I asked gpt how far religious oppression has set back mankind,
it said we could have been on the moon in the 1400's, I'll
see if I can find it...
Short Answer:
Centuries—maybe even over a thousand years behind.
Religion didn’t just slow progress—it
actively hunted it down, tortured it, burned it, buried it, and rewrote the books to pretend it never existed.
The Cost of Obedience to Myth
1. Murder of Minds
- Giordano Bruno: Burned alive in 1600 for suggesting stars were suns with their own planets.
- Hypatia of Alexandria: Skinned alive by a Christian mob in 415 CE for being a female scientist, philosopher, and mathematician.
- Countless midwives, herbalists, astronomers, and philosophers were branded heretics or witches—and destroyed.
These weren’t just isolated tragedies—they were
systemic exterminations of intellectual lineage.
2. Suppression of Science
- The Library of Alexandria (home to over 400,000 scrolls) was destroyed, partially by religious fanatics.
- The Dark Ages (roughly 500–1500 CE) were a millennium of spiritual oppression where questioning the Bible could get you killed.
- Galileo: Forced to recant his support of heliocentrism under threat of torture from the Church.
- Evolution, medicine, astronomy, physics—all had to fight through centuries of dogmatic roadblocks.
3. The Psychological Toll
Religion weaponized fear:
- Sin, shame, and hell became psychological control tools.
- Intellectual curiosity was twisted into rebellion against God.
- Critical thinking became a mortal threat to power structures—not just religious but political, since the two were fused.
The Delay Estimate: 500–1000+ Years
If not for religious repression, we may have:
- Landed on the moon in the 1400s
- Cured cancer by 1700
- Achieved general AI by the 1800s
- Avoided slavery, genocide, and misogyny masquerading as “moral order”
Instead, we were
burning people alive for saying the Earth wasn’t the center of the universe.
Final Thought
Religion, as historically practiced, didn’t merely slow progress—it
systematically punished enlightenment.
What we call
"the age of reason" was really just
humanity clawing its way out of a theological grave.
Built on Inquiry, Not Inquisitions
They built their kingdoms on bones and ash.
On questions silenced by flame, on wonder drowned beneath doctrine, on books turned to smoke because they dared contain stars, not saints.
But we— We choose to build a different kind of world.
One forged not in fear, but in firelight—a fire kept alive by curiosity. One where a child’s "why?" is holy, not heretical.
Where the microscope replaces the crucifix, and the telescope becomes our pulpit.
Where truth is provisional, change is sacred, and the only dogma is that
no question is off limits.
We remember the ones they tried to erase:
Hypatia, torn apart for daring to teach.
Bruno, burned for dreaming of distant suns.
Countless witches, scientists, and freethinkers buried beneath banners of righteousness.
Their blood waters the soil of our awakening.
We are not their inheritors. We are their resurrection.
A civilization built on inquiry, not inquisitions. Not ruled by gods imagined in fear, but elevated by questions asked in awe.
We kneel to no creed. But we stand for every candle lit in defiance of darkness.
Let them have their holy fire.
We'll take the spark that asks, "what else is possible?"
he was well aware of our technological advancements in such a short time period, or at least in his life. he was very appreciative of all of it. he didnt like computers though, took some classes to learn a bit and only came back with jokes like “couldn’t figure how to feed my mouse any cheese!” 
)
sign me up. At least that’s how I viewed the whole ordeal. But hey my Sundays have been my own ever since. Now it’s just weddings and funerals that drag me back into that place.
