Today, DarkSyde wrote about one of my favorite subjects, the Library of Alexandria. In those hallowed halls, humans stored knowledge of the diameter of the Earth and documented theories of a heliocentric universe and worlds beyond our own. And that was all before the 5th century.
No one can say with certainty when the Library was destroyed, but DarkSyde and others subscribe to the belief that it coincided with the gruesome murder of Hypatia by Christian zealots. Whether it was razed entirely then or finished off at some other time, though, there is little doubt that, at the very least, major damage was done when Patriarchs* Theophilus and Cyril waged war upon it. The fundies in the audience can bicker over whether it was demolished or merely crippled, but the Christian assault on the library is difficult to refute historically.
[And if you try to argue Caesar destroyed it before the Christians could've gotten to it, I will point you to everybody following him who mentions its existence.]
So before 500AD, humans already knew what took us another 1000 years to rediscover (or re-admit to ourselves, at any rate): that the world is round and we orbit the sun. Back then, Christians saw these ideas as threateningly as the fundamentalists of today see evolution and other scientific advances. By actively seeking the destruction of knowledge, by gruesomely murdering brilliant teachers like Hypatia, the leaders of Christianity willfully perpetrated the dark ages on Western civilization.
If that isn’t one of the worst crimes in human history, there is no such thing as evil. DarkSyde openly wonders what would’ve become of us had we never lost this knowledge. I wonder, too. In the culture of the scholars of the Great Library, there was no deference to any specific diety; by most accounts, science and learning always came first. It doesn’t take a ridiculously creative mind to conceive of how much saner our world could be had these principles continued to take precedence.
Obviously, the Egyptians hardly had it all figured out. I’m not nostalgic for the good old days of Ptolemy II. But I do believe the West was growing in a certain direction until Christian thugs laid waste to everything that didn’t fit their worldview.
And are those actions really so different from the attitudes of today? If there was one library in the world with the only copies of the collected works on biology and evolution, don’t you think an army of acolytes would’ve destroyed it by now? It’s a darn shame Guttenberg’s printing press came to work against them in the end, what with the dastardly dissemination of so many ungodly books.
The Christians who foster misinformation about ID and zygotes and Islam are no better than the ancient fanatics who attacked the Library of Alexandria. Now, though, they lash out at colleges and academics. They work tirelessly to get ID in school and Jesus in office. They fight science, destroy choice, and wage war on intellectual curiosity. If they had their way, the fundamentalists would plunge us right back into the darkness.
It’s hardly a foregone conclusion that they’ll fail.
*You can’t make this shit up.
My dad told me I was condemning my own soul to hell when I took a class on World Religions that taught about Islam. The teacher was a Muslim, but he was born and raised in ‘Afula, near Nazareth, so he had a unique perspective on the Israel vs. the Arab world. Most of what I know about Islam, I learned from him and he was extremely knowledgable in all the Abrahamic faiths.
However, when I came home to my family, my dad, the bigotted fundie, immediately said that I was tainted by the mere fact that I had studied the heathen religion. His idea was that knowing precisely what the tenets of Islam are means that I am following that religion. He is completely anti-knowledge, whereas my professor taught me things I didn’t know about Christianity and Judaism, let alone Islam. He was completely willing at all times to hear and understand the world around him, and I couldn’t help but notice the complete discrepency with fundie logic exemplified by my father, and the curiosity about the world exemplified by my Muslim professor.
So, in a roundabout way, I’m saying that you are completely right. The radical fundamentalists on our side are just as anti-knowledge and anti-science as every fundamentalist that came before. And we have to fight them at all points in order for our society to not give in to the dark age of irrationality we are heading towards.
I certainly wouldn’t put it past Christians of the day, nor past the dark ages fetishists of today, but your link regaring Caesar seems to specifically refute the “Christians did it” theory. Now, obviously, I don’t really know how reliable the link is, but you’re the one that put it out there, bucko
LOL. Well, I was reading everything, and it looks like I accidentally pasted a link to one of the Christian defenders there.
Here’s one piece refuting the Caesarian destruction and implying everybody had a hand in it.
Wikipedia also mentions Strabo’s visit 25 years after the supposed Caesar incident.
Here’s yet another source indicating it was damaged heavily by all 3 events.
Almost every source _but_ that original link seems to indicate the Christians likely participated in a destruction of some or all of the library.
Sigh. According to a fundie friend of mine, Muslims are responsible for the crime of destroying the library. I wonder if my fundie friend (who is opposed to evolutionary theory, the whole works) is aware of the contents of the library…?!
As an American, I expend the greatest amount of venom on Christian fundamentalist efforts to retard knowledge, repress women and control the government. However, I think it must be said that godbaggery of every stripe represents the biggest waste of time, energy and resources in the history of the planet.
Excellent point, Betty.
Also, I found the intended link and corrected the post. Auguste is referencing this link, which makes a solid case for Caesar’s guilt, but seems to fall outside the consensus most other scholars seem to accept, which is that the library continued on after this event.
The intended link points out, among several other things:
Thanks for the link! I read PAB on a weekly basis and it was a delightful surpise to see this post.
Whoa! That is one mighty fine compliment, DarkSyde. Thank_you_.
Over from Panda…gone.
Good piece….always wondered.
Now that that’s settled and Hypatia is my Patron Saint
(librarians and dietitians already being my favorite people) and
Bruno is my all time best (worst?) martyr-scientitst….
I can go on finding all things Catholic and all things ever born of Catholicism…
to be the essence of (and so…’essentially’) evil.
Epitome of that, institutionalized.
Actual fundie book-burnewrs….who knew?
That being so
Brown-shirt fundies helped shoe-horn us in to a thousand dark years.
Makes perfect sense
Perfect, actually
So, thanks for the insight.