General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Until the "religious viewpoint" on anything is dismissed, we will never have real progress. [View all]cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)You are looking at this in terms of who published what pamphlets or something.
Religion did not have to be argumentatively pro-slavery or pro-feudalism or pro-indentured servitude because those things were not actively questioned until European intellectuals gave upon religion. No defense was needed.
Religion was the central organizing principle of every aspect of European life for a millennia and religion did NOTHING during that span to take up the cause of the economically oppressed.
We know this because the lives of the economically most oppressed were magically little changed during a thousand years of religion calling the shots.
So to postulate that somehow religion magically changed independently during the enlightenment, rather than absorbing secular values during the enlightenment is an implausible sort of coincidence.
Slavery was abolished throughout almost all of the world within 150 years of Locke... and 1850 years of Christianity. And we are supposed to credit the later as the source of the idea?