I sometimes wonder how civilisation would have progressed it it had not been held back for hundreds of years by the Roman Catholic church.
The European enlightenment may have happened much earlier

@Moravian our robot overlords would have stopped us from fighting each other by now

@Simon1 Ha ha. At one period on my life I read a bit of science fiction. The late Scottish writer Ian M Banks wrote some great stuff and one was about the aftermath of the "AI war" The robots tried to take over but were defeated. A few surviving robots mingled with the human population and as it was impossible to tell them apart from humans you had to be careful
I think I would rather tackle a bunch of theists

@Moravian Oooh I don't know about that, given the Murder, Mayhem, Havoc, etc, etc, that the Theist Faithfools wrought upon human kind for centuries upon centuries I think I'd rather face a horde of Robots any day.
Those Faithfools are REAL experts at Genocide, Murder, Maiming, etc, over the last 1,000+ years, so much so that they've succeeded, in my opinion, of making even the Ancient Romans look like rank amateurs.

Well said! Do you think perhaps religion was put in place to control the weak-minded. Or to keep them off the streets on Sundays or to place our funds in fish and chips stocks?
A woman on the bus was pushing the bible the other day. I got up and told every one what I thought - that the bible is full of incest, murder, and mayhem. Not even very well written.

@newfoundland16 Religion is control. People get scared and want to know someone else is in control... (PLEASE, help me god!) Or need someone to blame! (Alas, It was god's will) Those who like to control figured this was a fine way to keep people in line. Scare them with the threat of hell if they are bad and lure with promises of heaven if they are good. Oh... and by the way... put money into the collection plate! We need your hard earned dollars! Operators are standing by!

Hey you forgot the 4 B's of Xrstian Invasion into new native lands, Baubles, Blankets, Bibles and Booze and IF those 4 don't get the desire result then they try #5 - Bullets.

that's true but they certainly did not improve the lives of the indigenous people sof America,Australia and Africa

@Moravian No but not the topic under discussion,

@Marionville Yes it is. The European colonists were following god's instructions from the old testament to exploit the earth and rule all the animals. It was this greed for land,gold etc that caused the genocide of the indigenous populations.

I think the writer said that the Roman catholic church changed society including stopping first cousins marrying but I agree that the harm far outwayed any good they did.

@Moravian ya think?

@Mofo1953 the dark ages,papal inquisitions. persecution of "heretics", abuse of power, persecution and murder of the Cathars.the crusades. gathering of extreme wealth in the church. There was a reason for the reformation.

@Moravian NSS!

Yeah, why not ask a few "witches" about their life improvements....and the people who no longer had help with various afflictions, prayers being so much more effective than medicinal herbs....

@Moravian any people who were around farm animals (which most people were then, many of them lived in the house!) understood about incest. It was the nobility, for inheritance/wealth accumulation) that married cousins to each other, with pretty dire results (hemophilia for one).

Society changed markedly under the RC church but for the better ?. We will never know how society would have developed without Christianity so it is hard to say.

@Moravian excately. What claims have religions, its followers, or its apologists ever made that were actually backed up by facts?

@Allamanda no WP subscription.

@Allamanda We propose that part of this variation....

I would propose the combination of patriarchy, inheritance, and narcisistic obsession with status contributed far more than the church did (with the church embracing the worst of those traits) to promote those variations, while still questioning thier definition of "better".

...fostered greater individualism...

Laughable when even discussing the RC church. Oh well.

@Allamanda the catholic church once had 3 popes at the same time, because they embrace divirsety so well.

It's a horrible institution that if it's done 1/10th the benefit of the damadge it's caused I'd be flat stunned. The cathedrals and churches can be quite nice aesthetically, though, so I'll give them that.

Of course it was more complex and the churches possibly did some good but the European settlers with god on their side committed genocide in North and Central America, after all the natives were only primitive heathens weren't they.
Re my comment about exploitation of the earths resources. For exampleThe native Americans lived in harmony with nature and exploited the American Bison as required . The colonists very nearly killed of the species as they did with the Passenger pigeon. If you haven't read "Bury my heart at Wounded Knee" by Dee Brown you should. It gives a perspective of the colonisation of North America from the Native Americans viewpoint. Not pretty reading.
The roles of the institutions may have changed but Your president is using the Christian fundamentalists to help back his agenda of climate change denial and continued exploitation of fossil fuels so maybe they haven;t changed that much.
As for hurting th feelings of those who value their Christian beliefs. that doesn't bother me in the slightest

Not sure about the fruitfullnes bit but until recently Roman Catholic families were nearly always larger than non RCs

@Moravian All families were big before we knew about contraception ...not just Catholic ones...after contraceptive methods were widely known, the RC Church prohibited their use, then the other denominations started to have less children than the Catholics...but we are talking about relatively recent human history.

@Moravian That's a fair comment. can definitely see the prohibition of contraception as an impactful intervention from the church.

@MattHardy Although Italy , the home of Roman catholosism has one of the lowest birthrates in Europe and I'm not sure if Marionville will agree but in NI many protestant couples had large families also. I think both sides were trying to outbreed one another.

That's rather a broad brush, isn't it?

Religion, in my experience, as a human invention, can be misused, like all other human inventions. No invention has any inherent moral quality.

@Paul4747 It is "broad brush" because it needs to be.
All religion was invented to control others.
It is inherently immoral.

@KKGator Religion in what form?
Religions often originated as mythologies to explain the universe, its existence and functioning. The path from there to organized religion frequently does lead to control structures, but I argue that it is not inevitable.
A concrete example is the Discordian religion, which explicitly has no organization and no hierarchy. Some claim this is a joke disguised as a religion, but believers say it's a religion disguised as a joke.

@Paul4747 I'm not terribly interested in their "intentions". I don't really care what it started off being. I am aware gods were invented by the ancients to explain things they didn't yet understand. Most gods faded into obscurity and mythology, where they belong. The abrahamic god and religions are what we are forced to contend this now.
The only thing that matters is the damage they do NOW.
That is what we have to deal with.

@KKGator Stating, as you did, that all religions were invented to control others and are inherently immoral, is directly related to the intent of the religion and its founders. That's what I was responding to.

Religion is and always has been a mixed bag. People do great acts of humanity in its name; people do terrible acts of barbarism in its name.