CaliforniaKid wrote:Username wrote:Hitchen's point that the Western church was more bad than good is probably correct (though I also agree with Hart that the Dark Ages were not as dark as most people think); Hart's point that the Eastern church is completely left out of this assessment is also correct. The history of Christianity is far more complex than Hitchens lets on. The truth is somewhere in the middle.
Having recently done some study of Christian interactions with Jews, Muslims, and heretics in the middle ages, it's my considered opinion that the dark ages were pretty effing dark, at least in much of Europe. (Not that there's any truth to the Protestant conceit that the darkness ended with the Reformation.)
It's true that the East wasn't quite as dark as the West, but I'd argue that religious dogmatism played a large role in Byzantium's decline and eventual collapse. See Philip Jenkins's recent book The Jesus Wars for a case in point. If Hart's argument is that religion didn't poison the East, then he must be talking about a different East than the one Jenkins described.
We're reading the same books. I'm half way through Jesus Wars. Check out Hart. You might not agree with everything he says, but he's no intellectual slouch. It's an interesting read, at least as an intelligent counterpoint to the religion poisons everything view, which is overblown and oversimplifies things. As I said, I tend to lean toward the belief that everyone has an ax to grind and the truth is somewhere between all of the arguments. I think you'll find Hart acknowledges the bad things that happened both East and West, but makes a good case that things weren't nearly as bad as Hitchens tries to show.