response 232 of 293:

Dec 18 01:27 UTC 2003

re resp:230: The people who grew up in Catholic Europe, and their 
children and grandchildren, advanced a huge amount, inventing the 
scientific method (which made use of the strenuous rules of logic 
developed for the priests); advancing math far beyond what the Arabs 
had given them; and applying all of the things they were learning to 
technology.

The Church may not have invented the printing press, but the people it 
trained certainly made great use of it.  Likewise with the water wheel 
and horse-drawn plows.  The monasteries invented many kinds of clocks, 
seeking the most accurate way to know when to do different prayers.  
The mechanisms of some of them -- and probably the tools used to make 
them as well -- were used for other developments.

Then there's sea travel, which was practiced for millenia, but no 
ships from China, America, Japan or southern Africa came to Europe.  
Why was that?  It was because they didn't know how, and because their 
cultures didn't encourage them to explore that much so they didn't 
develop the urge to travel that far.  Medieval Europe didn't invent 
the sailing ship, but Spain, Portugal and England sure did the most 
with it.

All I'm doing is suggesting there's a reason for all of this, and that 
it's not plausible to say it all happened in Europe, while Europe was 
dominated by the Catholic Church, but happened *despite* the Church.