Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!ll-xn!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!rochester!PT.CS.CMU.EDU!K.GP.CS.CMU.EDU!lindsay
From: lindsay@K.GP.CS.CMU.EDU (Donald Lindsay)
Newsgroups: sci.misc
Subject: Re: science is STILL religion
Message-ID: <1169@PT.CS.CMU.EDU>
Date: 19 Mar 88 04:33:08 GMT
References: <73600013@uiucdcsp>
Sender: netnews@PT.CS.CMU.EDU
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 36

In article <73600013@uiucdcsp> pax@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>I used to think that.  A seminary student I once knew suggested to
>me that maybe people really led better lives in the middle ages.
>I thought he was crazy.  How could I even talk to someone so dense
>as that.  But now, older and wiser, having seen something of our
>modern world--not just the fairy land campuses, not just the hedonistic
>narcissistic yuppiedoms, I have grave doubts.
>
>Those words--narcissist, hedonist--come from antiquity.  Those were
>scienceless times but deeper and more intellectual as our language still shows.

A short checklist:

- intestinal parasites.
- lice.
- no changes of clothing.
- no underwear.
- no hot water for baths.
- no soap until post-Roman times. (Technology in the service of mankind! )
- no running water, or else downcreek from someone else's running water.
- outhouses.
- no dentists - and tooth decay was NOT invented recently.
- backbreaking labor - literally. Dawn to dusk till you die of it.
- dietary deficiencies.
- vitamin D deficiency in winter. You too can be Snow White or a dwarf.
- creosote poisoning of the lungs. See further, teepee and longhouse. You
	too can live in a chimneyless room with an open fire.

Oddly enough, people living on tropical islands escaped almost all of this
(except the intestinal parasites). I guess swimming in warm salt water kills
lice.  Seafood and tropical sun fix all the deficiencies. Few fires. No need
of clothes. If the birth rate was controlled (by infanticide), life was OK.
Well, not very intellectual, actually, and heavily marred by war,
restrictive religions ("taboo"), and fun customs like ritual
self-mutilation.  Sigh.
-- 
	Don		lindsay@k.gp.cs.cmu.edu    CMU Computer Science