German nobles would not have had as strong a uniting force which to
rally around in order to throw off the yoke of the Papacy, so Germany
would have remained Roman Catholic longer. England would not have become
Protestant, so Spain would not have launched the Armada, so Spain would
have remained the naval superpower of the 1500s-1700s, and Spanish
Catholics, rather than English Puritans, would have colonized America.
Consequently, there would have been no American Revolution, and thus, no
great democratic experiment with a Constitutional Republic built on
principles of religious liberty. America may today instead be a Roman
Catholic monarchy, with the primary language being Spanish. The world
would have fewer, if not NO democracies, and worldwide, women would
still not have the right to vote, slaves would still be publicly owned
in the West, and it's quite probable that the "Enlightenment" of
atheism/humanism would not have taken place, so evolutionary theory
would never have become a prominent belief. Consequently, even if we had
television, cinema would be much more boring, without movies like
Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. Because Darwin is the single
most important direct influence on Nazi Germany, the Holocaust would not
have happened, neither would WWI or WWII, so the British would never
have conquered Palestine and Israel would never have been given to the
Jews. Jewish settlement would still have occurred, because that was
organic, due to antisemitism. However, the likelihood that Israel would
have been recognized as a country by the international community would
be much lower. Nor is it likely that the state would have been a
democracy if it were created in this alternate timeline.
The 'enlightenment' was, together with sects and heresies, one of those necessarily possible but unintended/unwanted consequences of the greater religious liberty Luther et al created by making faith much more individualistic by giving everyone access to the Bible. Instead of facing secular politics as our biggest internal frustration, we'd still be seeing roman catholicism as the greatest threat to peace and liberty on earth. There would not have been an American Civil War because the Protestant abolitionist movement would never have been a big enough influence to elevate it to the level of national politics. Consequently, there would have been no civil rights movement. Ironically, racial tensions might be perceived to be less strenuous, if only because the disparity in treatment of the "races" would never have confronted the nation's conscience, because there would have been no one to advocate for the oppressed. Since technological innovation of the industrial/post-industrial era was almost entirely a product of American ingenuity, enabled by our political liberty and economic prosperity, in a Roman Catholic America, the inventions like the cotton gin, tractor etc which made the necessity of manual labor obsolete would not have been invented, so slavery would still be seen as a practical necessity with a strong economic incentive for maintaining.
Is your mind blown?
~ Rak Chazak
The 'enlightenment' was, together with sects and heresies, one of those necessarily possible but unintended/unwanted consequences of the greater religious liberty Luther et al created by making faith much more individualistic by giving everyone access to the Bible. Instead of facing secular politics as our biggest internal frustration, we'd still be seeing roman catholicism as the greatest threat to peace and liberty on earth. There would not have been an American Civil War because the Protestant abolitionist movement would never have been a big enough influence to elevate it to the level of national politics. Consequently, there would have been no civil rights movement. Ironically, racial tensions might be perceived to be less strenuous, if only because the disparity in treatment of the "races" would never have confronted the nation's conscience, because there would have been no one to advocate for the oppressed. Since technological innovation of the industrial/post-industrial era was almost entirely a product of American ingenuity, enabled by our political liberty and economic prosperity, in a Roman Catholic America, the inventions like the cotton gin, tractor etc which made the necessity of manual labor obsolete would not have been invented, so slavery would still be seen as a practical necessity with a strong economic incentive for maintaining.
Is your mind blown?
~ Rak Chazak
