Pope: "GAWD GAWD GAWD" Czech: "Cool story bro."

[popehippo]

Pope Benedict XVI warned some 120,000 worshipers at a Mass here on Sunday of the dangers of a society without God, forging ahead with his fight against secularism on the second day of a three-day trip to the Czech Republic

Comments

[arisma]

[filbypott]

It's unfair to blame Christianity for Europe's loss of scientific advancement after the fall of Rome. Rome would have fallen with or without the Church, and Europe would have been just as bad off afterward. Also bear in mind that while the Church stifled science in the Middle Ages and Renaissance were Christian, the vast majority of the scientists they were stifling were also Christians.

[arisma]

So christians stifling christians is ok? Sorry, gonna have to agree to disagree.

[filbypott]

I wasn't saying it was okay. I was saying that most of the people who brought Europe out of the Dark Ages were Christian (if not Deist or agnostic).

[arisma]

For me there's a difference between the officials and the practitioners. One enables the other but the blame falls more squarely on those in power, the ones who set policy.

[filbypott]

Heh.

I think religion is inconsequential in the long run. It's just one tool among many that the rich use to manipulate the poor, albeit a particularly powerful one.

[celtic_thistle]

oh god stfu, you must know by now that many liberals have no great love for organized religion

[filbypott]

That's pretty much what I was trying to say, yeah.

If I can be more clear, I don't see it as "Christians vs. science", but rather, "political elites vs. revolutionary ideas".

[excusemesenator]

It's okay that we were robbed of a thousand years of progress because we got theological ideas based on (gasp!) a religious framework?

[rex_dart]

Actually, I would say that it's entirely arguable that the major factor in the downfall of the Roman Empire was the conversion to Christianity. It doesn't tend to help out your massively multicultural and multiethnic state when you convert to monotheism and start telling everyone else to do the same. Religious and cultural tolerance was the key to Rome's success for a very long time.

That is not to say that Rome would still be kicking it today if the conversion hadn't taken place. That's stupid. But it doesn't change the fact that the switch to Christianity was one of the deciding factors on hen and how it happened, even if you don't feel it's the main one.

[excusemesenator]

[biichan]

Hell, a huge majority of the science that did get done was done by monks and priests.

[worldmage]

Science continued advancing just fine in that period. Just not in Europe.

Edit: DAMN YOU FRANK

[rex_dart]

lolll