S///R///W/B Mythless Patterns

[Robert Pirani]

At 06:37 PM 9/27/00 +0000, Paul Mackin wrote:
>Seems to me Christianity had a lot going for it in its day. ...
>Another thing, it kept alive a lot of the best thought of the ancient
>world. Plato, Aristotle, etc--the deciplines which later could be split
>off from belief and made to work in the development of modern science
>and such. 

I don't think you can credit Christianity with keeping Plato alive. Far
more of Plato's thought on the nature of human existence became part of
Gnostic beliefs that were ruthlessly supressed by Christianity. Not that he
didn't influence Christianity at all, he did. But compared to his role in
Islamic philosophy and Gnostic religions I would Christianity did more to
eliminate that preserve Plato. It's true that Aquinas relied heavily
Augustine so this is really a qualification not a dispute.


Regards,
Robert