[OT] Plato's Pub and Philosophical Society

[Narrew]

Ha, this is something that I have thought about a few times.
I do agree that Religion did hamper "Growth". True, they did copy selected "texts" that they deemed worthy, but the peasants were NOT encouraged to be literate, if they were, the Churches power base would weaken since they were the only ones that could give the word of GOD (which that was just their point). All in all it came down to POWER, the Church throttled freethinking, there were many good things that they did, but the bad/evil/ignorant things surely made up for it, such as the Crusades or the Inquisitions.

I think of the Great Library in Alexandria which had many documents from all over the known world. One thing was a simple working steam power device. What would have been if the library had not burned down?

I do think that we can look at history and draw more than one conclusion, hence the conflict of opinions (at least we wont go to the stake for them). If we do look back over the Last 2000 years, the Last 300 years have been amazing and the Last 80/90 more than astonishing (of course we all know that).

That all said, I am with Fyron. The Church was not everything in the power base of Europe, but it was a major part of it and the things it did to stifle knowledge (and I contend anything other than what THEY thought was true knowledge was ignored) had a long Lasting effect on Growth, otherwise how come when America won its freedom did we really start to see growth?