[ExI] libertarian ideas ATTN: HENRY

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Aug 23, 2021, at 6:52 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> Sharia.  Just how much of all the bad things happening in the Middle East do you think we can blame on Islam?  In Western civilization Christianity got put in its place, so to speak and does not have anywhere near the influence it had before the Renaissance.  I do wish that would happen to Islam     bill w

I believe it’s way more complicated than that, and the Renaissance (which one? the Italian one?) was not really the watershed some make it to be. In fact, with Europe it’s really the wars of religion that came in the wake of the Reformation that lead to secularization. And actual secularization — the state not only tolerating different religions but itself becoming non-religious is kind of an outcome of the Enlightenment. (John Locke also had a huge influence here. Of course, he had a lot of influence on the Enlightenment itself.)

(This is kind of like persecution of witches. That’s generally something that arises after the Middle Ages, though most people associate it with the Middle Ages.) 

The wars of religion gave rise to some level tolerance, too, not so much because everyone became enlightened but because they were so genocidal. The Thirty Years War (01618-01648 CE) killed over 4 million, with some estimates as high as 12 million. It’s thought that some regions of what’s now Germany lost most of their population. In other words, they were virtually depopulated.

Regards,

Dan
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