Yours is a really valuable perspective on this issue, and probably gives you more clarity than those of us who have grown up immersed in the values of the West like fish in water. I had a Muslim friend who used to comment on how "Christian" my country was, whereas I'd always seen it as highly secular. The British historian Tom Holland is very good on this topic. His recent book "Dominion" is basically an examination of how Christianity so pervasively shaped the West. He's got some good interviews on YouTube if anyone wants a shorter introduction to this…
Check out a book called Dominion by Tom Holland and you might be surprised to find the true source of your current moral structure. He discusses Roman history and contrasts it to Christian culture, which developed out of the carcass of a fallen Western Rome and flourished for a thousand years in the Eastern Roman Empire. so much of what we think of as "universal human values" are actually Christian values. Your adopted morality is a result of centuries of relative peace and the complete domination of Christian ethics in the Western world.
> It’s pretty astounding It's not astounding at all: the (Catholic) Church very much absorbed quite a lot of Aristotle's meta-physics. He was simply called "The Philosopher" in many writings. And given that "Western values" are basically Christian values: * https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/21/dominion-makin... * https://historyforatheists.com/2020/01/tom-holland-dominion/ it's no surprise then that you can draw a straight line from the Ancient Greeks to the modern day.
Not read Millennium, but Dominion is brilliant. its not just the history of the church, it explains how the West came to be what it is and the influence of Christianity. It is also a useful corrective to the Western tendency to see its values and attitudes as universal, even where they are a product of a particular history and culture.
In case you're wondering why you're being downvoted: the history is much more nuanced. While the Archimedes Palimpsest is a genuine and tragic example of lost text, the broader claim that Christianity engendered a period of scientific erasure is considered outdated (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_thesis). For example, monasteries were the primary centers of literacy and education in Europe during the early middle ages, and they acted as the primary bridge for the survival of Greco-Roman intellectual heritage in the West. Not always intentionally, but they were the only sanctuary…
For anybody interested in the book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52259619-dominion I would highly recommend. Holland (historian, not the actor) makes a great case about why many of our thoughts nowadays are rooted in Christianity.
I’d say the church from Rome has always had problems like any group of humans. Collectively the churches established by the apostles I’d say got the truth right. Though if I were to pick a date where they went seriously wrong and led to what you saw at the time of the reformation and today I’d say 1054 AD As for women being treated poorly that is not something the church introduced, but has practically been done by men since time began. If you read early church history you’d probably realize that your moral basis itself is founded upon the work church did. If you’re someone who is open…