Is Christianity the bane of modern human society?

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I think people are the bane of any idea. You can throw a bible in the road 9 people can look at it and go about their day. It's the 1 individual who comes along and believes it's a truth then goes on trying to convert people. At the end of the day it's men behind these ideas and movements.

Religion is the bane of human progressiveness. Without religion, here would have been no faith-based ideas like:

- Combing the hair "comforts the brain."

- Illnesses are caused by an imbalance of the "Four Humors" - blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile.

- Illnesses can be cured by exsanguination or "bleeding" a person (which killed George Washington).

- Pi (the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter) has an integer value of exactly 3.

- Leaving a soiled shirt in a pile of grain produces mice.

- Gold can be chemically produced from lead.

- Women are inferior to men in every way.

... among other myths that have no basis in science.

I agree. It's a little depressing to think how much further we may have come without it.

Without Christianity's Dark Ages, where might we be without 400 years of superstition and repressed science?

If there's one good thing about Christianity or any other religion is that it gives you a good excuse not to do things you don't like. "I can't go to war, it's against my religion", "I can't lie to my own parents, it's against my religion", "I can't eat pizza with *artificial* cheese on it, it's against my religion!"

Perhaps, but the point I was actually making goes a little like this:

- modern western society exists because of slavery
- modern western society exists because of rape
- modern western society exists because of the slaughter of children
- modern western society exists because of the abuse of little boys by priests
- modern western society exists because of nazis
- etc

All just as valid as the argument made by Feyokien.

I see atheists say a lot that Christianity causes war, murder, and all kinds of other bad things. Christianity does have some of those things in its history, but that doesn't mean Christianity in itself caused all of those things. There have been plenty of societies throughout history that either had different religions or were not religious at all but still had plenty of bad things happening. Just because within the history of a religion there is war and violence doesn't necessarily mean that the religion itself is bad.

Really now? from the majority of the posts I've seen here I'd say that bigotry is the bane of modern human society, not religion as a whole.

"Religion doesn't kill people. People kill people."

The imaginary motto of an imaginary "National Religious Association".

Let's try another.

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a religion is a good guy with a religion".

Though imaginary that motto could loosely apply to WWII.

It's a joke folks. Please drop your pitchforks and back away from the keyboard.

I think that this is the quote you're fishing for:

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. -- Steven Weinberg

Unfortunately that has been all too true throughout religions and history.

Hair combing: nothing to do with religion.

Theory of bodily humors:nothing to do with religion.

Medical bleeding:nothing to do the religion.

Search for the true value of Pi:not effected by religion.

Theory of spontaneous generation: nothing to do with religion.

Transmutation of metals:nothing to do with religion.

The one (half )exception to your list of nonsense:

The belief in male supremacy:long predated any modern monotheistic religion. But the Abrahamic religions each went along with the belief and continued uphold belief in male supremacy. So you could argue that religion prolonged the already ancient oppression of woman.

I'm all for bashing religion, but posting stuff that you know full well is nonsense doesnt help any cause.

There were wrong theories in the past that folks believed simply because they just didnt know any better.

And then there were wrong theories connected to religion.

Everything you listed is the former (except maybe the last thing).

And you failed to list ANY of the actual examples of a wrong scientific beliefs actually connected to religion.

Actual examples include beliefs taken from scripture like Young Earth Creationism.

Another example is belief in the Geocentric Universe: invented (ironically) by the Pagan philosopher Aristotle it was adopted by the Catholic Church which enforced belief in it for centuries (and made life difficult for Gallileo). Religion could be blamed for prolonging belief in things like that.

You're right. Several examples presented don't take into account that they predate Christianity or were practiced outside of Christianity. I am not disputing that Christians may have incorporated or tolerated such practices.

Four humors. Ayurvedic medicine and that of the Greeks/Romans prior to adopting Xtianity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism

Lead into gold. Alchemy.
http://chemistry.about.com/cs/generalch ... 50601a.htm

Bloodletting as medicine. Similar roots to the humor philosophies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodletting

Slavery as right? That thinking had ample support in ancient Greece (and throughout the ancient world) prior to Christianity. Ottoman Turks (Muslims) used slaves for their Janissaries.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/slavery/eth ... rs_1.shtml
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissaries

Men are superior? That thinking also predates Christianity in the Near East and existed in Asia as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarchy - wherein you'll find this - "Domination by men of women is found in the Ancient Near East as far back as 3100 BCE"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle ... s_on_women

Christianity has its own long list of sins and weaknesses. However, when we blame everything on Christianity we are missing a point that history makes repeatedly - humans can be evil towards each other and often, most especially to anyone different. All religions enable that process and all religions are guilty of incorporating such.

You really don't know anything about history do you. I'm not even a Christian, Agnostic.

It's a very long complicated story that textbooks have been written on, such as the textbook I'm reading in my Ancient History to Early Modern college class, but it goes something like this. Germanic Tribes caused the Western Roman Empire to collapse, plunging Europe into a dark age. The Roman Catholic Church persevered through this era and became the Wests new backbone. The tribes eventually accepted Christianity and Roman Law, which brought about the process of creating unified states, Kingdom of Germany, France etc. Unified states are a lot better at developing technology and spreading it than decentralized tribes. This is all heavily summarized.

So basically our technological development would be nowhere near what it is today if Catholicism hadn't spread the Roman model of Law and State.

Now if one wishes to speak about the caustic effects of Modern "Republican Christianity" as I'll put it and how it is suppressing critical thinking, that's a whole different story.

This is not a question of history. You are making a hypothetical argument based upon an unknown factor. Nor is it a question of religion or belief. Your position on the existence of deities is irrelevant.



Now tell me the story of a parallel universe in which there is no Catholicism. What replaced Catholicism in this parallel universe? Why would it necessarily lead to an inferior or technologically backwards society?



The removal of Catholicism from history creates a vacuum of which you cannot claim would not be filled by something which created a 'better' outcome. Making such broad changes could have a massive impact for the better or worse, or leave us more or less where we are today. Of course, neither you or I would be around to discuss the possibilities, so I'm in favour of the historical outcome for very selfish reasons.

Speculation as to the relative values and merits of composite parts of our history and the effects they had, ill or good, on getting us to where we are, is completely and utterly without factual merit.

Edit:

Also look up Making History by Stephen Fry. I posted a link to it in the other thread about Hitler.

Hmmm... very interesting, and you make some good points that a lot of people don't normally consider.