re: #459 ggt

Perhaps have secular and non-secular combined accounts for that. I don’t know enough about European History to comment on what life was like before the 12th century. I do know that some of the do’s and don’ts made sense for health reasons—way back when, but no longer apply.

John Calvin imposed extremely strict rules on his community, right down to the designs permitted on the dishes in people’s kitchens. It’s one reason that H. L. Mencken called him “the Geneva Mohammed”. The Catholic Church of course has its own checkered past, with the Inquisitions. Yet, Christianity was open-ended enough that the Christian West could produce and grow The Enlightenment. It remains to be seen if the much more inward-looking system of fundamentalist Islam can do the same.