midnight Target: The Western civilization that the Greeks (Actually the Ionians) started was almost totally squashed by religion.
Yes. Almost. Many other civilisation were. It's a selective process. The one variety that promotes it's population, gains.
Think where we might be if the dark ages never happened. ...I have read estimates that up to 1500 years of advancement was retarded...
Oh, yeah - the society really needed knowlege lost in Alexandria to realise that all men are equal and property rights are essential in order to start developing an egalitarian society, free market and other goodies that come with it. That's what was in those books - and every peasant could check them out in their local branch...
Once there were conditions for some inventions, it came right up - in the Western civilisation, based on christian values.
What do you think a secular society would have been? Most likely socialist dictatorship like the modern ones with no knowlege discovery whatsoever.
Here I was talking about purely social foundations for our society that one or another branches of christianity helped to nurture.
Even in accidental historical process it was quite helpfull. The library would have been destroyed no matter what by that or other conqueror with or without a whichever religious pretext. But it was christians who preserved whatever greek inheritance we saved, who developed massive book publishing and eventually printing, etc.
miko
