That was still in a very undeveloped environment, and one in which a surprise Visigoth attack or a token Fall of Constantinople could reset civilization a few centuries. Now, we have modern, irrevocable ground. And the demographic information is showing that fruition is taking place. Atheism is on the rise faster than ever before.
Oh, instant death for those figures? Really, do you really believe that? It is not the case. Heck, I bet you still believe that old story that Galileo was made to recant about the sun on religious grounds too, eh? Of course it was because he was refuting another scientist (Aristotle... how dare he question Aristotle!), but of course, showing that for the true scientific battle that it was isn't so fashionable as making it the great ol' oppression of science by religion, eh? But no, forget the truth of the matter, it doesn't really matter, eh? It's a lot more helpful just to repreat the old mantra - religion's bad - and hold it accountable. It must be held accountable! For what it did and even for what it didn't do... it'd have done it anyway! And even if not, hey, it's something it deserves, I think... oh, dear, where is this train taking us now? ZeaLitY, do you not see? You are buying into this great myth! It is not fact, it is itself fiction, a skewed perception of history, and you are believing it as readily as ever you believed your Mormon teachings in days past. There have been others like this, the, oh, Marxist perception of history, that all's been the war of classes (mostly out of favour now), let's see... the feminist one (second wave feminist, also out of favour) that history has been an attempt to control women, which is an offshoot of Marxist concepts of economic control (you might actually still be holding to this one without realising that the time when it was considered a viable theory is in fact come and gone amongst reputable scholars... sort of taking the gleanings of the field decades thereafter. Feminism is actually more in third wave form, which is, I think, a bit more realistic and quite a bit more interesting.) The point is, these various paradigms for viewing history come and go. They all have their virtues, but no one is overarchingly correct. You're just buying into the atheistic one which is in vogue, but which will also have a similar fate. Each has some truth, but none of them really explain history correctly. This is something you must come to realize about paradigms.
And, oddly, these paradigms serve the same function that myths did in ages path. Do you realise, ZeaLitY, in doing what you are doing you are writing the myths of our age? Seems we can't get that desire for mythmaking out of our hearts... but this is what it is. Taking a certain view of the world and constructing the view of the past to fit. Setting up the villains and the heroes, rearranging the pieces. It's actually all quite fascinating. Unfortunately, though, you do not seem to be aware that you are doing it, and thus are not a mythmaker, but a merely a participant in the process.
Anyway, if such outdated view of history is what you hold, then you are sorely undereducated in it. No, ZeaLitY, for one thing, I was speaking of an earlier era, pre-Rome, and the foundations that were laid then endured even to this very day. Not to mention this idea of a 'dark age' is an absurd view that has been heartily dismissed these days. We did not lose our learning, and civilization was not reset... indeed, you are several decades - at the least! - behind in where scholarship is on such issues. That, in fact, is one of your problems: you have not kept up with modern developments, and most of your assertions are based on theoretical frameworks and conceptions of history that are woefully behind the times.
A philosopher from anquity could just have well said the same thing and, indeed, he would have had just as much reason to say so. Your view of history is terribly flawed: it is little wonder that your assertions about the present have so many holes. It is downright laughable that you should say that scientific rationality was not at the point yet where such things could be questioned: it was so even in antiquity. Hell, man, you need to look at some Lucretius! You have a terrible sense of Presentism, or if you were a prejudice to previous ages. The very fact that you think all times before this to have been steeped in some sort of dark age of ignorance and mysticism (save perhaps the glorious Greeks) is terribly outdated. Actually, you often have the sound of a 19th century Neoclassicist in that. The point is, you simply cannot make these assertions you do: they are based only on a flawed understanding of history, no matter what you would like to think.
As for the rest, again, you have thourough misunderstanding of many things. For one thing, your dismissing of religion as a field because it does not fall into your category of what is worth studying is rather dismaying. Indeed, you are dismissing what you do not know out of ignorance, not out of knowledge. Nor was I speaking of the training that ministers receive, because many of these are themselves unversed in the more subtle aspects of religious studies. I was speaking more of theology. And that is a field that can be discussed and dissected without even believing in a God, because it does entail the study of human nature - it tells us something about ourselves as well. But you have wholesale ignored this because it does not fit your criteria.
Not to mention, if you are implying that the Bible is not a good work of literature, on that ground alone you are sorely mistaken. Reject any truth or reason to it at all, it is undeniably good at points. The wisdom literature of Ecclesiastes, the Cosmology of Genesis... even if you put no more stock into these than you do the Ennuma Elish and Hesiod, it can still be good. As, indeed, Hesiod IS good. Ever read, I wonder, the Titanomachy segment? No, I doubt it... else you might have a touch of an appreciation what a religious mindset can write, when possessed of an artistic spirit.
And, oh, well, your list of - again I'll use your term - incuriousness continues! Fiction, you call Lord of the Rings? Yes, maybe, but what is fiction? Is there not truth contained even in a work of so-called fiction? Does not Hamlet, never having lived, tell us more about ourselves than those around us? Does not the fall of Agamemnon in Aeschylus' work teach to us ever so much, or as is said, that the muses tell truth in amidst lies? ZeaLitY, you do not understand literature, or the humanistic endeavour! All you see is fact and fiction, but haven't even cared to discern what those terms are! Oddly, you make the selfsame mistake that my fundamentalist friends have made (hmm... and you do have a fundamentalist upbringing, do you not? It seems to have travelled with you...): that you take only that which is there present to be truth. Either one says 'what this book says is true' or 'only what happened is true'... it amounts to the same fallacy. Truth does not only lie in the event, but in the interpretation of the event, and this is something you have yet to learn. Until you do, much of the world remains closed to you, and you are not in a springtime but a cold and hoar winter of black and white.
Nor are your view on science any better, a field which, again, I will maintain you have very little training or knowledge of. You use it as your gambit, your supposedly unshakeable trump. 'At least I have science.' Well, you don't. You have what you think is science, you have a layman's attraction to it that hardly manifests anything of true curiosity (to use your terminology) or understanding.
Let us, for example, take that ridicilous quote you are so fond of putting forward, that that which can be proposed without proof can be dismissed without such. This is foolish. This is because what you think to be science is not science in the general sense, but a very specific form of it, Empircism. Now this is good and fine - it has its place - but it is not the end all and be all to what science is. However, you do not, rather refuse to, accept this as being the case because it undermines your position. You have taken it as a godhead, to borrow religeous terminology, and defend it with all the fervour of a fervent believer. You are making apriori assumptions about things...
Yet again, you do not know yourself enough to see this be the case.
Yes, you think you are some great crusader for enlightenment, but you do not even know what enlightenment entails. Your eyes are clouded with anger, and all you see is bloody Ares through them... you know, it's of this sort of nature you express, either from the religious or atheists, that has foremost caused the very oppression and war you abhor... you, ZeaLitY, are in fact taking on yourself the nature and raiment which most allows those injustices to be perpetrated. And you have the audacity to style yourself some sort of crusader.
The irony in this statement you made is almost amusing...
'The forum will not be censored so that the religious can claim their sanctimonious higher ground and sacred cows.'
But you would see it censored, or at least invoke great wrath, so that the Empiricists can claim their sanctimonious higher ground and sacred cows? Because that's what you're doing, and doing with each breath you take here. You are defending what you hold sacred with a sense of self-righteousness. You only praise that which agrees with you, and damn those who disagree? Open-minded? ZeaLitY, these days, you are amongst the most closed-minded people I know. You wish to see nothing if it doesn't fall in your world view, and the only beauty is that which agrees with you.
ZeaLitY, from the likes of you, from those with this selfsame temper, HAVE begun the holy wars, from those who speak with hateful passion against their compeers of another creed.
