hahaha Bush says he doesn't believe in the Bible, does believe in evolution

http://lib-sh.lsuhsc.edu/fammed/grounds/history.html

MEDICINE IN THE DARK AGES (400-800 A.D.)

From the 2nd and the 4th centuries A.D., Roman territory declined and finally failed altogether. During this time of hunger, pestilence and war, there were few places scholars could go and feel safe. There was also a need for a place where the sick and wounded could go to seek solace. The one institution left that had the power to offer and assure asylum to these people was the Church of Rome.

Literary medicine found a haven in the churches and cloisters. Here information survived and records could be kept. Unfortunately, the monks were known as "practical men". They felt that natural law governed all of a man's life. Therefore, why should they worry about medical theories? They instead worried about practical matters of healing and tending. What worked was simply repeated. This put an end to medical learning and experimentation. It also opened the door for false treatments like charms and amulets. Once one "worked", it was used thereafter. And with all the decay of intellect around them, they of course looked to the greatest teachers of the past for any instruction they needed. Thus Galen's ideas on medicine became the foundation of medical knowledge.

There was another reason why the medical practices of the Dark Ages were centered in the monasteries. They were where the hospitals were. During the Dark Ages, lists of medical herbs were kept by the monks in the monastery. Persons needing medical help would go to these monks. St. Benedict (born 480 A.D.) encouraged monastic medicine at the hospice he founded at Montecassino. Cassiodorus (490-585?) encouraged monks in his monasteries to study medicine. He encouraged the teaching of herbs and medication but also fostered the bonds of Christian thought to its Greeco-Roman predecessor. He reemphasized the study of Hippocrates, Galen, and others. This seed of learning grew well over the next several centuries, Montecassino continued to foster medical education and grew to be renowned for its medical advances. This enlightenment set the stage for futher advancement as the early middle Ages dawned upon the world.

 

Montezuma ring a bell?

They didn't trade, they murdered the natives by the millions and destroyed entire civilizations in the process.

 

I'm not sure this line of argument is very sound. You could make similar arguments about slavery, wars, the plague, etc.

Just because history happened in a particular way doesn't mean that any particular historical events were necessary or desirable.

barfo

 

The facts are the facts.

The pilgrims and others, like Lord Baltimore, were willing to risk the crossing of the atlantic in rather small wooden boats to go to a place that had no roads or sewers or churches or organized (european style) society of any kind.

Unless you can find anyone who came here from Europe around the same time for any other reason. Of course, a hundred-plus years later, the territory had been scouted and european corporations got into the new world to make a buck.

 

Seriously, global warming... er cooling... er industrial revolution ... er...

Well, it got really cold for a few centuries back then and people basically starved and froze to death. Likely more to do with putting the freeze on human advancement. If you have 100% of the people foraging for food and 1/3 of those dying anyway, you're not going to have much free time to sit on your ass and think about planetary motion.

Once it did warm up, we had the free time to do those sorts of things, and it was people like Mendel and Newton who were among the leaders of the age of enlightenment.

Meanwhile, in England, the industrial revolution:

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

Another theory is that the British advance was due to the presence of an entrepreneurial class which believed in progress, technology and hard work.<sup id="cite_ref-27" class="reference">[28]</sup> The existence of this class is often linked to the Protestant work ethic (see Max Weber) and the particular status of the Baptists and the dissenting Protestant sects, such as the Quakers and Presbyterians that had flourished with the English Civil War. Reinforcement of confidence in the rule of law, which followed establishment of the prototype of constitutional monarchy in Britain in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the emergence of a stable financial market there based on the management of the national debt by the Bank of England, contributed to the capacity for, and interest in, private financial investment in industrial ventures.

 

The pilgrims converted the natives to christianity, they didn't go about mass murdering them.

Somehow you're argument isn't strong when it's the national armies of the Spanish who were out doing all the killing for king/queen and country. (e.g. not the church)

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

Columbus was made governor of the new territories and made several more journeys across the Atlantic Ocean. He profited from the labour of native slaves, whom he forced to mine gold; he also attempted to sell some slaves to Spain.<sup class="noprint Template-Fact">[citation needed]</sup> While generally regarded as an excellent navigator, he was a poor administrator and was stripped of the governorship in 1500.<sup class="noprint Template-Fact">[citation needed]</sup><sup class="noprint Template-Fact">
</sup>
On his immediate discovery of the Ta�*no people (one of three local Arawak-speaking indigenous groups), whom he met right after arriving on the island of Guanahani in the Bahamas on his first voyage, Columbus got the impression that he could conquer these people easily. In his journal he wrote, "I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men and govern them as I please" - and he proceeded to do just that.

He kidnapped some ten to twenty-five Indians and took them back to Spain. Only about seven or eight survived this journey but with the parrots, gold trinkets and other exotic loot Columbus displayed to the Spanish government he was able to persuade them into providing him with seventeen ships, nearly 1,500 men, cannons, crossbows, guns, cavalry, and attack dogs for the voyage.

He returned to Hispaniola and the Ta�*no (Arawaks) in 1493 demanding food, gold, spun cotton and whatever else they could get from the Indians. Cooperation was ensured by a punishment system: any minor offense by an Arawak would result in a Spaniard cutting off his ears or nose only to be sent back to the village as living, breathing, bleeding example of the work expected and the brutality the Spaniards were capable of.

The Tainos began to resist by refusing to plant for the Spanish, abandoning captured towns, etc. but over time this rebellion grew physically violent. Nonetheless, the Indian "sticks and stones" were no match to the guns and harmless to the armor the Spanish wore. Columbus used this resistance by the Indians as a reason to wage war and on March 24, 1495 the famed explorer set out to conquer this race that he had labeled "inferior" and "stupid."<sup class="noprint Template-Fact">[citation needed]</sup>

Naturally, the Spanish won and according to Kirkpatrick Sale, who quotes Ferdinand Columbus's biography of his father: "The soldiers mowed down dozens with point-blank volleys, loosed the dogs to rip open limbs and bellies, chased fleeing Indians into the bush to skewer them on sword and pike and 'with God's aid soon gained complete victory, killing many Indians and capturing others who were also killed.'"<sup class="noprint Template-Fact">[citation needed]</sup>

This led to a massive Spanish slave trade, in which Columbus brought back some 500 "specimens" to work as slaves in Spain while another 500 stayed as slaves for the crew left in the Americas.

Still, Columbus could not find the gold he was looking for all along. And refusing to call it slavery, Columbus resorted to this "forced labor". Indians were forced to mine for gold, raise Spanish food, provide sexual companionship, and even carry the Spanish everywhere they went. And beyond these cruel acts the Spanish disrupted the culture. Forcing the Ta�*no to work in mines led to widespread malnutrition and furthermore, an intrusion of European livestock and diseases caused further damage.<sup class="noprint Template-Fact">[citation needed]</sup>

The Ta�*no often refused to participate in the new lifestyle being forced upon them by the Spanish which resulted in suicide. In addition, children were often killed as a perceived escape from a terrible life to come.<sup class="noprint Template-Fact">[citation needed]</sup>

Before Columbus's arrival, hundreds of thousands of people populated Hispaniola alone. By 1509, only 60,000 Ta�*no remained there. Although population estimates vary, Father Bartolomé de las Casas, the “Defender of the Indians” estimated that there were six million (6,000,000) Ta�*no in the Caribbean at the time of Columbus's arrival in 1492.

 

As for Montezuma:

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

Montezuma, Moctezuma, Moteczoma, Motecuhzoma, Moteuczomah, are variant spellings and may refer to:

People

• Moctezuma I (c.1398-1469), the fifth Aztec emperor
• Moctezuma II (1466-1520), the ninth Aztec emperor, ruler at the beginning of the Spanish conquest of Mexico

 

Agreed. But the fact that it happened that way doesn't make religion a necessary factor any more than it makes those funny 3 corner hats they wore a necessary factor.

Sooner or later, someone was bound to colonize the New World. Religion caused that particular group to go after it first. But if they hadn't, someone else probably would have.

The Mormons colonized Utah. If not for the Mormon church, would Utah still be Indian territory today?

barfo

 

Ok. I missed that it was a response to some other argument, I guess, but it was an illogical counterargument nonetheless. If Johnny jumped off a cliff would you jump off a cliff too?

I've started forwarding all my posts to the FBI so that you don't have to.

barfo

 

Down at the Dairy Queen, I imagine.

barfo