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thrance • today at 10:43 AM • 1 reply • view on HN

What do you make of Christianity persecuting those who would place the Sun at the center of our cosmology? Or the relentless advocacy they're doing, even to this day, to fight the theory of Evolution? How can you explain their support of completely ascientific theories of 18th century racism and phrenology? Or how they supported a myriad of wrong theories over the ages, from a flat earth to the theory that if rocks fall down, it's because they like the ground?

Look, every religion touts itself as "the religion of science". Ultimately, I don't believe any of these cults incarnate any set of rigid philosophical principles. What Christians and other religious people believe shifts over time and space, and that's a good thing. They are slowly adapting to our modern understanding of the world, even if religious people tend to lean more on the reactionary side themselves.

But enlightenment was achieved in spite of religion. The French Revolution was very anti-religious because the Clergy was perfectly content enjoying its privileges in the feudal system, keeping peasants poor and uneducated. Only when the over-bearing Church was weakened were we able to explore radical new ideas of how the world works, and establish new scientific theories and knowledge.

1500 years of an all-powerful Catholic Church left Europe in a worst place than it was under Rome. Only since its power began to wane were we able to grow again.


Replies

josefx • today at 12:02 PM

> from a flat earth

That in the same paragraph as Galileo is a bit self contradicting. The church was stuck on an ancient greek model of the universe and the greeks were very much aware that the world was round, they once spend a day or two measuring it.

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