Mormons' early polygamy and doctrinal obsession with genealogy created the database that led to identifying a key genetic marker for a certain type of breast cancer.

Church steeples provided an early test bed for lightning rods.

Gigantic pipe organs would have been developed much later, if at all, were it not for churches.

Were it not for religion, there might be no Christmas holiday.

[The Atheist]

Were it not for religion, there might be no Christmas holiday.

Not to mention Easter! No dead god = no chocolate! Disaster.

The two days' holiday his death and subsequent body-snatch is worth is hardly worth mentioning, in comparison.

[Rufo]

Are you talking about religion as in personal religion, or as in organized religion? I believe that many of their benefits might differ. :)

[A Christian Sceptic]

Science, Freedom and even Capitalism (http://www.amazon.com/Victory-Reason-Christianity-Freedom-Capitalism/dp/0812972333)

Doh! Sorry - the above was Christianity specific. Not religion in general specific.

[plumjam]

Without religion none of you guys would get to bash the bishop.

[Damien Evans]

Without religion none of you guys would get to bash the bishop.

Is that like bashing a pinyata*?



*That is soooo not spelled right, please correct me.

[JoeEllison]

The roads are relatively clear for an hour or two on Sunday mornings?

[plumjam]

Is that like bashing a pinyata*?



*That is soooo not spelled right, please correct me.

only while doing a headstand

[Fnord]

Practicing a religion is like beating your head against a wall ...

... you only feel good about it after you finally stop.

[Dogdoctor]

Well it wasn't my thread. I don't have data but opinions. Possible reasons for those results could be that it gives people enough hope to create a will to survive in what seems like hopeless situations. This might help with various medical situations however the opposite might happen also where they are worried about why god has forsaken them. You might call it the power of positive thinking. If you feel helpless and wallow in your self pity you aren't as likely to do the things you need to do to survive.

[JoeEllison]

Is that like bashing a pinyata*?



*That is soooo not spelled right, please correct me.

Piñata.

[The Atheist]

Are you talking about religion as in personal religion, or as in organized religion? I believe that many of their benefits might differ. :)

Either/or.

Science, Freedom and even Capitalism (http://www.amazon.com/Victory-Reason-Christianity-Freedom-Capitalism/dp/0812972333)

Doh! Sorry - the above was Christianity specific. Not religion in general specific.

That's ok, specific religions qualify!

I do, however, think you're pushing it uphill to get baby Jesus to be responsible for any of those. Capitalism was well established before christianity as were science, medicine and freedom, no matter how some author might twist the facts to appear otherwise.

Without religion none of you guys would get to bash the bishop.

Good point. What fun is there in playing, "Kick the Language Professor"?

The roads are relatively clear for an hour or two on Sunday mornings?

Not to mention shops. Our local shopping centre, with about six churches on its boundaries, is quieter than the graveyards on Sunday mid-morning - by far the best time to shop.

Well it wasn't my thread. I don't have data but opinions. Possible reasons for those results could be that it gives people enough hope to create a will to survive in what seems like hopeless situations. This might help with various medical situations however the opposite might happen also where they are worried about why god has forsaken them. You might call it the power of positive thinking. If you feel helpless and wallow in your self pity you aren't as likely to do the things you need to do to survive.

You could well be right. One thing I am pretty confident on is that whatever the benefits are of religion, they come from the human-construct side of it rather than the god/s involved.

[A Christian Sceptic]

I do, however, think you're pushing it uphill to get baby Jesus to be responsible for any of those. Capitalism was well established before christianity as were science, medicine and freedom, no matter how some author might twist the facts to appear otherwise.

You should check that book out. It's rather fascinating and probably might be a bit upsetting. :)

But seriously - this guy is one of my new favorite authors. And I learned about him on this forum from someone. Thanks whoever it was.

[The Atheist]

You should check that book out. It's rather fascinating and probably might be a bit upsetting. :)

No way it will upset me, but if it concludes that christianity invented the concepts of science, freedom and capitalism, it's going to be wrong, and laughably so. All of those demonstrably pre-date Christ. There are so many books onm my waiting list that that one isn't likely to make the grade.

[A Christian Sceptic]

No way it will upset me, but if it concludes that christianity invented the concepts of science, freedom and capitalism, it's going to be wrong, and laughably so. All of those demonstrably pre-date Christ. There are so many books onm my waiting list that that one isn't likely to make the grade.

He's a professor in sociology. I hope you check out the book, but I understand having a long list. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I'm in no position to be an apologist for him or his book (I just finished it) but basically he makes the case that science, freedom, capitalism, succeed because of certain qualities in Christian doctrines and the methods employed by Christians to reason through them.

[plumjam]

Good point. What fun is there in playing, "Kick the Language Professor"?

Yeah. The two aren't consonant. :boxedin:

[Walter Wayne]

I recently read David Sloan Wilson's article in Skeptic. Beyond Demonic Memes: Why Richard Dawkins is Wrong About Religion. In it he mentions a study performed about characteristics of religious versus non-religious people. Since this thread came up thought I'd go and take a closer look.

The study he mentions is his own, in collobaration with Csikszentmihalyi. And is as much about altruism as about religion.
http://evolution.binghamton.edu/dswilson/resources/publications_resources/DSW01.pdf

The system they used to test is the Experience Sampling Method, which he describes briefly. I found one review of the validity of the method ... by Csikszentmihalyi, the pioneer of the method. So make of that what you will.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cluster=17879759317963564168

If you read through those, you know as much as I do. If you read thoroughly, you know more.

My basic reading of the study is that there is a correlation between altruism (prosociality) and wether people say religion affects their decisions. Among other things
"... religion is an important correlate of prosociality in the general sample but not all high-PROs[prosocial types] are religious."
Within the "high PROs" he mentioned the religious had more confidence, brighter outlook, and had more parental controls imposed and were less resentful of those controls.

The study concludes that altruism benefits the altruist in certain environments (apparently low PROs deal with certain conflicts better), and religion creates an environment that altrusits do well in.
...Given the right conditions, altruism can be very good for the altruist, as our results show. Once we think of altruism as a like a species with a distribution and abundance, we can attempt to modify the environment to expand altruism’s “niche”.

This is not a new enterprise and religions appear to be especially effective at creating environmental conditions favorable for altruism, at least among their own members.[My bold] Scientists interested in altruism have much to learn from religion (see also Wilson 2002, 2005).

An interesting read. Haven't digested thoroughly enough to come up with a critical opinion of it yet.

Walt

[blobru]

Well, religions are human inventions. Metaphysical tools, made for a reason.

The reason of religion? In no particular order:

animate nature -- allow people to 'speak' to that which they can't control -- nature -- and reason / plead with it as if it were human, which tends to decrease anxiety, increase happiness.

extend authority -- giving the head of a group supernatural power makes the morals of the group easier to patrol, as members assume they are constantly being watched and evaluated.

focus aspiration -- religious sites, churches, have served as regular gathering points for a community, where god's will is discussed and interpreted: ways of implementing god's will amount to ways of improving the community.

state counterbalance -- in groups where the state leader is different from the church's, the church provides another source of moral sanction; esp. when the leader of the state or the law that constrains it is immoral.

psychological palette -- this is an odd one, as it has mainly to do with the 'function' of art. Artistic expression is the individual universalized. Religions facilitate this by giving artists cliches, well-known stories, images, and themes, to work with. Art as a means of self-understanding, of relating oneself to the group, to the world, of making one's life and membership meaningful, is vital to any group.

history preserve -- part of religion is hero worship, idolatry, reverence for the relics of the past the heroes lived in. Objects and documents significant to the larger culture were often collected and transmitted by the church.

rational enterprise -- the desire to bind the universe to humanity from a set of fundamental truths is religion (the root of the word is literally "to tie up"). Logic is the working out of the implication of axioms. Logic is in a sense religion minus "faith" and "God", and thus religious theory, theology, has always been excellent training in logic and argumentation.

personal motivation -- this is the modern, existential component of religion. The individual decides her life would be better if she knew there were a god, and so makes the "leap of faith", chooses to know, to feel better about life. Reason is sacrificed to banish despair. It must seem a worthwhile sacrifice to those who make the leap.

That's it off the top of my god-hating head. By none of the above do I mean to suggest that the benefits come without cost; I'm just listing what I think are some reasons the religious might have for being so; i.e., the benefits to them; whether they benefit all and everyone is another debate. :relieved::halo::footinmou

[The Atheist]

Yeah. The two aren't consonant. :boxedin:

Nice! Nominatable for Pith, but I won't bother since you have as much chance of winning as me.

I'm in no position to be an apologist for him or his book (I just finished it) but basically he makes the case that science, freedom, capitalism, succeed because of certain qualities in Christian doctrines and the methods employed by Christians to reason through them.

Ah, that's a little different, I could maybe be persuaded to see that. I'll move it up the list a few notches.

An interesting read. Haven't digested thoroughly enough to come up with a critical opinion of it yet.

Walt

Cheers, looks interesting, I'll read in depth later.

[Wowbagger]

Without Judaism, there would be no stand-up comedians.

Right?...... right?!

[Damien Evans]

Piñata.

Thanks.

[The Atheist]

Well, religions are human inventions. Metaphysical tools, made for a reason.

Yep.

The reason of religion? In no particular order:

animate nature -- allow people to 'speak' to that which they can't control -- nature -- and reason / plead with it as if it were human, which tends to decrease anxiety, increase happiness.

extend authority -- giving the head of a group supernatural power makes the morals of the group easier to patrol, as members assume they are constantly being watched and evaluated.

Not so sure either of those are benefits. Reasons, sure.

focus aspiration -- religious sites, churches, have served as regular gathering points for a community, where god's will is discussed and interpreted: ways of implementing god's will amount to ways of improving the community.

state counterbalance -- in groups where the state leader is different from the church's, the church provides another source of moral sanction; esp. when the leader of the state or the law that constrains it is immoral.

psychological palette -- this is an odd one, as it has mainly to do with the 'function' of art. Artistic expression is the individual universalized. Religions facilitate this by giving artists cliches, well-known stories, images, and themes, to work with. Art as a means of self-understanding, of relating oneself to the group, to the world, of making one's life and membership meaningful, is vital to any group.

history preserve -- part of religion is hero worship, idolatry, reverence for the relics of the past the heroes lived in. Objects and documents significant to the larger culture were often collected and transmitted by the church.

rational enterprise -- the desire to bind the universe to humanity from a set of fundamental truths is religion (the root of the word is literally "to tie up"). Logic is the working out of the implication of axioms. Logic is in a sense religion minus "faith" and "God", and thus its practice, theology, has always been excellent training in logic and argumentation.

personal motivation -- this is the modern, existential component of religion. The individual decides her life would be better if she knew there were a god, and so makes the "leap of faith", chooses to know, to feel better about life. Reason is sacrificed to banish despair. It must seem a worthwhile sacrifice to those who make the leap.

That's it off the top of my god-hating head. By none of the above do I mean to suggest that the benefits come without cost; I'm just listing what I think are some reasons the religious might have for being so; i.e., the benefits to them; whether they benefit all and everyone is another debate. :relieved::halo::footinmou

Great stuff!

I agree with pretty much all of your points and explanations. How to quantify the cost is tricky.

[The Atheist]

Without Judaism, there would be no stand-up comedians.

Right?...... right?!

That's actually pretty good!

Not to mention Bob Dylan or Albert Einstein.

[Ginarley]

...snip...
focus aspiration -- religious sites, churches, have served as regular gathering points for a community, where god's will is discussed and interpreted: ways of implementing god's will amount to ways of improving the community.

I think this is the primary benefit of religion to society. Just getting people to gather together for any unified reason is beneficial for any group of people that have to live together. Religion has the added bonus undue respect so such gatherings are almost always cordial and often lead to greater social cohesion because of it, and I think a great deal of good has come from this. I very much doubt this good was exclusively religious but nonetheless it is good.

[blobru]

... Not so sure either of those are benefits. Reasons, sure. ...

Hmm... I take it by "benefits" you mean to society and not just the religion then?

Then the first two, animate nature & extend authority, should have the general benefit of making everyone's [religious] neighbors happier and better behaved. (They're probably the two oldest motives for religion, especially animism, the original Px for death, grief and uncertainty.)

I think this is the primary benefit of religion to society. Just getting people to gather together for any unified reason is beneficial for any group of people that have to live together. Religion has the added bonus undue respect so such gatherings are almost always cordial and often lead to greater social cohesion because of it, and I think a great deal of good has come from this. I very much doubt this good was exclusively religious but nonetheless it is good.

Yes, cordiality and cohesion are both important benefits, maybe deserving of separate entries.

It's my impression that religion aims at overwhelming antisocial impulses with congratulatory conformity: the more like the heroes of the faith and each other we are, the better -- on the assumption most of us trust ourselves; others, not so much. Congregations lessen that distrust by making ethics and motives transparent, reinforcing social norms; simplifying, ritualizing conduct.

[ceo_esq]

But seriously - this guy is one of my new favorite authors. And I learned about him on this forum from someone. Thanks whoever it was.

I think the blame is probably mine (from here (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=3405414#post3405414)). If so, you're welcome.

[A Christian Sceptic]

I think the blame is probably mine (from here (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=3405414#post3405414)). If so, you're welcome.

It was your fault! :)

[ceo_esq]

Ah, that's a little different, I could maybe be persuaded to see that. I'll move it up the list a few notches.

If it helps, here (http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0109.html) is an online reprint of an essay Professor Stark wrote for the Chronicle of Higher Education a couple of years ago around the time that book was published, in which he gives a brief overview of the book's thesis. Stark is apparently a nonbeliever, by the way.

[Beerina]

Were it not for religion, there might be no Christmas holiday.

Not to mention Easter! No dead god = no chocolate! Disaster.

Doubtful. These were deliberately chosen to displace other religions' holidays around that time, both themselves ultimately deriving from the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

So we'd still be doing Passover, or Satyrnalia, or whatever.


We do have a secular holiday for the atumnal equinox (Labor Day) and the summer solstice (4th of July), though both are off by a couple of weeks. The former roughly derives from the position of the year (end of needing kids to help on the farm = end of summer = roughly fall equinox) but the later was purely coincidental.

[Lanzy]

Were it not for religion, there might be no Christmas holiday.

Of course there would be. We would celebrate the coming of the SUN not the coming of the SON. About the same time of year. But with much more drinking and better songs.

[Charlie Monoxide]

That's actually pretty good!

Not to mention Bob Dylan or Albert Einstein.
Or Captain Kirk, Spock and Slash ....

Charlie (St Lenny Bruce) Monoxide

[Wauthan]

Hmmm... well I have to admit that the religious people I've encountered always appeared to be fairly couragous, even to the point of foolishness.

Speaking your mind to complete strangers, trying to break up a knife fight, walking alone through the rougher parts of town in the middle of the night as well as making major risk investments. And doing these things without breaking a sweat because "God is with me".

True that this might be a very dubious benefit, since it's based on a mere illusion of strength and safety, but since quite a few of things that scare us are mere illusions of danger I guess it could be an advantage.

Then again when the **** *really* hits the fan I would rather not be stuck with an imaginary umbrella.

[ceo_esq]

Doubtful. These were deliberately chosen to displace other religions' holidays around that time, both themselves ultimately deriving from the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

I think that's basically true of Christmas, but I'm not sure that Easter occurs the time of year it does because it was deliberately chosen to displace another religion's holiday. Easter has to be celebrated close to Passover because the event it celebrates is believed to be linked in time to Passover. And of course, even in the post-apostolic period Christians observed both.

[The Atheist]

If it helps, here (http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0109.html) is an online reprint of an essay Professor Stark wrote for the Chronicle of Higher Education a couple of years ago around the time that book was published, in which he gives a brief overview of the book's thesis. Stark is apparently a nonbeliever, by the way.

Thanks, I shall follow that up. I can see the book moving rapidly towards tje top of the list!

Of course there would be. We would celebrate the coming of the SUN not the coming of the SON. About the same time of year. But with much more drinking and better songs.

More drinking? Are you insane?

Better songs, I could cope with - of all the things I hate about Christmas, Silent Night is #1.

[JoeTheJuggler]

This study from the Journal of Religion and Society pretty well debunks the myth that religiosity is good for society:

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html

[Irony]

Thanks, I shall follow that up. I can see the book moving rapidly towards tje top of the list!



More drinking? Are you insane?

Better songs, I could cope with - of all the things I hate about Christmas, Silent Night is #1.

The one thing I'll never completely forgive Christians for is taking an excellent song like Greensleeves and messing up the lyrics.

I will partially forgive them, however, because of the chocolate bunnies. And for peeps, which are inedible, but make excellent projectiles and are fun to microwave.

[Nim Chimpsky]

The bible is responsible for quite a bit of our idiomatic expressions.

http://www.layhands.com/ModernPhrasesInTheBible.htm



But then again, Seinfeld has probably added a fair number as well:

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/a-george-divided-against-itself-cannot-stand/559498716

"A george divided against itself, cannot stand."

[fishbait]

Just getting people to gather together for any unified reason is beneficial for any group of people that have to live together. Like the Nuremberg Rallies? Yeah. That worked out well, didn't it?

[ceo_esq]

This study from the Journal of Religion and Society pretty well debunks the myth that religiosity is good for society:

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html

Judging from his Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_S._Paul), though, the author of that piece (a freelance paleontologist and dinosaur illustrator) has no expertise in any relevant field. The entry also points out that academic social scientists sharply attacked his methodology from that article.

[The Atheist]

This study from the Journal of Religion and Society pretty well debunks the myth that religiosity is good for society:

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html

Well, it does nothing of the kind.

I'd love to see a document which debunks the myth that religiosity is good for society.

Creighton doesn't have one.

I'm not going to [again] tear that crap to pieces, so start a thread if you'd like me to politely explain why and where it's crap. The brief answer, which I can give you, is that it first decides on which criteria it will select to decipher a "goodness" quotient, then uses statistics to "prove" the case. It is an amateurish attempt and horribly flawed in more ways than [clearly] you can imagine.

... And for peeps, which are inedible, but make excellent projectiles and are fun to microwave.

Greensleeves? Wasn't that invented for castratos?

What the hell are peeps?

[Dr H]

Anyone still doubting the fact that churchgoers live longer than non-churchgoers needs to wake up as well.

Well yeah, if I go to church I may live 2 to 3 years longer. But if I skip church and use the time to exercise, I may live 3 to 5 years longer. I think my choice is clear. :)

Also, I find myself wondering: does the mere attendence at "religious services" translate into an extended average lifespan, or does one also have to believe in the religion to some extent? Could, for example, an atheist drop in on a different church each week and extend their life?

And if so, mightn't the operative factor here be some sort of regular social interaction and not religion per se? I can see a comparison study with people who go to their local weekly, for a pint with the mates.

I am willing to volunteer for the comparison study, if anyone wants to kick it off. Perhaps we can even write a grant to fund it. ;)

[GreyICE]

The Peace and Truth of God did save lives with the countries that accepted them. They are the first recorded instance of the concept of limited warfare.

Islam did a lot to shelter Jews from persecution during the middle ages. Islam also sheltered various Christian heritics from persecution.

Buddhists monks setting themselves on fire brought the Vietnam war tons of publicity, all bad, and may have helped end that senseless waste of life sooner.

Many Quakers helped the underground railroad, due to their convictions.

Ghandi was an inspiration to the concept of peaceful protest, as was Martin Luther King jr. Both did great things for their country.

I'm sure I'll think of more eventually. I wish more theists did things like those, instead of protesting at funerals and killing people.

[Dr H]

Gigantic pipe organs would have been developed much later, if at all, were it not for churches.

Aw hell, the Romans had organs back in the 3rd century BC. And they didn't use them in churches, they used them at the gladitorial games.

[Darth Rotor]

What the hell are peeps?
http://www.peepresearch.org/nitrogen.html

They are disgusting sugar candy things that make the baby Jesus cry.

DR

[GreyICE]

Science, Freedom and even Capitalism (http://www.amazon.com/Victory-Reason-Christianity-Freedom-Capitalism/dp/0812972333)

Doh! Sorry - the above was Christianity specific. Not religion in general specific.

Wow. That's just horribly wrong. Capitalism is the default economic system, and probably came into existence around the time of money (although arguably it could apply to the barter system too, at which point it came into existence around the time of trade). As for Freedom, you'd be surprised to learn that Roman slavery generally encompassed the concept that slaves could buy themselves out of slavery, and go on to live good lives. Christian slavery was for life.

As for Reason, Plato and Aristotle... don't even get me started (ha! Lets declare the earth is the center of the universe! And kill people who disagree! That'll make us look reasonable!).

[The Atheist]

Like the Nuremberg Rallies? Yeah. That worked out well, didn't it?

I don't remember which church held those, can you refresh my memory?

Judging from his Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_S._Paul), though, the author of that piece (a freelance paleontologist and dinosaur illustrator) has no expertise in any relevant field. The entry also points out that academic social scientists sharply attacked his methodology from that article.

Damn, I didn't see your prior post, I needn't have bothered. There must be some relevance - he's a BS artist, which is closely allied to the church.

Well yeah, if I go to church I may live 2 to 3 years longer. But if I skip church and use the time to exercise, I may live 3 to 5 years longer. I think my choice is clear. :)

Also, I find myself wondering: does the mere attendence at "religious services" translate into an extended average lifespan, or does one also have to believe in the religion to some extent? Could, for example, an atheist drop in on a different church each week and extend their life?

Maybe we could get some stats on the UU church?

I'm sure the whole thing's explicable, but it's bloody interesting and how the hell do we replicate the benefits elsewhere?

And if so, mightn't the operative factor here be some sort of regular social interaction and not religion per se? I can see a comparison study with people who go to their local weekly, for a pint with the mates.

I am willing to volunteer for the comparison study, if anyone wants to kick it off. Perhaps we can even write a grant to fund it. ;)

Great idea!

[Dr H]

Doubtful. These were deliberately chosen to displace other religions' holidays around that time, both themselves ultimately deriving from the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

I think that's basically true of Christmas, but I'm not sure that Easter occurs the time of year it does because it was deliberately chosen to displace another religion's holiday. Easter has to be celebrated close to Passover because the event it celebrates is believed to be linked in time to Passover. And of course, even in the post-apostolic period Christians observed both.

Christmas got dropped on top of yuletide and other winter celebrations. Easter got dropped in on top of various spring fertility celebrations (not to mention the vernal equinox), notably the ancient Teutonic celebration of the goddess of fertility Eostre.

If you had no Christianity you wouldn't have Christmas or Easter, but you'd still have the older pagan holidays that happen around those times of year. If you had no religion you wouldn't have Yuletide or Eosturmonath, either.

Though I suspect that the people who run breweries and distilleries would come up with other reasons for us to celebrate...

[A Christian Sceptic]

Wow. That's just horribly wrong. Capitalism is the default economic system, and probably came into existence around the time of money (although arguably it could apply to the barter system too, at which point it came into existence around the time of trade). As for Freedom, you'd be surprised to learn that Roman slavery generally encompassed the concept that slaves could buy themselves out of slavery, and go on to live good lives. Christian slavery was for life.

As for Reason, Plato and Aristotle... don't even get me started (ha! Lets declare the earth is the center of the universe! And kill people who disagree! That'll make us look reasonable!).

You should read the book then. Or at least the essay ceo_esq linked to.

[A Christian Sceptic]

What the hell are peeps?

http://www.marshmallowpeeps.com/

There's even peep recipes and crafts!

[The Atheist]

If you had no Christianity you wouldn't have Christmas or Easter, but you'd still have the older pagan holidays that happen around those times of year.

No you bloody well would NOT!

If you tried that kind of move, I'd be leading delegations of southern hemispherians to protest at the UN that season-specific international holidays unfairly favour northern hemispherians.

[Dr H]

No you bloody well would NOT!

If you tried that kind of move, I'd be leading delegations of southern hemispherians to protest at the UN that season-specific international holidays unfairly favour northern hemispherians.

And we would have to oppose you to the bitter bloody end, because the gods are on our side, of course. ;)

[GreyICE]

You should read the book then. Or at least the essay ceo_esq linked to. What does that essay have to do with capitalism, freedom, or reason? It can LOOSELY be linked to gender-based freedom (which women lost ground on over the subsequent centuries, from important in the church to meaningless and with no role) but other than that, is mute on the other two.

In any case, the roots of both modern reasoning and capitalism handily predate Christianity, and probably Judaism (capitalism certainly does - its not a concept or philosophy, its a method of describing economic interaction).

[ceo_esq]

What does that essay have to do with capitalism, freedom, or reason? It can LOOSELY be linked to gender-based freedom (which women lost ground on over the subsequent centuries, from important in the church to meaningless and with no role) but other than that, is mute on the other two.

There were two linked essays. I think you read the one about women. The one about capitalism, reason, etc. is this one:

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0109.html

[ceo_esq]

Christmas got dropped on top of yuletide and other winter celebrations. Easter got dropped in on top of various spring fertility celebrations (not to mention the vernal equinox), notably the ancient Teutonic celebration of the goddess of fertility Eostre.

I've said this elsewhere, but the whole Eostre-goddess idea is highly speculative, particularly given that we don't really have any evidence of there having been an Eostre apart from Bede's lone statement that he thought Eostre was a pagan goddess after whom the month Eostremonath must have been named (and whose worshippers, if they ever existed, had died out long before the word "Easter" ever came to be identified with the Christian feast). In fact, I believe the earliest recorded uses of a variant of the word "Easter" to refer to the previously-existing Christian feast postdate the Christianization of Britain by quite a bit. But more to the point, the ancient Teutonic spring fertility celebrations cannot have had any effect on the timing of Easter, because the timing of Easter was determined independently and long before early Christians were exposed to such things. Accordingly, I think it's inaccurate and misleading to suggest that Easter was "dropped on top" of a Teutonic festival except coincidentally.

[GreyICE]

There were two linked essays. I think you read the one about women. The one about capitalism, reason, etc. is this one:

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0109.html

The ancient Romans invented the spirit of capitalism, if not necessarily the words, and invented many of these technologies the article is raving over. In fact they were so far in advance of the middle ages that they had concepts like working sewer systems, aqueducts, concentrated road manufacturing, trade (a hallmark of capitalism), and many other advances. They had advances that would boggle the middle ages - graffiti on the walls of Pompeii advertised whores prices - a situation that suggests a literate populace, and therefore public education (not seen again for more than a millenia). You want to trace all those advances to their origins? Trace them to Rome.

[ceo_esq]

The ancient Romans invented the spirit of capitalism, if not necessarily the words, and invented many of these technologies the article is raving over. In fact they were so far in advance of the middle ages that they had concepts like working sewer systems, aqueducts, concentrated road manufacturing, trade (a hallmark of capitalism), and many other advances. They had advances that would boggle the middle ages - graffiti on the walls of Pompeii advertised whores prices - a situation that suggests a literate populace, and therefore public education (not seen again for more than a millenia). You want to trace all those advances to their origins? Trace them to Rome.

I'm afraid you've greatly overestimated the advances of the classical world compared to the medieval world in the West. The Middle Ages were a time of unprecedented technological dynamism in Western Europe which far outstripped the admirable yet relatively modest accomplishments of Roman antiquity. I have argued this at length (relying on scholarly authority) in, among other places, the "Is religion slowing us down?" thread, including without limitation the following posts:

1 (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=1148164#post1148164)
2 (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=1178774#post1178774)
3 (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=1182203#post1182203)
4 (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=1190597#post1190597)
5 (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=3394796#post3394796)

[GreyICE]

I'm afraid you've greatly overestimated the advances of the classical world compared to the medieval world in the West. The Middle Ages were a time of unprecedented technological dynamism in Western Europe which far outstripped the admirable yet relatively modest accomplishments of Roman antiquity. I have argued this at length (relying on scholarly authority) in, among other places, the "Is religion slowing us down?" thread, including without limitation the following posts:

1 (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=1148164#post1148164)
2 (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=1178774#post1178774)
3 (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=1182203#post1182203)
4 (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=1190597#post1190597)
5 (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=3394796#post3394796)

Ah, argument ad long listium.

Lets dissect that and see if the long list has anything useful. I'm going to take the list in your second post because frankly I don't have too much time for argumentum ad nauseum.

* crop rotation and strip cultivation
Sorry, we're looking for the Muslim Agricultural Revolution. As a plus, you win this spiffy goat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Agricultural_Revolution

Crop rotation also had some references in Romanic literature, but we'll stick to this one for now.

* heavy wheeled plow

Hmm, if you're refering to the heavy plough, I'd have to go with no again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plough

I'd be so much more concerned about citing Wikipedia if you cited any sources at all.

* nailed horseshoes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe#History

Ooh, second century BC. That just hurts.

* horse collar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_collar#History

Developed in China, during the 4th century BC. However, this one did spread to Europe in the 900s, so hell, that's almost like they invented it (except for the entire inventing bit).

* whiffletree
Google doesn't know. Color me confused.

* horizontal-axle windmill
Ding Ding Ding! First winner.

* rotary whetstone
You know what? I have no idea, and I can't find any references.

* spectacles
Once again, another winner! Oh, wait, the second.

* maritime compass navigation and the compass wheel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass

1044 for the first compass (in china), although it was around 1400 before anyone was steering with them. So that's after the middle ages.

* sternpost rudder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudder#China

Ooh, China wins again. And the arabs had one in 985. But since the Europeans actually developed this one independently, we have to give them credit, if nothing else for being completely uncommunicative with the rest of the world. Go Middle Ages?

* cannon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon#Early_history

Oops, China wins again. Looks like Europe didn't start beating China until AFTER the middle ages. Given the fact that the Roman empire had at least equal footing with the Chinese empire, and China had their own special, special woo holding them back, I'm not buying this amazing European progress. I mean if you have Rome and China at the same point, and China is crippled by their woo, then I don't see the Christian woo helping anyone, if they're both getting to the same point at the same time.

* glass mirrors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror#History

Oof, 77 AD at the LATEST. Its like this list is a bunch of ********, which you're hoping I'll ignore because its really long.

* hydraulic hammer
There is no such thing. There's water hammer, which is not what you're looking for, but there's no such animal as a hydraulic hammer.

* weight-driven clock
Yes, kind of. It was an Arab who perfected the ancient clock, and the principle of using a different form of weight than falling water is not huge innovation, but I guess this deserves a nod. Though trading one form of gravity driven mass for another form of gravity driven mass seems a little... trivial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock#Early_clocks

* sandglass
Another winner (although it might be cruel to note that a sand clock and a water clock are really very similar principles).

* scientific human dissection
Ooh, no. The Greeks did this first, and the Arabs did this systemically. Just not even close.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissection#History

* many surgical instruments
Such as the leech, holy water to drive the evil spirits out, and lots of prayer.

* numerous advances in building (and shipbuilding) techniques
Oddly I didn't find a single reference to the Middle ages here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipbuilding

I wonder why...

* numerous advances in arms and armor
Steel Plate? Anything else?

Is this list full of **** to make it long enough to annoy anyone who wants to discredit your woo? Yes, yes it is.

Now tell me why I should listen to you when you lie to me this way.

[The Atheist]

Now tell me why I should listen to you when you lie to me this way.

*Waves red handkerchief*

Mate, of all the posters in this joint, ceo_esq is one of the few who is always worth listening to, and listening most carefully.

Calling him a liar or a "woo" is:

A) Really bad form, because he's an extremely polite bloke
B) Really stupid, because you will get it handed to you on a plate, and if you're not careful, so sliced it might need several plates
C) Really stupid, because it's badly wrong

I'm sure there have been times ceo's been wrong, but lie? Not in him.

Re-think your position, re-consider your attack and be prepared to re-treat!

:bgrin:

[GreyICE]

*Waves red handkerchief*

Mate, of all the posters in this joint, ceo_esq is one of the few who is always worth listening to, and listening most carefully.

Calling him a liar or a "woo" is:

A) Really bad form, because he's an extremely polite bloke
B) Really stupid, because you will get it handed to you on a plate, and if you're not careful, so sliced it might need several plates
C) Really stupid, because it's badly wrong

I'm sure there have been times ceo's been wrong, but lie? Not in him.

Re-think your position, re-consider your attack and be prepared to re-treat!

:bgrin:
Heh, if I'm actually so wrong that I'm going to get whipped in the arena of facts, then I'll take my licks like a man, and admit I was wrong. I saw a list like that, and flashed back to a thousand lists I've seen with no citations and lots of items - all designed to obscure the point. I'm reasonably sure I'm right on the origins of most of those historical items, and he's not. For the time the middle ages encompassed, innovation and invention were truly sparse and sporadic, leading to very, very, very low rates of progress. Commonly accepted historical accounts can be wrong - but really, they usually aren't. And I'm pretty sure this one is not.

I have no real love for Christianity even (if my back is to the wall) I'll admit that its a step up from modern Islam, and I have a lot of respect for the Quakers. But I'm not buying that the lovie-dovie institution that brought us the Spanish Inquisition, illegalization of loans (that always helps capitalism along), the crusades, the brilliant concepts of exorcism and plenary indulgence, and burning academics (or just making them drink molten lead) for 'heresy' was really some instrument of progress. If Jesus had buckled down, and preached that there was no higher power than the human mind, and that every man had to think and reason for himself, and the west had followed that and spread it across the continent, well, just imagine for a second the roman sewer system wasn't lost. No black plague, less disease, less fear of travelers (so more trade), etc. And all that had to happen was instead of the Book of John we had the 11th commandment - "Thou shalt install sewer systems in thine cities, or God shall smite thee most unmercifully, in the form of really painful sores and humorous diseases."

[plumjam]

Well yeah, if I go to church I may live 2 to 3 years longer. But if I skip church and use the time to exercise, I may live 3 to 5 years longer. I think my choice is clear. :)


If you go to Church and do lots of prostrations before the altar you'll live perhaps 8 years longer.

[ceo_esq]

Is this list full of **** to make it long enough to annoy anyone who wants to discredit your woo? Yes, yes it is.

Now tell me why I should listen to you when you lie to me this way.

You're not being lied to; you're being corrected. Try to bear in mind that what's being corrected is your assertion that Romans "were so far in advance of the middle ages" and "had advances that would boggle the middle ages". Why China is particularly relevant to this is not clear. Anyhow, I will address your points, but it may be a little while before I can get round to it. Meanwhile, it's not clear to me why you chose to get bogged down in the one post - of the 5 I linked - that didn't provide extensive material from authoritative sources. I would suggest in the meantime that you consult the multiple scholarly quotations and citations I provided there, which are directly hostile to your thesis.

[Dr H]

I've said this elsewhere,
OK, I'll take your word for that. ;)

...but the whole Eostre-goddess idea is highly speculative, particularly given that we don't really have any evidence of there having been an Eostre apart from Bede's lone statement that he thought Eostre was a pagan goddess after whom the month Eostremonath must have been named (and whose worshippers, if they ever existed, had died out long before the word "Easter" ever came to be identified with the Christian feast). In fact, I believe the earliest recorded uses of a variant of the word "Easter" to refer to the previously-existing Christian feast postdate the Christianization of Britain by quite a bit.
I wasn't suggesting that's where the term "Easter" came from , although I didn't really make that clear. And I did say "various" spring and fertility celebrations. I concede that this may be coincidence, rather than causality.

The point I was addressing was the notion that if Christianity were to disappear so would all holidays at the times of years we have been accustomed to associate with Christmas and Easter. In fact, there had been holidays at those times of year in western culture for a goodly while before Christianity came along.

But more to the point, the ancient Teutonic spring fertility celebrations cannot have had any effect on the timing of Easter, because the timing of Easter was determined independently and long before early Christians were exposed to such things. Accordingly, I think it's inaccurate and misleading to suggest that Easter was "dropped on top" of a Teutonic festival except coincidentally.
On the timing, I agree.

However, Easter certainly was "dropped on top" of other celebrations around the same time of year in the same way that many Christian celebrations displaced earlier traditions. A newly dominant religion can either try to eradicate all trace of earlier religious tradition, or else it can subsume them into its own rituals and pretend that they logically belong there. Thus we have things like "the Easter Bunny," eggs, ham, and baskets as symbolic of Easter -- none of which came from the original Christian prescriptions for the holiday.

While the Easter Bunny is more important to modern candy manufacturers, the eggs, baskets, etc. were pulled fully into the Christian Easter tradition in many cultures. In the multiethnic neighborhood I grew up in, for example, it was an annual tradition among Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, and Slovaks to bring an "Easter basket" to church to be blessed by the priest for the holiday. The baskets typically contained bread, a bottle of water (to bevome "holy" water), ham, candles, and hard-boiled, gaily colored eggs. The different churches did this at different times--some up to a week before Easter, ours did it the day before--but they all did it. I remember people old enough to be my grandparents talking abou t how their grandparents had done these things back in "the old country."

I agree that Easter wasn't timed to coincide with a particular European pagan festival, as Christmas may well have been, but it did "suck up" some of those festivals nonetheless, and I find it hard to believe that was an accident.

[GreyICE]

You're not being lied to; you're being corrected. Try to bear in mind that what's being corrected is your assertion that Romans "were so far in advance of the middle ages" and "had advances that would boggle the middle ages". Why China is particularly relevant to this is not clear. Anyhow, I will address your points, but it may be a little while before I can get round to it. Meanwhile, it's not clear to me why you chose to get bogged down in the one post - of the 5 I linked - that didn't provide extensive material from authoritative sources. I would suggest in the meantime that you consult the multiple scholarly quotations and citations I provided there, which are directly hostile to your thesis.

Well lets continue along the lines that we started on then, of the Roman empire not being sufficiently interested in science to result in advance. This doesn't seem to be borne out in practice. From the ruins of Pompeii, we see historical plumb bobs, compasses, and squares - tools of the trade for engineering.
http://www.imss.fi.it/pompei/tecnica/etecn2.html

They had discovered many of the principles of motion and deriving energy thereof - Waterwheels, pumps and valves, the actions of motions. From there, how far is it to imagine that they could have developed Windmills and Cam shafts? Not very far at all. After all, a Cam Shaft is merely an irregular axel that can produce lateral motion, and a windmill is a waterwheel done with wind. Moreover, consider the Roman's extreme openness to trade and idea sharing. Many of the inventions of the middle ages duplicated work done in China, or by the Arab nations. Rome's dedicated traders would have encountered these before the middle ages did, jump starting the technology. Consider that some took nine hundred years to migrate - would that have happened with the Roman empire? I would tend to doubt it.

The major advances in moving machinery came with refined metalworking. Indeed, the romans were generally deficient with moving machinery. However, this is more a restriction of technique and time than that of innovation. The waterwheel demonstrated movement in that direction, and they would have eventually hit the point where the metalworking was at the level to support it.

The Romans also valued hard work, like the Christians, although they valued philosophy too. The image of a soft empire is easy to hold, but they could be very cutthroat when it came to making money, and I doubt technological advance would have been held back.

In fact, the defining problem of the Middle ages wasn't the lack of invention (which was steadily occuring) it was the lack of communication. Inventions moved very, very slowly. The early middle ages was marked by the accomplishment of pretty much nothing in the European world. It wasn't until the urbanization of the high middle ages when anything got done. In fact, many of the inventions of the high middle ages may simply have been inventions of the early middle ages that very few people knew about beyond a select set - a problem that would never have occurred in a Roman setting.

One can see, in all of the Church's dealings, that they may have worshipped Christ, but their guiding light was the Roman Empire. They named their own state the holy Roman Empire, they moved the papacy to near Rome, they preserved Latin as the official language for an absurd length of time past the point where it was a common tongue, they in many ways venerated the Romans as much as they did the Bible.

Perhaps their legacy was that they kept the Roman legacy of trade alive, the Roman concept of higher learning, and thought alive. I'll grant them stewardship. But the concepts? Those were Roman, through and through. The origin of all those amazing ideas - trade, innovation, planned design, urbanization, schooling, those are all legacies of the Romans.

[A Christian Sceptic]

They had discovered many of the principles of motion and deriving energy thereof - Waterwheels, pumps and valves, the actions of motions. From there, how far is it to imagine that they could have developed Windmills and Cam shafts? Not very far at all.

According to my Roman History teacher in college, the Romans reliance on slavery caused them to only progress so far. Why invent a windmill and cam shafts when the slaves work just fine?

[The Grave]

In an endeavour to educate, I'm going to note some of the good things which come about through religion/s.

This one today caught my eye - Anglican women attacking family violence (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10498938). They have arranged an impressive speaking list of local heroes and I imagine the event will be well-attended. Whether it works or not is anyone's guess, but it's a bloody good target.

Note that the Anglican trust involved is interacting with 5000 Pacific families a year.

Anyone still doubting the fact that churchgoers live longer (http://longevity.about.com/od/longevityboosters/a/religion_life.htm)than non-churchgoers needs to wake up (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/05/990517064323.htm)as well.

I'm kicking this off as a result of dogdoctor's fundamental atheist thread for reasons which may or may not become apparent.

None!

[ceo_esq]

Ah, argument ad long listium.

That linked post wasn’t an argument as such by itself. It was part of a much longer thread discussion.


* crop rotation and strip cultivation
Sorry, we're looking for the Muslim Agricultural Revolution. As a plus, you win this spiffy goat.

Crop rotation also had some references in Romanic literature, but we'll stick to this one for now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Agricultural_Revolution

I’m afraid that if, as Wikipedia suggests, that the Muslim Agricultural Revolution commenced in the 8th century, then its crop rotation techniques do not predate the medieval European three-field system (which in any event is not the same system associated with the Muslim Agricultural Revolution).

Moreover, although the Romans may have practiced some simple crop alternation (a two-field system), three-field crop rotation is a medieval phenomenon. From Lynn White, Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford UP 1962) (footnotes omitted):

The three-field system of crop rotation has been called ‘the greatest agricultural novelty of the Middle Ages in Western Europe’ … the first secure indication of it being datable in 763. … There was nothing comparable to three-field rotation in Roman times. Pliny tells us that the people of Trier once sowed grain in March after their winter crop had been destroyed, but this is recounted as a most unusual episode, and there is no indication that it was repeated.


Professor White argues that triennial rotation is likely to have arisen from a marriage between different crop planting schedules in the Baltic-North Sea area (where, he notes, the most important “anticipations of the triennial rotation are found”) and those in Mediterranean Europe, as a result of medieval commingling of Teutonic and Latin cultures.

Cf. Edward Grant, God and Reason in the Middle Ages (Cambridge UP 2001); Sidney Pollard, Marginal Europe: The Contribution of Marginal Lands since the Middle Ages (Oxford UP 1997); Josef Konvitz, The Urban Millennium: The City-Building Process from the Early Middle Ages to the Present (Southern Illinois UP 1985); Michael Williams, “The History of Deforestation”, History Today, Vol. 51 (July 2001).


* heavy wheeled plow

Hmm, if you're refering to the heavy plough, I'd have to go with no again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plough

I was referring to the heavy wheeled mouldboard plough with coulter, typical of the medieval period. Certainly it was an advantage possessed by the medieval Europeans over their Roman forebears, which is the point. I do not happen to have at hand my most technical plough references, but my recollection is that the Chinese mouldboard plough was not wheeled, and coulter ploughs were rare there. Also, it’s questionable whether a plough of the medieval European sort is of especially great use without a padded horse collar (see discussion above). Of course, one would not necessarily expect regions with different soils, climates and so forth to develop and use all the same agricultural implements.


I'd be so much more concerned about citing Wikipedia if you cited any sources at all.

I did cite sources in that thread, just not in the brief summary post you picked out of that list of links.


* nailed horseshoes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe#History

Ooh, second century BC. That just hurts.

Take a closer look at that Wikipedia entry; the 2nd century BC evidence is not good at all. Moreover, since it certainly was not adopted on any noticeable scale prior to the Middle Ages, the notion of a 2nd century BC nailed horseshoe (even in the unlikely event it existed) is hardly useful to a comparison of Roman versus medieval society. At any rate, Professors Grant, White (though he entertains simultaneous Western, Byzantine and Siberian appearance) and Pollard agree that the nailed horseshoe is a medieval European innovation, as do Clifford Backman, The Worlds of Medieval Europe (Oxford UP 2003); A.C. Crombie, Augustine to Galileo: The History of Science, A.D. 400-1650 (Heinemann 1952); John Lienhard, The Engines of Our Ingenuity: An Engineer Looks at Technology and Culture (Oxford UP 2003); Henry Spiegel, The Growth of Economic Thought (Duke UP 1991) and Rodney Carlisle (Scientific American Inventions and Discoveries (Wiley 2004), among others.


* horse collar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_collar#History

Developed in China, during the 4th century BC. However, this one did spread to Europe in the 900s, so hell, that's almost like they invented it (except for the entire inventing bit).

The more pertinent question to the point is: did the ancient Romans use it? But at any rate, if you’re going to rely on Wikipedia – always an iffy proposition – you need to pay closer attention to what the entry actually says, which (in this case) is that the breast-strap harness (a predecessor to the horse collar) developed in China at that time. The appearance of the true horse collar in China is confidently noted much later in the 5th century AD according to Joseph Needham (the source for that Wikipedia article and a Sinologist I’ve quoted from time to time here). Some sources disagree even with that. In Europe, at any rate, Professor White points out the artistic depiction of the “modern” padded horse collar by 800. Needham and some other sources favor a theory of transmission from Asia to Europe, but evidence (apart from some inconclusive philological evidence) is lacking, and White also points out evidence of a process of gradual evolution in the technology that is indigenous to Europe, supporting the thesis that “the modern [i.e. medieval] harness was the product of a slow development in the Occident.”


* maritime compass navigation and the compass wheel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass

1044 for the first compass (in china), although it was around 1400 before anyone was steering with them. So that's after the middle ages.

That article says that the first Chinese reference to ship navigation by compass occurs before 1120; the oldest extant European reference dates to about 60 years later. So both Chinese and European mariners are using compass navigation in the 12th century. However, most evidence favors an independent development. (Even if it had been 1400, that still would fall in the Middle Ages, which is commonly held by historians to have lasted roughly until sometime between the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the Protestant Reformation beginning in 1517.) Moreover, Professor Needham acknowledges that it was industrious medieval Westerners who made the most rapid developments in this area, having developed shortly after 1300 the boxed dry-pivot navigational compass with compass-card, which the Chinese would eventually discover in the 16th century from Japanese pirates who learned it from the Europeans (Science and Civilization in China, Vol. IV:1 (Cambridge UP 1962)).


* sternpost rudder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudder#China

Ooh, China wins again. And the arabs had one in 985. But since the Europeans actually developed this one independently, we have to give them credit, if nothing else for being completely uncommunicative with the rest of the world. Go Middle Ages?

Funny how you draw from this the idea that the Europeans were “completely uncommunicative with the rest of the world”, which contradicts what you just said (likely incorrectly) about the horse collar. At any rate, you have again made a couple of mistakes here, probably due in part to reading the Wikipedia article too quickly, and in part to the fact that the Wikipedia article is not particularly detailed. First of all, the Chinese rudder referred to there was not a sternpost rudder, despite being a stern-mounted rudder. As Lawrence Mott notes in The Development of the Rudder: A Technological Tale (Texas A&M UP 1996):

The technology that eventually replaced the quarter rudder was the pintle-and-gudgeon system, so the use of that term is appropriate as well as accurate. The phrase [i]stern-mounted rudder is too broad. The Chinese for centuries used a rudder mounted on the stern, but they did not utilize pintles and gudgeons, and, in fact, their ships did not have a sternpost to which rudders could be attached. Moreover, the term could apply equally to a steering oar hung from the stern of a boat.

However, although I used the term sternpost rudder[i], even I may have been insufficiently specific (although I only used it in the context of a brief summary list), because Mott goes on to note that “The phrase [i]sternpost-mounted also has some limitations. Although it adequately describes where and to what the rudder is attached, it neglects the method of attachment.” Perhaps, to avoid misunderstanding, I should have referred to the innovation of the permanent sternpost-mounted pintle-and-gudgeon rudder.


In addition, even with regard to the venerable quarter rudder from Greco-Roman times, Mott notes:

One of the more dramatic changes in quarter-rudder technology during the medieval period was the adoption of the high-aspect-ratio, foil-shaped rudder. The shift to this rudder design represented a major departure from the Roman philosophy of using a balanced rudder. … [Medieval] changes in rudder shape and blade placement … represent a major breakthrough.

*****

* cannon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon#Early_history

Oops, China wins again.

Again, China is not part of this particular comparison between Roman society and medieval society. However, what I had in mind was the true metal-barreled field cannon, and it’s not at all clear that China achieved this first - and if it did, there appears to be little evidence that the Europeans did not arrive at the improvement on their own. Look at your own source: the Wikipedia article says that the the “first documented battlefield use of gunpowder artillery” in China took place in 1132, but the device was a huochong – which, its separate Wikipedia entry suggests is a forerunner to the cannon, being a bamboo tube projection firearm. The same entry indicates that metal versions began to be produced either in the late 13th or early 14th century; it further states:

The oldest metal huochong, which is seen by many as the first known cannon, is a bronze huochong which has an inscription dating back to 1298. This piece has no certain find context, however, and is therefore disputed in authenticity. The first certain bronze huochong comes from 1332.


Europeans were already using cannon by the seige of Metz in 1324, so upon closer examination Wikipedia is actually suggesting that these may have appeared in both Europe and China at virtually the same time. Indeed, some more recent Asian scholarship cautions against assigning Chinese cannonry an earlier date than European cannonry. From Sun Lai-Chen, “Military Technology Transfers from Ming China and the Emergence of Northern Mainland Southeast Asia, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 34 (2003):

Scholars have long asserted that the Yuan used metal-barrelled cannon in their invasions of Japan and Java in 1281 and 1293, but this was actually not the case. The weapon the Yuan armies employed in these campaigns, as well as the earlier war against Japan in 1274, was a counterweighted trebuchet hurling powerful explosive iron bomb-shells ... Archaeological finds suggest that true metal-barrelled hand-guns … did not appear until 1288; and the earliest metal-barrelled artillery, so far as we know, was made around the first half of the fourteenth century[.]

*****


* Looks like Europe didn't start beating China until AFTER the middle ages.

That doesn't seem to be the case; Professor White suggests that by "the late 13th century Europe had seized global scientific leadership."


*glass mirrors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror#History

Oof, 77 AD at the LATEST.

Going back over my sources, I’m not sure what I had in mind (I posted that a long time ago), since it definitely wasn’t the same kind of glass mirror available in antiquity. I wonder if I wasn’t thinking of cristallo use in mirrors or the improvements made to glass via the use of new additives in the later Middle Ages. Actually, on second thought, it is marginally possible that I made the mistake of relying on Wikipedia, whose entry on ”Medieval technology” ( http://wiki-trust.cse.ucsc.edu/index.php/Medieval_technology) reports the same thing. At any rate, lacking any further recollection of what I was reading at the time, I confess this is a mystery.


* hydraulic hammer
There is no such thing. There's water hammer, which is not what you're looking for, but there's no such animal as a hydraulic hammer.

There is indeed such a thing, I’m afraid, although a more common term for it is a trip hammer (see, e.g., P. Boissonnade, Life and Work in Medieval Europe (Keegan Paul 1927): “The use of the rolling-mill and the hydraulic hammer transformed the operations of rolling and hammering, and facilitated metal working”). Although we’re really supposed to be contrasting classical Roman versus medieval society, I feel relatively confident that you’ll nonetheless object that a primitive water-powered trip hammer had appeared in China by at least the 2nd century, if not earlier. However, that wasn’t really the point as it relates to medieval inventiveness; Professor White notes that “despite the … potential usefulness [of water-powered machinery] … neither Rome nor China showed imagination in its application to industrial processes.” By the late 900s, trip hammers were being used in European metal forges, fulling mills and other applications, I can find no earlier references to these machines being used – particularly on anything like a widespread basis – to do anything much besides husking rice or grinding other plant material (though I do find references to them being adapted to such uses in later medieval China).


* sandglass
Another winner (although it might be cruel to note that a sand clock and a water clock are really very similar principles).

I’ll grant you that, although to give credit to whoever invented the sand clock, it’s an improvement in a few respects: it doesn’t freeze, won’t spill over, and the rate of flow doesn’t vary as much depending on how full the reservoir is.


* scientific human dissection
Ooh, no. The Greeks did this first, and the Arabs did this systemically. Just not even close.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissection#History

That for a very brief time in the city of Alexandria human dissection (and vivisection, if rumors are to be believed) was practiced doesn’t really undermine my point here (particularly as it relates to Roman society), nor does it detract from the great achievement that the adoption of the medieval practice represented. In fact, the extremely isolated character of the Alexandrian practice in the ancient world only serves to emphasize this. As Professor Grant notes (footnotes omitted):

[T]he rational character of medieval medicine and of European society as a whole is nowhere better exemplified than in the acceptance of human dissection in postmortems to determine the cause of death. This occurred in Italy in the late thirteenth century, in a way that is little understood. But the practice soon became established. … Shortly after the beginning of postmortems, the dissection of humans was introduced into medical schools where it became institutionalized for the teaching of anatomy. This is no minor achievement. Most societies forbade cutting the dead human body. Except for Egypt, human dissection had been forbidden in the ancient world. By the second century A. D., it was also forbidden in Egypt. It was never allowed in the Islamic world. … the integration of human dissection as a normal part of a medical education was of monumental importance. Without the firm beginnings in human dissection initiated in the Middle Ages, the significant progress that was to come from the great anatomists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ... could not have occurred. That a European, Christian society overcame the longstanding fear of, and deep hostility to, human dissection is a tribute to the rational character of medieval medicine and to those unknown individuals who made it possible.


As for the alleged “systematic” practice of scientific human dissection in the Islamic world, I refer to Tony Huff’s The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West (Cambridge UP, 2nd ed. 2003) (footnotes omitted):

[W]hat kind of anatomical knowledge did Europeans have, and what was their medical practice at this time – the twelfth and thirteenth centuries? What kind of anatomical knowledge did medieval Europeans have in the era of Ibn al-Nafis [often regarded as the greatest of medieval Islamic anatomists, who lived from 1213-1288]?

Current scholarship reveals that Europeans had considerable knowledge of human anatomy, not just that based on Galen and his animal dissections. For the Europeans had performed significant numbers of human dissections, especially postmortem autopsies, during this era. The years 1200-1350 have been labeled the great period of hospital creation in Europe, and … this coincided with the establishment of medical faculties and medical training in universities.

By the thirteenth century postmortem examinations to determine causes of death were well established. Perhaps more importantly, one could say that the Europeans, unlike the Muslims, had in fact launched a program of empirical enquiry into the constitution of the human body, and part of the inquiry necessitated dissecting human bodies. Conversely, postmortem examinations for forensic purposes in the Islamic world were said to be “strictly forbidden.”

At the end of the thirteenth century, European medical specialists … were using the practice of dissection to train students. These public dissections were carried out in a formal and solemn way, with religious and public authorities in attendance, along with the presiding physician dressed in academic robes. Very soon thereafter, textbooks of human anatomy, based on dissection, were in circulation. …

In short, by the thirteenth century there was no major ideological resistance to the performing of human dissections in Europe. At the time of Ibn al-Nafis, European anatomists were practicing dissections on the pig and also the human body. Consequently, they had a considerable stock of empirical knowledge about human anatomy that was not available in the Arab-Muslim world. Inspired by the pursuit of scientific knowledge, European physicians engaged in a number of practices that would have been forbidden in a Muslim context. These included (1) the dissection of human bodies, (2) the dissection of a pig, (3) the performance of the operation in a public forum, and (4) the publication of richly detailed drawings of the human anatomy[.] … In addition, Middle Eastern medical education of the time was still based mainly on the memorization of authoritative texts. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a very select few medical students [in the Islamic world] were able to apprentice in hospitals, … but so far as we know, this experience did not include being witness to or performing human dissections.


A more extended quotation from Professor Huff, together with some revealing visual aids, may be found in this post (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=3398305#post3398305).


* numerous advances in building (and shipbuilding) techniques
Oddly I didn't find a single reference to the Middle ages here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipbuilding

I wonder why...
Wikipedia is what it is, I suppose. We’ve already discussed the pintle-and-gudgeon rudder and the improved medieval quarter-rudder. Yet that’s hardly all. As Richard Unger puts it in “Warships and Cargo Ships in Medieval Europe”, Technology and Culture, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Apr. 1981): “Throughout the middle ages technical improvements made by shipbuilders … [were] often incorporated into ships. … Medieval shipbuilders were far from being primitives doing just as their fathers had done before them.” One sees improvements ranting from greater efficiency in specialization and differentiation of hull design to developments in complex rigging. The adoption of frame-first design and Mediterranean moulding is generally taken to be a significant medieval European innovation which permitted “virtual industrialization of ship-building”. Graeme Barker, Companion Encyclopedia of Archaeology (Routledge 1999). Cf. Maurice Keen, Medieval Warfare: A History (Oxford UP 1999); Susan Rose, Medieval Naval Warfare, 1000-1500 (Routledge 2002); McGrail et al., Boats of South Asia (RoutledgeCurzon 2003); John Humphrey et al., Greek and Roman Technology: A Sourcebook (Routledge 1998).

I’m afraid this post has dragged on far, far longer than I intended, so I will cut it short for now, for which I apologize - I was simply trying to do justice to your post. In a subsequent post I hope to address some more general observations regarding whether the characterization of the medieval era as one of great progress and industry is justified.

[Olowkow]

state counterbalance -- in groups where the state leader is different from the church's, the church provides another source of moral sanction; esp. when the leader of the state or the law that constrains it is immoral.



Somehow in the US, this does not seem to have worked out very well in the case of the Bushies and their moral backers.

[blobru]

Somehow in the US, this does not seem to have worked out very well in the case of the Bushies and their moral backers.

No. :)

But then the church in the abstract is not necessarily the opposite of the state, just separate. In the US, there are many churches, and, as you say, Bush identifies himself with the interests and morals of a fairly large segment.

Maybe the best example of a counterbalancing moral sanction right now in the US is conscientious objector (http://www.scn.org/ip/sdmcc/co.htm)s. Section 6(j) of the Military Selective Service Act says that no person "who by religious training and belief is conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form" can be required to kill or train to kill in the military. So, if your religion says all war is evil, or your church condemns a particular war, you can apply for conscientious objector status. (You can also object on other grounds but my limited understanding is religion is the most secure).

{I don't have data for the current war, but in the first Gulf War, according to the Center on Conscience and War (http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=17584), 111 soldiers were granted CO status (and 2500 imprisoned for applying! -- not sure how reliable that estimate is). The most famous conscientious objector in recent times is of course Muhammad Ali, who was banned from boxing, though not imprisoned, for 3 years for refusing to fight in Vietnam as a Black Muslim.}

[ceo_esq]

Mate, of all the posters in this joint, ceo_esq is one of the few who is always worth listening to, and listening most carefully.

I thank you for, and return, the compliment.


Capitalism was well established before christianity as were science, medicine and freedom, no matter how some author might twist the facts to appear otherwise.

Inevitably this sort of thing is going to depend on what one considers to constitute capitalism, science, etc.

I've been meaning to follow up on one of these items. As far as capitalism is concerned, the thesis that the birth of capitalism occurred in the Middle Ages - and even that religion played a significant contributing role - is not that uncommon among historians and sociologists of economics, so while there's certainly much room for debate and disagreement, Professor Stark's argument doesn't occupy the lunatic fringe of academia. Primarily for my own edification, I identified a number of authorities who have had something to say about the medieval origins of capitalism, which I share here (footnotes omitted in each case).

From Randall Collins, Weberian Sociological Theory (Cambridge UP 1986):

t can be seen that the [i]institutional preconditions for capitalism fell into place for the first time in the High Middle Ages. And not only the institutional preconditions but a version of the developed characteristics of capitalism itself can also be found then. … [T]here are a number of features of medieval Europe that set it off from the economies of other agrarian and feudal societies. First, there was the growth of rationalized technology in this period. … Rationalized technology of this sort, however, is not a precondition for capitalism, but tends to go along with the economic boom itself. Weber pointed out that industrial technology is of little value if it cannot be used for mass production, and that requires the regularized provision on a large scale of the factors of production, as well as markets on which mass products can be regularly disposed of. The medieval boom in technology thus implies a larger institutional transformation. …

And in fact the other institutional features of capitalism were being put into place. The crucial preconditions include the bureaucratized state, a rationalized legal system, and citizenship rights. The significance of the Middle Ages for the last is in little dispute. Modern autonomies and corporate privileges of self-government under enacted law derive from the chartered cities of medieval Europe. … At the same time, these citizenship elements were scattered on the medieval scene; together with some of the contractual elements of feudalism, they provided the seedbed for later developments of universal citizenship, but only after massive political revolutions of later centuries widened their application. The point I would like to stress, though, is that the institutional preconditions for capitalism were developed in medieval Europe, not so much in the wider society as in one specialized part of it, the Church. … [W]hat is most important from our viewpoint is the fact that Europe had a bureaucratized government that nevertheless had just the right degree of organizational decentralization within it to foster Weber’s institutional preconditions for capitalism. … The reformed Papacy was uniquely qualified to promote these. Indeed, if we except some tendencies in the late Roman Empire, it was the first true bureaucracy to exist in the West. …

In accordance with Weber’s model, the bureaucratic Papacy provided the regularization of public law and order that was necessary for any extensive economic activities. To be sure, the Church was not completely successful in this. But it is no coincidence that the height of economic boom within [medieval] Europe was in the very centuries (1100-1300) when the Papacy was at the height of its power[.]


Professor Collins goes on to discuss the origins of modern corporate law (that's part of my field, and I agree) in the canon law of the Catholic Church, the significance of monasteries as economic entrepreneurs, and various other matters, concluding that “the rise of medieval Christendom was the main Weberian revolution”.

From Jean Favier, Gold and Spices: The Rise of Commerce in the Middle Ages (Holmes & Meier 1998):

One could argue endlessly about the use of the word capitalism by the historian of the Middle Ages. … We should be clear about one thing: medieval capitalism resembles only very slightly the system of wealth production analyzed in the last century, for an industrialized society, by Karl Marx. Here, as elsewhere, we should not be misled by words: the reality that they conceal is always related to a particular time. Ancient Athenian democracy has nothing to do with the America viewed by de Tocqueville, any more than the Roman dictatorships have with those of our century. Capitalism in the thirteenth or fourteenth century is clearly not that of the industrial era.

And yet, by separating the functions of an enterprise and drawing the nonproductive classes into a personal involvement in business, the medieval businessman had, nevertheless, helped the economic world over a particular hurdle — that of the limitations to freedom of action imposed by the individual operating alone. The name we give to this process — medieval capitalism, the birth of capitalism, or the origins of capitalism — is unimportant. Circumlocutions are simply preliminary precautions, not something to fight over. The important thing is that we accept that the epoch of the Tuscan companies is not that of the great industries of the Ruhr; the first is a distant anticipation of the second.

Technical industrial progress, it is clear, would not have led to much had there not been a similar development of the intellectual tools by means of which the businessman was able to manage markets as well as his own affairs, devise operational structures and analyze the management of his enterprise, and observe and measure fluctuations in the economy. In order to make choices and gamble on the chances of the morrow — from peddler to businessman, tradesman to banker, from the eleventh to the fifteenth century — the world of trade had to perfect systems for dealing with rates of exchange and payment for transactions and services rendered. In order to progress, it had to establish procedures for obtaining credit suited to the times and, particularly, to the requirements of moral theology and canon law. Legal bases for these enterprises had to be created appropriate to the needs of trade, not to the needs of the feudal lords and the rural economy from which most of the nobility's income was derived. Last, in order to transact their commercial and banking activities, businessmen had to invent a method for both continual monitoring and final balancing of their accounts.

The techniques born as a result of these needs, engendered in their turn by growth, would be those of our modern system of economic relations. The last three centuries of the Middle Ages introduce not only the notion of monetary transfer but also trade in commercial bills and letters of exchange — in other words, paper money and financial credit.


From James Westfall Thompson, Economic and Social History of Europe in the Later Middle Ages (1300-1530) (Century 1931):

Towns, trade, and capitalism emerged together in [medieval] Europe. Merchandising, manufacturing, banking, business technique, credit – all are of urban origin. Then capital came to have a new sense; it was a value hatching a new value, or as Karl Marx put it, "Mehrwert heckenden Wert." Instead of being immobile, as formerly, wealth became fluid, mobile. Money became, so to speak, a means of production. Production was considered in terms of value in money as a means of gaining greater values. Services were no longer required of vassals and serfs, but were converted into money payments. Hired labor paid better than forced labor. Free workmen were found more productive than servile workmen. Business contracts replaced the old feudal and manorial ties. Monetized urban rents multiplied. "The continuous increase of the burghal population enriches them more and more. ... In proportion as the wealth of the towns increases ... they take up more and more an industrial character, the rural artisans flocking into them en masse and deserting the country." The towns became commercial and industrial centers, the greatest of them having international commercial relations.

Italy was the earliest country in Europe in which a capitalistic régime and a capitalistic society appeared. … [T]he origin and genesis of capitalism is to be found as far back as the first century of the Crusades, and in the case of Italy the elements of it may be discerned as early as the eleventh century.


From Oliver Cox, The Foundations of Capitalism (Philosophical Library 1959):

[T]his great cultural development [of medieval capitalism] did not begin by adopting the features of ancient Mediterranean civilization. It was something essentially new, worthy of being called an invention – in fact, an innovation in contravention to existing models. This point has been properly emphasized by such perceptive economic historians as Werner Sombart and James Westfall Thompson.


From Peter Stearns, The Face of Europe (Forum Press 1977):

Medieval economic development, while just as vital as political development, is harder to capture than politics, although it did produce a few key institutions. ... The Middle Ages saw the western birth of capitalism, a money economy … and the corporation.