[ExI] libertarian ideas ATTN: HENRY

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Aug 23, 2021, at 4:11 PM, Anton Sherwood via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> > On Aug 23, 2021, at 6:52 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote:
> >> [...]  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
> 
> On 2021-8-23 08:59, Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat wrote:
> > 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. [...]
> 
> Whatever was before the Renaissance was also before the Reformation,
> so Bill's not wrong :P

I think a case can be made that the Reformation’s immediate outcome was not a lessening of religious influence but rather its increase. It wasn’t until after the wars of religion and then the Enlightenment that the influence went into Sharon decline. Now you can argue that long after that a hundred years or more later is still after, but it seemed to me his using the Renaissance in there wasn’t just an arbitrary marker — like ‘after the invention the telescope, men landed on the Moon.’ Of course, he can chime in here to elaborate why he used the Renaissance (and which one he meant).

Think, too, of the various post-Medieval inquisitions, such as the infamous and long lasting Spanish Inquisition. It’s thought to have been far more pernicious because it was not under papal control. But (see below) lessening papal authority doesn’t mean lessening the influence of religion, no?

(If one’s looking for a watershed here, too, it might be more the ride of printing, which led to publishing works of dissent. One immediate effect of this was governments clamping down on publishing. But the longer run effect was undermine traditional authority. But recall works like the Malleus Maleficarum were printed works too, and in this particular case, which it might led to diminished clerical power (the Church even condemned it) — as anyone who could read it might use it to start a witch hunt (which is exactly what happened) — I don’t think that’s a good example of a decline of religious influence.)

Regards,

Dan