(June 9, 2014 at 6:57 pm)mickiel Wrote:(June 9, 2014 at 6:51 pm)Beccs Wrote: Precisely. So it was prudent to claim Christianity as your belief when the other options are death/torture/ridicule.
Yes; but we can only say other options COULD have been trouble.
From examples throughout history of people who either were against the church, or whose science went against church teachings, proving them wrong, it can be shown that persecution would be a pretty sure bet.
In fact, when an open atheist in some part of the US was voted onto a city council only a couple of years ago his opponents tried to invoke a state law that said atheists can't hold public office.
Fortunately, those laws are overridden by national laws
Playing Cluedo with my mum while I was at Uni:
"You did WHAT? With WHO? WHERE???"