I think here you are making a category mistake. “Science” or technology cannot be compared with “Religion” as a comparison of worldviews. Science is in of itself not a worldview, merely an empistimological methodology, one that can be used by both the religious and non-religious alike.
Science, to be effective, needs both people willing to fund and carry out research, as well as people and funding to apply that research. “Science” itself contains no reason why anyone should do either. It is up to the overarching worldview (whether religious or non-religious) to determine whether or not the research and its application is a good use of resources or not.
Religious people have always used current technology in their efforts to help their fellow humans. To try and drive a wedge between “Science” and “Religion” in this fashion is I think misguided. The real question is whether non-religious people would use technology to the same extent as the religious to help people. Since the available data shows that atheists are less likely to be charitable, the answer is not obviously yes. The choice is not between religious people who build prayer centers, and the non-religious that build hospitals. It appears that the choice is more between the religious who build both prayer centers and hospitals, and the non-religious who do nothing.
Secondly there are other objections to your argument. One is that the purpose of Christianity, and many other religions is not to make people healthy, wealthy and wise. The point of Christianity is being in relationship with God. That may or may not improve your life in different areas. But criticizing Christianity for not improving the health of the population when it makes no claim that it is able to do so completely misses the mark.
Thirdly it is far from clear that “Science”, even in your use of it, is in fact a net positive for society. For while science has lead to the development of many good things, it has also lead to the development of truly horrific things as well. For instance in a world without science we would not have chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. In fact nearly all of the horrors of the 20th century, such as WWI, WWII and the Holocaust would have been impossible without 19th or 20th century technology. And with the effects of climate change and ever increasing pollution, again brought on by technology, it may well be that the increase in our health and wellbeing that we enjoy now may be quickly erased by the degradation of our planet that the same technology made possible.
Jesus never told us that usurers burn in Hell for eternity, which rips apart your entire argument right there. The sayings of Jesus are recorded in the four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. You can read them here. And you probably should, before you report what Jesus said.
The Catholic Church banned paper production in 1100? I’m afraid you’re wrong about that one as well. It’s possible that you’re confused by the case of German Emperor Frederick II, who banned cotton paper in 1228, because it was too fragile and he wanted writing done on longer-lasting parchment, but of course that’s quite different from banning all paper, and anyway Emperor Frederick wasn’t the Catholic Church.
(Much as I may disagree with your viewpoints, I can’t fault your imagination. If computer programming ever grows too tedious, perhaps you should try writing alternate history novels. It would be fascinating to explore what life would be like if your version of history had actually happened.)
This is basically the central claim of your OP restated. In the 100+ posts since that OP, I and others have challenged you to defend that claim. You’ve mainly refused to do so. Repeating the claim won’t make it true. It simply is not the case that “the output was the same” in every society until the 19th century, and we’ve provided you a mountain of evidence why it wasn’t. Rather, it was the case that Christian society advanced more than any other. See post 38 or any of a dozen others.
Actually it wasn’t. It was the Catholic Church who spearheaded the end to slavery, and they are the most doctrinal Christians of all. Pope Paul III completely condemned slavery in his encyclical Sublimus Dei:
Given that, it’s not surprising that slavery ended in Catholic countries earlier than in countries with secular governments. It happened first in Mexico*, where it was abolished in 1810, by a declaration written by a Catholic Priest. Over the next couple decades, abolition spread to other Catholic countries in Central and South America. By contrast, slavery was not abolished in the United States until 1863.
*Actually, slavery was first abolished in 1791 in Haiti, by Black slaves killing and driving off their white masters.
You are not looking at the same group. Your statistic is for those with a particular announced religious affiliation. Mine is for those who practice a religion, for instance by regularly attending church (or mosque/temple/synagogue). Cite. Perhaps you didn’t notice where I said clearly that I was talking about “those who practice their religion”, not just profess it.
And yet when the renaissance kicked in and the enlightenment and all the other post-Roman periods we have had, they all found great inspiration in Greece and Roman texts, ideas and concepts. Half the symbols of the USA political system comes from Roman concepts. They might be used differently, but I recon that if classical times hadn’t been such a source of inspiration for them they would have called it something else. Of course one has to be near illiterate if one doesn’t think Greek writers and thinkers haven’t helped to make the world a more interesting place.
You confuse religions with deities. Perhaps you meant your op to read: “Deities have Never Bettered the World”
And this proves what? Few people after all, claim that science hasn’t also contributed to the betterment of the human condition. But one does not rule out the other. Anyway it is a silly proposition to begin with. The world consists of individuals. All I have to show is one single individual for whom religions is a positive thing, and the world is a better place for it.
Man I wish I had the magical glasses you all had that could tell me what part of history was influenced by religion and what part wasn’t. To me it all seems like some sort of self-serving meta-narrative, but it’s clear that it’s just that I can’t see which parts of people are religious and which parts are trying to escape their religious yoke.
Yesterday I answered this very late in the evening and I wasn’t able to convey my sheer shock for reading such an ignorant thing here, in the SMDB.
As I said before the Greeks, unable to raise enough food and also to expand resorted to commerce in order to be able to feed themselves… they were the world greatest traders, when the romans turned the Mediterranean into a lake commerce expanded to a level simply not seen today: capital, goods, and people were truly free to flow from one place to another. They didn’t have a market? Please, visit Constantinople, Rome or Marseille, they were huge center of commerce.
An then you dismiss classical science. True, Aristotles didn’t discover relativity but more than two thousands years ago he walked the first steppes: he, Aristarco of Samos, Eratostenes of Cirene, Ptolomey, and dozens more were great scientist. Joseph Heller said that Aristotles had written more science than he had available to research. The greeks and romans weren’t perfect, they relied to much in the deductive method and too little in the inductive one, and so their conclusion were often wrong (besides they didn’t have electronic microscopes). But to dismiss their contribution to human knowledge is simply astounding.
Finally you dismiss their contribution to Art and Literature. And I can’t answer this… I am speechless.
I of all people am in no position to discourage SDMB flippancy, but it helps if there’s some actual thought behind it. Is being accused of racism in a liberal society comparable in any way with being on the wrong side of a power struggle in a fundamentalist society?
I’m not sure how you’d define “liberal society” (I note the mswas did not bother to expand of what he thought comprised “the liberal party line”) but for me a fundamentalist society is, roughly, one that is fanatically dedicated to a particular idea to the exclusion of all others. In such a society, the worst possible thing to accuse someone of is lack of faith in that idea. In a theocracy, call someone a heretic. In a communist society, call them a profiteer. In French society in the years immediately following the revolution, call them a monarchist. It doesn’t matter it it’s true or not, because any and all measures to prevent heresy, profiteering and the return of the monarchy are fair game, including executing people who might have thoughts along these lines because the stakes are just that high.
The net result, of course, is that the accusation becomes a useful tool to eliminate one’s political rivals, or even people one perceives as potential political rivals. The somewhat worrisome trend in recent years in American politics is to accuse someone of lack of patriotism. True? False? Does it matter? Further, the people making the accusation most often are either in a religion faction or are closely linked to one. Fox News’ audience may not be demanding the return of the guillotines to satisfy their bloodlust, but they’re quite happy to enrich commentators who can titillate their bloodlust by blaming liberals for anything and everything.
Eternal vigilance is necessary to hold it at this level. When such vigilance is absent, very ugly things begin to happen.
But if you want to equate this with your poor widdle feelings getting hurt by someone calling you a racist, be my guest.
You’re nitpicking without taking the ten seconds to determine what I meant.
Yes, there was trade in Ancient Greece, and throughout the world through most of time. For most of that time, and in most of those places, merchants were viewed as a necessary evil but certainly among the lower classes (perhaps not in Greece, I’m not sure.) But a trader simply traded. He wasn’t like a banker, he simply transported items from point A to point B and sold for a markup.
They did have:
Brute resource gathering
Distribution
Selling at a markup
They didn’t have:
Banking
Significant class mobility
Manufacture (and the management hierarchy thereof)
Like I said, there wasn’t a market in which to introduce inventions, raise capital in which to start a company which would mass produce your invention, and distribute it for sale. That last item is there, but none of the former. And even if there had been, there was no point in it as being at the top of the merchant class was considered to be an irrelevant position to reach at the time. One was born a merchant, he didn’t decide to become one for the sake of world domination.
So unless you’re arguing that the modern free market existed previous to modern times, you’re missing the point.
Where did I dismiss either of these? Looking back through my text, I’m quite certain that I don’t see the place where I say, “Man those Greeks sure had sucky art!” That’s almost certainly because I didn’t say it.
You yourself have just said that the Greeks were reliant on deduction. I said nothing more nor less than exactly what you said in this paragraph, and you’re decrying me for it. The only thing I added was a likely explanation for why inductive reasoning didn’t grow.