What Has Religion Done in 2011?

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In ancient times Priests practiced medicine. In this system even dogs were entitled to socialized medicine.
Nowadays Priests are no longer required to practice medicine other than to pray for the sick.

Ancient times ... Completely irrelevant ... I'm still waiting for accomplishments of the "Body of Religion" in the last year, and you go off on a tangent about ancient history.

Besides, what they were practicing back then likely more resembled torture than medicine.

Medicine in ancient Israel may or may not have been very advanced but everyone had access to healthcare regardless of their ability to pay because ten percent of zero is zero. Likewise in modern Israel there is also universal access to healthcare which still may be considered primitive by future standards when wheelchairs are replaced by robotic cyborgs.
The real witch doctors are today's medical capitalists who insist that every family pay a thousand dollars in insurance premiums and if you collect beer cans for a living then you are out of luck.

Ancient medicine is irrelevant.

Modern Israeli medicine is secular.

Witch doctors exploit the ignorance and fear of their patients for the power and awe it brings. They light a few candles, burn some incense, chant a few prayers, and then blame the patient if he or she does not get well - just like modern-day religious faith healers.

Science-based medicine actually works, more often than not - certainly more often than any ooga-booga faith healing.

Doctors do not insist that anyone pay insurance premiums - they only insist that their patients follow treatment. It is the insurance companies that insist on the exorbitant payments - they could easily afford millions of dollars of treatments if only their business executives would accept lower pay and fewer benefits.

Now, back to the topic: Would someone please post a list of Religious Achievements of 2011 to provide balance to the list of Scientific Achievements of 2011?

Thank you.

-Fnord-

(PS: I hope no one mentions "Spreading Propaganda" again ...)

Among Native American tribes, it was often the case that if the medicine man failed to save the life of a person, then the medicine man was considered to be using his magic to harm rather than heal, and so could be legally murdered by the dead person's relatives.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Hmm ... maybe those Native Americans were more wise that I thought ... imagine being able to legally seek the "Life for a Life" penalty from a modern-day Christian faith healer ... Benny Hinn would've had an extremely short career ...

That indeed would be a dream.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Would it matter? Most of you wouldn't know how to read or write if it weren't for religion and dogma of learning how to read and write. But who needs that anyway. Most ppl jus txt on their cel phones & attempt 2 write legible sentences 4 u 2 read.

some religion's brought us meditative breathing and meditation. which have aided in improving mental health.

That's all i can think of.....

It is a bit of an assumption to say people would not have been taught to read and write if it were not for religion. There were practical reasons for society in the 19th century to teach people to read and write, regardless of how it was brought about. Industry required these skills, not the church. In fact I would say if it was down to the church they would rather we were all illiterate.

19th century? try the 1st century! or even BCE. Scribes were expensive to raise. Aside from governments, religion, and maybe trade guilds, few people learned how. Even within the organisations it was rare to have more than a handful of people who could read and write. I think however through the power of religion there was a compulsion to spread the word so to speak, and with that came the necessity to manuscript more and more religious texts, thus ensuring more people were taught the art of the Scribe.

Then came the printing press, and you know what Johannes Gutenberg did with it? He PRINTED A BIBLE! Hah!

Witch's invented nuclear witchcraft.

As I recall, one of the reasons why Gutenberg had printed the Bible before anything else was because the Catholic Church had accused his invention of being witchcraft. Producing a Bible sort of threw a wrench into their argument. It was later on that the Protestants made use of his printing press to mass produce vernacular language Bibles - which I'm sure made the Pope steaming mad!

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

People still learned how to read it.

Oh, no, I'm not disagreeing with the outcome; I'm just saying that Gutenberg may have had some ulterior reasons for choosing to print a Bible before any other book.
And to be sure, literacy was increased in countries where Protestantism had caught on, precisely because of the availability of their vernacular language Bibles.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer