"Top 10 reasons the Dark Ages were not so dark" *snicker*

[Lord T Hawkeye]

http://listverse.com/2008/06/09/top-10-reasons-the-dark-ages-were-not-dark/

Gotta love apologists...let's see...

10.     "The Classical Education (still used today in some schools) was the system used by the Universities which were created in the Early Middle Ages"
    By that you mean Prussian model which was not designed for enlightenment but to teach subservience?

9. Gives no evidence or solid examples

8. They forced a dead language on everyone.  yay...

7. "While they did not create a lot of new thinking"  Contradicting your original premise, way to go

6. Religious unity?  In other words "Believe as we do or else."  Last I checked, that's generally known as barbarism.

5. Taking credit for something that had nothing to do with it.

4. Already was there before.  Can't take credit.

3. Not even going to dignify that...

2. Aristocracy, fair IF you're of the priviledged class.  If you weren't which was only the case for about 98% of the population, then it kinda sucked.

1. The feudalistic model was an improvement over outright slavery yes.  You worked on the land and the local warlords left you alone if you paid them off.  More freedom makes the human livestock more productive but if you think this was motivated by benevolence on the part of the rulers, you're dreaming

[MrBogosity]

Here's what Thomas Paine said about #8 (and #10) in Age of Reason:

The setters-up, therefore, and the advocates of the Christian system of faith could not but foresee that the continually progressive knowledge that man would gain, by the aid of science, of the power and wisdom of God, manifested in the structure of the universe and in all the works of Creation, would militate against, and call into question, the truth of their system of faith; and therefore it became necessary to their purpose to cut learning down to a size less dangerous to their project, and this they effected by restricting the idea of learning to the dead study of dead languages.

[Travis Retriever]

Yeah, this guy is completely stupid.

#10:  And this is good because...?

#9:  OK, this guy is a liar.  The start of science (e.g. Galileo, DeCartes, etc) was what marked the END of the Christian Dark ages.  Hell, IIRC, that's how it's defined!
When science started up with them, it was called the "Renaissance".  Meanwhile, period during which the birth of free market philosophies, of human liberty and further refinement of science occurred was called the "Enlightenment".

#6:  Well, if your idea of "unity" is the Christians saying to everyone else, "become a Christian, or we'll fucking murder your ass!"...

#5: "Algebra Arrived" Yes, by the Muslims during their scientifically prolific period around the 12th-13th centuries.  Hence why it's called the "Christian Dark Ages" not the "Global Dark Ages".  I mean, duh.

#4: Yeah, because there was none of that befo-- oh, wait, there were the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, etc.  Major History Fail.

#3:  ...Seriously?

#2:  Because as we all know, fair laws means torture, enslavement, and murdering people for not being the right flavor of Christian.  Also, they forbade interest (usury laws).  Sounds rather Marxist, so I might give him that, depending on his definition of fairness.
It's like I said folks, red isn't just a color of taste for conservatives.

#1: Seconded on what Hawkeye said.  If history (and the incentive map) is any indication, under a 100% free market (which feudalism was most definitely NOT), they'd have been far better off.  Hell, why does this imbecile think that economic growth really only skyrocketed after the introduction of relatively free markets, after being flat for hundreds, if not thousands of years?
It's also cherry picking.  As the massive amount of Christian faith at the time (e.g. thinking cats are evil and/or of the devil) was one of the reasons the Black Plague was as severe as it was (as it was spread by rats, which the cats would have curtailed).

And that was just from reading the titles of his items (and Hawkeye's refutations of them) alone!