(April 20, 2015 at 6:08 pm)abaris Wrote: The excommunicated kings, emperors and dukes of the Middle Ages would disagree...Theologians called the shots till the Age of Enlightenment and they brought us crusades, witch hunts, widespread illiteracy and a general decline in civilization coupled with a generous helping of superstition.
Henry VIII laughed when the pope excommunicated him, and didn't lose power as a result. Pope Urban II did call for the First Crusade in 1096 though it was up to kings or nobles holding military retainers to respond, and most of them responded somewhere between half-heartedly and not at all. I'm not saying that religious people don't mess with politics or cause problems; in our own American day we remember the Scopes Monkey trial and Falwell's Moral Majority.
But the Crusades have nothing to do with the question at issue here: The question is whether the presence of religion significantly retarded advances in science, technology, the economy, or living standards throughout history as a whole. I say it did not, and have pretty good backing for my view as it's shared by a majority of serious historians and anthropologists. Illiteracy was caused by the huge cost of books and the need to survive by growing your own food until recent times, and not by religion.
