Also I feel I should point out that overall Religion is known to have a positive influence on humanity, it got us out of the dark ages, and paved the way for the sciences to florish.

Modern atheists seem desperate to hide this inconvenient truth, but there you go. Yes it also has caused many wars too, but as discussed in another thread, wars generally always link to territory or resources, religion is usually the excuse. I wonder sometimes where you people get your information, or if you just make it up on the spot to support your conjecture.

Yea, that was exactly my point. Without religion we would still be a bunch of warring states.

Judaism predates Zoroaster.

Alan Turing is not why Germany lost WW2.

Edited 7/12/2015 01:10:04

>Without religion we would still be a bunch of warring states.

That's a pretty big claim. Peace is generally a good idea if you aren't threatened because you aren't going to be wasting resources and getting people killed. That's got nothing to do with religion. Evolution made us social creatures that aren't going to just get into fights for no reason.

>wars generally always link to territory or resources, religion is usually the excuse

That's exactly the problem. It lets people justify things without looking greedy. "Give money to my large institution. It's totally not because we're greedy and power hungry, we're just doing the work of God and you're selfish if you don't give!"

Pretty interesting stuff if you look up "letters of indulgence".

Edited 7/12/2015 01:55:50

Ebin, when skourby talked about religion, he was being sarcastic.

Yep.

Though, Ebin, you have to understand- the people who were for letters of indulgence were religious, the people who first stood against it (like Martin Luther) were also religious.

OK, the Renaissance was triggered by the importation of Arab, Persian, Greek, Indian, Chinese and Syriac scientific texts, inventions and concepts into Europe (due to the Crusaders coming into contact with the Middle East), where they were translated, especially into Latin. I'm sure you all know that while Europe rotted in the Middle Ages the Islamic caliphates were flourishing. They were vastly more advanced and cultured than Europe and, along with China and India, were the centers of scientific advancement. A nun in medieval Germany described Cordoba (the capital of Moorish Spain) as the jewel of all cities.

Anyway, I consider these people influential (not in any particular order):

-Muhammad
-the person who invented paper (a Chinaman)
-the person who invented the wheel (a Sumerian)
-al-Khwarizmi
-the Wright brothers
-Columbus
-Vasco da Gama
-Edison
-Alexander Bell
-Jesus