So how long will Ben last this time?

[Elok]

BE: You have heard of a necessary but not sufficient condition? A basic level of peace and stability (not total, but not a war every five years) is a NBNSC for real social advancement. So, no, the absence of Turks didn't "cause" the Enlightenment, that was two hundred years in coming after the Reformation--but Europe was able to shake off the last vestiges of Medieval power structures in part because the incessant external threats and instability which brought them into being had largely ceased. Of course there were other factors, including the growing (massive) centralization of state power.

[Bereta_Eder]

Elok,
you have made the assumption that it was some degree of peace and stability in europe which allowed for the manifestation of the englightment. You also tried to paint muslims as some sort of "evil" which had to be far away for europe to clear itself free from the christian fundamentalist yoke.

I present you two facts that say the opposite and put muslims in the core of the englightment debate:

1. Englightment was heavily based on ancient greek ideals. Everyone knows that. You too, I'd assume.
There would be no such tranfer of knowledge without the arabs. Those kept copies and saved the ancient scriptures. Not medieval europe.

Thank the arabs, everyday, for the enlighment. Or don't. I don't think you're a proponent.

2. The englighhment started on the borders of "War with the mooslims" namely on the city states of italy. A concrete push were also byzantine scholars who fled en mass to venice.

War and the muslims, created the englightment.
On the borders, during war and thanks to them.

[Elok]

1. The medieval civilization was largely based on ancient Greek ideas, if it comes to that. So much that half the work of the Enlightenment was demolishing Scholasticism, the Church's muddled synthesis of various pagan thinkers with Christianity. Galileo died under house arrest for contradicting Aristotle and Ptolemy, not the Bible. Well, and for insulting the Pope in print.

2. What? The Enlightenment was largely a northern European phenomenon; Spain and Italy remained overpoweringly Catholic for some time. Are you thinking of the Renaissance? It sounds like it.

3. No, WAR had to be far away, not Muslims. Or rather, persistent external threats (I specifically enumerated Vikings, Lombards, and Magyars, but cf. Huns, Vandals, Alans, Avars, Saxons, Goths, Franks, Jutes, etc., who in various times and places were pushed away or else gradually assimilated only to be invaded by someone else). This is simplifying a bit, of course, but generally I'm appealing to the Civ-player truism that you don't get much research done during wartime. Especially not when you're losing.

[Kidlicious]

Elok,
you have made the assumption that it was some degree of peace and stability in europe which allowed for the manifestation of the englightment. You also tried to paint muslims as some sort of "evil" which had to be far away for europe to clear itself free from the christian fundamentalist yoke.

I present you two facts that say the opposite and put muslims in the core of the englightment debate:

1. Englightment was heavily based on ancient greek ideals. Everyone knows that. You too, I'd assume.
There would be no such tranfer of knowledge without the arabs. Those kept copies and saved the ancient scriptures. Not medieval europe.

Thank the arabs, everyday, for the enlighment. Or don't. I don't think you're a proponent.

2. The englighhment started on the borders of "War with the mooslims" namely on the city states of italy. A concrete push were also byzantine scholars who fled en mass to venice.

War and the muslims, created the englightment.
On the borders, during war and thanks to them.

The Enlightenment produced the French Revolution. Why are you glorifying it? Do you believe in Enlightenment philosophies?

[Bereta_Eder]

1. The medieval civilization was largely based on ancient Greek ideas, if it comes to that. So much that half the work of the Enlightenment was demolishing Scholasticism, the Church's muddled synthesis of various pagan thinkers with Christianity. Galileo died under house arrest for contradicting Aristotle and Ptolemy, not the Bible. Well, and for insulting the Pope in print.

2. What? The Enlightenment was largely a northern European phenomenon; Spain and Italy remained overpoweringly Catholic for some time. Are you thinking of the Renaissance? It sounds like it.

3. No, WAR had to be far away, not Muslims. Or rather, persistent external threats (I specifically enumerated Vikings, Lombards, and Magyars, but cf. Huns, Vandals, Alans, Avars, Saxons, Goths, Franks, Jutes, etc., who in various times and places were pushed away or else gradually assimilated only to be invaded by someone else). This is simplifying a bit, of course, but generally I'm appealing to the Civ-player truism that you don't get much research done during wartime. Especially not when you're losing.

1. What?!

I'm sure medieval europe was all about democracies, indivinduality and using reason as a tool for reaching a course of action. Right...

2. erm, how exactly was northern europe even remotely involved in either the birth of renesscance or the enlighment?


3. Fine. War. Not muslims. I'm afraid scientific progress doesn't really happen like in a game of civ. I'm sorry to break it to you, but for example the biggest advances in science (or societal engineering) were done during war, exactly because there was a need.

The constant strife gives birth to all sort of things. After all it's common knowledge that some parts of europe managed to rape the entire planet simply because they had so much practise between themselves, for centuries

[Ben Kenobi]

most of the population in southern spain were muslim until at least the 15th century. the muslims, together with the jews, were then forced to convert or expelled in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.

Not unless by 'Southern Spain', you mean Granada.

And the Christians of Southern spain were forced to convert in the mid 7th century. But I guess they don't matter.

[Elok]

And yes, of course the Muslims played their part in the birth of modern Europe. It started far sooner than most people appreciate; the turn-of-the-millennium Pope Sylvester II was educated in Muslim Spain. But all that is completely irrelevant to my argument. You seem to be assuming that, because I have expressed distaste for Islam in the past, I must be trying to pin everything on them now. And then not reading what I say, which is somewhat frustrating.

[Bereta_Eder]

I'm afraid you're offering tid bits of information, useful on a trivia pursuit game, and then expect me somehow to expand them and cover the whole with them?

[Ben Kenobi]

Post was directed at Cockney, not you, Elok.

[Elok]

I won't have time to continue this in depth (kids are awake now), but as to northern Europe and the Enlightenment: Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, Locke, Newton, Leibniz, Hooke, Boyle, Hobbes . . . notice how all of these names are French, English or German? Spain had a pair of good kings try and drag them into modernity; not sure about Italy, since Italian history is too frigging confusing to keep up with. But the Enlightenment proper (not the Renaissance) was centered on the north.

EDIT: Seriously, I wrote a monster essay up there. I simply don't have time to keep it up now, sorry.

[Kidlicious]

I'm afraid you're offering tid bits of information, useful on a trivia pursuit game, and then expect me somehow to expand them and cover the whole with them?

Facts are important, such as the fact that the Enlightenment began in Germany.

[Bereta_Eder]

And France was a northern european country since... when?


You also asked wether i'm responding to you because of what I perceive as hostility towards muslims.

The thing is that it pains me to see such self serving nationalistic trite.

I'm sure nazis (oh no, braindead will scold me) did exactly the same thing with pseudo-scientific analysis about jews simpy because they thought it served them.

The thing is that it indeed serves you to make muslims the new jews.

However it creates irrevocable problems to a large swarth of earth so it has to be stopped so civilization can advance

quite enough have already perished in your hands for some extra gas

[Elok]

You have fundamentally misunderstood me. I'm not arguing that Europeans are better than Muslims, or Inuits or Zulus or Samoans. I'm arguing that people, everywhere, of every race and creed, revert to brutish and violent power structures when they feel threatened or when life is unstable. That's why bat****-crazy Wahhabism-Salafism is so popular now, because so much of the Muslim world has been under the thumb of thuggish dictators backed up by our guns and money. They feel humiliated and angry; they (or many of them) want revenge, not cosmopolitan Western lifestyles (which they can't have in any case). This is human nature.

[C0ckney]

Not unless by 'Southern Spain', you mean Granada.

no i mean southern spain, especially andalucia, granada and murcia. when the kingdom of granada was conquered in 1492, there were still significant muslims populations in valencia and as far north as aragon. at the beginning of the 16th century, there were around 1 million moriscos in spain out of a total population of 8.5 million.

[Kidlicious]

And France was a northern european country since... when?


You also asked wether i'm responding to you because of what I perceive as hostility towards muslims.

The thing is that it pains me to see such self serving nationalistic trite.

I'm sure nazis (oh no, braindead will scold me) did exactly the same thing with pseudo-scientific analysis about jews simpy because they thought it served them.

The thing is that it indeed serves you to make muslims the new jews.

However it creates irrevocable problems to a large swarth of earth so it has to be stopped so civilization can advance

quite enough have already perished in your hands for some extra gas

Radical Muslims aren't the new Jews. They are the new Nazis.