What if religion never had a "breakthrough"?

[jonb]

The Romans invented and built upon advancements with artillery, but they are most known for their contributions to language and law....they were more politicians than inventors.

Artillery er no. They did not invent any artillery, as for development there is no evidence, the things they had were just copies of others templates. Think of this in the entire history of the Empire although they had roads, nobody thought of putting a wheel on one, these people had no idea of invention. I can remember reading Livy who all, but accused the Celts of cheating because they had carts with four wheels, a technology beyond the Romans at that time

Contributions to Language. Even this which if anything a people should be able to claim as their own the Romans claim to it is doubtful. The Romans it is commonly accepted were a Greek colony and this is their own myth about themselves that they were descendants of the Trojans. So is Latin an Ionic Greek language at its root. No, its Etruscan and other Italian tongues so they even fail in that regard.

The law, a system of law which keep the rich rich and the poor poor. It is commonly claimed that modern law derives from Roman originals, but this is far from true, Sure Alfred the great tacked on to the end of his laws in English copies of Roman laws, but that was just to make it seem he was instep with Rome, (the church), but that part of English law was not used. Only after the Normans invaded and found the Saxons who were at the time the most literate people in Europe because of statutory public education. Stopped all courts from using English, and insisted on Norman French, did that part of the old law books get even a look in, but as the Norman judges were not the best educated people, the actual law dispensed was based on case history, not a Roman template.
There is even a strong case for large parts of Roman law that it was copied from far better developed Celtic laws. If you really want to stand by the case of Roman law having any influence you could sight Cicero, and his use of slur, slander, and paid witnesses to win his cases, that there is some influence on modern law, but are you really going to rest your proposition on that?

[CapnAwesome]

I have question for Polaris. Where are you getting your information from? I am genuinely curious.

[Cato]

Is David Barton now fucking with medieval history?

[Polaris]

The Romans actually invented the Scorpion, which was a much more effective heavy archer artillery piece than what the Greeks had been using. It was like comparing a smooth-bore rifle with a rifled, magazine-fed Prussian rifle. It's design would later be used to propel small stones, which was quite effective in sieges....it made the victory at Masada possible though they could have also won by just keeping their camps posted for additional months.

Jonb. Why is it that the British only think of their contributions to law when they were in fact centuries behind mainland Europe? It was not until the second millennium that they even were adopting laws and legal processes from the Romans that had been running the daily affairs of nations such as France and Spain.

[Brian37]

I'm not sure if this kind of thread has been made before or if this even is the right part of the forum for this. Either way here it goes.

This is something I often ask myself and I think it's a pretty interesting topic to explore.

Imagine for a second, a world (dimension if you will) where religion never got the same hold of humanity as in "our world".
How do you think such a thing would affect the scientific and technological advancements of humanity? For example, if Christianity never was made up there would have been no dark ages to suppress science and medicine for 500 years, what would the effects of those events have been?

One idea, one I find very likely is that if since science and medicin never had such a setback maybe we'd be at a level of technology and knowlege today equal to 500 years into the future from now.

Of course there could have been other events leading to totally different outcomes but the main idea here is that this "other dimension" never was affected by religon nearly as much.

Anyway, let the brainstorming commence!

If ifs and butts were candy and nuts.

If the city of Alexandria had never been burnt down. If ancient Rome and Greece had not failed eventually, we certainly would have been more advanced.

This is not a new question by any means. It all amounts to shit happens and yes "if" this and "if" that. But what happened happened.

None of your question would change the reality that conflict would still exist and the only way to reduce conflict is to shift the focus on clubs and labels and shift it to our common condition. But even then, you are still talking about a species that groups and finds safety in numbers.

So life still amounts to a crap shoot and you just try to reduce the harm and maximize the benefit.