Glenster -- curious - what do you mean by the 'urban myth of the dark ages' -
I've never heard that expression before. Thanks. :)
The myth of the Dark Ages is that belief in God must include the sort of lit-
eralist conservative interpretation of old religious accounts that works against
the advancement of science, and that this, made law of the land, held back pro-
gress in science for centuries. According to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_ages
"Films and novels often use the term 'Dark Age' with its implied meaning of a
time of backwardness. For instance, the popular movie Monty Python and the Holy
Grail humorously portrays knights and chivalry, following in a tradition begun
with Don Quixote. The 2007 television show The Dark Ages from The History Chan-
nel called the Dark Ages '600 years of degenerate, godless, inhuman behavior.'
"The public idea of the Middle Ages as a supposed 'Dark Age' is also reflected
in misconceptions regarding the study of nature during this period. The contem-
porary historians of science David C. Lindberg and Ronald Numbers discuss the
widespread popular belief that the Middle Ages were a 'time of ignorance and
superstition,' the blame for which is to be laid on the Christian Church for al-
legedly 'placing the word of religious authorities over personal experience and
rational activity,' and emphasize that this view is essentially a caricature.
"Contrary to common belief, Lindberg say that 'the late medieval scholar rarely
experienced the coercive power of the church and would have regarded himself as
free (particularly in the natural sciences) to follow reason and observation
wherever they led.' And Edward Grant, writes: 'If revolutionary rational
thoughts were expressed in the Age of Reason [the 18th century], they were only
made possible because of the long medieval tradition that established the use of
reason as one of the most important of human activities.'
"For instance, a claim that was first propagated in the 19th century and is
still very common in popular culture is the supposition that all people in the
Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat. This claim is mistaken. In fact,
lectures in the medieval universities commonly advanced evidence in favor of the
idea that the Earth was a sphere. Lindberg and Numbers write: 'There was
scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge
[Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference.'
"Misconceptions such as: 'the Church prohibited autopsies and dissections dur-
ing the Middle Ages,' 'the rise of Christianity killed off ancient science,' and
'the medieval Christian church suppressed the growth of natural philosophy,' are
all cited by Numbers as examples of widely popular myths that still pass as his-
torical truth, although they are not supported by current historical research."
