Amen! Soli Deo Gloria!!!
Posted on 10/31/2017 11:37:29 AM PDT by Gamecock
Edited on 11/01/2017 5:53:19 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Amen! Soli Deo Gloria!!!
Do you seriously think abortion/child murder, "birth control", homosexualism and adultery didn't exist before the Reformation??? Heck, that stuff WAS a part of the Roman Catholic church hierarchy which spurred the Reformation!
Maybe the economic progress would have been slightly slower without the Reformation, or maybe not. Rodney Stark, an American sociologist of religion, says in his book The Victory of Reason that there is a fundamental difference between Christianity and Islam in how they view the material world. The Christian view is that God created the universe and gave the universe its laws (laws of nature). It is possible to learn these laws by observing the material world and using human reason. Only from time to time, an exception to these laws happens (called a miracle).
The view of Islam is that everything that happens in the material world is a direct consequence of God’s will. There can be no laws of nature because they would diminish God’s greatness. In other words, everything that happens is a sort of miracle. There is no place for human reason.
In The Victory of Reason, you can also learn that there were regions in medieval Europe where trade and entrepreneurship flourished (the Flanders, northern Italy, etc.) Technological innovation happened (the spectacles, the mechanical clock, the printing press). And these were all Catholic countries. So it can be argued that Catholicism was compatible with economic progress. In 1500, Europe was without any doubt the most progressive part of the world.
So no, if the Protestant Reformation had not happened, Europe would not be as backward as Islam.
The Separation of Church and State? That is a phrase that liberals like. But I think it depends on what you mean by the phrase. If you mean that churches should be independent of the state, I agree because churches tied to (or subjugated by) the state are unable to criticize immoral rulers and high positions within such churches become a career instead of service. If you mean that the state (or any public entity) should be rid of any trace of Christian morality, I must strongly disagree. Some liberals argue that any law that was inspired by Christian morality is unconstitutional because it violates the concept of the separation of Church and State.
These were marginal phenomena and no decent person publicly approved of them at that time because they were universally considered immoral.
It depends. You must differentiate between the Scottish Enlightenment and the French Enlightenment. The American Founding Fathers were influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment, which was not explicitly anti-Christian. The French Enlightenment was virulently anti-Christian and was the most important cause of the French Revolution and its terror.
My point relates to the dominating political power the RCC had at the time (and well beyond!).
Remember Newton's first law of motion: A body in motion will continue in a straight line and with constant velocity unless acted upon by an outside force.
Any organization in power will never freely relinquish that power. The Reformation was the outside force that ultimately broke the RCC's power. There has been no such outside force on islam - and look where they are still mired.
It is impossible to say, post Reformation, how we would be living today if it had not occurred. The only parallel (again: not equality) I see is how islam has failed to give up power over the same time (just the power over peoples' lives, not the faith as such), because no one made them do so.
OK, I really should not be debating on religion threads...I'm outta here! Thanks for listening.
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