Agree or disagree: "We'd be 1,500 years ahead if the Church hadn't burned our best minds at the stake"?

Question

"We would be 1,500 years ahead if it hadn't been for the church dragging science back by its coattails and burning our best minds at the stake."
— Catherine Fahringer

Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.
— John Burroughs (1837-1921)

Yo Daniel B: Buddy, ya got your facts a little mixed up to blame Hitler's little hell-fest on Science.

I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.
— Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 46

I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so
— Adolph Hitler, to Gen. Gerhard Engel, 1941

Christ was the greatest early fighter in the battle against the world enemy, the Jews... The work that Christ started but could not finish, I will conclude.
— Adolf Hitler

Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of Almighty God: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.
— Adolf Hitler

deslok 113 & jwgarman: You both bring up interesting points worthy of discussion - namely that society wasn't emotionally ready for scientific advancement to have occurred any earlier - Nuclear weapons, etc. For that I thank you. Even if your arguments do include a LOT of "what if's" and sound an awful lot like the ends justifying the means.

Answer 1

Perhaps, however, this is a question we can never really know the answer to, since in fact religion DID have a strong influence on society for hundreds of years.

It might just be that unfettered by religion, science might have advanced faster, and gotten us all blown up sooner. We might not be here today. Maybe we needed the time to mature enought to handle the level of science we have now.

Just a thought.

Answer 2

I think if the Church hadn't burned those people at the stake, someone else would have. There is always a cultural war between those who would advance knowledge and thought and those who resist out of fear that new knowledge will force them to re-think their beliefs. Religion has often sided with the status quo, but orthodoxy would exist with or without religion.

What it comes down to is human society is willing to advance only so fast, and develops defense mechanisms such as the Inquisition to slow the progress when the rate of change gets too high. It has taken time for humanity to evolve a worldview that can accommodate our current level of scientific and philosophical exploration, and many religions have evolved along with it.

Answer 3

disagree.
The Bible is 4000 years ahead of modern science. Read the Book of Leviticus regarding health and sanitation of the Hebrew people. You would think you are reading a modern day health journal. We only 'discovered' this 150 years ago.
Was Da Vinci burned at the stake? Sir Issac Newton? Galileo?
Catherine Fahringer would probably have been one of the executioners. She was of the 'free thought' movement. what a HYPOCRITE! Think anything you want as long as it is NOT of a religious nature. Who is she, the thought police?
John Burroughs was a naturalist who was stuck-up and thought he was smarter than everyone else. Intellectuals are intellectual idiots. They completely miss the point. Yes, they are smart, they know they are smart, but they think they are smarter than the whole world. That is their major downfall. They think they know everything.
If you can actually study history, you will see that most who were burned at the stake were Christians who disagreed with the political system of the day.
Your high priests, the 'scientists', used scientific method to 'prove' that the Jew were a sub human species. They conducted all kinds of 'scientific' experiments on Jews and other religious groups who didn't fall into goose step with a Godless regime. When they were finished, they killed them using experimental types of chemical weapons. Some didn't work right, and the victims died very slow and painful deaths. Over 7 million dead Jews, and millions of other 'undesirables' later (Mostly Christians), Europe was burned to the ground, all because some nut used your God (science) to instill hate.
Over 50 million people died in WWII because of 2 Godless regimes, Nazism and communism. I don't think that the church topped that at burning people at the stake even if they did it for 2000 years (the church did not).
If you want to eliminate religion from the world, you will remove the only moral barrier that keep idiots like these from running amok.
Yes, we would be centuries ahead in scientific research, because the prisons would be science labs with human subjects.
We would have government-run labs filled with 'undesirables' who are 'scientifically' proven to be sub-human.
I would not doubt that you are probably an animal rights activist who wants to free all the lab rats, and replace them with people, because that is what you will get when you remove the influence of religion from the world.

Answer 4

Wrong!! Utterly wrong!! If a stupid Roman soldier who thought everyone conquered should bow down to him, hadn't killed Archimedes then we would have had calculus in ancient times instead of during the renaissance. That would have made us more advanced. But, I ask you would you trust a guy like Napoleon with a thermo-nuclear weapon? Or someone like Hitler with a matter-antimatter bomb or particle accelerator weapon? History happens the way it does for a reason. Science advances the way it does for a reason. We have to socially advance as well as scientifically advance or KAAABBBOOOOOOOOOMMMM!!!!!!

Answer 5

Since most of the scientist in the western world were Christians and the university system as it stands was originally set for the last 1000 years was set up by Christians. and since due to the protestant reformations emphasis that everyone should be able to read so that they could at least read the Bible for themselves I would guess that the quotes you chose were merely from two reactionary anti religionists with and axe to grind.

Answer 6

Although she did wonders for the separation of church and state, I'd really like to see a list of "our best minds" that were actually burned at the stake.

So I'd have to disagree on principle of not seeing evidence of names.

The JB statement does, in my opinion, ring very true.

Answer 7

If the world is worse now than it was 1500 yrs ago, why do you think 1500 more years would be better? Man can't exist the way it is another 1500 years.

Answer 8

Disagree...

What great things have humanity gained from industrialization?

What are more often burned, great books or great authors?

Sheik Omar warmed the public baths of Alexandria for six months with fires fueled by our most horrific societal loss, the entire library.

Answer 9

Agree. Our esoteric spiritual heritage took a tremendous blow, and our inner awareness is nothing like as evolved to the level it should be; this hidden cause is the direct and indirect cause of the tremendous malaise that has overtaken our society, and why so many people have to resort to antidepressants and other mood-altering drugs, and why so many people turn to 'recreational" drugs, in the absence of the spiritual remedy that is provided by a solid foundation of faith and wisdom.

Answer 10

even though i'm christian I agree with you, the church made a crazy mistake there when the Inquisitions begun, BUT if we are now with Global Warming, if the Industrial Revolution would have happened 1500 years before we would be dead by now