Is the internet destroying religion?

[Michael]

Cap'n. I believe you are looking at the wrong statistic. Don't look at the literacy rate at the time the printing press was invented. Look at the literacy rate afterwards!! The printing press drove remarkable literacy rates. And that was down to one thing: the bible. Look at literacy rates of the founding generations in America - all free people learned to read, and they learned to read so that they could read the bible, first the Geneva Bible then the 'King James' bible. And it then didn't stop at the bible. Once the people could read, they were open to all sorts of material. Just think of the impact of Thomas Paine's 'Rights of Man' in America. It was arguably the catalyst that drove independence and was a major stepping stone to the French Revolution. It certainly inspired Washington and Franklin to believe in independence. And then his 'The American Crisis' ("These are the times that try men's souls") enthused and galvanised Americans when all was looking lost.

The printing press drove remarkable literacy rates in all layers of society (we are not just talking about an elite; the printing press absolutely crushed the previous paradigm of reading only being for the elite classes), and drove huge political changes, and changes in world order that are arguably still reaching their conclusion. It opened up all levels of society to new knowledge; it empowered the working classes and even empowered slaves who could use the bible against their owners. I see nothing of that sort happening with the internet, certainly nothing on that scale. I can only imagine what George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine would make of the use we put a remarkable new technology to.