You are so stupid. And that would go for your other incarnation cammmnpble as well. You are saying ( again ) that the church (christian) caused the dark ages. soon Joe the dots will be connected between you and cammmpbell. It is going to be fun to watch you lie about it again. In the mean time, I hear they need a pair of stinky socks for malaria reserch. You and your alter ego would be perfect.
Well the church didn't "cause" the dark ages but they sure as hell didn't help matters much. After the fall of Rome there was a massive power vacuum in Europe and the church was the most organized and powerful
political entity. They wielded that power with an iron fist and many of the traditional beliefs our society holds about God today came from their lust for power and dominance. We're talking about a period of time that lasted roughly 1,000 years so different things were the norm at different times, but there were some periods for example where reading was illegal except for nobility. Certainly reading in Latin was a huge no-no and in many cases punishable by death. Of course Bibles were only written in Latin so it was basically a situation where anyone aside from a member of the clergy or nobility who read the Bible for themselves ended up getting killed.
The church really did try to keep the people ignorant and completely dependent upon the church even above the kings and disagreeing with the church was going to get you hanged, decapitated, burnt at the stake, tortured to death.....sometimes all of them. So when the church said for example "disobeying God will result in punishment" they made sure they delivered in very ruthless and grotesque ways. And because no one could read the Bible, of course the people had to take the church's word for what would be disobedience to God. Well many of these concepts (such as hell just as one example) were flat out made up by the church and pounded into the heads of the people in order to control the actions of the people....and the people knew no better because they couldn't read the Bible and find out for themselves. Even worse if they DARED suggest that the church was wrong they're a dead man and maybe their family too.
Well ****...one can imagine not only the atrocities committed by the church but the effect it had on slowing the rate of development socially and technologically because of that lack of education and terror among the people. Still to this day we feel the effects because of some of those beliefs that the church created in order to control the people (and the kings) have endured.
So no, the church didn't "cause" the Dark Ages, but they sure played the major role in keeping them "dark" for as long as they possibly could and in the end interfering with a person's understanding of God and ability to connect with God on an individual spiritual level.