Milesius wrote:The dark ages were caused by barbarian invasions, not Christianity, which you would know, if you were not a noxious mediocrity with just enough of learning to misquote. There was a whole world to the East that remained Christian (until the followers of Mahound swept much of it away) that did not experience the dark ages of the western part of the Old Roman Empire. Moreover, Christians are the ones who preserved the learning of antiquity.
Why do you use the strange distortion 'Mahound' to refer to Mohammed? Oh well, I suppose you may be one of those people who enjoy being rude for religious reasons. Be my guest. People from all religions do it, so why not you?
The concept of a 'Dark Ages' is of course based on a view of history that centers on the Latin West, and neglects the Eastern Roman empire that continued for long after the deposition of the last of emperor of the Western Empire. Many historians nowadays prefer not to use it at all. It also neglects the Islamic world as a contributor to human intellectual culture.
Given your reference to 'Mahound', I suppose it is to be expected that you give the Arabic-speaking world no credit at all for preserving, and in some ways developing and surpassing the learning of Greek antiquity. Do you think, for instance, that the accounts of the work of the
House of Wisdom in Baghdad from the 9th century onwards are just Islamist propaganda?