RE: Would we currently be at this point of civilization without religions?
November 11, 2015 at 10:11 am
You know I once remember reading "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World" and in the chapter on the Antikythera mechanism he wrote with such sniveling words something "If only there wasn't that science hating Christianity in medieval times we wouldn't be wasting our time on the Moon now but visiting nearby stars."
Perhaps he was right considering religion really flourished during pagan era but then diseases came and people embraced darker religions.
And I guess role of religion is for peaceful uniting of tribes, because as people grow their tribes get bigger and tribes start killing other tribes and then the one that win are those that spare people if they accept their gods, meaning them as gods. Like Alexander the Great and that kept for a long time. Remember Napoleon once said “I do not see in religion the mystery of the incarnation so much as the mystery of the social order. It introduces into the thought of heaven an idea of equalization, which saves the rich from being massacred by the poor.”
Perhaps he was right considering religion really flourished during pagan era but then diseases came and people embraced darker religions.
And I guess role of religion is for peaceful uniting of tribes, because as people grow their tribes get bigger and tribes start killing other tribes and then the one that win are those that spare people if they accept their gods, meaning them as gods. Like Alexander the Great and that kept for a long time. Remember Napoleon once said “I do not see in religion the mystery of the incarnation so much as the mystery of the social order. It introduces into the thought of heaven an idea of equalization, which saves the rich from being massacred by the poor.”
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
