The museum created by the American Bible Society in July 2021 said it would be open to visitors until March 28. The Christian ministry nonprofit that translates Bibles and sends them around the world has recently been besieged with challenges including layoffs, funding troubles, and five CEO changes within two years.
I’m a deist but even I get weirded out by how selective ppl are with the evils of religion on lemmy. Before there were universities institutions of learning were funded by churches of practically all the major religions. A museum based on famous religious academics, artists, musicians, and writers would be very interesting and would hold major historical significance.
You don’t get why people would get worked up about the evils of religion…?
Literal didn’t say that but ok
A lot of people don’t get is that the churches didn’t want knowledge for knowledge’s sake. It was about power. Copy their unholy book, spread it to the masses, teach it to them and hold them as a weapon against the rulers of the countries they were in.
They had the wealth and the manpower from all the gullible fools they conned.
Sure, specific intellectuals did pursue advancement in science and technology under the wing of religion, but it was often that or be silenced.
Same as with the witch trials. It wasn’t the Church that did that and even advised against it, it was their rabid followers who misunderstood the texts.
Remind you of any current group in particular?
I feel pity for the Renaissance. All that hubbub about enlightenment and yet we’re still stuck in the ages before it.
Like Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes? Silenced/censured by the church, often with threats. Or Bruno, burned alive…
We don’t talk about Bruno.
Does religion having a monopolization on learning (in Europe) make up for all of the murder, torture, oppression, etc.?
Maybe if we didn’t have all the learning but none of the queer people or the “witches” or the Jews or the Muslims or anyone else that Christians ended up massacring never got tortured and murdered, the world would be a better place.
Things can be relearned. People can’t relive their lives.
I wrestle with this one because let’s not pretend life was peaceful before religion - religion gave the structure that grew into us understanding those things are wrong. It’s now obsolete but for s time I think it was a net positive
A net positive for whom? The wealthy and powerful?
Because so far your argument seems to be that Christian tradition in Europe kept knowledge alive… knowledge that had mostly been destroyed due to the Christianization and then collapse of the Western Roman Empire.