| Interesting question. I would have to disagree.
The invention of the printing press made books a whole lot cheaper than they had been (up until 1452 they all had to be copied out by hand, a tedious and time consuming process - medieval Bibles were fantastically expensive by modern standards), which was a stimulus to literacy. With greater learning, people began to question the authority of the Catholic Church more. The invention of the telescope destroyed the idea that the Earth was the center of the universe, and the discovery of the New World, not even hinted at in the Bible, convinced intelligent people that the Bible didn't have the answers to all of life's questions. The progress of medicine in the West was hampered by the Church's opposititon to dissection; but once dissection became common practice the medical knowledge of anatomy made great strides. Medical science remains free of ideology, unless you want to consider the germ theory ideology. | 
04-14-2008, 06:01 AM
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