[gedsiz]

Originally posted by FrostyBoy
Well i'm no historian, but I could assume easily that Christianity needing a way to mass print their bullshit, lead to the invention of the printing press. But don't assume I think that only Christianity could have lead to that discovery, I just think Christianity gave it a boost. Well, you may say Christianity lead to printing press, but probably not in the way you'd expect.

Printing press and protestantism appear more or less at the same time.
And what makes protestantism unique at that time, is that it abolished the priest caste in religion.
Before that, the believers have to rely on the priests to tell them God's will. May I just remind you that the bible was forbidden to read for ordinary catholic believers until vatican 2. As a side note, I know some old catholic guy (70+), true believer who is still afraid of reading, and even having home a bible. His education about the bible being a book for the initiate is so strong, that still today he prefers to rely on the priest to tell him what is in there and how to understand it.

Protestantism introduced the 'democratic' access to God.
The printing press was certainly not desired by religion. Religion of that time was so abusive, that it lead to a reformed form of religion, and a will of people to look for themselves, learn for themselves in the topic of spirituality, as well as in the topic of simple knowledge.

Still today, even among the protestants - who should know better - while they are supposed to practise the 'check for yourself' in spirituality as well as in knowledge, some want to prevent the ordinary believer to check for himself, or to confront their beliefs or science. 'Here is how you should understand the bible, and here is what science should tell'.

Printing press, books, are the democratisation of knowledge. Knowledge about spirituality and science. At some time in history, one very unique form of religion allowed the ordinary believer to have access to that knowledge and even encouraged the discussion, study of the basics by everybody.
And once that pandora box was opened, the nightmare of religion: atheism wasn't that far away. Today, you see how religion tries to strike back by dictating how the bible should be interpreted, but that is a petty attempt to retake the control, to close the box.

Religion leading to printing press?
Well, I'd say: religious abuses leading to p***-off people, leading to reform and appeasement measures, leading to printing press. Ultimately leading to people seeing through religion bovine waste, leading to atheism.

But there is no way a true religion would want the believer - whose greatest virtue is to believe without questioning - to have access to knowledge, to books. Christianity, the church, because of her abuses had to give away ground on this, but I can guarantee that was against her will. See how she fought the reform, and how she put books, including the bible itself to the infamous index.