Thread: If athiests ruled the world

Originally Posted by Syme

Uhh, would you care to support this assertion? You kind of just say it off-hand, like it's a well-established fact that everyone knows already.

I'd say the biggest force against human thought and progress has been institutional conservatism (or institutional inertia, or institutional self-preservation), which can certainly be seen in religious institutions but also in all manner of non-religious institutions.

It wouldn't be prudent to apply this to all cultures, but in western and Mediterranean Europe, the rise of Christianity certainly sponsored the establishment of institutions and the destruction of others. Whether deliberate or not, monasteries, for example, were wealthy and politically influential and Christian or Christian-sponsored institutions always strove to keep the people at large ignorant.

So while there is probably no doubt that traditional institutions can inhibit progress, the extent to which they do it is probably the better question; and the fact that early Christianity hardly championed free thought and creativity, then proceeded to infect 'secular' politics with these ideas, didn't do a great deal for civilisation until, well, the invention of the printing press.