The Dark Ages was certainly a dark and dire time for civilization. I watched a History Channel program on the Dark Ages today (purchased on iTunes and downloaded to my iPod), and it gave me some slight insight on that epoch in history. In the past century, I think civilization has finally gotten to a point where I can cope. I can’t imagine actually living in earlier times, let alone the Dark Ages.

Historically, the Dark Ages are thought to have started around the 5th century, and ended around the 12th century. Rome had done much to improve civilization, over the centuries, what with aqueducts, architecture, engineering, roads and all… but the signs of cultural stagnation were showing. Europe, outside of Rome at this time, was pretty bad off. You had tribes throughout Europe, living hand to mouth, barely surviving, in stark contract to Rome. Since misery loves company, the Goths sacked and laid siege to Rome in the early 5th century, and civilization on a precipice. Add to the fall of Rome, famine and plague, and civilization is pushed off that cliff, and into a six-century free fall.

[Here is the video from the History Channel, on YouTube in several parts. Read more, here.] Be sure to click to continue and read the rest of the post, after the jump!

So, this period is marked by pestilence, poverty and ignorance, which breeds fear. Given the harshness of life, it is little wonder that peasants looked to religion for answers. When you fear for your life every day, you need some reason to live. This is a time and place, far removed from the reason and philosophy of ancient Greece. Frightened, starving, ignorant masses have no time to sit around and discuss philosophy. Christianity was a powerful mythology, and threats of invoking the wrath of dead saints was enough to make strong men tremble. The church also motivated people, and gave them something to believe in. Life was dreadful, but this was just the mortal coil, and things would be really good… later, in the afterlife. Without a dogmatic and unifying religion, Europe would have remained fragmented and tribal, and not been able to withstand the world’s other major religion, Islam.

What strikes me, is that there were different clear religions throughout the ages. The fall of Rome, led to the rise of Christianity. The Vikings then attacked the British Isles and Europe, but were defeated. And, with their demise, ended their religion. Islam was pushed back to the East. Peasants and noblemen alike had little ability to read and write. Without science, tools, mathematics… gods provided hope and reasons. People were no longer strangers, because they belonged to the same club. The God Club. I don’t defend the killing that was done, in the name of the church, but religion had its purpose. It was based in primitive myths and superstition, and it was perverted and used to subjugate whole populations. It evolved, to offer what people needed at the time. The idea heaven (the promise) and Hell (the threat) were refined, and demons were everywhere, blamed for bad things that happened to good people; because you couldn’t let God be directly blamed or people would choose a better god.

At this time in history, people needed something that couldn’t exist outside of a fairy tale. The church served an important function, but like any bureaucracy, it didn’t fade and go away when the Dark Ages ended. Around the end of this period, in the 12th century, a mini-ice age was ending, and some attribute this to an increase in reliable agriculture. People were fed, and better educated. Rather than religion fading from necessity, the church held a firm grip on on the hearts and minds of the people. The Dark Ages was a time of evolution. Less able religions disappeared, leaving basically two religions, Islam and Christianity. Religions that were powerful and insidious. They spread and were invasive like the plague, and they had evolved into reason-resistant strains.

With the perspective of an educated person, in the 21st century, the Dark Ages appears as a primitive time, to be sure. Yet, for all our progress, a majority of the people on the planet still believe in demons and other primitive superstitions. The trend is looking good though. Organized religion is losing its grip, I think. With an economy this century that is more good than bad, that means more and more people have a standard of living that is raised up and they no longer worry about starving. The Internet and global communication will help to show people of different cultures how much we all have in common. People will be more highly educated, and science will make advances. When it comes to the Religious Dark Ages, we are still living in them. To many of us, we look at angels and demons/heaven and hell the same ways we would if it were superstition coming from any primitive tribe. This “plague” is not resistant to reason, and more people are able to step back and look objectively at religion and reject it. This means there is light at the end of the tunnel; the Religious Dark Ages are coming to an end. But, I think we are always one major cataclysm or tragedy away from falling back into the abyss, where the candle of reason is snuffed.

Organized religion was the outcome of Europe’s trial by fire, in the Dark Ages. We shouldn’t make it easy for organized religion to exist. Churches shouldn’t be exempt from taxation. Blasphemy laws must be abolished. It is encouraging that fewer young Americans, and even fewer young Europeans feel beholden to organized religion. We should be able to unite as a planet of people, without bribes and threats from sky gods. Without organized religion, and with more secular governments, superstition and myths will be exposed to the light of knowledge and the test of science, and they will fade – perhaps, once and for all.

(When will nations like Iran and even America, truly separate politics from religion?)

(Given that we can’t eliminate the “religious virus” entirely, can we come up with an even more virulent strain of “reason” to vaccinate ourselves against it, if it were to threaten to spread again?)

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