Hi Poetsong,

The camping was great, thanks.
I enjoy conversing with you, very clear and to the point.

1. An exaggeration but ok, Christianity was the dominant religion.
In this argument I was not signaling out Christianity; Muslins and Jews also thought the plague had a supernatural cause. (2, 5) The 99% is the number people that believed in God.

My problem is not that some people might of have felt that their suffering was the wrath of God. I am sure many did.
I am not sure how many believed that the plague was caused by God, either as a punishment or the start of the Apocalypse or the work of the devil. The low figures I have seen are at 30% and high ones go as high as 90%. Although I would consider the number was way over 50%, I can agree on 50% of the people thought this way.

2. ”I don’t think this (God was the ONLY solution) is apparent at all. Just because a person views God as the Ultimate cause does not mean that they are unaware of a Proximate cause. If we were to follow this logic you would have to believe that Christians never try to solve problems because we believe God ultimately in control of the universe. Clearly that is false.”

Yes I would say that a majority of Christians today do not believe God controls everything. But go ask a person that takes the Bible literally; today many main stream evangelicals say that God punishes people through disease, natural and human disasters. I know I shouldn’t judge a Faith based on its “whackos”, since these people have a minority of Christian followers. But during the 14th century the majority of people thought exactly the way that these “whackos” do. (0, 2, 3)

I do have a few sources that state that how often people thought prayer or repentance was the only solution. (1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) But theses sources merely confirm a simple logical connection. If one truly believes that a Divine Being was the cause of the problem then divine acts would be the best solution. I sure 1000s of people looked at secular reasons but millions were looking for a divine solution thus closing their minds from secular solutions.
Do you have any logical arguments as to why people would seek other solutions when they thought the disease had a divine purpose?

“…ignoring the principles found in the book of Amos “
I agree. Cleanness is promoted in the Bible but stories about God’s use of plagues and other natural disasters as a punishment are much more prevalent.(3) If the Bible is the word of God, in which his wisdom on how to live is passed to us, then I would expect verses that clearly reflect this. Such as, animals that reduce the numbers of vermin like cats are good. That transporting rodents and other animals to other lands is a bad. Boiling water before drinking it is a good. This was simply not the case. (11, 12) If these statements like these were preached by the Church would have almost certainly confined the disease to local areas.

”We agree that rats were the major transmitter. But I think it is important to remember that the disease is airborne and direct contact contagious as well. “
I agree, Air borne disease did infect local populations but it was rats that caused the disease to spread to far away lands.

”3. This closed off millions upon millions of minds from the actual causes of the plague and the appropriate actions needed to stop the spread of the disease.
This is the meat of the argument. But I don’t have any reason to believe that people were not perusing every possible answer to this disease.”

I do agree. During the later outbreaks a majority of people in European nations started investigating secular reasons for the disease. Hence my reference to the picture of the plague cloaks, I know it wasn’t that effective but this showed progress. During the 14 century the main focus was on prayer and repentance as my previous stated sources shows. I am sure you will be able to find references to secular causes during the 14th century but they were in the minority. Do you have any references that shows secular investigation was a main method of investigation?

”5. Even if things were handed better later, I don’t know what this would have to do with religious belief. I also don’t know what the plague in other locations has to do with religion either.”

The Middle East, China and Europe suffered from the plague but only Europe was hit by wide spread reoccurrences of the disease.
Why didn’t the Europeans have the knowledge to combat the disease?
Why did wide spread re-occurrences only happen in Europe?
These later outbreaks shows that Europeans still did not know what to do in case of plagues. But finally only after the “age of enlightenment” did a large scale investigation of secular reason behind the plague occurred, this is when real solution were discovered.
I don’t believe their faith completely cut the Europeans off from finding secular solutions but it most certainly slowed down their progress. Millions of people went to the grave thinking their death was caused by a lack of repentance for their sins.