I've now read reviews and note committed Christians maintain he's biased (in spite of degree in theology) and the agnostic cheer. Nothing unusual in that. Presumably says not much I am not already aware of.

I've just finished "The Closing of the Western Mind" by Charles Freeman (ISBN 1-4000-4085-X). Like Edward Gibbon he regards the rise of Christianity to have been responsible for holding back the development of science. I've now moved back to a book "The Story of Civilization- man's own show" by a George A. Dorsey who I'd never heard of. Short biography at:

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/abcde/dorsey_george.html

The book was written in 1931, the year of his death. The first page of the bit I have come back to (p.455) contains the passage:

"That civilization reached its culmination with pagan Imperial Rome; with Christian Rome it went into a thousand years' sleep. No other event in human history worked such havoc with man's handiwork, such momentous change in his outlook."

The idea was obviously accepted by at least some people 75 years ago. How come we hear so little of it yet?