Theology III

[GrayMouser]

[QUOTE=Lief Erikson;620678]

But there were other devastating methods used to develop this economy that I haven't mentioned yet.

4) The expansion of inequalities and ruthless exploitation of the common worker. In the Medieval Ages, there was a social contract between lords and their workers that provided their workers with a generally pretty good life. In fact, throughout most of the Medieval Ages, the average worker was about as tall as Westerners of the 21st century are. That is an indication of good economic conditions, a healthy diet, etc. They began to get shorter in the Late Medieval Ages because the Little Ice Age devastated a lot of harvests, but economic conditions for the average worker became the worst they'd ever been during the Enlightenment. The skeletons of average workers from that time period are shorter than they'd ever been before in post-Christian Western history, because workers were so brutally treated in factories, were starved and given squalor to live in. Owners had no compassion for them in the capitalist free market. This is a useful article showing the transition from economic conditions in the Medieval Ages to economic conditions of the Enlightenment: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/medimen.htm

According to the author, skeletal height also is sensitive to inequalities in populations, and inequalities between the rich and poor actually became far greater in the modern era than they'd been in the Medieval Ages, because of the inhumanity and lack of social, moral responsibility felt by big businesses. To achieve our great economies of today, the common worker for centuries was ground into the filth under an iron foot. It was a very, very savage time in the Enlightenment to be a worker, more so than at any other time in Western history. And inequalities between the rich and poor are actually still much greater in our modern societies than they were in the Medieval Ages- it's just that now in the West, because the brutal practices of the past produced so much more money to go around, both the rich and the poor are monetarily better off than they were in the past.

Intersting study, but a couple of points.

-The study was limited to the far northern fringes of Europe- essentially Scandinavia and Britain- I'd be interested to see figures for the more populated urbanised areas of France, Germany and Italy.

-The author acknowledges the effects of climate and population growth.
For most of the Middle Ages, northern Europe was under-populated. The expansion into that areas was roughly equivalent to the much later settlement of North America and the Antipodes.

Forests were cleared, the heavy bottom lands were first opened by the mouldboard plow, marshes were drained (often by monasteries) horses replaced oxen (horse-collars) , crop rotation and legumes were introduced, as well as wind- and water-mills: all labour-saving devices. (How can you tell I wrote a term paper about this in college? )

Then, inevitably, the weatherman and Dr. Malthus began to catch up.

And, note, the author actually acknowledges that these gains were recovered in the eighteenth century. Certainly, the conditions of Victorian Britain were horrendous- but they were much less so when other countries began to industrialise, including Germany and America.

5) The destruction of the environment. This could have the longest lasting and most cataclysmic impact of all, on humanity. The Bible calls us to be good stewards of creation. However, to develop our modern economy, humans in the Enlightenment destroyed many of the world's ecosystems and most of its natural environment.
http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/jo...cal_Crisis.htm
According to this source, “the fact that the present ecological crisis began developing since the Industrial Revolution is indisputable now.”

There was always cutting down of trees to build buildings or crafts before the modern era, but the Industrial Revolution stepped up the process in a vast way through its factory system. They essentially perpetrated an environmental holocaust in their production of our modern benefits, destroying hundreds of species, ruining the air, forests and seas. We have continued in their footsteps in our age, and this kind of environmental rape is necessary to produce a modern economy of the kind we've got.

Yep, we've been mining our environment instead of stewarding it.

The environmental catastrophe our economic development required could literally end up wiping out the human race, in a few hundred years.

So don't be proud of this economic development. The shrugging off of Christian moral safeguards on society was nightmarish in its consequences for hundreds of millions of people in the past, for many people fighting wars in formerly colonized nations of the present, and it could easily be for all humanity in the future.

OTOH, the average person in medieval times lived a life far below that of most people on Earth today, in any term you wish to posit.

Most of these strides of intellectual thought were strides into evil and away from what was pure. Things like sexual license that were taught by many of these thinkers have caused the proliferation of STDS that have proved an economic burden for nations and death for millions. AIDS alone is expected to kill 1.8 million Ethiopians this year.

Well, according to the Bible and other ancient documents, sexual license has always been with us.

Maybe if Catholic Bishops stopped lying to their parishioners about the size of the AIDS virus and the effectiveness of condoms , some of those millions wouls survive? But hey, what's a few millions of people dying in misery if it stops them from committing the sin of using contraception?

Some of these thinkers advanced Social Darwinism, which spawned Imperialism. Others supported Racism or Eugenics. The new political philosophies were perverted as well. Atheistic Communism has become responsible for repeated genocides, as have democracies (the destruction of Native Americans, and now abortion). There were no Christian genocides in the Medieval Ages, and there were no major rebellions in the Early and Middle Medieval Ages- only a few local rebellions against lords. The modern era is born on rebellion and replete with genocides.

Well, if you don't count the Cathars and others. As I've said before, there's a reason every bump in the ground in Europe has a castle on top. But hey, if you want to return to a world of bubonic plague, serfs bound to the land and subject to execution for changing their jobs, burning Jews and heretics, by all means advocate for it. Our Enlightenment principles mean we won't burn you at the stake for doing so, though we know if you ever got into a position of power you would be more than happy to launch an auto-da-fe on us.