[quote]No.

Kings in the 17th century certainly ruled with a divine right to rule, but that's been pretty much standard for all of history- every despot since the cavemen claimed to rule with the mandate of heaven. And throughout that history, it was never enough to just shut everyone up- whether the people accepted an autocrat was largely dependent on the man's political strength. I mean, the 17th century saw ol' Charlie of England- one of the great proponents of the divine right to rule, mind you- be overthrown and executed, largely because of his attemps to control everything.[/quote]
What are you disagreeing with? You are practically repeating what we already established which is that no one questioned why someone is born to rule over others. Sure, rebellions happened, monarchs were killed, and crowns shifted hands, but at the end of the day those peasants that rose up would go back to their fields and just work for the next guy that comes along claiming he is destined to rule them. They accepted it as a normal thing because they never left their little bubble of ignorance. Progress of philosophy was crippled by Church who insisted that every new idea must be explained and be connected to God. Everything else was sacrilegious. You can clearly see the difference in philosophy of the Medieval ages and that of the Renaissance and the Enlightment, for example reading works of Machiavelli and Hobbes, who are mocking the way society works. If this was done in the Medieval times the author would be punished, most likely by death.

[quote]The second assertion I'd like to contest, and one that makes me cringe in terrible agony every time I see it, is everything you said about the so called 'dark ages'. Apparently, everything between the fall of Rome in the 400s and the renaissance was anarchy and cultural stagnation, which lasted over a thousand years. Except for, what do you call it, the Carolingian renaissance of the 700s, or the cultural brilliance of the Byzantines and the Islamic world, ect, ect. /Sarcasm [/quote]
I don't deny there has been civilizations in the Medieval Ages. It's called the Dark ages because scientific progress was relatively stagnant. Sure, it's not exactly historically accurate to call it Dark ages as it implies nothing significant happened. Obviously this is not true.
However, there was no progress in neither medicine nor literature (most of it revolved around religion), science was practically non-existent and anything that remotely went against contemporary standards was frequently dubbed witchcraft. Contrast to this is the Renaissance and the Enlightenment period when literature and art flourishes, science is still somewhat held back but is making break throughs in secret. Criticizing Church is slowly becoming acceptable. This is the era when Europe is slowly leaving it's conservative cocoon. We're talking about Europe here, I'd leave the Islamic world out of it, who by the way, was ahead of Medieval Europe in a lot of aspects, including mathematics, astronomy, astrology, anatomy, physiology, philosophy etc. We can see this by the fact that Europe had to  gather and translate old scripts from the Arabs, who unlike Europeans, wrote down and preserved literature of the ancient times and built upon the foundations laid down by the ancient Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, and other great civilizations.

[quote]My point here is that calling the 400-1400 period the 'dark ages' is a gross oversimplification, one which reduces the greatness of the countless civilizations that rose and fell in that period (yes, civilization did exist).[/quote]
Sure, civilizations existed, but was there much progress in anything other than in art of warfare? It was a time of wars, poverty, famine, plagues and death. On top of that, it was an era of little to no hygiene. Byzantium can be somewhat excused as far as that goes.

[quote]Finally, you seem to imply that the 'church'- by which I assume you refer to the Roman Catholic Church- was not only a proponent of the divine authority of Kings, but actively hunted those who opposed their tyranny. This is a ridiculous concept; for one thing, the popes would never impart divine authority on kings, authority they guarded as their own.[/quote]
Was it not the Popes that gave the titles to European monarchs? If I recall correctly, the Catholic Church was the founder and supporter of Spanish inquisition. Was this not tyranny against those that opposed them? Crusades? Slaughter of fellow Christians, even those who had slightly different teachings than the ones preached from Rome. I'm talking about the Cathars who were systematically hunted and killed by Catholics.

[quote]The thousand years you clumped into the 'dark ages' saw a constant struggle between the papacy and the European Kings for religious authority.[/quote]
Papacy wouldn't be as strong as it was if the monarchs wanted all the power for themselves. Fact is, they acknowledged Pope as the religious leader. The Pope literally had the authority to stop two kings fighting each other and make them fight together against a common enemy which is the case with Crusades. This 'struggle' for power only culminated in the 16th century with the emergence of Protestant church and even then Kings only joined it for completely unrelated reasons, for example King of England converted because he wanted a divorce. King of Denmark converted because he needed the money from confiscating church lands after his country was broke following a civil war. By this time Europe was already largely in Renaissance period.

[quote]And even if one were to ignore that and pretend that the popes loved these Kings, it ignores the simple fact that your statement is an anachronism. By the 17th century, the roman church was already spiraling into its political decline. A third of Europe had broken off and formed their owned reformed churches, and even in those catholic nations that remained, papal authority was almost non-existent.[/quote]
If I'm not mistaken, 17th century is 100-150 years after the Medieval ages. How is it anachronism?