Brian:

...I think it is generally acknowledged that post-modernism is in retreat since the heydays of the liberationists in the 60’s and 70’s. But what now? Beware the pendulum returns!
Gathering on the far horizon are the ultra conservative creationists and the fundamentalists. Are we to defend traditions of moral imperatives from liberal or conservative? To be forewarned is to be forearmed!

The author wrote: "This year is an opportune time for we in the English-speaking world to recognise this breakthrough"

We is the object of the preposition, for. It should be: "This year is an opportune time for us in the English-speaking world to recognise this breakthrough"

Protestant Bible? I have a Bible taken from a hotel room. It has 1217 pages. The New Testament starts on page 929. It really is the Jewish Bible with a Christian addendum.

The author wrote: "The movie Gods and Generals was set in the American Civil War. I was affected by this fine movie. It reminded me of the extent that the influence the Bible had on the people of that era. In the movie the marriage of General Thomas Jackson had in it three individuals - the man, the woman and God."

General Jackson was a religious man who fought for slavery. Biblical influence justified slavery. "The Arrogance of Faith" tells how the slavers got their inspiration and justification from scripture.

>> Atheists should respect the historical role that the Bible has played as the first step towards the technology that we have today. <<

Oooer.

I'd better start with the self flagellation then, here's me thinking that we owe respect to many early cultures such as the Greeks, Egyptians, Sumerians, Chinese and many, many more.

What a shame many Christians are unable, today, to understand even the most basic understanding of how science works.

Ah the "good" book!

Applied Christian history 101

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~spanmod/mural/panel13.html

All done under the aegis and inherently bloody imperative of Constantine's sword.

As I have mentioned before this image is featured in The Pentagon of Power by Lewis Mumford. A book which describes the historical developments of the Western drive to gain total power and control over every one and every thing. And which describes the multitude of incremental factors that created what Mumford called the Invisible Mega-Machine, or the archetypal pattern, or the "culture" of death, that now patterns the entire world. And which describes the changing historical manifestations of the Mega-Machine.

The Mega-Machine really took off in a big-time way after the European Renaissance and the emergence of powerful new technologies which also gave the always essential PSYCHOTIC Western man the technological means to conquer the world with his MAXIM guns.

Beginning with the European Renaissance Protestant Christian-ISM arose simultaneously with the "culture" formed in the image of scientism. Which is to say that it was the other ("religious") side of the same reductionist coin that mis-informed scientism.

"From 313, when the Roman emperor Constantine opened the gate to an explosive expansion of Christianity, the church had evolved into a type of state. It was a huge bureaucratic organisation ruled by a king-like figure in the pope".

One of the first things it did was to shut down education, burn libraries and even stopped the children of slaves from learning to read.

Most of those monks who illuminated and hand-copied the Bible during the Dark Ages were in fact illiterate.

The notion that information was power persisted for centuries and progress was made in spite of - not because of the Bible.

The assumption that the United States was founded on the basis of religion is fanciful nonsense, a myth created after the fact.

Fairly tenuous link there.

Using the same logic as the article, one could extrapolate other equally ludicrous headlines to push a cause:

"What Hiroshima owes to the pope."

"What Laika owes to the pilgrims."

"What Benjamin Franklin owes to a german printing press."

Conversely one could link the invention of the wheel to the absence of the protestant bible.