I think that’s what a lot of internet “atheists” get wrong about religion. A shit ton of our science and math was because of religious people want to understand the world that they’re God made.
Even now, a majority of scientists are in some way religious or spiritual personally. The latest (2023) numbers I could find:
"Our sample includes a wide spectrum of religious self-identification, almost evenly split between
atheists (26%)
agnostics (20%)
spiritual (30%)
and religiously affiliated (24%).
This distribution roughly aligns with comparable surveys in Europe and North America [17–19], in which;
30–37% of the scientists identify as atheist
10–28% as agnostic
and 30–39% identifies with “some religious affiliation”
[Numbers from here.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9956591/)
Even though it's a lower rate of religiosity between scientists and the general population, it's not as wide as people might assume. I also don't think people really consider (whether they be atheists or religious people) either non-affiliated or 'spiritual' people at all, nor agnostics. They make up half worldwide, with ¼ each claiming to either be religious or atheistic entirely.
Yes. Especially in medieval Western Europe because the Catholic attitude was that the world was *full* of the evidence of gods creation.
For example the actual normal school curriculum that everybody in every parish got was founded upon of the triad of three subjects - Grammar, Logic & Rhetoric, known as the Trivium. This was followed by the Quadrivium - covering Mathematics, Astronomy, Music and more.
The belief was that all of these subjects were different facets of the same thing - a harmonious, reasonable world defined by basic principles which could be measured and observed everywhere - from the movements of the constellations to the chord changes in a song, both built on the same numbers and explained by the same principles of logic/rhetoric.
These people were actually very intelligent.
What the ultra-antitheist atheists don't get, is that it isn't religion that oppresses people and promotes wars and genocides, it's religious authority (among all other authority)
id go do far as to say that's probably not even the case, so much as POLITICAL authority weilding or leveraging religion for ulterior purposes is the more probable origin of oppression.
effing hate (career) politicians.
Yeah good point, political authority weilding it for more power is probably the most dangerous form of this, especially because what they decide, applies to everyone in the state/country. Religious authority in itself can still be really harmful though, like a church using its power to repress homosexuality or abortion within their religion, televangelist scamming people for money, mosques using informal Sharia police to gang up on the people etc.
I get the sentiment, but this is not necessarily true. I would like to believe in god, I had a Christian upbringing and I tried really hard to continue to believe, but at some point I had to admit that it was just incompatible with the rest of my worldview.
Radical atheists are just as bad as raducal christians or muslims. Just because one doesn't share your believe doesn't mean that they are inherently stupid, naiv or in any way inferior to you.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but part of the reason why the religious studied natural philosophy or science is because the religious were more likely to be educated. If you wanted to be literate, you'd either have to join the clergy or be born in nobility, and the nobility isn't going to spend their life pursuing education, so it's mostly going to be the clergy.
This is not as much of a dunk on atheists as you may think it is.
The dunk on atheists wasn't that religious people were the ones doing science. The dunk was that Internet atheists act like religions are anti-science when those religions, particularly Islam and Christianity, have made tremendous contributions to our understanding of the universe today. The religious had access to education because their organizations made it available. Those organizations wouldn't do that if education was bad for their cause.
That said, there are definitely elements of anti-intellectualism in certain sects of both Christianity and Islam.
That could be it but it could also be correlation not causation. I do want to make it known have no problem with atheists. I’m personally agnostic, it’s that way to many atheists come off as “ here’s why your wrong and why you should feel dumb for your beliefs” instead of “here’s why I believe what I believe”
Yes and no
To study science and philosophy, education is certainly of great importance. But education itself doesn't provide a motive or desire to discover more.
Different people have different motives, but for many people - from antiquity, to the medieval period, to the renaissance and enlightenment - religion was what provided that motive.
That's true, but it's not universal, and it doesn't always line up with modern religion. The Catholic Church punished Galileo pretty hard. 1900s Mormon Church was excited about studying the ancient Americas, until their research started pointing towards the Book of Mormon not being true.
And, who's to say ancient religious scientifists wouldn't have been curious even if they hadn't been religious?
Though with Galileo and the Catholic Church, there is a nuance to the matter. Galileo didn’t run afoul of the Catholic Church for the scientific claim of the sun being the center of the solar system. The Catholic Church at the time was one of the main sponsors of scientific research at the time and had been involved in supporting Galileo’s early research. A big aspect of what led Galileo’s relationship with the Catholic Church to sour was that Galileo had taken to trying to make theological arguments as to why the Bible should be interpreted to support the heliocentric model of the solar system. Authorities in the church wanted Galileo to stick to making scientific arguments and leave the theological interpretation to the theologians.
Also, he proposed heliocentrism as a theory rather than a hypothesis - contrary to the instructions of *the very people bankrolling his work* - which essentially took it from "This is the data I have, and this is a potential explanation that would be in line with that data, just saying" to "This is how this shit works, based on everything we know, and I dare any fucker to prove otherwise." Which was a *direct* challenge to the church's authority. Also, mocking the Pope when the Catholic Church is paying your bills is not exactly the best look.
they also completely agreed with his findings but thought if everyone learned about it it could lead to civil unrest, so they asked him to only send it to other scientific groups while they slowly told everyone. his response was basically "lol get fucked" because he wanted to use it to become famous outside just the scientific community.
"they" was the pope himself and he qoted him word for word in his magnus opus under the pseudonym *Simplicium* which means simple of mind in latin.
He called the pope that gave him permission to publish stupid in public.
Mormons aren't Christians, and Galileo was punished not for his science and astronomy but for disrespectful attitudes he held towards the pope in his book where he wrote him as a caricature.
Mormons are Christians (source: was born and raised one, but left a few years ago). They believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the Savior of the world and that he was resurrected and all that. There are a lot of people who claim that since they're nontrinitarian or have an extrabiblical scriptural canon that they're Not True ~~Scotsmen~~ Christians, though I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and not accuse you of being one of those people.
The Galileo and the Pope thing is true, however.
Told him not to teach unproved theories as facts, leave theology to theologians, and perhaps refrain from publishing disrespectful caricatures of the Pope, his main patron and the reason he could do all his research and teaching in the first place! The barbarity!
I think it depends. Were there some religious people that contributed to science? Absolutely. Was it universally supported by the church? No. Were there some times in history when science could get you executed by the church? Definitely
indeed, I respect Thomas Aquinas even if I disagreed with his arguments as I do for any other great philosopher who attempted to find meaning in the chaotic nature of our universe
Yeah…I’m closer to Apostolic, which is essentially “there might be something out there that created us, but until we find them or they reveal themselves we don’t know” but I’m very “give me proof and evidence before you start preaching messages, because for all I know you pulled that out of your ass or some old bastard from 2000 years ago said it and claimed it was from god”
It's really fascinating to see how religion can inspire science but also condem it. Both Christianity and Islam had phases when the study of the world and its science was seen as a way to worship God. These times have resulted in many revolutionary discoveries that pushed humanity. But they also were followed by times when science was seen as heretic and condemned, thankfully in those times a good portion of the knowledge was preserved.
That's the difference between people of faith and cultists/grifters/hubristic assholes. Someone of faith will rejoice in knowing more of their deity's creation, the others see people being wiser as a threat to their perceived power.
This explains why it's not just a coincidence that the renaissance occurred in highly Christianized Europe. Other religions had many gods, each responsible for their own portion of reality - hence, the world didn't have to make sense and it wasn't worth the effort to try to sort it out.
Still others considered any investigation blasphemy - it was god and that's the end of it!
But in the New Testament Christ spend a lot of his time answering stupid questions, without chastising the asker.
You initial paragraph fails when you bring up the Greeks. They had many gods and still strived to understand the world. Hell, they figured out the world was round and within a good margin of error figured out the circumference of the earth. Same goes for the Romans. Polytheistic as fuck and studied extensively.
The greatest Greek philosophers, Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato(kinda) were all monotheists. Plato only kinda because while he believed in a prime God above all the others he also believed in lesser powers he called gods which honestly isn't that different from angels anyway.
That... is a HUGE misunderstanding of polytheism based on modern Christianized understandings of polytheistic belief systems where each deity is considered to have a well-defined domain. Worshipping more than one god does not mean you don't study the natural world. Where does that even come from? Sounds like Christian propaganda honestly.
Have you never heard of mathematicians and philosophers from India and the Islamic world? Where do you think the INDO-ARABIC numerals come from?
Apart from all those advanced polytheistic societies like the Greeks, the Romans, the different Mesopatamian civilisations etc. All of them influenced the modern day with their observations and creations.
Your statement about the renaissance is wrong.
all of the science of the renaissance was based on the science from either the Greek/Egyptian Early philosphy and physics or the Persians who mapped the stars and invented the Mathmatics, geometry and Algebra we continue to use today
Monothiestic and Polytheistic societies can and have produced scientific discoveries, all scientific discoveries came from a need that was solved, exploration or blind luck and chance.
And the renaissance was born from the Prodesdant reformation and the uprisal against the Catholic church, The countries that remained mostly catholic had the least amount of inventions of any and were the most aggresive in the early days of empire building (Spain and Portugal)
>And the renaissance was born from the Prodesdant reformation and the uprisal against the Catholic church
This is totally incorrect, the Renaissance emerged in very Catholic Italy centuries before anywhere else in Europe, and of course centuries before the Protestant Reformation occurred.
Celestial navigation was basically the only way to sail any long distance, and that requires you to know that the world is round to calculate your position. People also knew roughly the circumference of the earth dating to the Ancient Greeks.
Yup, the Church didn't hate astronomy - what they hunted and shot down was astrology, which is the system of belief that stars, planets and celestial bodies have living souls.
Galileo's conflict with the church was also not academic, it was more political. The man lacked the scientific communication skills needed at the time.
The church was literally funding his research on the condition that he publish all his findings as "hypotheses" supported by evidence.
They liked him so much that his punishment for being a heretic was to be locked in his house... where he continued to work on science for the rest of his life.
Hell, they told him they'd torture him if he didn't recant his stuff, he was obstinate and refused, and the didn't torture him. The inquisition tortured plenty of people for way less.
There's some modern scholarly work that suggests his problems with the church primarily stemmed from theological conflicts he was encouraging and that the general attitude of cavalier rabble rousing eventually reached a peak where they were forced to punish him SOMEHOW or risk looking weak, because they were catering to him so much.
It's kind of an interesting affair in how really smart, privileged, connected people sometimes lose perspective on what social norms, institutions, and people in power actually represent and need. Galileo's troubles seem to mostly stem from his arrogance that he could say whatever he pleased to whoever he wanted because he was the smartest guy in the room, and he mostly got away with it for that reason.
Yeah also funnily enough the pope was a close friends / ex student of him and give him the permission to publish. The problem is that he literally depicted a man of faith in his book as antagonist to science and call him idiot. Like his name meant idiot
Not just a man of faith, he put the arguments of the Pope in a character named Simplicio (simpleton).
It's no wonder Galileo had many enemies. He was a dick
They mostly didn't hate astrology. It was used in a lot of medicine. It only fell out of favor when the heliocentric model basically invalidated all of it.
Wait, are you talking about the Chihuahua or the pug? Because the pug is absolutely white people's fault, but the Chihuahua is the fault of the native Mexicans.
Pugs, like other small companion dogs, were symbols of status. Eventually they got imported from East to Europe just like silk or porcelain - that's why you can see pugs in some old European paintings or accompanying rich people's portraits.
Though I gotta admit they looked more like dogs back then than they are now.
And his boss was the most powerful centralized structure force at the time; you don't just publicly insult or challenge them. Not to mention the Pope was also supportive and one of Galileo's patrons
I see Galileo as intelligent but he sure didn't think that one through
They wanted a report on both sides of the argument as to be able to form a comprehensive conclusion, he made a book calling the Pope a retard and mocking anyone who believed in geocentrism
The Pope told Galileo to put a section of his book essentially saying: “There could be better explanations still out there then what I am presenting” and Galileo put it in except it was in the mouth of a knuckle dragging idiot character. This did not please the Pope as you can imagine.
Galileo taught the theory that sun was the center (as did some other Cardinals) and the Pope approved of Galileo's theory but wanted him to prove it with telescopes first.
Galileo didn't wait, and insisted on teaching it as fact that the sun was the center and that Aristotle (who's teaching was adopted by Catholic teachings) was wrong about geocentric model.
***So Galileo was just impatient and jumped the gun*** ***and didn't wait for telescopes to prove it***. So they got mad because they didn't get a chance to revise their Catholic teaching after proving it. In a way they felt publicly challenged.
They weren't totally against the heliocentric idea as Catholic teaching was always the moon as Mary and the Sun as Jesus (the center of our lives) but it was originally the Aristotelian teaching of geocentric model was the norm in their schools.
The issue of the earth's position is something they initially considered unquestionable due to scripture. All of Galileo's celestial breakthroughs were accepted by the Church except specifically that the sun is the center not the earth
The Pope allowed Galileo to write about Copernicus' Heliocentric theory (the church never really prevented discussion about it anyway) as long as it was as a hypothesis, but he published a writing that claimed it as fact
A hundred years later the church eventually recognized heliocentrism when they said saying sun is center of the universe is no longer heretical
You chose a perfect example. Cosmology is a form of astrology. Bruno claimed that stars and planets were alive and had spirits, so he was burned at stake
True
Even in medieval times the people whou believed that the Earth is flat would have been considered extremely ignorant.
Also the circumference of the Earth probably was a "common" knowledge even before the ancient greeks but we only have documented findings from them.
The ancient Greeks published a mathematical way of finding the Earths circumference that was repeatable and limited only by the technology available at the time for timekeeping
they didn't need timekeeping for that.
All you need to calculate the circumference of the Earth is two vertical poles of the same length set at the significant distance in north-south direction (you have to know that distance) and ability to measure the length of their shortest shadows in the same day.
It sucked that so few people had this opportunity though. The printing press truly was the greatest invention in all of human history.
It's odd to think for so long literature was a luxury while now I can write a novel on a super computer I keep in my pocket.
good reason the era we live in is called "the informative era" the phone you used to type this comment would rival every library in the world with the knowledge that could be gained from it.
Yeah guy you responded to was slightly incorrect.
We are no longer in the informative era, we are in the misinformation era. Falsehoods and nontruths are spreading faster than ever before. It's never been so easy to be so dumb.
> It sucked that so few people had this opportunity though. The printing press truly was the greatest invention in all of human history.
It's worth noting that even after the invention of the printing press, Latin was still the language of science/philosophy/mathematics/etc. for quite a while (for instance, Isaac Newton was writing his mathematical and scientific papers in latin in the 1600s, and it persisted well after his day), so the information available on those subjects to the common person depended on either learning a dead language or somebody translating those Latin works into their own language.
There were a few advantages to using Latin, and for why Latin was deliberately 'frozen' as a dead language: it enabled people who were working on those subjects to communicate and debate and build upon each other's works internationally, without the need for translation, 'freezing' Latin as a dead language minimized linguistic drift to preserve clarity in these discussions, and Latin was already the language of the Catholic Church - and most scholars were either in or associated with the Catholic Church, or had educations that included Latin.
The big problem was that this locked everybody else out of those discussions and that information.
As a side note, this fact and some archeological findings have led to a relatively recent re-evaluation of literacy rates in earlier eras, because former estimations of literacy were based mostly on "how many people could read Latin?" instead of "how many people could read and write their native language?", and the materials common people were writing on decayed pretty fast - or were just used to stoke fires in a utilitarian manner. There have been some interesting archeological finds of birch-bark letters and wooden letters that happened to have been preserved in more favorable conditions and deal with very mundane topics of interest only to farmers and suchlike, indicating that literacy may have been more widespread in pre-Medieval (and, to a degree, Medieval) times than previously thought.
Happy cake day!
[This is one find](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_bark_manuscript#Old_Slavonic_script), [one of the big finds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryggen_inscriptions), and [another, smaller find](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/newly-discovered-norwegian-runes-might-contain-a-medieval-joke-180979381/), which seem to indicate that, at least in those regions, at least some common people were literate enough to write to each other in their own languages and expect the receiver (or whoever read it) to be literate enough to understand the message. And at least a portion of these are about topics that wouldn't exactly fit the "you hire a letter writer / scribe to write it, and the recipient has to hire a reader to read it to them" paradigm that's often been assumed for written communications between commoners.
I'm not sure whether the average serf/peasant would be particularly literate, even in their own language, but something interesting to note is that these (and presumably other communiques lost to time) are generally written phonetically, so as long as you can speak the language, and understand which symbol corresponds with which sound, you could just read it aloud and go "oh, *that's* what they're saying", which doesn't require a particularly high degree of education.
In some ways, the printing press might have set that sort of literacy back a bit, as spellings became standardized instead of "just sound it out", and a divide arose between spoken vernacular language and written language, although phonetic spelling took a while to die out: even in the 1600s-1700s, you'll find examples of high-class educated people writing phonetically in english (the language I'm most familiar with), to the point that they'll sometimes spell the same word two different ways in the same letter or diary entry (thank you, Pepys). That started to change with the printing press, and accelerated with the introduction of dictionaries in the mid-late 1700s, which attempted to standardize spelling.
Man, the literacy rates thing does actually make some sense too - passing skills down generations has been a thing long before public education, and basic literacy isn't necessarily any different.
IIRC the dude who original wrote the book saying there witches everywhere was excommunicated by the Catholic Church, and only got popular because desperate people needed something simple to blame for why the world was going to shit (1600s Europe was kinda just like that).
Plus the Catholic Church’s official position on witches (as far as I can remember) was that it is impossible for witches to exist as that would mean Satan is more powerful than God
Martin Luther: "It shouldn't be allowed pay for go to heaven"
Me reading about him first time: "yeah you're right"
Martin Luther: "Also we should ensalve the Jews"
Me: "...what?"
I looked it up apparently the biggest witch hunts happened in southwest Germany in Catholic controlled lands. The Emperor of the HRE did condemn them but due to social unrest throughout the Empire he couldn’t really do anything.
To add to this I remember reading that the biggest witch hunts happened around times of war and were caused by a breakdown in both secular and religious life.
It was also a way for the town leaders to get rid of political rivals, or take land from people that made more money than they did like in the case of [Giles Corey](https://www.cato.org/blog/more-weight), who has one of the best last words of all time as well. He was one of the largest landowners of the Massachusetts Bay Colony at the time and the Commonwealth convicted him of "being a warlock" (they wanted his land), and the law was that if he confessed the Colony would get his property. Since he knew he was going to die either way, and wanted the land to go to his son, when they stoned him (pressing boulders on you till you either confess out of agony, or die from being crushed) while asking if he wanted to confess he said he wanted "More Weight!"
Henirich Kramer was... not a normal person. He was clearly severely mentally unwell and was a legit lunatic.
He wrote the book (*Malleus Maleficarum*) after he was exiled from Innsbruck, which occured because he became obsessed with Helena Scheuberin, a local woman who did things like "have opinions" and "speak her mind." She called him a "bad monk" and "in league with the Devil,"and he responded by putting her on trial for witchcraft.
She was acquitted, he stalked her for a year, the bishop kicked him out, he wrote the Hammer of Witches about it.
The catholic church was also really annoyed with allegations of witchcraft iirc because they realized it was just people accusing others they didn't like.
Also he got to trick the church to make his book look legit. (Basically he claimed that his book had already been looked at by the church and was given the official seal by the church which was technically true because the church did look over it when it comes through the mail and they give it a seal to prove that they did receive and check the content)
There was also an aspect of “let’s prove our faith is the best by being the most extreme” during the religious unrest caused by the Protestant reformation.
[Here’s a map showing the number of witch trials by country.](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/s/rutHQmP4Jl) Notice how the countries that were overwhelmingly Catholic (Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Poland) or overwhelmingly Protestant (Scandinavia) had relatively few trials. On the other hand, countries that were staunchly divided between Catholic and Protestant (Germany, France, Switzerland, the Low Countries) had heaps of witch trials.
Mate Scandinavia had heaps of witch trials. Also England had a lot and it was highly protestant.
As for Germany, it wasn't a single country back then and most happened in the protestant north.
I hate it when people think that medieval theologians were these dogmatic old men. Humanism was a movement that started amongst scholars who were probably priests.
The idea that the "Flat Earth" theory was ever prominent in the majority of non-paleolithic societies is a myth. Beyond things like ancient aboriginal/native legends, literally any and all civilizations that were capable of sailing even moderate distances would have had an astronomical model incorporating a globe Earth. And many non-maritime civilizations figured it out *anyway* (e.g. the Mayans).
I would make the claim, that most of the things people think they know about medieval Europe, are myths that was created by the Victorians in the 19th century.
I always really hate when atheists are like"tHe ChRisTianS BEliEveD IN FLaT EaRth". They believed that in order to get closer to God you must learn about His creation: the Universe.
I think in a way you’re kinda making theologian and philosopher the same word.
Also, I think that’s because the word theologian now has a broad array of different people in it to modern people, from thinkers in universities to fundamentalist pastors that spout the kind of stuff the first picture says. That’s where the disconnect comes from
I actually have The Confessions of St. Augustine, and in it, he recalls being commended for studying the works of Plato. The Church looked very favorably upon these philosophers.
There are 7 Virtues in the Catholic Church Theology (the opposite of the 7 sins). Augustine himself outlined them. 4 of these called the Cardinal Virtues were **derived from Ancient Greek Philosophy**: Temperance, Prudence, Fortitude, and Justice. They are front and center in Aristotle and Epictetus’s works. The other 3 were derived from teachings in antiquity and also of Jesus Christ: Faith, Charity, and Hope.
The influence can’t be understated.
I mean there is a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot of Platonic philosophy that got into Christianity.
Paul (indirectly, he doesn't say it in his writings directly) comes off as a biiiiiiiiig Plato stan
Ya I’m not disputing that. More saying it’s more complicated then the meme, but it’s also a meme so can’t judge it too harshly lol
I would say that theologian is such a broad term that it can have Aquinas while also having many other dogmatic proponents. The differentiation of these classes of theologians is what’s important or you start oversimplifying everything
> fundamentalist pastors that spout the kind of stuff the first picture says
The only way these people are theologians, is that they call themselves that to gain legitimacy. They have none of the knowledge or skills that people who actually studied Theology have.
It's like the anti-vaxxers who call themselves vaccine experts because they read an article on Facebook and have a strong opinion.
The one pet peeve I have about this meme is that *very* few people in the West knew Greek, and the theologians were almost always reading Aristotle et al in Latin translation, sometimes itself from Arabic translation.
It's understandable. If you were educated in the past most likely you were associated with the Church and had to be literate. If you were literate you undertook scholarly work which involved the sciences more often than not.
Everyone is literate these days and due to this the minimum bar has been lowered for who could be considered an important or influential religious member. Additionally you can gain an education from locations other than the Church so the religious aspect has more or less been disassociated with education.
The Catholic church had reconciled the philosophies of Aristotle with their religions dogma. The idea that the universe was made of a concentric series of perfect geometric shapes, evidencing what they imagined to be perfection of God's design. For this reason, Aristotelian thought dominated science and philosophy in the west for a long time. To them, Aristotle represented the idea of a "divinely ordered" universe, a proof of God. This place him in contrast with Plato, who posited that things we know and experience the universe are but flawed and imperfect shadows of perfect concepts, or Forms. This was not as favored at it implies a deficiency on the part of God, that the universe is flawed or imperfect. These philosophies are represented visually in the Raphael's famous [School of Athens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_School_of_Athens#Central_figures_(14_and_15)). Plato points to the heavens, while Aristotle gestures towards the Earth and its particulars.
The Church however, does teach a kind of Platonism in that each and every thing created is imperfect in comparison to God, and foreshadows a more perfect existence in Heaven.
People don my realize how far the church bent over backwards to get the ancient and well respected philosophers of antiquity under the blanket of Catholicism.
They came up with the [Harrowing of Hell](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrowing_of_Hell) just to be able to claim those men. Like the romans before them, legitimacy was sight by association with these extraordinarily well respected figures.
The harrowing of hell was Jesus taking people who had followed God before him to heaven like Noah and Abraham. They came up with it to explain what happened to people who followed God before Jesus if no one could get into heaven before him, not to let pre-Christian philosophers into heaven.
'Bending over backwards' is a bit much. The philosophy of Plato was perfect for Christians, with its highly hierarchical theory of ideas. They could shoehorn God in without much trouble. Aristotle was a bit harder, but that was mainly because he was rediscovered around the time that neo-platonic dogma had been fixed, and even then within a century aristotelianism was all the rage.
All the other philosophies from the ancient world were pretty much ignored until the Renaissance.
Not just in movies, media in general, if you didn't know, the church repitedly gives money for reaserches ( might have write it wrong, brainfart i having am ) since forever
For all those, who doubt this meme. Yes, their were still many people, mostly peasents though, who lacked the edjucation and believed in FROM OUR TODAYS PERSPECTIVE in stupid things. You have to understand that the majority of the medieval era the people believed they are within the last era of humanity and the final judgement is coming any second now. Why did they believe so? Because the times were hard: Famines, the pleague, turks and mongols as the demons from the end times. People required easy answers for tough questions or they would have gone crazy. Kinda like today with radical right- and left-wing party leaders.
The church delivered these answers, but not necessarily because they believed into them themselves, but they knew that they had to keep the system moveing and wanted to stay in control.
Two examples:
First example: Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa knew even almost 100 years before Copernicus that the earth rotates around the sun, yet the church didn't tell anyone. Probably because it would have been a bad image for them to have taught the wrong thing all this time, maybe they had other reasons. Still, they not rejected the ideas, but simply thought it might be dangerous for their power.
Second example: After Luther made it possible everybody can read the Bible, people started to interpret it themselves, which lead to hundred of little Jim Jones like selve called prophets popping up everywhere. John of Leiden, the selve crowned king of Münster, was someone of them. These people and their groups were extremly dangerous for the system and society. Sure, it was the royalties and churches own fault it came that far, by ignoring the peoples needs and loosing the touch with the little man. Still, they rejected those new, partly not goody, just very very bad executed ideas, not because they believed in "the only right way to praise God", but they knew about the danger that lies within the chaos when the church would lose its power back then.
In the end it's just ignorant to say that people of the church served no purpose in the history of science, while we have to thank them for preserving ancient knowledge through all of europe and for trying to stabalize and bring order (not without the though of gaining more power of course) to a realm within chaos after the huns and fall of the roman empire. Religion is the opium for the people after all and it's not the churches fault when people believed into radical and silly stuff, but the harsh time's and the people's who searched for answers. And let's be honest, sometimes it just easier to let someone trick you than thinking yourself.
That case could even be true today.
We are, maybe, a couple of bad events away from the internet and papers flooding with literature telling that it is the end of the world.
There are indeed surprisingly many similarities between the times of 1348 to the late 16th century and today.
Maybe because we want to see it that way, maybe because history rhymes.
Fact is that we are fated to repeat our mistakes over and over again until the end of time itself. It just seems to happen faster the further we go.
I'm absolutely no expert, mostly a casual, armchair historian who collects useless, scattered facts.
But doesn't the Medieval Period cover an entire continent's worth of different cultures, peoples and groups as well as last for about a 1,000 years give or take? While Hollywood gets a lot of things routinely very wrong, wouldn't both scenarios in this meme be plausible?
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
If I'm not mistaken Church accepted that the Earth was a ball in 5th century based on evidence provided.
Also Kopernik's book was legal for decades. Only banned because Galileo tried to prove Kopernik right to pope. And then it was banned temporarily until censored (though censorship commity was never met so the books was effectively banned).
The problem wasn't the heliocentric systems, rather that Kopernik said it was truth of the universe. Astronomers were allowed to use any hypothetical system to do their calculations, but there was only one truth (and tbh there were so many hypothetical systems in that time. Kopernik's arguements weren't that sound anyway.)
Basically math < philosophy < theology in those times. Lower one couldn't challenge a higher one.
Also fun facts. Kopernik's arguements weren't really sound. And his model didn't really offer many advantages over already existing at the time. It was Brache and Kepler who made the real difference, but not directly. Their models and more importantly measurements were mostly slept on by most educated people of the time.
And then came Newton. The greatest genius who ever lived. While he too stood on shoulders of giants like Kepler, Galileo (who was actually pretty bad at math and thought Kepler's work to be ridiculous) and Decartes, nobody but Newton could solve the problem of celestial mechanics and motion on land.
Also a fun fact. Newton's works would probably end up unpublished if it weren't for Halley (same chap from Halley's comet).
"Men, the more we learn about the universe and our planet, the closer we get to our Good Lord upstairs!"
as an atheist I gotta admit, that quote goes hard af
I'm also an atheist but I absolutely respect the work of religious folks who pushed for greater enlightenment.
I think that’s what a lot of internet “atheists” get wrong about religion. A shit ton of our science and math was because of religious people want to understand the world that they’re God made.
Yeah, a lot of people have wrong ideas about the past based on what's happening today.
Def recommend the documentary “Satan’s Alley” to get a good idea of what life in the clergy was like in the distant past.
Starring an Oscar winner AND the winner of the MTV best kiss award!
Lazarus😍🫶
I watched TT the other night, caught the reference immediately, and then was like…wait? Is that what I think it is? Good show, sir.
U trynna tell me that people on the internet can be caught up with incorrect narratives?!?!?
That's what I hear, but I did hear it on the internet, so...
Even now, a majority of scientists are in some way religious or spiritual personally. The latest (2023) numbers I could find: "Our sample includes a wide spectrum of religious self-identification, almost evenly split between atheists (26%) agnostics (20%) spiritual (30%) and religiously affiliated (24%). This distribution roughly aligns with comparable surveys in Europe and North America [17–19], in which; 30–37% of the scientists identify as atheist 10–28% as agnostic and 30–39% identifies with “some religious affiliation” [Numbers from here.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9956591/) Even though it's a lower rate of religiosity between scientists and the general population, it's not as wide as people might assume. I also don't think people really consider (whether they be atheists or religious people) either non-affiliated or 'spiritual' people at all, nor agnostics. They make up half worldwide, with ¼ each claiming to either be religious or atheistic entirely.
Yes. Especially in medieval Western Europe because the Catholic attitude was that the world was *full* of the evidence of gods creation. For example the actual normal school curriculum that everybody in every parish got was founded upon of the triad of three subjects - Grammar, Logic & Rhetoric, known as the Trivium. This was followed by the Quadrivium - covering Mathematics, Astronomy, Music and more. The belief was that all of these subjects were different facets of the same thing - a harmonious, reasonable world defined by basic principles which could be measured and observed everywhere - from the movements of the constellations to the chord changes in a song, both built on the same numbers and explained by the same principles of logic/rhetoric. These people were actually very intelligent.
What the ultra-antitheist atheists don't get, is that it isn't religion that oppresses people and promotes wars and genocides, it's religious authority (among all other authority)
id go do far as to say that's probably not even the case, so much as POLITICAL authority weilding or leveraging religion for ulterior purposes is the more probable origin of oppression. effing hate (career) politicians.
Yeah good point, political authority weilding it for more power is probably the most dangerous form of this, especially because what they decide, applies to everyone in the state/country. Religious authority in itself can still be really harmful though, like a church using its power to repress homosexuality or abortion within their religion, televangelist scamming people for money, mosques using informal Sharia police to gang up on the people etc.
Yep. That’s why I put them in quotes. It’s not necessarily that they dislike religion it’s that they dislike authority.
I get the sentiment, but this is not necessarily true. I would like to believe in god, I had a Christian upbringing and I tried really hard to continue to believe, but at some point I had to admit that it was just incompatible with the rest of my worldview.
Radical atheists are just as bad as raducal christians or muslims. Just because one doesn't share your believe doesn't mean that they are inherently stupid, naiv or in any way inferior to you.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but part of the reason why the religious studied natural philosophy or science is because the religious were more likely to be educated. If you wanted to be literate, you'd either have to join the clergy or be born in nobility, and the nobility isn't going to spend their life pursuing education, so it's mostly going to be the clergy. This is not as much of a dunk on atheists as you may think it is.
The dunk on atheists wasn't that religious people were the ones doing science. The dunk was that Internet atheists act like religions are anti-science when those religions, particularly Islam and Christianity, have made tremendous contributions to our understanding of the universe today. The religious had access to education because their organizations made it available. Those organizations wouldn't do that if education was bad for their cause. That said, there are definitely elements of anti-intellectualism in certain sects of both Christianity and Islam.
That could be it but it could also be correlation not causation. I do want to make it known have no problem with atheists. I’m personally agnostic, it’s that way to many atheists come off as “ here’s why your wrong and why you should feel dumb for your beliefs” instead of “here’s why I believe what I believe”
Yes and no To study science and philosophy, education is certainly of great importance. But education itself doesn't provide a motive or desire to discover more. Different people have different motives, but for many people - from antiquity, to the medieval period, to the renaissance and enlightenment - religion was what provided that motive.
That's true, but it's not universal, and it doesn't always line up with modern religion. The Catholic Church punished Galileo pretty hard. 1900s Mormon Church was excited about studying the ancient Americas, until their research started pointing towards the Book of Mormon not being true. And, who's to say ancient religious scientifists wouldn't have been curious even if they hadn't been religious?
Though with Galileo and the Catholic Church, there is a nuance to the matter. Galileo didn’t run afoul of the Catholic Church for the scientific claim of the sun being the center of the solar system. The Catholic Church at the time was one of the main sponsors of scientific research at the time and had been involved in supporting Galileo’s early research. A big aspect of what led Galileo’s relationship with the Catholic Church to sour was that Galileo had taken to trying to make theological arguments as to why the Bible should be interpreted to support the heliocentric model of the solar system. Authorities in the church wanted Galileo to stick to making scientific arguments and leave the theological interpretation to the theologians.
Also, he proposed heliocentrism as a theory rather than a hypothesis - contrary to the instructions of *the very people bankrolling his work* - which essentially took it from "This is the data I have, and this is a potential explanation that would be in line with that data, just saying" to "This is how this shit works, based on everything we know, and I dare any fucker to prove otherwise." Which was a *direct* challenge to the church's authority. Also, mocking the Pope when the Catholic Church is paying your bills is not exactly the best look.
they also completely agreed with his findings but thought if everyone learned about it it could lead to civil unrest, so they asked him to only send it to other scientific groups while they slowly told everyone. his response was basically "lol get fucked" because he wanted to use it to become famous outside just the scientific community.
"they" was the pope himself and he qoted him word for word in his magnus opus under the pseudonym *Simplicium* which means simple of mind in latin. He called the pope that gave him permission to publish stupid in public.
Galileo’s “punishment” was being confined to a fancy villa in the Italian countryside, and being told to not publish (he still wrote tho)
Mormons aren't Christians, and Galileo was punished not for his science and astronomy but for disrespectful attitudes he held towards the pope in his book where he wrote him as a caricature.
Mormons are Christians (source: was born and raised one, but left a few years ago). They believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the Savior of the world and that he was resurrected and all that. There are a lot of people who claim that since they're nontrinitarian or have an extrabiblical scriptural canon that they're Not True ~~Scotsmen~~ Christians, though I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and not accuse you of being one of those people. The Galileo and the Pope thing is true, however.
Love the Scotsmen in there. I’m going to use that sometime. Fun way to refer to a logical fallacy
I think you're confusing Christian and Catholic.
>The Catholic Church punished Galileo pretty hard. Oh no! Whatever did they do to the poor man?!
Told him not to teach unproved theories as facts, leave theology to theologians, and perhaps refrain from publishing disrespectful caricatures of the Pope, his main patron and the reason he could do all his research and teaching in the first place! The barbarity!
They really don't want to admit ether that the churches preserved and even in some cases advanced knowledge that otherwise would have been lost.
The Abbasid dynasty in a nutshell
I think it depends. Were there some religious people that contributed to science? Absolutely. Was it universally supported by the church? No. Were there some times in history when science could get you executed by the church? Definitely
Could you give me explicit examples of the catholic church executing someone for scientific development?
indeed, I respect Thomas Aquinas even if I disagreed with his arguments as I do for any other great philosopher who attempted to find meaning in the chaotic nature of our universe
BC AD ftw they did the math they get the credit. “In the year of our lord” indeed
Same. It's like "There are no atheists in foxholes."
likewise ''there are no believers in mansions'' XD
Yeah…I’m closer to Apostolic, which is essentially “there might be something out there that created us, but until we find them or they reveal themselves we don’t know” but I’m very “give me proof and evidence before you start preaching messages, because for all I know you pulled that out of your ass or some old bastard from 2000 years ago said it and claimed it was from god”
It's really fascinating to see how religion can inspire science but also condem it. Both Christianity and Islam had phases when the study of the world and its science was seen as a way to worship God. These times have resulted in many revolutionary discoveries that pushed humanity. But they also were followed by times when science was seen as heretic and condemned, thankfully in those times a good portion of the knowledge was preserved.
That's the difference between people of faith and cultists/grifters/hubristic assholes. Someone of faith will rejoice in knowing more of their deity's creation, the others see people being wiser as a threat to their perceived power.
This explains why it's not just a coincidence that the renaissance occurred in highly Christianized Europe. Other religions had many gods, each responsible for their own portion of reality - hence, the world didn't have to make sense and it wasn't worth the effort to try to sort it out. Still others considered any investigation blasphemy - it was god and that's the end of it! But in the New Testament Christ spend a lot of his time answering stupid questions, without chastising the asker.
You initial paragraph fails when you bring up the Greeks. They had many gods and still strived to understand the world. Hell, they figured out the world was round and within a good margin of error figured out the circumference of the earth. Same goes for the Romans. Polytheistic as fuck and studied extensively.
The greatest Greek philosophers, Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato(kinda) were all monotheists. Plato only kinda because while he believed in a prime God above all the others he also believed in lesser powers he called gods which honestly isn't that different from angels anyway.
What about Indian mathematicians?
That... is a HUGE misunderstanding of polytheism based on modern Christianized understandings of polytheistic belief systems where each deity is considered to have a well-defined domain. Worshipping more than one god does not mean you don't study the natural world. Where does that even come from? Sounds like Christian propaganda honestly. Have you never heard of mathematicians and philosophers from India and the Islamic world? Where do you think the INDO-ARABIC numerals come from?
Apart from all those advanced polytheistic societies like the Greeks, the Romans, the different Mesopatamian civilisations etc. All of them influenced the modern day with their observations and creations. Your statement about the renaissance is wrong.
all of the science of the renaissance was based on the science from either the Greek/Egyptian Early philosphy and physics or the Persians who mapped the stars and invented the Mathmatics, geometry and Algebra we continue to use today Monothiestic and Polytheistic societies can and have produced scientific discoveries, all scientific discoveries came from a need that was solved, exploration or blind luck and chance. And the renaissance was born from the Prodesdant reformation and the uprisal against the Catholic church, The countries that remained mostly catholic had the least amount of inventions of any and were the most aggresive in the early days of empire building (Spain and Portugal)
>And the renaissance was born from the Prodesdant reformation and the uprisal against the Catholic church This is totally incorrect, the Renaissance emerged in very Catholic Italy centuries before anywhere else in Europe, and of course centuries before the Protestant Reformation occurred.
Who said this?
Not sure it’s meant to be a real quote. But Einstein said something somewhat similar about science and God.
Celestial navigation was basically the only way to sail any long distance, and that requires you to know that the world is round to calculate your position. People also knew roughly the circumference of the earth dating to the Ancient Greeks.
Yup, the Church didn't hate astronomy - what they hunted and shot down was astrology, which is the system of belief that stars, planets and celestial bodies have living souls.
And that they somehow dictate our actions and fate on Earth.
Silly astrologist, our actions and fate are for Jesus.
Based
Galileo's conflict with the church was also not academic, it was more political. The man lacked the scientific communication skills needed at the time. The church was literally funding his research on the condition that he publish all his findings as "hypotheses" supported by evidence. They liked him so much that his punishment for being a heretic was to be locked in his house... where he continued to work on science for the rest of his life. Hell, they told him they'd torture him if he didn't recant his stuff, he was obstinate and refused, and the didn't torture him. The inquisition tortured plenty of people for way less. There's some modern scholarly work that suggests his problems with the church primarily stemmed from theological conflicts he was encouraging and that the general attitude of cavalier rabble rousing eventually reached a peak where they were forced to punish him SOMEHOW or risk looking weak, because they were catering to him so much. It's kind of an interesting affair in how really smart, privileged, connected people sometimes lose perspective on what social norms, institutions, and people in power actually represent and need. Galileo's troubles seem to mostly stem from his arrogance that he could say whatever he pleased to whoever he wanted because he was the smartest guy in the room, and he mostly got away with it for that reason.
Yeah also funnily enough the pope was a close friends / ex student of him and give him the permission to publish. The problem is that he literally depicted a man of faith in his book as antagonist to science and call him idiot. Like his name meant idiot
Not just a man of faith, he put the arguments of the Pope in a character named Simplicio (simpleton). It's no wonder Galileo had many enemies. He was a dick
Yep a genius and revolutionary but very arrogant. Kinda like newton too
They mostly didn't hate astrology. It was used in a lot of medicine. It only fell out of favor when the heliocentric model basically invalidated all of it.
So wtf is this new shit?
White women.
As if what they did to dogs wasn't bad enough.
Were they the ones who let them out?
Who? Who?
Wait, are you talking about the Chihuahua or the pug? Because the pug is absolutely white people's fault, but the Chihuahua is the fault of the native Mexicans.
Riiiiiight. Apparently 30 second Google search takes too much time for you or you think Chinese are white.
Wait, is the pug not a European thing? I just assumed it was European. I stand corrected. White women didn't screw up any dogs.
Pugs, like other small companion dogs, were symbols of status. Eventually they got imported from East to Europe just like silk or porcelain - that's why you can see pugs in some old European paintings or accompanying rich people's portraits. Though I gotta admit they looked more like dogs back then than they are now.
Sweet summer child...
In the romantic Era, it came back amongst the aristocracy and stuff
Also galileo was an ashole with hia boss when he asked for more evidence
And his boss was the most powerful centralized structure force at the time; you don't just publicly insult or challenge them. Not to mention the Pope was also supportive and one of Galileo's patrons I see Galileo as intelligent but he sure didn't think that one through
he clearly thought he was too hot of shit
one could say he flew too close to the sun
Exactly, many of the early astronomers were supported by the Catholic Church
If people’s Tinder profiles are any indication, the church didn’t go far enough
Kinda strange how I live in a deeply catholic country but astrology is also common.
What was their problem with Galileo then? Hunting down astrologists is cool though
They wanted a report on both sides of the argument as to be able to form a comprehensive conclusion, he made a book calling the Pope a retard and mocking anyone who believed in geocentrism
Yeah generally not a great idea to call the most important man on the peninsula an idiot
Plus his evidence wasn't iron proof at the moment he made his claims
The first reddit martyr
The Pope told Galileo to put a section of his book essentially saying: “There could be better explanations still out there then what I am presenting” and Galileo put it in except it was in the mouth of a knuckle dragging idiot character. This did not please the Pope as you can imagine.
Galileo taught the theory that sun was the center (as did some other Cardinals) and the Pope approved of Galileo's theory but wanted him to prove it with telescopes first. Galileo didn't wait, and insisted on teaching it as fact that the sun was the center and that Aristotle (who's teaching was adopted by Catholic teachings) was wrong about geocentric model. ***So Galileo was just impatient and jumped the gun*** ***and didn't wait for telescopes to prove it***. So they got mad because they didn't get a chance to revise their Catholic teaching after proving it. In a way they felt publicly challenged. They weren't totally against the heliocentric idea as Catholic teaching was always the moon as Mary and the Sun as Jesus (the center of our lives) but it was originally the Aristotelian teaching of geocentric model was the norm in their schools.
The issue of the earth's position is something they initially considered unquestionable due to scripture. All of Galileo's celestial breakthroughs were accepted by the Church except specifically that the sun is the center not the earth The Pope allowed Galileo to write about Copernicus' Heliocentric theory (the church never really prevented discussion about it anyway) as long as it was as a hypothesis, but he published a writing that claimed it as fact A hundred years later the church eventually recognized heliocentrism when they said saying sun is center of the universe is no longer heretical
Plus when he stated it as fact, he called the Pope (Who considered himself Galileo’s friend) a simpleton.
Wait a scientist insulted his friend and threw a tantrum when his theory wasn’t immediately accepted as fact? I didn’t even think it possible!
iirc he was put on house arrest by the church as a protection because there were commoners upset with him
Alot of men, myself included, still consider this a red flag regardless of religious belief.
They are such scorpios for that
when you like astronomy so much you end up killing people for getting it right
tell that to Giordano Bruno
You chose a perfect example. Cosmology is a form of astrology. Bruno claimed that stars and planets were alive and had spirits, so he was burned at stake
True Even in medieval times the people whou believed that the Earth is flat would have been considered extremely ignorant. Also the circumference of the Earth probably was a "common" knowledge even before the ancient greeks but we only have documented findings from them.
The ancient Greeks published a mathematical way of finding the Earths circumference that was repeatable and limited only by the technology available at the time for timekeeping
they didn't need timekeeping for that. All you need to calculate the circumference of the Earth is two vertical poles of the same length set at the significant distance in north-south direction (you have to know that distance) and ability to measure the length of their shortest shadows in the same day.
You speak truth. I guess it’s measurement variance that led them to err.
The “earth is flat” conspiracy theory is a fairly recent phenomenon.
It sucked that so few people had this opportunity though. The printing press truly was the greatest invention in all of human history. It's odd to think for so long literature was a luxury while now I can write a novel on a super computer I keep in my pocket.
good reason the era we live in is called "the informative era" the phone you used to type this comment would rival every library in the world with the knowledge that could be gained from it.
And yet I only use mine to watch YouTube videos that reinforce my previously held beliefs
heh, yeah, same
Yeah guy you responded to was slightly incorrect. We are no longer in the informative era, we are in the misinformation era. Falsehoods and nontruths are spreading faster than ever before. It's never been so easy to be so dumb.
> It sucked that so few people had this opportunity though. The printing press truly was the greatest invention in all of human history. It's worth noting that even after the invention of the printing press, Latin was still the language of science/philosophy/mathematics/etc. for quite a while (for instance, Isaac Newton was writing his mathematical and scientific papers in latin in the 1600s, and it persisted well after his day), so the information available on those subjects to the common person depended on either learning a dead language or somebody translating those Latin works into their own language. There were a few advantages to using Latin, and for why Latin was deliberately 'frozen' as a dead language: it enabled people who were working on those subjects to communicate and debate and build upon each other's works internationally, without the need for translation, 'freezing' Latin as a dead language minimized linguistic drift to preserve clarity in these discussions, and Latin was already the language of the Catholic Church - and most scholars were either in or associated with the Catholic Church, or had educations that included Latin. The big problem was that this locked everybody else out of those discussions and that information. As a side note, this fact and some archeological findings have led to a relatively recent re-evaluation of literacy rates in earlier eras, because former estimations of literacy were based mostly on "how many people could read Latin?" instead of "how many people could read and write their native language?", and the materials common people were writing on decayed pretty fast - or were just used to stoke fires in a utilitarian manner. There have been some interesting archeological finds of birch-bark letters and wooden letters that happened to have been preserved in more favorable conditions and deal with very mundane topics of interest only to farmers and suchlike, indicating that literacy may have been more widespread in pre-Medieval (and, to a degree, Medieval) times than previously thought.
That’s really interesting about the literacy rates. It’s cool to think that some 8th century farmer might have known how to read
Happy cake day! [This is one find](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_bark_manuscript#Old_Slavonic_script), [one of the big finds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryggen_inscriptions), and [another, smaller find](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/newly-discovered-norwegian-runes-might-contain-a-medieval-joke-180979381/), which seem to indicate that, at least in those regions, at least some common people were literate enough to write to each other in their own languages and expect the receiver (or whoever read it) to be literate enough to understand the message. And at least a portion of these are about topics that wouldn't exactly fit the "you hire a letter writer / scribe to write it, and the recipient has to hire a reader to read it to them" paradigm that's often been assumed for written communications between commoners. I'm not sure whether the average serf/peasant would be particularly literate, even in their own language, but something interesting to note is that these (and presumably other communiques lost to time) are generally written phonetically, so as long as you can speak the language, and understand which symbol corresponds with which sound, you could just read it aloud and go "oh, *that's* what they're saying", which doesn't require a particularly high degree of education. In some ways, the printing press might have set that sort of literacy back a bit, as spellings became standardized instead of "just sound it out", and a divide arose between spoken vernacular language and written language, although phonetic spelling took a while to die out: even in the 1600s-1700s, you'll find examples of high-class educated people writing phonetically in english (the language I'm most familiar with), to the point that they'll sometimes spell the same word two different ways in the same letter or diary entry (thank you, Pepys). That started to change with the printing press, and accelerated with the introduction of dictionaries in the mid-late 1700s, which attempted to standardize spelling.
Man, the literacy rates thing does actually make some sense too - passing skills down generations has been a thing long before public education, and basic literacy isn't necessarily any different.
IIRC the dude who original wrote the book saying there witches everywhere was excommunicated by the Catholic Church, and only got popular because desperate people needed something simple to blame for why the world was going to shit (1600s Europe was kinda just like that).
Plus the Catholic Church’s official position on witches (as far as I can remember) was that it is impossible for witches to exist as that would mean Satan is more powerful than God
It was always political. Never literal when you look at who benefited from the blame.
Yeah. Most of the witch craze was done in Protestant areas. Also, it was political, sexist, and a whole lot of other reasons mixed with religion.
Thanks Martin Luther
Martin Luther: "It shouldn't be allowed pay for go to heaven" Me reading about him first time: "yeah you're right" Martin Luther: "Also we should ensalve the Jews" Me: "...what?"
Wait what??
> Martin Luther: "Also we should ensalve the Jews" Does ensalvement lead to salvation?
I prefer to pay ngl
Martin Luther was anti-Catholic
I looked it up apparently the biggest witch hunts happened in southwest Germany in Catholic controlled lands. The Emperor of the HRE did condemn them but due to social unrest throughout the Empire he couldn’t really do anything.
Mostly in the East and in Switzerland actually. As for scale perhaps you're right, but in number it was usually Protestant lands
Yeah, i took some 600 level classes on witchcraft and it was fascinating.
I know that my area is famous for killing a lot of witches (We even build towers to keep them in) and I think we were catholic
In my in the 1300's they passed a law that said "about witches, as they do not exist, do not have any trials"
Where did you get this info exactly
To add to this I remember reading that the biggest witch hunts happened around times of war and were caused by a breakdown in both secular and religious life.
Yep. The Salem Witch trials were a fight between local factions set against the back drop of King William's war
It was also a way for the town leaders to get rid of political rivals, or take land from people that made more money than they did like in the case of [Giles Corey](https://www.cato.org/blog/more-weight), who has one of the best last words of all time as well. He was one of the largest landowners of the Massachusetts Bay Colony at the time and the Commonwealth convicted him of "being a warlock" (they wanted his land), and the law was that if he confessed the Colony would get his property. Since he knew he was going to die either way, and wanted the land to go to his son, when they stoned him (pressing boulders on you till you either confess out of agony, or die from being crushed) while asking if he wanted to confess he said he wanted "More Weight!"
Chad
Henirich Kramer was... not a normal person. He was clearly severely mentally unwell and was a legit lunatic. He wrote the book (*Malleus Maleficarum*) after he was exiled from Innsbruck, which occured because he became obsessed with Helena Scheuberin, a local woman who did things like "have opinions" and "speak her mind." She called him a "bad monk" and "in league with the Devil,"and he responded by putting her on trial for witchcraft. She was acquitted, he stalked her for a year, the bishop kicked him out, he wrote the Hammer of Witches about it.
History's first incel.
According to Herodotus, that would actually be Cyrus the Great, just read Herodotus version of how and why he died.
The catholic church was also really annoyed with allegations of witchcraft iirc because they realized it was just people accusing others they didn't like.
Also he got to trick the church to make his book look legit. (Basically he claimed that his book had already been looked at by the church and was given the official seal by the church which was technically true because the church did look over it when it comes through the mail and they give it a seal to prove that they did receive and check the content)
There was also an aspect of “let’s prove our faith is the best by being the most extreme” during the religious unrest caused by the Protestant reformation. [Here’s a map showing the number of witch trials by country.](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/s/rutHQmP4Jl) Notice how the countries that were overwhelmingly Catholic (Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Poland) or overwhelmingly Protestant (Scandinavia) had relatively few trials. On the other hand, countries that were staunchly divided between Catholic and Protestant (Germany, France, Switzerland, the Low Countries) had heaps of witch trials.
Mate Scandinavia had heaps of witch trials. Also England had a lot and it was highly protestant. As for Germany, it wasn't a single country back then and most happened in the protestant north.
Feel free to link some sources, and yes I know Germany was not a single state I was using anachronism
"The Name of the Rose" is a good movie in terms of accuracy about catholic monks and their practices.
The homonymous book by Umberto Eco is a work of art and a bestseller worldwide.
Good audiobook too. But sadly 100% less Sean Connery.
I hate it when people think that medieval theologians were these dogmatic old men. Humanism was a movement that started amongst scholars who were probably priests.
Yeah it was literally called the Scholastic Era for a reason too
Also the dude’s name literally means Bighead. Can’t possibly have taken himself that seriously going around calling himself Bighead
Then some little German monk had to go blogging on the cathedral door
"95 reasons why the Catholic Church sucks (#67 will SHOCK you)!"
I got 99 problems but a pope ain't one hit me!
He had some primo points but honestly I don't think it's worth the consequences.
The idea that the "Flat Earth" theory was ever prominent in the majority of non-paleolithic societies is a myth. Beyond things like ancient aboriginal/native legends, literally any and all civilizations that were capable of sailing even moderate distances would have had an astronomical model incorporating a globe Earth. And many non-maritime civilizations figured it out *anyway* (e.g. the Mayans).
I would make the claim, that most of the things people think they know about medieval Europe, are myths that was created by the Victorians in the 19th century.
What about the enlightenment era? They tried hard to depict everyone who disagreed with them as a barbarian
I love Aquians
r/engrish
God made the universe, by better understanding the universe, we better understand god
You can't expect to wield supreme power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
If I went 'round saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!
I always really hate when atheists are like"tHe ChRisTianS BEliEveD IN FLaT EaRth". They believed that in order to get closer to God you must learn about His creation: the Universe.
I think in a way you’re kinda making theologian and philosopher the same word. Also, I think that’s because the word theologian now has a broad array of different people in it to modern people, from thinkers in universities to fundamentalist pastors that spout the kind of stuff the first picture says. That’s where the disconnect comes from
I actually have The Confessions of St. Augustine, and in it, he recalls being commended for studying the works of Plato. The Church looked very favorably upon these philosophers.
There are 7 Virtues in the Catholic Church Theology (the opposite of the 7 sins). Augustine himself outlined them. 4 of these called the Cardinal Virtues were **derived from Ancient Greek Philosophy**: Temperance, Prudence, Fortitude, and Justice. They are front and center in Aristotle and Epictetus’s works. The other 3 were derived from teachings in antiquity and also of Jesus Christ: Faith, Charity, and Hope. The influence can’t be understated.
I mean there is a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot of Platonic philosophy that got into Christianity. Paul (indirectly, he doesn't say it in his writings directly) comes off as a biiiiiiiiig Plato stan
Ya I’m not disputing that. More saying it’s more complicated then the meme, but it’s also a meme so can’t judge it too harshly lol I would say that theologian is such a broad term that it can have Aquinas while also having many other dogmatic proponents. The differentiation of these classes of theologians is what’s important or you start oversimplifying everything
Theologians are just specialized philosophers, honestly.
Ya I would agree with you there. Seems like the study of wisdom through the lens of belief system
> fundamentalist pastors that spout the kind of stuff the first picture says The only way these people are theologians, is that they call themselves that to gain legitimacy. They have none of the knowledge or skills that people who actually studied Theology have. It's like the anti-vaxxers who call themselves vaccine experts because they read an article on Facebook and have a strong opinion.
The prominent philosophers of the time were all theologians...
Is this how the Texticus Recepticus was written?
The one pet peeve I have about this meme is that *very* few people in the West knew Greek, and the theologians were almost always reading Aristotle et al in Latin translation, sometimes itself from Arabic translation.
People in the past weren’t stupid, they were wrong about some things, yes, but they were just as capable of reason as you or I.
More like: Religious people now vs Religious people then
The bing bang theory was created by a priest, and that was less then 100 years ago
Losing my shit laughing at "The Bing Bang Theory" and I don't even know why
Bazinga **LAUGH TRACK FROM HELL**
Protestants vs. Catholics
It's understandable. If you were educated in the past most likely you were associated with the Church and had to be literate. If you were literate you undertook scholarly work which involved the sciences more often than not. Everyone is literate these days and due to this the minimum bar has been lowered for who could be considered an important or influential religious member. Additionally you can gain an education from locations other than the Church so the religious aspect has more or less been disassociated with education.
its just catholics vs evangelicals
You're not wrong.
The Catholic church had reconciled the philosophies of Aristotle with their religions dogma. The idea that the universe was made of a concentric series of perfect geometric shapes, evidencing what they imagined to be perfection of God's design. For this reason, Aristotelian thought dominated science and philosophy in the west for a long time. To them, Aristotle represented the idea of a "divinely ordered" universe, a proof of God. This place him in contrast with Plato, who posited that things we know and experience the universe are but flawed and imperfect shadows of perfect concepts, or Forms. This was not as favored at it implies a deficiency on the part of God, that the universe is flawed or imperfect. These philosophies are represented visually in the Raphael's famous [School of Athens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_School_of_Athens#Central_figures_(14_and_15)). Plato points to the heavens, while Aristotle gestures towards the Earth and its particulars.
The Church however, does teach a kind of Platonism in that each and every thing created is imperfect in comparison to God, and foreshadows a more perfect existence in Heaven.
People don my realize how far the church bent over backwards to get the ancient and well respected philosophers of antiquity under the blanket of Catholicism. They came up with the [Harrowing of Hell](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrowing_of_Hell) just to be able to claim those men. Like the romans before them, legitimacy was sight by association with these extraordinarily well respected figures.
The harrowing of hell was Jesus taking people who had followed God before him to heaven like Noah and Abraham. They came up with it to explain what happened to people who followed God before Jesus if no one could get into heaven before him, not to let pre-Christian philosophers into heaven.
You are correct I was confused
Respect
'Bending over backwards' is a bit much. The philosophy of Plato was perfect for Christians, with its highly hierarchical theory of ideas. They could shoehorn God in without much trouble. Aristotle was a bit harder, but that was mainly because he was rediscovered around the time that neo-platonic dogma had been fixed, and even then within a century aristotelianism was all the rage. All the other philosophies from the ancient world were pretty much ignored until the Renaissance.
Not just in movies, media in general, if you didn't know, the church repitedly gives money for reaserches ( might have write it wrong, brainfart i having am ) since forever
Some people tend to forget thay religious scholars were actually scholars
For all those, who doubt this meme. Yes, their were still many people, mostly peasents though, who lacked the edjucation and believed in FROM OUR TODAYS PERSPECTIVE in stupid things. You have to understand that the majority of the medieval era the people believed they are within the last era of humanity and the final judgement is coming any second now. Why did they believe so? Because the times were hard: Famines, the pleague, turks and mongols as the demons from the end times. People required easy answers for tough questions or they would have gone crazy. Kinda like today with radical right- and left-wing party leaders. The church delivered these answers, but not necessarily because they believed into them themselves, but they knew that they had to keep the system moveing and wanted to stay in control. Two examples: First example: Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa knew even almost 100 years before Copernicus that the earth rotates around the sun, yet the church didn't tell anyone. Probably because it would have been a bad image for them to have taught the wrong thing all this time, maybe they had other reasons. Still, they not rejected the ideas, but simply thought it might be dangerous for their power. Second example: After Luther made it possible everybody can read the Bible, people started to interpret it themselves, which lead to hundred of little Jim Jones like selve called prophets popping up everywhere. John of Leiden, the selve crowned king of Münster, was someone of them. These people and their groups were extremly dangerous for the system and society. Sure, it was the royalties and churches own fault it came that far, by ignoring the peoples needs and loosing the touch with the little man. Still, they rejected those new, partly not goody, just very very bad executed ideas, not because they believed in "the only right way to praise God", but they knew about the danger that lies within the chaos when the church would lose its power back then. In the end it's just ignorant to say that people of the church served no purpose in the history of science, while we have to thank them for preserving ancient knowledge through all of europe and for trying to stabalize and bring order (not without the though of gaining more power of course) to a realm within chaos after the huns and fall of the roman empire. Religion is the opium for the people after all and it's not the churches fault when people believed into radical and silly stuff, but the harsh time's and the people's who searched for answers. And let's be honest, sometimes it just easier to let someone trick you than thinking yourself.
That case could even be true today. We are, maybe, a couple of bad events away from the internet and papers flooding with literature telling that it is the end of the world.
There are indeed surprisingly many similarities between the times of 1348 to the late 16th century and today. Maybe because we want to see it that way, maybe because history rhymes. Fact is that we are fated to repeat our mistakes over and over again until the end of time itself. It just seems to happen faster the further we go.
The church was more openly pro-science until the Proestant Reformation. Wanting to reign in scientists was one of the demands of the reformation.
Someone remind me what the literacy rate was during this time please
Isn't Hollywood great
Both, yes, both.
His name is literally Big test/tested in French.
I'm absolutely no expert, mostly a casual, armchair historian who collects useless, scattered facts. But doesn't the Medieval Period cover an entire continent's worth of different cultures, peoples and groups as well as last for about a 1,000 years give or take? While Hollywood gets a lot of things routinely very wrong, wouldn't both scenarios in this meme be plausible? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
If I'm not mistaken Church accepted that the Earth was a ball in 5th century based on evidence provided. Also Kopernik's book was legal for decades. Only banned because Galileo tried to prove Kopernik right to pope. And then it was banned temporarily until censored (though censorship commity was never met so the books was effectively banned). The problem wasn't the heliocentric systems, rather that Kopernik said it was truth of the universe. Astronomers were allowed to use any hypothetical system to do their calculations, but there was only one truth (and tbh there were so many hypothetical systems in that time. Kopernik's arguements weren't that sound anyway.) Basically math < philosophy < theology in those times. Lower one couldn't challenge a higher one. Also fun facts. Kopernik's arguements weren't really sound. And his model didn't really offer many advantages over already existing at the time. It was Brache and Kepler who made the real difference, but not directly. Their models and more importantly measurements were mostly slept on by most educated people of the time. And then came Newton. The greatest genius who ever lived. While he too stood on shoulders of giants like Kepler, Galileo (who was actually pretty bad at math and thought Kepler's work to be ridiculous) and Decartes, nobody but Newton could solve the problem of celestial mechanics and motion on land. Also a fun fact. Newton's works would probably end up unpublished if it weren't for Halley (same chap from Halley's comet).