Quote:
Originally Posted by Cheese
read post above...and my apologies if that link didnt appeal to you. The fact is the information in it, is accurate.....dude  |
The information is accurate but I am saying you can bring up any list of any powerful culture, society, state, or religion in human history and come up with a similar litanty of attrocities that we in the modern world would view as morally reprehensible. You are assigning complete blame to Christianity for something that I believe to be a trait of human nature. If the world were without religion, mankind would find some other ignorance or superstition to kill each other over until the point where we realize that killing each other becomes so devastating that it's better to hold back (mutually assured destruction).
What is the point of even making hypothetical guesses at what the world would be like? It'd probably be unrecognizable. Without unifying forces like Christianity in western europe, western society would probably be overrun by muslims and mongols and the Renaissance and the Enlightenment would have never happened and we'd probably be in a much more backward and barbarous society today. It's fun conjecture I guess. If only you could guarantee the Roman Empire didn't fall apart (whether that is due to Christianity or total mismanagement by Imperial rule after the fall of the Republic is something else to be debated).
Alright, I agree with you that religion impeded science in certain ways, but I think that the critical mass of societal and economic development was simply not good enough to foster enough of an educated class to really create the educated and liberal world that we have today. I would agree with you that superstitious and religious Europe (along with political and economic factors such as the decline of the Roman Empire) probably killed off scientific advancement for 2000 years where it was left to Muslim scientists to provide any applicable science of today. That said, Christianity and science existed side by side throughout the important scientific advances of the 17th-19th centuries where the political and religious atmosphere of those times were especially more tolerant and fostering than most other societies of the world.
In the end, I agree with Thor's statement. I don't care much for the historical death toll or the historical tragedies or delay of science and "enlightened" society. That's crying over spilt milk. Sure I'd rather that we'd be 2000 years ahead and have flying cars and space ships and live for hundreds of years, etc. but we have what we've got. Like Thor, I don't the only relevant thing to discuss is how religion affects modern day society and discourse.