The Renaissance ended with the return of classical learning preserved In Constantinople. Scholars fled the city due to the conquest by the Turks. I've got to believe that this idea that "science" brought the West out of the Dark Ages is one of those you thought up for yourself because of its profound ignorance. And what you do know about the Dark Ages is just what wikipedia told you. Think for yourself? Bah!
Science is what brought us out of the dark ages. What was preserved only represented a tiny fraction of what was to be discovered and derived in the years that followed. And much of the old myths were wrong anyway, What do you know that you didn't find on wiki? What do you know about science? I'm a physicist. But this is really about you defending the greatest plague in the history of humanity, religion.
It is really not about me defending religion. It is about me challenging your assertion that you think for yourself. You didn't think up F=ma. Somebody told it to you. (Not that F actually equals Ma , of course, but you know what I mean.)
No, we weren't just told that F = ma. We measured it. In physics we walk path of discovery as the greats did. As classroom and homework problems we derive what they derived and discover the answers ourselves. We do the experiments they did. This way we see for ourselves that physics works and yields the correct answers. We know it for a fact. No trust required.
And most of classical physics was discovered AFTER the dark ages. That is what carried us into the age of enlightenment.
Um, the Roman Empire was not without religion. And there are plenty of other ways to have an f'ed up culture besides religion. Frankly, I'm not sure if modern humans have ever been without religion. It probably predates our species. People, understandably, struggle to cope with the possibility that their loved ones are permanently gone and someday they will be too. That's not a thing. You mean nationalism, which is basically religion.
Same Christian oriented history ignoring the Jews. As translators and flow of trade. Ref.: Jews and Modern Capitalism by Werner Sombert The Medieval Warm Up helped end the Dark Ages too. Western Europe food production increased as did the population. Good time to declare a Crusade to reduce the worriers at home. El Moi Defender of Truthiness
Actually, Christianity “invented” children by pushing back on the idea they were property like slaves and dogs and cats, and made them the property of God. Children, particularly orphans bought and sold without even the meager protections given to slaves. It was an idea that grew in popularity.
It was the Greeks who advanced the idea of individual rights by establishing the first recorded formal meetings to solve community problems. This idea may have originated somewhere earlier but I am not a scholar in this field. Of course these individual rights applied mostly to the wealthy or influential such as military top brass. And it affirmed the right to hold slaves as opposed to the rights OF slaves. But the IDEA was accepted by the population as a whole. Individual universal rights date from the early 19th century in the west when slavery was abolished. It is a relatively very new concept and still not properly accepted by some who think it "difficult" that the law now bestows equal rights on everyone. That somehow this offends the natural order when in fact it should have been the natural order for a very long time.
