Happy, The dark ages had nothing to do with religion. Most Historians I think will agree on me with this point.

The General consensus is that the dark ages were a result of the power vacuum left by the fall of the Western Roman empire, constant raids from peoples in Northern Europe against other regions, and a series of plagues that wiped out more then half of the continental population. Several wars occured between warlords, who had seized power in the absence of Rome, creating a massive drain on population and stagnating economic, intellectual, and social growth. Raiders from Northern Europe and the Muslim Jiihad further compounded these difficulties. constant ransacking, pillaging, and burnings destroyed much knowledge. As a result of the loss of knowledge in the general population as well as there being little to know unity, infastructure left behind by the Romans fell into disrepair or was simply scrapped to make houses. However Religion (particularly Christianity) served a good purpose in these times.

Monks preserved knowledge from the Roman and Greek eras. This knowledge in turn was used to improve the average persons (technologically regressed from the previous Roman Era) life style. Also as more and more warlords converted to Christianity, religion served as a unifying force in the time. The Catholic church put restrictions on war and the raiding of neighboring territories. I would maintain that the practice of religion in the dark ages served a good purpose.

As far as the crusades are concerned. You really ought to look deeper into your history before you say they where entirely negative. Vast armies moving Eastward required the construction of new roads. These roads in turn greatly improved the trading infastructure of Europe. Also the crusades helped to re-open the trade routes from the Eastern world to the Western world and visa versa. Another effect of the crusades was to remove the excess of soldiers from Europe. I know this sounds kinda crazy, but this is actually historically backed. After many of the waring tribes in Europe where unified into countries and the raiders from the north where placated, there was suddenly a massive excess of soldiers who where only skilled in the art of war. These soldiers in turn where hired as thugs by wealthy nobles and kings to terrorize their populations for the sake of either obedience or money. The pope of the time (I cant recall his name at the moment) cited this as one of his reasons to calling the first Holy Crusade.

Anyway if your looking for some verification of some of this data, then I suggest you watch the documentary "The Dark Ages" it was done by the history channel in 2007. you can watch it instantly on Netflix and or you can rent it.

although we could always just dig up washington's bones and scientifically prove he exists...

but that isn't your point. i would be interested in talking free will/determinism as i am one of those wacky atheists who doesn't believe in free will and there aren't many of us (as most atheists i've met believe in free will).

and you don't have to worry about my emotional baggage on the subject. i know my particular thoughts on reality are likely as silly and wrong as anyone else's.

Detin,

some good points but be careful when you start advocating war as a positive or a potential solution to a problem. sounds a bit maniacal.

i'm still waiting for some of those studies you mentioned. i'm thinking the Bible Belt and the non-Bible belt in the US and which is more industrious. or how about japan? pretty much an atheist nation. seems to be doing okay without religion. maybe even leading the world in industry?

interesting points everyone. especially for reminding of the george washington video i havent seen in a couple years. lol.

dete, sorry to say it, but even as a pretty die-hard christian, i gotta admit the crusades were pretty fucked up. maybe thats cus im protestant and have inherent bias against those catholics (lol @ that). not that i know a ton, i just read a couple books about the first and i believe third crusades. but its fucked up when you are basically pillaging your way across the known world, ransacking entire environments and populations, and committing mass genocide along the way. along the way. they killed a bazillion jews (+/- 3), and it was a holocaust close to the order of magnitude that hitler/nazis were. pretty atrocious.

one interesting account during their trek to jerusalem during the first crusade was the battle of antioch (wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Antioch). sadly the wikipedia account only mentions the expected side of this tidbit: that while the crusaders were seiged and starving inside of antioch and at their wits end, they claimed to see a meteorite fall into the turkish camp, and this inspired them (along with the discovery of the holy lance, lol). but what was really intriguing was in this book that i read about it (written by a nonchristian historian), which states that the turkish account of the seige mentioned the exact same happenstance, that a meteorite came out of nowhere and fell into their camp the day before the battle. and then all the muslim leaders saw it as a bad omen and started questioning everything. so when the crusaders made their last gasp attack out of antioch, a lot of the turkish leaders quickly decided to run away, since there were divine omens. anyways, weird stuff that the meteorite was mentioned in both sides of the account.

so im going to divert this conversation (unlike verms, i have no word count limit on my posts). the question i pose to you great debaters is not whether an omnipotent being exists or not, but whether anything spiritual exists. such as a meteorite striking one camp at the most profound time. or people coming back to life when they shouldnt. or devils/demons type stuff.

i understand that in america, we tend to shrug all that stuff off, but in third world countries that shit is crazy.

to be clear I wasn't saying that war was positive, I was merely pointing out that it wasn't all negative. Although I'm not sure if this is accurate, I think it would probably be ok to say that the crusades basically diverted military effort from the country side to alien lands.

Monte, I agree there was some messed up stuff that happened during the crusades. But as i just said, I think that it was just redirecting the destructive energy that was already apparent in Europe.

Also you may be a die hard Protestant, but as luck would have it I'm a proud believer in the Catholic doctrines.

hah... well the reason i said "lol @ that" was because protestants cant really hold anything against catholics, since really they are our ancestors basically. it would be like me hating the british because they dont speak english like me. or something hopelessly illogical like that.

i agree with a lot of catholic doctrines, just have major issues with it being too works-based, and all the freaky praying to saints stuff. but i bet if you took a protestant from the 1500's and put him in a room with a catholic from the 0000's, theyd get along just fine.

now, back to this fun topic full of tangential discussions. (props to everyone for not slipping down the slope into mudslinging epithets). (yes i just said props, im that old). (no i dont really know what the word epithet means, but it feels right).

Also as kind of a side note: there is an extremely large field of science that is not physically provable. Lucky for you guys i am pretty familiar with this field since it was my field of study for 3 years. About 90% of nuclear physics is not based on observing the behavior of subatomic particles. This is, at least for the moment, impossible. And some very prominent pioneers in the field say it will forever be impossible. (Fermi, Einstein, Kepler, Compton, Schrodinger, Pauli, well its a really long freaking list). Basically what i am trying to say is, you cant see an electron. You can't measure the width of a proton. You can measure how much energy a neutrino has. However you can see the effects that these various particles have and extrapolate the necessary data.

In essence my point is we can't physically prove that any of nuclear physics works, however we can create a series of mathematical representations that seem to pretty accurately predict atomic and subatomic particle behaviors.

You will never here me say that you religious, or lack there of, beliefs are wrong. In truth it is impossible to really prove mach of anything theological.

I will say though that i am a firm believer in God. Even though I don't see or here or touch him in a physical sense, I believe that I see and feel and touch some of the effects he has on our surroundings.

Um also Monte to clarify, Catholics do not pray to saints or Mary. This is a very common misconception. We ask them to pray for us. Much in the same way you might ask a friend to pray for you if your going through a tough time in life. We also don't worship statues or bow to altars.

Also I fully expect to lose credibility for admitting I'm Catholic, but that doesnt bother me because i am proud of my faith.

heh

if protestants think catholics are praying to statues when they pray in front of them, does that mean protestants are praying to their beds when they say their nightly prayers? =D