Did Christianity hold Europe back?

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I am on the fence about this at the moment. so I'd like to hear arguments from either side.

The main argument in favour of the idea are:
1. The Nietzschean argument - Christianity promoted weakness over strength, and otherworldliness over physical and mental vigour.
2. The Bible ret*d scientific studies, which was an issue we were still dealing with in the 19th century with Darwin, and which we are still dealing with today in some place.
3. The Renaissance was an 'rebirth' of Classical (pagan) knowledge.

I don't have any thoughts on argument 1, except that I don't agree with it. I feel the same way about all similar arguments simply because they don't agree with my experience of reality. I haven't really formulated a rebuttal, though.

I agree with argument two, but I don't have any further thoughts on it, yet.

I have issues with argument three. The main one is that Renaissance humanism had its roots in Christianity as much as it did in Greco/Roman ideas. You can't exactly call the Renaissance a revival of 'pagan' thought either, since it was specifically Classical Greek and Roman ideas that were being revived and certainly not ancient Celtic or Germanic ones. Paganism itself wasn't 'humanist' in any sense, it was (is) animist; the only reason the Greeks and the Romans had a somewhat humanistic approach to life was because they were free to question their pagan religions and some of them didn't take it that seriously.Thus, I would call the Renaissance and rebirth of secular ideas more than a rebirth of pagan ones.

That only shows that the wording of argument 3 is wrong, rather than the general sentiment of it. Christianity was holding people back, and it took a challenge to its authority for people to move on. It does get complicated in that the humanism of the Renaissance was partly based in interpreting (for the first time not solely the role of clerics) Christian dogma differently to how it previously had been. It's true that the Renaissance started before the Reformation proper, but there were rumbles before Luther with the likes of the Lollards, and scholarship that was paving the way for it to happen. These movements were Christian and not secular or pagan.

So I think argument 3 has a grain of truth in it, but is quite a complex matter. I don't know a great deal on this and would appreciate other people's input.

Imo, Christianity stagnated scientific progress for about 1000 years.

Geocentric Universe, indeed...

Religion in general - and Christianity in particular for those of us in Europe - has been our chains. Our bonds. That which we must break away from at the soonest opportunity.

Well, you'd have to consider the fact that the Roman Empire converted to Christianity, and Byzantine/eastern half of the empire did pretty well before it was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The western half of the empire also survived for a century or two before the invading "barbarians" sacked Rome and destroyed the empire. However, in the chaos that the western half of the empire went through after Rome fell, a large amount of information was lost and/or destroyed, and will never be regained, pushing the people of the region backwards in terms of advancement.

The culture of the empire also fell apart. A new culture, the feudal culture of the Medieval Ages, formed to replace the old culture. In the Medieval Ages, wars, famines, plagues, and all sorts of disasters happened, one after the other. Small kingdoms came and went, and people couldn't really live without worrying something crazy was going to happen. As a result, superstition ran rampant, and people often did not trust their neighbors.

Most people found comfort in the religion that survived. Those that didn't were killed, because of the people's superstitious nature. It was the superstitious people who took over the Church and turned it into something that scared people into submission that held Europe back.

I'm not a Christian; I don't believe in God. But I do know a couple things about Jesus, and he was supposed to be an emissary of peaceful, loving God, not a wrathful one. Christianity was created with the intent of helping people. And, as puddingmouse pointed out, the Renaissance was a movement created by Christians. So I think Christianity was part of the problem, but the culture of time was a bigger part of the problem.

Simple answer is:

The hell do I know.

In my opinion, Europe was fortunate to come across the work The City of God by Augustine of Hippo. It laid the theological foundation for the separation of religion and politics within Christianity.

Without it, Christianity would perhaps *still* be holding Europe back...

Sure did.

^

Lol. I think Newton's prophecy was 'correct' by sheer luck (his prediction for the date of the apocalypse didn't work out). I think that story provides a good reason not to be closed-minded, whatever side you are on.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p5jnqEyUs4[/youtube]