> even the slightest deviation from the ideas of an all-powerful church and nobility would be progressively punished by censors, mutilation, or execution

Medieval Christian societies were by and large certainly less brutal than ancient Greek and Roman states which were based on conquest and subjugation and extreme exploitation of slave labour. While admittedly some things did regress we have to thank Christianity for introducing the concept of universal human right (at least on a basic level) which is not something that existed in any shape or form back in e.g. 0 AD.

> basic reasoning skills atrophied in service of weird nonsense theological arguments

Scientific method was pretty much invented in Christian universities. Of course the model they were operating on was "somewhat" flawed but the methods they invented to reason about it were certainly a stepping stone to

> Greeks than we know about some parts of Dark Age Europe

Yes there was an ~200-300 year gap.

> 1000 years of stupidity by the Protestants

The same people who brought back witching burning (coincidentally a wide spread ancient Roman practice which the church tried to stamp out with various degrees of effort and success during most of the early to high middle ages)?

> Catholicism is the only reason we didn't reach our current level of technical and intellectual development 1000 years ago.

lol... let's not get silly. Just how much technological progress do you think there was between e.g. ~ 300 BC and 400 AD? It was clearly much less rapid than e.g. between 1000 and 1400 AD.