An excellent book on that subject is Wm Manchester's "A World Lit Only By Fire". I'm in the middle of a chapter with a clear discourse of exactly what you describe:
Here's a passage:
"Medieval Christians, knowing the other cheek would be bloodied, did not turn it. Death was the prescribed penalty for hundreds of offenses, particularly those against property. The threat of capital punishment was even used in religious conversions... Charlemagne gave Saxon rebels a choice between baptism and immediate execution; when they demurred, he had 4,500 of them beheaded in one morning.
"Every flourishing religion has been intermittently watered by the blood of its faithful, but none has seen more spectacular internecine butchery than Christianity. In A.D. 330 Constantine I, the first Roman emperor to recognize Jesus as his savior, made Constantinople the empire's second capital. Within a few years a great many people who shared his faith bagan to die there for their interpretation of it... over three thousand Christians died at the hands of fellow Christians -- more than all the victims in three centuries of Roman persecutions. On April 13, 1204, nearly nine centuries later, medieval horror returned to Constantinople when the armies of the Fourth Crusade, embittered by their failure to reach the Holy Land, turned on the city and massacred the inhabitants."
that the political, economic, and scientific advancement of Europe were achieved in spite of the Christian religion, not because of it. The pretense that Christianity is in some way superior to Islam must be dropped: the West has advanced not because we had a better religion, but because we forced religion back into the church and fought to keep it there. That battle continues, and if we lose it our current troubles will seem insignificant by comparison with what we will get.
Read Bill Joy's "The Future Doesn't Need Us" for expansion on that nugget of wisdom. Unlike the medieval sword we as a species now have the opportunity to wipe out many millions more at a stroke.
"Bring 'em on!" isn't exactly a motto for survival in the day of bioterrorism and radiological weaponry. It's more of a suicide proclamation. |
