Pure sophistry. You might as well argue for the existence of a divine soul in ameoba, since we certainly couldn't have bypassed that stage in our evolution into sentient entities.

If Christianity hadn't got in the way of the Greeks

It quite possible we'd be even further ahead

the church is responsible fro holding back the progress of Europe many times when that step conflicted with the teachings of the day

Copernicus and Galileo spring to mind

Many of those principles occur in other places that aren't Christian so those we could easily put done to common sense application of rules within societies
I don't see right or wrong as something exclusive to religion
And I don't have to swear on a bible nor would any judge with common sense impose it

Or perhaps centuries earlier, but not in Europe first?

It's not clear what this scientific revolution which apparently occurred soon after the 12C consisted of, but whatever it was, why was it more valuable for God to have it occur in Europe rather than, say, Persia?

Ah - that's an interesting conundrum!

The church was asking Copernicus to "prove" that the earth was not the center of the universe! Precisely what non-believers are asking believers to do!

One has to break down the difference between fundamentalism and orthodoxy also. Thinking goes wrong when it resorts to fundamentalism.

There's a difference between right thinking and thinking I'm right.

When thinking becomes institutionalised there is a danger of "thinking I'm right." The church is always at it's best when counter cultural, rather than monolithic. Where a non-catholic can point to the institutional monolith of the Church in the middle ages, I can think of the thinkers who challenged that monolith from within and so helped change the world.

The roots of the inquisition is not so different from today: monolithic catholicism 'defending' europe from the inroads of monolithic mohammedism, versus 'monolithic' 'western - read American - democracy (read capitalism)defending the world from encroaching Islam. Abu Gharib could be the new Inquisition!

Instead of point at the past, we can use lessons of our human weakness in the past to point out current day wrongs, and place them in context.

It wasn't - Europe happened to invent the printing press a short time later.

400 years later. Surely that's a ridiculously weak argument? And it wasn't Europe, it was a German called Gutenberg. It took another 400 years to get to the European Union. I suppose that was the inevitable consequence of typesetting?

Eh? Do believers think the earth is the centre of the universe? News to me.

Tell that to the Borgias when you meet them in Heaven.

Right people I'm off to bed. Good night and God bless.....

When we all die we will know who is the true victor of the arguement. Until then I am putting religion in the same carpark as race and social class.

Sorry, but we already do know that.

It's Sir Alex Ferguson, right?

No I don't think you quite understand the non-believer

we're not asking you to prove anything, we may however point out that your proof may not be what you think it is

I would add that some scientists would go further to suggest that the available evidence would suggest that their is scant reason for the existence of a creator
and certainly enough is known about the fundamentals of the universe to suggest that its statistically more probable that there isn't a creator

I take it from that you've already come across "The Creation" by Peter W. Atkins? If not, I strongly recommend it.

Just done 'God Delusion' by Dawkin's and 'God is not Great' by Hitchens recently

I'm curious, what are those Christian principles that were laid into foundation of Western society?