I think we would be a head if the dark ages didn't happen.

If the library at Alexandria was not burned and other such atrocities.

What groups where at fault differ for different situations, what there motivations where can also be different.

Many times religion is used as a tool to control, and knowledge is power so tools that control disdain knowledge in the hands of the people being oppressed.

Yeah - we could "what if" this thread to oblivion. Hard to admit that it was Columbus though, and his intent was to spread Christianity. I hope you're not losing sleep over this.

DUDE!

What if Lee had had a truckload of M-16's at Gettysburg!

IMHO, ideological dogma is responsible for all ignored or straight up censored knowledge.

Here is how science works. We have phenomena, we gather data, we analyze the data and try to find ideas/hypothesis that match all of what we see, we run tests to find the conclusion that fits, if something comes along to change that, we say ohh well and discard or fix the old to match with the new.

Religious ideology does it backwards. They come up with a conclusion then try there damdest to find phenomena that match it. If a religion started with a single premise that god exists and wants us to explore the truth of nature, and those people of that religion then took as there core mandate the same principles of science well, then that would be very different wouldn't it. Does such a religion exist?

So without an example otherwise I believe at its most fundamental religion is anti-science. At least all of the ones I know about are . . .

That is just my very humble opinion everyone is free to ignore or disagree with it.

I'm gonna agree. Not because it's your opinion, but because it's fairly well demonstrated throughout history.

scientist has always been theorizing, analyzing, for many years and they haven't found a cure to a sickness?

now they been tearing up dead ppls many yrs just to study, and your
telling me religion has something to do with it?


f that, scientist did find the cure for sickness to stop cancer, but
if they do use it how are they gona make money.

once your cure you'll never come back, com on guys think about it.

people are using religion as tools to make money but it has nothing
to do with technology.

politic + technology = money and thats the truth.

Effected _by_ religion, effected in _opposition_ to religion, or effected _in spite of religion_?

I can certainly make the argument about America being settled by those escaping religious tyranny-- it's in our very Constitution, no less-- as being effected by opposition to theocracy. I hardly think that recommends religion as a reliable agent of change, much less technological advancement, though.

Someone else mentioned the Golden Age of Muslim science. Yet, if you look at what has transpired since then in the Muslim world, with its almost constant Jihads, could it not be argued that religion had a deleterious affect, effectively stopping said Golden Age in its tracks? Pretty much everwhere you look in the Muslim world these days you see a desire to establish a new Caliphate bent on world domination under their religion, not on science for the egalitarian advancement of all.

Even in this country, you see a pullback. Go to Borders Books and look around-- you'll see, for example, no more than a two foot section dedicated to books on Engineering. Math fares a little bit better, but even it is dwarfed by the mountain of shelves devoted to religion and New Age mysticism.

I think the U.S. would do well to inspect what happens when religion supplants the hard work of studious inquiry into what make the physical world tick.

-Kerry O.

i ment to say politic + controlled technology = money, thats y we can't better ourself or better our technology.


religion is religion its up to u to believe it, don't blame religion


what your saying a rifle shoot itself.

We would be tech behind because the monks made copies of religious books and books in general then eventually printing presses and so forth and people spreading the word and new ideas etc. etc. It is true that the modern since age tech has had leaps and bounds. I belive we are in a second industrial revolution right now. We probably cannot see it because we are in the middle of it.

Religion based on ignorance and fear have been an inhibiting factor BUT conversely people need to know so that made people perform more focused and more empirical studies of the world and universe around us. In a way religion led to what we refer to as "Empirical Method" where there has to be proof that an experiment can be repeated to justify a Theory that was based on a Hypothesis. With religion there needs to be blindly faith (DEPENDING ON WHICH RELIGION YOU SPEAK OF!!!!). In science there has to be some way of seeing the effect and results of the effect and what caused it.

Now with Philosophy there is just words used to express ideas and rationalize them. That is not science. Now both have played parts in Science as well.

Now if you are referring loosely to the Catholic Church? They were seriously detrimental towards human advancement. 'Keep them ignorant,' was a Catholic principle that brought on the dark ages. That and a lot of territory grabs and warring in Europe when Western Rome fell.

Look at Islam's history. They are the ones that gifted us with Algebra and our number system. They also had bath houses like the Romans. They had a rich culture like the Romans. Once upon a time they were poets, musicians, artists, and romantics but then they changed and human greed and power mongering changed that all for them.

In a way we probably would not have gotten as far as we did without it but then again, there is no telling what we could have done and in turn probably without the mental sophistication to evaluate the effects of it before using it nuked ourselves to death in a war hundreds of years earlier because of our more war like tendencies of the day. Picture the Romans with Nuclear weapons. The world would have been their oyster for sure.

This is such a give and take issue!!!!

Short answer, maybe not. Why? Tell someone 'no' and what do they do? Had religion not have been in the way nobody would have probably asked the big questions in the first place!

Yes. That's it, exactly.
Rather sad, actually.

Not to long ago, it was discovered that monks made copies of religious books after washing the ink off of other books and then writing what they considered pertinent. Books like the ones Achimedes had written about his discoveries.

No the reason we have not landed on mars yet is because the aliens won't allow it.

Earthers are quarantine from space travel in general.

Tell it to Copernicus

Regarding the opening post - I don't think you can say what 'would' have happened if we didn't have religion. I think that many of the good and bad things which religious power structures facilitated would have happened anyway if we had non-religious power structures.

One of the things that hold us back the most in technology (as opposed to science) is the existence of large corporations that have a vested interest in the old ways of doing things, and enough money/inertia to protect their little empires against those who would otherwise out-innovate them. Of course, these same companies were/are also responsible for helping to advance technology. Its just like religion - under some circumstance, religion helps advance technology, in others it does the opposite.

But of course.

I realize this thread is several days old, however, it was flagged for abuse. I have removed the insulting remarks. Please do not attack/insult others.