Where would we be as a civilation if the Dark Ages never took place?

Question

As far as three thousand years ago, the Greeks discovered the way to understand the universe, science. Even inventions of the steam engine by the Romans. We were inventing technology and using science. Then religion steps in and surpresses knowledge and the use of science. Several scienctists are told to say they were wrong. Fast foward 1500 years and the age of enlightenment and the renassiance. The discoveres that the greeks and romans made were learned again. And now in the last 100 years have we started to really use technology. Just imagine where we would be if things were different. Maybe someone invents the engine in 1000a.d. Splits the atoms in the 1500s and space travel in the 1700's. By our time, we would probably be living all in the solar system...Or maybe we would've destroyed ourselves.

Answer 1

What a great question!

No, I think if we had had forward progress continuing by the time the Age of Enlightenment came along, imagine what Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson could've made out of it!

Darwin would've had both the ideas and the technology to prove out his theories.

Pasteur would've been ten steps ahead of where he ended up--at the beginning!

I think these were the people who also had the wisdom to use the knowledge in a judicious fashion. The convergence of 'Moral Man' and Deism with technological prowess would have produced a better future than the disjointed, herky-jerky existence we have now.

For example, we have NOT 'moved forward' with the rediscovery of science. SOME have, many have not. If you talk to a number of fundamentalist (fill in the blank) style religionists, they are as stuck in the Dark Ages as any monk scribing with his eyebrows up in his fringe because you mentioned something he might consider 'heresy.'

It's the fact that the Dark Ages took place at ALL that keeps reverberating in our collective psyche, serving as a choke-chain on advancement, causing one step forward, two steps back, and sideways diversions into violent anti-science too often to mention.

So, without the Dark Ages, we could have proceeded unfettered by the neurotic, anal-retentive processes that we're still dragging along with us.

Answer 2

your right the world would be about 500-800 years more advanced without the Dark Ages

I constantly lament that fact

but religion has nothing to do with it. Rather it was the power of the Christian church and the fact that they kept the masses ignorant and them in power.

Just look at other places on earth during that time both China and the Middle East invented things like Algebra, the Compass, gunpowder, and Superior sailing equipment and much more.

this was all done under Arabic Islam and Chinese Buddhism.

So clearly it was not religion that held back science but rather Christianity and the Church

Answer 3

Well the dark ages lasted about 1500 years which isnt all that long considering. We can say technological advances were at a stand still then definitely, but it still took hundreds of years afterwards to get where we are today so I guess if we imagine where we would be 1500 from now, we could assume that is where we would be today if it didn't happen. IMO... we'd destroy ourselves.

Answer 4

Bingo... if it weren't for Christianity, Christopher Columbus probably would have been out in the Asteroid Belt, setting up a mining colony, instead of trying to prove that the earth isn't flat, and finding a shortcut to the Orient.

Answer 5

if the knowledge we have now was used long ago, we wouldn't be around today as the kings controled the world at a dangerous pace.

Answer 6

Well, on the other hand, we wouldn't have a very good historical lesson on the dangers of religion ;-)