Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
Well I do not think it is as clear cut as that but the Church of course had some influence. But that is not the issue. The issue is what we would have had if we had had no Church. I think we would have had as good or better hospitals and universities without a Church. So if that is the case the claim is that the Church is responsible for we not having better hospitals and universities.
Or who can say what would have happened? And since it is so hard it is wrong to claim that the Church is responsible for something that we might have had in any case.
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Agreed, this was my point. The Christian Church certainly influenced the development of universities and hospitals in the West, but the concepts were around in other cultures, notably in the Buddhist world as far back as the fifth century BC. The hospitals of Medieval Islam bear a strong resemblance to the insitutions derived from the concept of Christian Care later on in Western Europe.
I suspect that the idea of instutionalised places of learning and medical care would have developed even in an atheist society.
Graham