The movie Agora....

[WCGreen]

It's about the beginning of the dark ages. Not the official one, the one that started with the collapse of the Roman Empire, but the intellectual divide, the divide that proclaimed in the name of Jesus that anything not directly associated with the christian bible was pagan and therefor unworthy...

I think back to when I became aware of the library of Alexandria and all that was lost when the glorious repository for the wisdom of the age was destroyed by fire.

We were told the story, the tragic result of the fire, but were never really let in on the true motives for the destruction of so much precious knowledge.

I was raised Catholic and was educated by nuns for a while and then let out into the public education system.

Neither of these systems dwelve much on the motive for the library's destruction.

It wasn't until I started to delve into the development of the Christian Culture after I recovered from a near death illness that I learned the true motives. It was caused by factions of Christians vying for dominance in 400's that lead to the destruction of the Library at Alexandria.

Alexandria was the intellectual capital of the empire. It's international port made it the cosmopolitan center of the Mediterranean world.

It was a tolerant city that gave those with a curious mind a place to nurture and grow.

But when the differing sects of Christianity became political, sanity left the building.

Much like it is now, the competing sects were trying to out do each other and in the end, the faction that won decided that the pagan blasphemy that was contained in the Library needed to be purged so that only pure Christian thought would be available.

And we all know what happened.

Watch the movie. It's pretty brutal but it is a seminal event that seems to be glossed over.

I think when I understood that most of religions are frightened by scientific knowledge destroying the mystery that religion depends upon, I lost my desire for religion.

It's not to say I do not believe in god, and that is a personal matter, but it is to say that I do not trust the motives of religion.