Do you think religion is holding society back?

[Succubus]

The dark ages were started by the fall of a corrupt Roman Empire that failed to defend itself from barbaric forces outside of Christianity, the church eventually helped to pull the western world out of that darkness through literacy, why, because the Bible was being translated into different languages and the people began to have the desire to learn and read the Bible in their own languages and find out what the Church was hiding from them, the reformers were great men and served the people well.

GC

That didn't work out to well for William Tyndale did it? Burned alive for translating the bible into English.

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http://www.oddlyhistorical.com/2015/04/1...ning-rods/

Slow adoption

In spite of the obvious advantages that lightning rods presented for owners of tall buildings, particularly churches, their adoption was a slow and painful affair. Superstition and fear prevented people from trying the invention for themselves. Their fear found encouragement from many ministers and priests of the day. In America, Reverend Thomas Price of Old South Church in Massachusetts blamed the earthquake of 1755 on Franklin’s blasphemous invention. Since God could not vent his retribution from the sky, the Reverend said, he did it by shaking the Earth. He concluded by saying that “God’s  wrath will not be thwarted.”

Yep. Thirty years after Franklin invented the lightening conductor church bell ringers in Europe were being electrocuted.