So I get home today and have two messages on my Myspace blog (www.myspace.com/rookhawkins) and they're from this guy who claims to be friends with another Christian I ran into. Somehow this Christian's posts got deleted by Myspace (So did my two-hour responce to him and I don't know why). Here is my response to him:

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I don't know what you're talking about, but I didn't delete any post - in fact I replied to it here on my blog. I'm surprised to find his post and mine both gone - but I promise you they were both here and I was waiting for him to reply back to me - apparently I see why it didn't happen.

As for your incredulous claim that your God will be coming back, I find it ironic. You’re no different then the ignorant Christians of the second century who wrote hundreds of apocalyptical writings in lieu of Jesus’ return – as they were being told it would happen in their lifetimes. And then again, it happened in the Middle Ages where people were told that Jesus would be coming back in their lifetimes. Then there were those nuts who claimed that Jesus was returning in the new Millennia (Y2K) and look how wrong they were. Your claim is no different then theirs and it will pass as theirs did.

More irony is that Jesus and Paul and the anonymous writers of some of the Epistles also claimed that Jesus would be returning within the lifetimes of those around them – their generation:

MATT. 10:23. “. . . for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have goneover the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.”

MATT. 16:28. “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.”

MARK 9:1. “And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.”

MARK 13:30. “Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.”

LUKE 9:27. “But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.”

These passages clearly show that Jesus’ coming in power and glory to judge the quick and the dead was to take place in the lifetime of persons living then. Yet they have all died and the kingdom has never arrived. The following is an additional list, the ones with more "*" show they have the most impact. These are taken from my dear friend, Dennis McKinsey, author of The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy.

** MATT. 4:17. “. . . Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

** MATT. 10:7. “. . . The kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

MATT. 23:39. “For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.”

** MARK 1:15. “. . . The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.”

*** MARK 13:29–30. “So ye in like manner, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know that it is nigh, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.”

*** LUKE 9:26–27. “. . . when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s, and of the holy angels. But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.”

*** LUKE 21:31–32. “So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled.”

* JOHN 14:3. “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”

* JOHN 14:18. “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.”

* JOHN 14:28. “Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. . . .”

* JOHN 16:22. “And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, . . .”

* ACTS 1:11. “. . . this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.”

** 1 COR. 7:29. “But this I say, brethren, the time is short. . . .”

** PHIL. 4:5. “. . . The Lord is at hand.”

* COL. 3:4. “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.”

** 2 THESS. 2:2. “. . . as that the day of Christ is at hand.”

** HEB. 9:28. “. . . and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.”

** HEB. 10:37. “For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.”

** JAMES 5:7–9. “Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord . . . Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh . . . behold, the judge standeth before the door.”

** 1 PET. 4:7. “But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer.”

* 1 JOHN 3:2. “. . . but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.”

** REV. 1:1. “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass. . . .”

** REV. 3:11. “Behold, I come quickly. . . .”

** REV. 22:7, 12. “Behold, I come quickly. . . .”

** REV. 22:20. He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. . . .”

The passages from Paul such as Corinthians and Thessalonians clearly points to the idea that Jesus would be returning swiftly – not in thousands of years and not long after the death of those he was speaking to. These letters were written to the communities living at the time – Corinthians and Galatians are no more relevant now then they were two hundred years ago – or even five hundred years ago. The communities of Ephesius and Galatia are long extinct as they used to be. It’s been almost two thousand years and Paul and Jesus’ words have proven to be false, unless you want to claim that there are two-thousand year old individuals walking around? That would be a site.

Also, way to assume the very point in dispute. Special Pleading (that your God exists) is not an argument, but a fallacious logical argument. There are reasons why your savior wasn't accepted by the Jews.

What is the Jewish concept of the Messiah?
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/judaism/FAQ/06-Jewish-Thought/section-8.html

Why Jews Don't Believe in JC
http://www.mtfreethinkers.org/jewish/jewish.htm

Christians have willfully and purposely misinterpreted and misused the Septuagint{LXX) to "shoehorn" Jesus into the alleged prophecies Note: The LXX is a Greek translation of the OT by Jewish scholars that was used by Christians as the source for the Christian OT. The Greek was very bad and the Jews abandoned the LXX for that reason. However, it has served the purpose of Christians well because they bend the Greek to make it say what they need (virgin birth crap, prophecies etc.)

Christians misuse the LXX for mistranslation of "virgin"
http://www.thedeepdark.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard/topic.cgi?forum=8&topic=501&start=0#postNumber4
(Also see Justin Martyr’s dialogue with Trypho – quite an eye-opener!)

What the Jews say about LXX:
http://www.geocities.com/faithofyeshua/masoretic_text_or_lxx_what_is_of_god.htm

A Detailed Comparison of the Hebrew Text to the LXX Showing Christian Corruptions of the Original Text......
http://www.messiahtruth.com/response.html
And as for your final claim, that people “like me” cover up information, you don’t want to start a “who covers up more” debate with me, friend. You won’t like what happens and you certainly won’t come out looking good. Christians are known for hiding, burning, and killing off whatever and whoever to keep their faith in tact.

Don’t believe me? A few blog posts down is a list of the crimes committed against humanity in the name of preserving religious intolerance and covering up the heresies and free-thinkers. In fact the Catholic Church has an entire order of Heresiologists – those who launched the nasty little think called the Inquisition – Thomas Aquinas is known to have written that Heretics should receive no penance but instead should be killed outright after excommunication:

"With regard to heretics two points must be observed: one, on their own side; the other, on the side of the Church. On their own side there is the sin, whereby they deserve not only to be separated from the Church by excommunication, but also to be severed from the world by death. For it is a much graver matter to corrupt the faith which quickens the soul, than to forge money, which supports temporal life. Wherefore if forgers of money and other evil-doers are forthwith condemned to death by the secular authority, much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death. " (Summa Theologica; Secunda Secundae; Question 11, Article 3)

And we can’t forget about the hundreds of documents that the church burned, destroyed or buried, many of which are lost to us still. We were lucky enough to uncover several apocrypha, the Gnostic Gospels and Apocalypses, Acts and additional pros before they too would be lost to us. And what of the black list of books, books which are forbidden to be read by anybody in the church even under penalty of excommunication?

And to bread this subject even more, what of all the damage and hindrances to science in the name of keeping the faith pure of reason by the church throughout history? Here is a blog post by Scientific Historian and Classical Historian Richard Carrier:

On another blog last month I was asked by some friends to comment on a thread about Christianity's role in the progress of science. Other things were being discussed there, such as whether Martin Luther was a despicable ass or an admirable genius, which I didn't comment on because I know too little about the matter to add anything worthwhile. But the history of science is my Ph.D. field, so I could comment on that with some authority. And I did. What follows is expanded and adapted from what I said, and completely supercedes my comments there as far as I'm concerned. Don't worry, though. My blog isn't always going to be about the history of science.

It is becoming popular now to claim Christianity "responsible" for the scientific revolution (Stark, Jaki, etc.). My dissertation will refute much of that thesis, in about two chapters altogether. But we need to keep distinct the claim that Christianity did not actively oppose science (which is sometimes true, depending on how you define "oppose") and the claim that Christianity was necessary for the scientific revolution (which is certainly not true), as well as various claims in the middle--like "Christianity wasn't necessary, but helped," which again depends on how you define "helped"; or "all theologies can find a compatible incentive towards science, and Christianity is a theology like any other," which is true, depending on how you define "Christianity" and "theology"; and so on. Likewise "our concept of science is an outgrowth of Christian theology" is no more true than "our concept of science is an outgrowth of pagan theology." Modern science grew up in a Christian context, but only by re-embracing ancient scientific values against the grain of the original Christian mindset. In turn, those ancient scientific values grew up in a pagan context. As with Christianity, that's not causality, it's just circumstance.

However, in all this the one claim that cannot be sustained is that Christianity "encouraged" science. Had that been the case, then there would not have been almost a thousand years (from roughly 300 to 1250 AD) of absolutely zero significant advances in science (excepting a very few and relatively minor contributions by Hindus and Muslims), in contrast with the previous thousand years (from roughly 400 BC to 300 AD), which witnessed incredible advances in the sciences in continuous succession every century, culminating in theorists whose ideas and findings came tantalizingly close to the scientific revolution in the 2nd century AD (namely, but not only, Galen and Ptolemy). You can't propose a cause that failed to have an effect despite being constantly in place for a thousand years, especially when in its absence science had made far more progress. Science picked up again in the 1200's precisely where the ancients had left off, by rediscovering their findings, methods, and epistemic values and continuing the process they had begun.

Sure, this was done by Christians, but only against the dominant grain, and at first only very slowly, and only by redefining what it meant to be a Christian in a way that would have been nearly unrecognizable to the Christians of the first four centuries, and was diametrically the opposite of what Christians of the early middle ages would have tolerated. A fair example is the treatment of John Philopon in the 6th century, the only known experimental scientist in the whole of Christian history before the 13th century: he was branded a heretic and everything he did in the sciences was effectively ignored. Though he wasn't condemned for being a scientist, he was condemned for thinking for himself in matters of theology, precisely in his effort to make science and religion compatible. But by opposing exactly that process, the Church killed any prospect for science under its watch for nearly ten whole centuries. You can call it collateral damage, but it's damage all the same. An accidentally dead Iraqi is still a victim of war, and so was medieval science a victim of Christianity.

Aquinas and Roger Bacon are often wheeled out here, but they are also examples of what I'm talking about: both post 1200 AD (hence again a thousand years too late), and both responding to the revival of ancient (pagan) scientific and philosophical literature and ways of thinking. At that point, that meant mostly just some Aristotle--whose work had already become largely obsolete even in antiquity. The real discoveries of what the ancients had achieved after him would take another century or more, and even then all they had achieved was never fully realized until the 20th century. Hence the new ideas under Aquinas and Bacon were not inspired by Christianity but in spite of it. They were inspired, instead, by the recovered ideas of ancient pagans, and the challenges they posed to Christian ways of thinking.

Moreover, neither Aquinas nor Bacon did anything significant in science. Neither conducted any significant experiments or advanced any scientific field in any notable way. Bacon's protoscientific work has been much exaggerated and misrepresented in the literature, and Aquinas didn't do anything scientific at all, proto or otherwise--in fact, he fathered the "scholastic" approach to natural philosophy, which was the antithesis of science and the butt of every joke among scientists of the Renaissance. Thus, neither of them represent examples of an "encouragement to science." At best they represent examples of attempting to find a compatibility between two otherwise alien ways of thinking, with mixed and insufficient results. And even then they were not representative of their times--they were both acting against the grain (the Church had only recently banned the study of Aristotle and then reluctantly changed its mind), in efforts to reconcile Christianity as-it-was with better ways of thinking. They were both arguing, in effect, that Christianity had to change, and change fundamentally, to allow improvement, and yet neither of them understood science anywhere near as well as the ancients did, nor did either have any idea what the results would be of what they were asking for--had they known, they might both have changed their minds about their respective projects.

Even so, it is still wrong to say, as a friend of mine did, that "Christianity has spent the majority of its 2000-plus years opposing science with theology, with the most brutal means at its disposal." As someone else said, that’s a gross oversimplification, exaggerated and excessive. But so is the claim that Christianity never presented any obstacles to science, or that it only occasionally did so. The reality is that it constantly presented obstacles, usually indirectly (but just as potently), and sometimes directly, but rarely "with the most brutal means at its disposal." In effect, using a whole arsenal of tactics, early (and especially early medieval) Christianity bitch-slapped all thinking that could have any tendency to support and inspire an embrace and pursuit of scientific values. This hostility and effort wasn't aimed at science directly, but at liberality of thought, and most of all, at the notion that evidence available to everyone is the only supreme authority in all debates of substance. The Church very definitely and actively opposed that idea. And even before the consolidation of the Church, as I show in my dissertation, most Christians were uniformly hostile to the whole system of scientific values, condemning them as vain, idolatrous, arrogant, and unnecessary, if not outright dangerous. It took a long, gradual process to finally change minds on that score.

From Aquinas and Bacon (and their peers) to the dawn of the scientific revolution spans a period of roughly 300 years, and it took over a thousand years for Christianity to finally produce an Aquinas or a Bacon--at least in terms of actual intellectual authority and influence. In some respects, Origen and Philopon were perhaps comparable, but both were branded heretics and their scientific values rejected by their Christian peers. And even in the 13th and later centuries opposition remained, despite a growing tide against it. And though that opposition to scientific values has gradually dwindled ever since, it remains large and powerful enough to elect the presidents of a world superpower. This is not a problem to be regarded flippantly. This is the bugbear in Christianity's closet, and Christianity has failed to kill it for two thousand years. Christianity must be judged by that very failure.

It has also been noted that "sure there have been conflicts, but many (if not most) of the great scientists of history have also been religious," like Newton and Galileo. Indeed. Most of the greatest scientists in antiquity were also religious. Galen and Ptolemy were pagans, even creationists. All that proves is that people can manipulate their religions to be compatible with a scientific mindset--often by compartmentalizing, which means only embracing scientific epistemic values when answering questions that don't challenge precious religious dogmas, which is really the issue. A religion will be capable of being made compatible with science only insofar as it restrains its dogmatic commitments far enough that science is unlikely to encroach upon them. The problem is that science always will encroach upon them eventually, and when that happens there will be only two responses to choose from: give up precious dogmas (in other words, change your religion to be compatible again with science) or stand your ground and oppose science (which is how the Intelligent Design movement has responded to evolution, for example, and soon will respond, I suspect, to advances in neuroscience).

It is certainly true that Christianity, like all religions, can be "retooled" to go either way, but not everyone will go the same way, hence there are Christians who are okay with science, and Christians who fight it tooth and nail. The problem with religion is exactly this: it keeps around this tendency to push a segment of the population against science, even as other segments find ways to make religion and science compatible. This tension is inherent in religious thinking and will never go away until religion goes away altogether. To be clear, by "religion" here (since I use that word in a different sense in other contexts) I mean any belief system that places faith above evidence and reason, accepting evidence and reason only when they do not conflict with an accepted set of faith-claims. Hence those two options for a religious person faced with scientific facts that contradict her faith: she can change her faith (and thus place science, and hence evidence, first in authority when choosing what to believe) or oppose science. Religion always produces the latter sort of person, even when it also produces the former, and that's what's wrong with it.

Hence the problem I am pointing to is not unique to Christianity. It existed even in the pagan world before Christianity. Anaxagoras was prosecuted by the Athenians for blasphemy simply for theorizing the sun is a hot stone. Other pagans tried to launch a blasphemy prosecution against Aristarchus when he claimed the earth revolves around the sun. Lucian had a contract put out on his head for claiming the miracles of a certain cult had natural explanations in ordinary fraud. Likewise, Neoplatonism sometimes resembled medieval Christianity in its disinterest in empirical studies and obsession with mystical approaches to science, often through armchair reasoning and "inspired intuition." But there was one enormous difference: science-hating pagans never had the institutional power and clout to enforce their views on the general society (all Anaxagoras and Aristarchus had to do to avoid their influence was leave town), but the Christians achieved and maintained precisely that power for many centuries, and so pervasively there was no way to escape their influence. What they did with that power was sufficiently scary that we should never want that to happen again.

Yet for all that, what I am asserting here is not that Christianity alone is responsible for the Dark Ages. I find Christianity to be a symptom, not a cause, of the fall of the Roman Empire and the ideals it founded or fought over (see my discussion The Rise of World Christianity). What I am saying, however, is that Christianity didn't do any good. It neither corrected what had gone wrong nor reintroduced any striving for the dreams and aspirations of earlier Greek and Roman idealists, but to the contrary, Christianity embraced a partial and sometimes full retreat from them. Hence Christianity did not kill science. But it made no effort to rescue and revive its ideals, and instead let them drown, with little sign of regret, and in some cases even to praises of its demise. Thus, Christianity was bad for science. It put a stop to scientific progress for a thousand years, and even after that it made science's recovery difficult, painful, and slow.

I am also not saying Christianity "necessarily and uniformly" stomps out science, only that we cannot claim Christianity "encouraged" science during its first thousand years, even if some significant Christian factions did later or now do. Christianity threw up a great many obstacles to the recovery of pagan scientific values during and after its first thousand years, and to a lesser extent is still doing this today. But again I am not saying all Christianity does this now. Rather, I am saying Christianity will always generate factions that do, as it always has. And the last thing we want is to allow one such faction back in power, as had been the case during Christianity's first thousand years in the saddle. We must not go back to the Dark Ages.

People still raise objections to various points above.

One might object and say, "Historians no longer believe there were any 'Dark Ages'!" That depends on what you mean by Dark Age. What I mean by that term here is any era in which a considerable amount of knowledge is lost, especially scientific and technical knowledge, while the ruling zeitgeist looks backwards to a time before more enlightened ways of doing things were embraced. The loss of over 90% of all literature, and the corresponding historical and scientific knowledge it contained, is a fact. The abandonment of the highest civilized, technological, historical, and scientific ideals of the early Roman elite, in exchange for more barbarian ways of thinking and doing things, is a fact. And that is, by my definition, a Dark Age.

Far less was recorded during the middle ages, and far less accurately, than had been the case in classical times, and only a small fraction of what was recorded before was preserved, and even what survived remained known to astonishingly few, and put to good use by even fewer. Again, by my definition, that's a Dark Age. At the same time, the greatest aspirations of the pagans, with their struggling ideals of democracy and human rights, just like their empirical ideals and the scientific spirit they inspired, were chucked out the window in favor of more primitive ideas of "god-given" kings constantly at war over a feudal society, pontificating popes and pulpit-thumping preachers, burning witches and the widespread embrace of hocus pocus, even by the educated elite. That's a Dark Age. And however much one might not like it, we had one.

One might object and say, "Well, it wasn't totally dark, some improvements in technology were made, some history was recorded, a lot of ancient knowledge preserved." But that would only be a valid point if I were claiming a Pitch Black Age. Even with a little light, it was plenty dark. Moreover, by far most of what was invented, improved, or preserved came after the 12th century. The Dark Ages preceded that. Even what was preserved through to the 12th century was only barely so, much of it only in a few isolated places, sometimes only in a single manuscript, perhaps two or three, scattered across the world and collecting dust on forgotten shelves, often damaged or surviving only in translation. And by far most of what survived was preserved only in the comparably wealthier Middle East, where times were never as dark as they definitely became in Europe. Hence the Dark Ages more aptly describes the history of Europe than of the medieval Middle East, although even the latter experienced a notable decline from pre-fall Rome in every aspect of civilization and culture.

One might object and say, "Well, even you admit Christians produced one real scientist, John Philopon, so clearly Christianity was doing something to encourage science!" That's hardly sound reasoning. When the controlling religion generates only one significant scientist in a thousand years spanning hundreds of millions of adherents, you cannot claim it "encouraged" science. That's like finding a single poodle-juggler in a thousand years of Christian history and claiming Christianity encouraged poodle-juggling. For a thousand years Christianity failed to inspire society to take up the values, especially the scientific values, that many pre-fall Romans had embraced, and this had the effect of stalling scientific progress for a thousand years. One might quibble over the causes of that fact, but it's still a fact.

One might object and say, "You are much too vague about what these mysterious 'scientific values' are that Christianity abandoned and came to accept only with difficulty and never universally." Well, then let it be known what I mean. By phrases like "scientific ideals," "scientific values," "scientific mindset," I do not mean potentially dogmatic activities like observing the movement of the stars or performing textbook surgery, but a system of beliefs that produces advances in knowledge, including a belief that public evidence and verifiable reason trump all authority in explaining what is and can be, that persuasion by appeal to observable evidence and sound logic is the only valid means of gaining consensus about the truths of this world, that this requires embracing everyone's intellectual freedom to accept, reject, or propose any idea they please, and that it is valuable and good to devote your life in this way to the pursuit of progress in understanding any aspect of nature or existence. Those are the scientific values of which I speak.

One might object and say "Christianity never had such a swift and overwhelming cultural influence in the middle ages as to blot out a 900 year course of scientific progress by itself!" Yes, it did. The Church owned all scriptoria and chose which books to copy and which to toss in the dustbin. The Church controlled all schools and chose what would and would not be taught in them. All Europeans that lived in those thousand years were under the thumb of priests who quickly opposed any freedom of thought that they imagined could ever pose a threat, and to that end had the full force and power of government and social influence at their command. The Church decided what values would be preached every week to all the masses, and which values would be derided. As I said, that is precisely the power even the antiscientific few among the pagans never had. The effect is undeniable: the abandonment of a shocking amount of scientific knowledge and, far more than that, the abandonment of the scientific values that had until then produced and improved that knowledge, and could have continued doing so.

One might object and say, "Characterizing classical antiquity as encouraging a general 'liberality of thought' is at best simplistic, and in many cases false." Not so. The reality is, freedom of thought not only existed, but was widely practiced and embraced, across the whole of the Roman world before Christianity came to power. Although things did start to roll toward fascism during the chaos of the 3rd century (as I explain in that linked discussion above), before then the vast diversity of philosophical and scientific sects and schools is evidence enough. Such open diversity could not have been the case had freethought been effectively opposed, and would not have been the case had it not been widely enough encouraged. Political freedom of speech was limited. But science was apolitical. Indeed, the phenomenon of "eclecticism," a widespread independence of thought whereby scientists and philosophers could pick and choose principles and theories from among all sects and schools as they themselves saw fit (rather than aligning themselves with only one) was the dominant intellectual fashion under the Hellenistic Greeks and especially the Romans. This is a fact of the times, a social and intellectual phenomenon that Christianity often attacked and then effectively eliminated.

In contrast, the groups that opposed science in classical antiquity were small, few, rare, and ultimately powerless. That is exactly the opposite of what happened under Christianity. Even if Athens was occasionally inhospitable, there was always Alexandria, Rome, Rhodes, Samos, Antioch, Ephesus, Pergamum, London, Marseilles, and countless other cities to retreat to in freedom--where, in fact, most science in antiquity was actually done. Hardly any science was done at Athens, in the whole history of antiquity--even much of Aristotle's scientific work was conducted on Lesbos. And under the Romans, what the Athenians had rarely attempted would have been outright illegal--which is why Lucian had to be dispatched clandestinely by assassination: his religious foes could no longer use the government to suppress his intellectual freedoms, exactly the opposite of the way things were under the thumb of the Church.

Yet even before the Roman Empire, neither Aristarchus nor Anaxagoras (nor any other scientist in the whole of antiquity) were killed or jailed or fined or affected in any significant way at all, beyond not being welcome in one city for a brief time. Hence their work continued uninterrupted, and their books were faithfully preserved and disseminated--until Christians (yes, Christians) decided they weren't worth copying anymore. Hence their books are lost to us. We have a hundred volumes of Jerome's inordinately boring letters, but not a single volume on Aristarchan heliocentric theory. Yes, heliocentric theory--over a thousand years before Copernicus. That is the measure of medieval Christian values.

Perhaps, indeed, had Christianity collapsed and a fanatically religious Neoplatonism produced a universal Church in the 4th century and thereafter for a thousand years, it, too, would have failed to encourage any significant scientific thinking. In which case I would be saying the same thing I am now: religion, whether Neoplatonic or Christian or Spaghettimonsterish, is bad for science and always will be, so long as it has any power to undermine or impede freethought, and insofar as it will (and it will) always generate antiscientific enclaves whom we will forever have to battle just to maintain the status of scientific knowledge and values. This is how it was. This is how it is. And until religion is gone, this is how it will always be.

And this is only half the bad news for you. One can write volumes of all the work the church has undone in history – the rewrites and destruction and obliteration of other cultures, slander wars, murders, thefts, genocides – you want to talk about hiding information and covering up truth? You picked the wrong person to pick this fight with.

I have never deleted a post by anybody on my blog unless they have been deliberately trying to goad me or just made insults one after another. You have to be pretty bad to warrant a deletion by me. One has to question why I left YOUR two posts up if I was one to “hide the truth”, even when you throw an allegation that I delete posts! You’d think if I wanted ANYTHING covered up, it would be the fact that I delete and cover things up! Right? But you’re still here. And had you bothered to read my blog comments elsewhere you’ll see I leave a lot of critical and sometimes violent comments on my blog. Because I’m not like YOU.

I don’t believe in hiding one side of an argument why only displaying mine. That my friend, is what Christians do.

The best to you,

Rook