(April 7, 2015 at 9:42 am)Nope Wrote:That's true.(April 7, 2015 at 9:07 am)watchamadoodle Wrote: I wonder if the idea of separation of church and state was affected by Catholicism?
Usually religion is part of the state, but in Europe the Roman empire disappeared while the Roman religion remained.
Didn't different European Christian groups spend a lot of time killing one another in the name of religion?
I'm not sure what I'm suggesting.
Why did the industrial revolution, the enlightenment, etc. happen in Western Europe? Why not Eastern Europe or China or the Ottoman Empire?
Separation of church and state was a novel idea. Gobekli Tepe suggests that religion was the impetus for agriculture and urbanization - not the reverse as people used to assume. Religion was the reason for the existence of early cities like Uruk. The population viewed themselves as slaves working on a plantation owned by their city's god. Originally these cities had no kings, but, even when kings did appear, they were viewed as caretakers in service of the city's god.
In Eastern Orthodox, the head of the church is usually tightly-coupled to the head of the state. In Roman Catholicism, there was more tension between religion and state. I'm not sure if this was a significant factor - just wondering.
