Shedding Light on the Dark Ages
I have previously written on the propaganda campaign by European Materialists called the Enlightment. All the talk of the 'Dark Ages' was a load of rubbih spread by people who wanted to denigrate Christianity. Religious sociologist, Rodney Stark has another book coming out on the topic and World Magazine has an interview with him that is well worth checking out. Some of the best stuff

STARK: The other great faiths either taught that the world is locked in endless cycles or that it is inevitably declining from a previous Golden Age. Only Christians believed that God's gift of reason made progress inevitable—theological as well as technical progress.

STARK: The Dark Ages have finally been recognized as a hoax perpetrated by anti-religious and bitterly anti-Catholic, 18th-century intellectuals who were determined to assert their cultural superiority and who boosted their claim by denigrating the Christian past...In the past few years even encyclopedias and dictionaries have begun to acknowledge that it was all a lie, that the Dark Ages never were. This always should have been obvious since by the end of the so-called Dark Ages, European science and technology had far exceeded that of Rome and Greece, and all the rest of the world, for that matter.

WORLD: Could you be specific? What were some of the "Dark Ages" innovations that show the folly of considering Greek and Roman culture the apex of civilization until recent times?

STARK: How about the perfection and widespread use of waterwheels, windmills, and pumps, the invention of the compass, stirrups, the crossbow, canons, effective horse harnesses, eyeglasses, clocks, chimneys, violins, double-entry bookkeeping, and insurance? This list doesn't begin to do justice to this era that historians of science now refer to as an age of remarkable innovation and discovery.

So the 'Dark Ages' actually saw a huge amount of innovation and discovery due to the Christian worldview. Of course, in 50 years time, I predict that Atheists will still be pushing the Dark Ages lie.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Thursday, December 08, 2005