How did Greece go from a nation of philosophers to brainlets?

St. Augustine was a Berber who wrote in Latin. Nothing to do with Greece.

Christianity (and Islam for that matter) attaches itself to Greek philosophy like a remora to a shark. They limit themselves to commenting and rewriting it editing out the stuff that "offends the faith", and then have the nerve to boast that philosophy is the servant of theology (aka pseudo science).

The only noteworthy Christian philosophers (before modernity) are the "heretics", semi-heretics, and other dangerous betes noires such as John Philoponus, William of Ockham, Nicholas of Cusa, etc.

In short, Christianity was a Soviet-style Jewish totalitarian regime that set Europe back 1000s of years, and Islam is its unintended child.

>Christianity has always been in direct conflict with philosophy because it threatens it's monopology on truth.
Didn't they still teach Plato and later Aristotle?

Aquinas was concerned mainly with trying to cherry pick out metaphysics that made his God sound more 'real'. He basically said Aristotle was the only real philosopher (because he liked the idea of a Prime Mover) which is basically shitting on the entire Greek cannon, it's also shitting on Aristotle too by only acknowledging a tiny fraction of his work.

The medieval church cared so little for Greek philosophy they didn't even bother taking serious efforts to preserve and translate it. It was the Arabs that first took a major interest in and started the philosophical engine again with dudes like Avveroes. That's pathetic! The time period between the fall of Rome and the Arab conquest represents the lowest point of philosophy in the history of the West in terms of development.

>if the universe is eternal God is just another creature who is limited by the laws of the universe.
I don't follow at all.

The Christian tradition basically has God as some sort of reality creator.

The Greek tradition is the opposite. Reality creates the Gods. And thus natural law is supreme. There is no transcendent divine law, because the divines obey the natural law. This is the type of thinking that lead to science. While the Christian thinking says that since divine law>natural law you can get better results with mystics and dogma.

To see it in action consider that the Greeks thought disease was caused by a humor imbalance while the Christians attribute it to divine forces. The Greek one was FAR closer to the truth and even got better results "eat this thing to fix your bodies humors" vs "take some holy water and call me in the morning"

>the Christian thinking says that since divine law>natural law you can get better results with mystics and dogma.
Isn't it saying that natural law is under divine law so it should be followed like God's law? I've read that from a few old Pope writings before.

I also wouldn't call the tendency for a belief to improperly lead to false conclusions from simple logic to be a telling facete of its actual truth. Also I've read a lot of primary sources about things like the black death that did show at least some people understand disease in scientific senses.

>Isn't it saying that natural law is under divine law so it should be followed like God's law? I've read that from a few old Pope writings before.

There's only natural law, no divine law. It was just a question of figuring out how the Gods fit into it all. Because of this the Greek philosophers quickly developed a type of proto-naturalism. They were not atheists but their Gods were not miracle workers or moral teachers. Christianity absolutely needs at least ONE miracle for dogmatic reasons and that's the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's way the theologians had to justify the existence of miracles, which leads to a shitty development of science.

This btw also conflicts with the church's view of a morally ordered universe. In Christianity God created the universe which for one reason or another means his morality ought to be obeyed. Contrast with the Greek Gods who were born from the universe but conquered the Titans and declared themself the new tyrants in town, no morality needed!

Christianity fucked over Europe fpr a thousand years. Not only that but the the only moment technology started to evolve was when religion lost its hold. Each time christianity lost its hold everything became better. The silent revolution is proof of that

>There's only natural law, no divine law.
I agree with most of what you said, but I don't think this assumption is fair nor pertinent to the discussion of what others believe nor what actually is true.
Also, although Christianity's past growth obviously shows signs of inhibiting scientific growth, it's not fair to say intellectualism as a whole died when, as I stated, there was at least some thought and there lies potential for more scientific thought.

I also don't like how you so often tie moral values and natural forces together when you seem to reject their interwoven nature as described in biblical teaching.

>Each time christianity lost its hold everything became better.
pic related
Also please don't be so disrespectful to the monks who dedicated their lives to recording and saving books following the collapse of the Roman Empire. Why can't we appreciate subtlety in history other than idiots screaming The Church saved the West Completely and fedoras demanding religion and science are inversely related.

Technology did advance quite alot under the Soviets though.

That's true, but science also did advance quite a lot under Christian rule. It's like how, until the "incident" Darwin wanted to be a clergyman because intellectualism and christianity at the time were so royally linked.

It took 1000 years in the dark before technology started to progress again at good pace again. Worse, we lost knowledge during that time period. The only thing we made were chad Trebuchets and virgin Catapults

>I also don't like how you so often tie moral values and natural forces together when you seem to reject their interwoven nature as described in biblical teaching.

I really don't care about what it's teachings are except for historical analysis. Any moral system is going to be a derivative of how a people see the world being run (how much is divinely run, how much is naturally run, etc).

For example Christians thought the universe was morally run. That if an earthquake happens and it kills many people than it happened for a moral reason, too much sin? Earth quakes cannot be natural but must be divinely guided and happen for morally justified reasons. The pagans too experimented with the idea of divinely guided natural disasters but they were not dogmatically obligated to believe it because their Gods are not all-powerful moral judges.

> it's not fair to say intellectualism as a whole died
It didn't die it got reduced. To it's lowest point of growth in the history of Western thinking. The return to a steady pace of development corresponds with either a weakening in the church or with the church becoming heretical.

>It didn't die it got reduced. To it's lowest point of growth in the history of Western thinking
That was a result of the Silk Road spreading diseases and greatly reducing the population of Rome in the long run. Also you forget that outside of Rome Europeans were a bunch of barbarians that weren't doing shit.

>For example Christians thought the universe was morally run. That if an earthquake happens and it kills many people than it happened for a moral reason
That's pretty interesting. I've legit never read that anywhere before can you tell me where you read that.

If Darwin was a cleric, unless he wanted to be a heretic he would not have promoted evolution. It violates the dogma of God being a creator.

The clerics were more intelligent yes but they largely wasted their intelligent on stupid topics such as debating the nature of the trinity. They also took vows to not reproduce which is probably the most self-destructive eugenics program that you could ever fucking conceive of. It's makes people de-evolution by constantly removing the top genes from the pool.

The religion was incredible destructive to human intellect even if you weigh in the contributions it did have.

>If Darwin was a cleric, unless he wanted to be a heretic he would not have promoted evolution. It violates the dogma of God being a creator.
That's the incident I was talking about.

>That's pretty interesting. I've legit never read that anywhere before can you tell me where you read that.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake Even as late as 1755 the religion had trouble with the idea that natural disasters were not moral judgements. A particularly nasty earthquake happened and by conicense it leveled a whole bunch of church's and killed a lot of clergy. This was a huge theological quagmire.

>That was a result of the Silk Road spreading diseases and greatly reducing the population of Rome in the long run. Also you forget that outside of Rome Europeans were a bunch of barbarians that weren't doing shit.

Disease or no disease a huge chunk of philosophy (which at the time was still heavily married to science) offended or questioned core doctrines. It also threatened the supremacy of the religion's truth if pagans learned some of the secrets of the universe before their religion was even founded.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake
Thanks a ton, user. This is pretty interesting shit.

>It also threatened the supremacy of the religion's truth if pagans learned some of the secrets of the universe before their religion was even founded.
Why did they teach and publish Plato and later Aristotle while still acknowledging that he disagreed with them then?

pls be b8

>Why did they teach and publish Plato and later Aristotle while still acknowledging that he disagreed with them then?

Consider that at first they were not really interested in them. There wasn't a big effort to translate or read them, the big resurgence of them came from the Arabs, the Europeans inherited the salvaged texts after they drove out the invaders. At this point the texts have already entered the sphere of thinking and must be responded to; which they did. So it took an outside force, an invasion no less, to get thinking back on track. Philosophy was still looked down on though.

From my experience of looking at people like Aquinas their methods are to cherry pick that which they can use to affirm their dogma and have little respect for the rest. They after all have divinely given truth from their dogma, some dogma which they are required to believe but is at odds with philosophy. Good luck being a monk and arguing against the miraculous resurrection of Jesus in order to support your view of a world governed by natural laws, not divine intervention!

To be blunt I would not even consider Aquians a philosopher. He hated the word and every aspect of it that wasn't the tiny area of Aristotelian metaphysics that he could apply to his God.

If religion is true, then it only describes nature. It doesn't supplant it. Maybe you Greek boy-lovers should try being open to the ideas expressed in the Bible, while still examining them through a critical lens. We need more religious scholars who aren't pulled in by the dogmas, and the sentiment expressed in this thread sounds like it would be useful to this end.

Can I ask what you mean? I think religion is true when understood psychologically, in the way Jung reads religion.

To be brutally honest I think the ideas expressed in the bible are sickly and deeply anti-human.

I'm theist as fuck, so sorry if this sounds like a bunch of spiritual mumbo jumbo. The Bible is just a collection of books written by humans, and as such is inherently flawed. I agree that it's unfortunate how people take the Bible too seriously and it influences our thinkers by putting them in a position where they have to contest simple facts like how all life didn't come out of one ark or how Noah didn't live to be 400 years old. However, if the core ideas in these books express the truth of our reality, then reality is indeed shaped by a greater force, and our universe is not simply chaotic. There are also far greater implications, including a fundamental guide by which we should conduct ourselves written into nature itself (the "Golden Rule"). Don't mistake religion for the will of God, or the ways of men for the ways of God. How people choose to interpret the words of the Bible does not reflect on the truth of the words themselves. What I'm really trying to say that you can get closer to God by examining nature. Sorry for rambling, I'm also drunk.

To quip, Isaac Newton once said
>God created everything by number, weight and measure.
and that nigger was smarter than everyone in this thread.

Also, what ideas from the Bible do you deem "anti-human"?

Philosophy is for idiots. It's a hobby. God is beyond that.
Nobody cares what you think, pseud.
>and that nigger was smarter than everyone in this thread.
No, far from that.

>Didn't they still teach Plato and later Aristotle?

The reverse order actually. And Socrates is widely believed to be on of the first monotheist philosophers. Aristotle was so beloved that his works were directly incorporated into catholic theology. The whole reason why they believed the earth was the center of the universe was because that is what Aristotle said and Aristotle can't be wrong. If anything the Christians were massive greek-aboos like the Romans.

>To see it in action consider that the Greeks thought disease was caused by a humor imbalance while the Christians attribute it to divine forces.

Wrong again retard. They believed in the miasma theory which stated diseases came from things which smelled bad. Hence why plague doctors wore those weird mask with spices stuffed in the nose. That is actually FAR closer to the truth than shit related to humors.

Completely wrong. Every time you had increase secularism you had huge death tolls. Both WW1 and WW2 were the results of rampant secularism. Atheist have killed more in the 20th century than all religions in the proceeding millennium did.

>The silent revolution is proof of that

Please be memeing, that's a HORRIBLE example.

You mean the Soviets stole technology from Christian America which won the Cold War. This is a history board, so please learn some history.

b8

>unironically believing in eugenics

Please fuck off back to

>Please be memeing, that's a HORRIBLE example.
I'm a christian, but may I ask why?

>Could it specifically be the brand of Christianity that emerged in the late Roman empire that stunted intellectual development?

No, since the Byzantine Empire had one of the most highly educated populations in the entire world, functioning universities, carried on the the Greco-Roman philosophical traditions, etc.

>Since Protestant Europe clearly outperformed Catholic Europe

What the fuck are you even talking about? There have been both Catholic and Protestant god-tier philosophers.

Or, you know, things like the plow, crop rotation, etc. Carolingian Europe has lots of examples of technological advances. The dark ages as a time of Christian Luddites is a myth and misconception.

Catholics aren't Christian

He was a Neoplatonist, brainlet

> However, if the core ideas in these books express the truth of our reality

I think everything written in religion express reality in some way. Paul probably did experience something on the road to Damascus. Whether he can describe what he experienced accurately is another thing. He might have lacked the vocubulary or proper knowledge of the world to really understand it. Likewise Noah's story does refer to something that did happen, not as the text describes but they are trying to communicate something.

> then reality is indeed shaped by a greater force, and our universe is not simply chaotic.

Reality is shaped by a lot of things, including individuals. So there is order it's just that there is more than one will going on. So a "greater force" might be someone stronger than you or some natural element beyond your control. The universe simply contains the rules that decide who's will wins.

>Also, what ideas from the Bible do you deem "anti-human"?
It's opposes the darker and more passionate parts of humanity. It might use the word evil or sin but it's basically at war with human nature. It tries to justifiy this by postulating some great force outside yourself which you must obey, which in turn makes people betray the real power, inner power. This is often associated with empty threats about hellfire. The Gnostics and certain mystics had it right, conceptualizing divinity as an aspect of their own self-hood rather than something outside them. The subconscious and it's vast web of instincts and passions I think that's the place of divinity. it needs to be expressed in totally irrational ways, religious ways, because it's a realm that isn't rational. That's what Jung went with.

The thing isn't that NOTHING happened during the dark ages. It's that it was the period with the lowest growth. In addition some things did go backwards. Architecture and correct porporations in art actually went down.

So? Still not Greek.

Modern Greeks are 90IQ brainlets mixed with arabs and turks.

The Greek works were translated from Greek to Syriac entirely by Christians and from Syriac to Arabic mostly by Christians.

what if i told u religion had nothing to fucking do with the science and technology advancement of a country.

Byzantium was great you fucking plebs.

What you want to term philosophy was for the Byzantines what was always true for them which was neo-platonism, which was already the dominant mode of thought in the late post-Constantine eastern Roman empire.

There is no difference in what happened to the post-Roman West compared to the eastern half, the clergy in both cases acquired the power to become educators and form academies and preserve knowledge. The beginning of western philosophy has its roots in Augustine, Aquinas and Scotus, this when the root of ontological questions begin for the western world, true they were not original but no philosophy is wholly original. For the east it was the importance of Plato rather than Aristotle that they could combine with their eastern mysticism and spirituality, for the greek-speaking, east the pagan past expressed eternal truths concurrent with that of the truths of the biblical Jews.

If anyone wants to understand what the Byzantines meant by philosophy, and to understand what is the root of Orthodox religion, they have to study Gregory Palamas, and it all becomes clear from then on.

>arabs and turks.
*slavs

Leave us out of that.

it's true. the difference between ancient greeks and modern greeks is due to slav admixture rather than turk or arab admixture.

They got too complacent with the older achievements. That's why you shouldn't be smug.
Also nowadays parents tend to "guide" their kids towards stuff like biology or law, so they can all be doctors and lawyers and stuff. Basically a lot of kids's goals tend to be towards moneyz.

>Architecture and correct porporations in art actually went down.
The money for large urban projects dried up. Architecture itself advanced leaps and bounds during the dark ages.

Why don't Greeks look like us then?

Read Copleston's History of Philosophy Vol. 2 introduction.

Because you got Gothic admixture

He is not entirely wrong Medieval medicine were derived from the teachings of Latin and Greek medicine, the theory of Miasma would've had its place within a broader understanding of health and medicine.

>I was only pretending

>it seems like the further away you get from Orthodoxy the smarter
Yup.

Original christianity was gnosticism, this is why Paul is always Reeee'ing at heresies of all kinds in the bible, because they were the heresy and everybody else was believing something different. The closer you get to orthodoxy, the more of a potato retard you become, since it leads to the demiurge and the mind is important for the gnostics, so the demiurge makes you retarded.

>hur dur not believe in my religion makes you retarded
literally calvinism, kys

Shouldn't you be deepthroating some local government officials right now, orthocuck?

>Original christianity was gnosticism
gnosticism is blaspheming the god you're trying to mystic so you guys are even more lost than they are.

Byzantines kicked out the Paulicians , and orthodoxy has nothing in common with gnosticism, fucking original church unchanged since council of Constantinople.

>The martyr, Jesus, would be considered a morally defiant and pathetic person by Greek standards while Alexander, the "greatest of all Greeks" is pretty much the champion of sin.
I'm so fucking glad that Chad-worshipping shit ended with the Greeks. That edgelord Nietzsche was so butthurt, he ranted a lot about that.

There's this anime called 'Drifters' which story is basically historical chads being summoned as the good guys in a fantasy world, while martyrs, or people who lived and died in unjust manner, as the bad guy (including Jesus, lol). My god, then Viktor Tsoi and Varlam Shalamov would be the bad guys then, because both figures had a really shitty life.

People tend to forget that the Platonists, Cynics, Stoics, etc. weren't really that popular initially. Those schools which in some ways anticipated or were partially absorbed by Christianity. Before those schools got popular, your average Ancient Greeks were still infatuated with Heracles' heroism and shietz (ironically part of the view that failed them in the first place).

>orthodoxy has nothing in common with gnosticism

Gnosticism is the orthodoxy, you're just following a heresy.

Working for the Turks is bound to do that to you

it's not like they got completely turned into slavs or something, they are just closer to slavs than the ancients were, who were a bit closer to levantines than modern greeks are.

t. Protestant

Because they got raped by Turks.

The 3nd century CE is definitely when the decline become irreversible and western civilization slipped into a 1,500+ year dark age. You can tell hebrew mythology is to blame, it calls on people to place faith on a pedestal and cast away truth.

>it calls on people to cast away truth.
hmmmm. It's almost like you haven't even read the thread.

hmmm. It's almost like you didn't read the initial question posed by the OP.

The OP might think that only certain sects or teachings are responsible, but fundamentally speaking the faith in hebrew mythology is broadly responsible. Of course philosophers are going to degenerate into brainlets if they subordinate truth to faith.

This entire post stinks of retardation

You'd be amazed at the enormity of untapped Byzantine works.

Other than that, life goes on.

>doesn't even mention his ethnicity
>sensitive berberist gets assflustered

Berber we wuzery is getting even more ridiculous than afrocentrism.

Being Greek has nothing to do with Greek thought

Roaches, it was all on them, they hardly developed their colonies after ransacking them. Greek culture and growth was stunted because of this. Byzantium was beautiful while it lasted. Established silk trading route, advocated the resurrection of Hellenistic values, pro-science studies in the name of God, none of which were censored or opposed by the church, civilizing the Slavs and practically creating Russia, influencing mudshit culture so much that even their mosques look like Byzantine churches. The Turks were and always will be savages that have no clue about preserving beauty, instead they just rape and pillage their way into dominance and leave all the ruins and remains derelict.

I dont see Slavs anywhere on that picture.

>. The priests didn't want to say that a bunch of Pagans that pre-dated their religion's founding knew morality,
Have you ever heard of the word Scholastic?

Atheists are a disease

You mean the guys that had no real respect for any of the concepts that challenged their faith and really only cared about a tiny section of Greek metaphysics to *prove* their God and a few ideas about linguistics and logic?

Guys like Aquinas who trash talked philosophy and basically said only Aristotle counts?

Guys who's entire sum of contributations to the field is so small that most over-views of philosopher's history only name-drop them!

slavs are the top left light grey cluster. here's a similar chart to make it clearer.

Still no clustering with Slavs.

they would have to be the same as slavs to cluster with slavs. modern "greeks" cluster half way between ancient greeks and slavs because they are a mix between greeks and slavs.

They have virtually zero Slavic blood. If they differ from ancient Greeks, that admixture must've came from elsewhere. Probably Anatolia.

look, i'll try to make it simple for you. i've drawn a line between ancient greeks and slavs, ancient greeks and turks, and ancient greeks and arabs. on which line do modern greeks sit?

>The whole reason why they believed the earth was the center of the universe was because that is what Aristotle said and Aristotle can't be wrong.
You fucking idiot, the reason they thought the Earth was the center of the universe was because the evidence pointed to it. Stop with this revisionist bullshit that makes any historian roll in their grave.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Schools_of_Thought

Christian Anatolians, Syrians, and Egyptians unironically preferred living under Turkic beys and Arab warlords than they did the Byzantines.
Crushing taxation and a retarded bureaucracy will do that to you.
I'm as much a Romeboo as the next guy, but Byzantium was stagnating long before the Turks ever even migrated into Anatolia.
Although I will agree that the Turkish legacy has been one primarily of conquest rather than any kind of cultural development.