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edwardbernaysyesterday at 12:58 AM2 repliesview on HN

Could that perhaps be a reaction to an anti-intellectualism streak in the mainstream religious narrative for the last couple decades?


Replies

kragenyesterday at 3:43 AM

The last couple of millennia, really. Who lynched Hypatia? Who burned the Timbuktu Manuscripts? Who burned Giordano Bruno alive? Who burned the Maya codices?

At the same time, religious institutions have always contained many intellectual traditions, perhaps most of them. When the Christians extirpated knowledge of the hieroglyphs, it was the Egyptian priests they scattered. We don't know what was in the Maya codices, but large parts of the surviving Maya inscriptions are religious in nature. European universities began as seminaries; al-Azhar University is over 1000 years old and initially taught only sharia, fiqh, and the Quran. And everyone knows how Irish monks saved civilization.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that religious people are usually the ones who care about intellectualism, whether in favor or opposed.

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taylorlapeyreyesterday at 3:48 AM

yes, certainly