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

Ha ha ha!

Exactly.

Sounds a lot like special pleading to me.

"The Bible in the local language became the bridge between fearing to study the natural world and the pursuit of knowledge of the natural world. Without that bridge, there would have been no crossing."

I could find nothing in the article that even remotely suggested that before the Bible was published, people "feared to study the natural world", nor that its publication led to "pursuit of knowledge".

The growth and spread of published works in the fifteenth and sixteenth century would surely have been far more important than the translation of one single book. Universities as well as churches printed books. The general public also started to read around the turn of the sixteenth century...

http://www.presscom.co.uk/print1.html

"But their [Lyonnese printers'] principal output continued to be books in the vernacular — romances, household manuals of health or husbandry, the "Romant de la Rose," "La Légende dorée," "Le Miroir de vie humaine," and "La Somme Rurale," a handbook for the guidance of the local magistrates in the performance of unaccustomed judicial functions. Many of these were adorned with pictures, designed to widen the possible market."

A bridge too far, perhaps, Mr Holden?

The most profound catalyst for the world's "bridge" from ignorance to knowledge was the printing press, invented by Johannes Gutenberg around 1440.

I think this behooves Protestants to say thank you Mr Gutenberg (and he couldn't have created the press without a wheel or two).

Dear Ammonite,

Gutenberg did not invent the printing press. He was the first to introduce it to Europe. The first known printed book was in 868 in China.

To summarise: modern secular science owes a great deal to religion and the Bible, just as vaccination owes a great deal to smallpox.

Yes, yes, in the 17th century, nobody could have abandoned the state religions. After all they so well constrained who got what positions in all walks of life.

In that time, citizens also pissed and crapped in the streets, had no social welfare programs, surgeries were performed without anaesthetic and the church could arrange persecution of even aristocrats who made insufficient public adherence to trivial doctrine.

Like public defecation, I see no reason to equate *historical* unavoidability of religion with *current* merit.

Rusty