Do you think religion is holding society back?

[SteveII]

No, not at all.

A pagan worldview couldn't (and didn't) foster the move to modern science. Pagans thought the world was endowed with spiritual aspects--events and conditions were caused by spiritual forces.

As such, a careful examination of natural causes was not a natural extension of that worldview--not in the least. This is the same reason that modern science did not develop in Asia or India--where there were plenty of stable societies that would otherwise have been able to foster scientific pursuits. 

It is only a worldview that held that the universe existed with a natural order and did not hold any special unseen properties, that would prompt large numbers to attempt to explain it. The only worldview anywhere near the timeframe of the rise of science that met that description was Christianity. 

No...they didn't.  That would be the christers who supplanted and then exterminated them...only later realizing "hey, those fuckers were onto something".  Your summary, above..was just another myth that the christers told about the people they annihilated.  The truth of the matter, is that the pagans were the intellectuals and the christers the backwoods ignorants...the heathens.

The emergence and rise of christianity was a -disaster- for science, and the world.  

The perpetuated myth that Christianity was a foe of science is silly and unfounded. Show me where there was any systematic design/desire/process to hold science back. You certainly can't deny that most early scientist were Christians of some stripe--so how could "Christianity" have been a foe when the label applied to the people doing the science?

-and there we have it.  Christianity didn't do shit.  You're just hoping that you can grift some credibility from the unfortunate fact that some scientists were christians.  Well..maybe if they hadn't actively exterminated the folks who weren't christians......that would have been different.  Like it was -before- there were christians.

So...no backup for your claims--just rephrasing them. Must be nice to invent a reality specifically to address a debate question. It's really hard to rebut such an imagination. Congrats on the winning strategy.