They were also responsible for the destruction of thousands of priceless documents that were deemed counter to church teachings. I'm fully with Dorkman here.

You think Westboro wouldn't LOVE to throw some folk up on the rack if they could get away with it? The only reason there's been "progress" is because our society has steadily been willing to put up with less and less of religion's (specifically Christianity's) crap over the centuries. Take a look at fundamentalist Islamic countries, though. Shit still happens daily. I literally cannot ever go to Dubai because I would be at risk of arrest or worse for being openly gay.

However, many of history's greatest thinkers have been religious, or even driven by religion. Even Einstein believed in a Spinozan god. Didn't hinder them. I know you're arguing about a broader spectrum, but it's still a valid point.

(By the way, I know this is going to come up, so I'm going to say this now. People like to say that almost every war in history has been caused by religion. This is untrue. Almost all of those wars were fought over land and/or resources. Religion may have been the surface reason, but it's very rarely the actual reason. It's like when people say that the Civil War was about "state's rights" and not slavery.)

Last edited by Doctor Submarine (2014-01-03 05:39:13)

There is actually more than just the monks who preserved some knowledge. Several schools were started by the Church or monastic orders, as you stated, but there is more to the story.

This is a quick summary. No, I'm not holding it up as a scientific article, with references. http://www.cracked.com/article_20186_6- … ieves.html

Not the best audio quality, but an interesting lecture from Cambridge regarding science and religion in the Middle Ages:
http://www.faraday.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk … height=460

Oh, snap lol

As long as we're knocking out common arguments, here's one you all might be familiar with. See this chart?

This chart is 110% bullshit. Please never share it.

Yeah, it's hard to argue that the Crusades weren't religiously-motivated to a large extent. But it's a super complex area of history, because there were like ten different Crusades over several centuries. Plenty of people went due to religion, but there were also plenty of people who went because the Church was paying people to do so. Also "eternal glory" and whatnot, but that's not a big factor.

And yes, the Israel/Palestine fight was sparked by conflicting religious interests. However, by this point both sides have demonized each other so much that religion is just a part of the hate-brew.

Coming back to something mentioned earlier, does religion form the basis of ethics?

My first instinct would be to say "no, empathy does", but I say that after growing up with some religious framework imposed by the world around me, if not at home.

The WBC is fascinating. On the one hand, their main racket is trying to provoke people to attack them, so that they can sue. Almost all the adults in the family are lawyers. Even if they don't get punched, they still get plenty of attention. On the other hand, everything that we know about how the church works indicates that they do believe everything they say. It's just bizarre. I mean, Fred Phelps used to be a major advocate for civil rights. What happened?

Last edited by Doctor Submarine (2014-01-03 06:45:49)

Maybe it's circular. Ethics come from man, man creates religion as an ethics delivery system, religion propagates ethics. Ultimately, that's what it comes down to.

It's still a common belief that religion gets the credit for our morality.

The revolution in humanitarian rights (democracy, equality, welfare, abolition, education for all, etc) came out of the Enlightenment: mainly free-thinkers, deists, secularists, etc. Paine, Voltaire, Mill, Hobbes, Hume, Locke, Spinoza, Diderot, etc.

Of course, you can cherry-pick the Bible for the good-bits and ignore the bad bits, but in doing so you're already applying a pre-existing value system that does the filtering. It's reversing cause and effect. You could do the same filtering with a Tolkien book.

But bizarrely religion gets the credit, even though it's been the cause of holding back moral progress for many centuries (slavery, racism, monarchy, misogyny, homophobia, cruel punishments, etc). Studied closely, the Bible has an Iron Age moral code that has no place today. The fact that even religious people regularly dismiss large tracts of it is telling. And the further we progress (e.g. gay rights in the 21st century), the greater the parts of the Bible that have to be swept under the carpet as embarrassing to believers.