Did religion slow the rate of human progress?

A scene from the TV show Family Guy,
as quoted on Google+

By Aaron Sherman

I'm going to spoil this one for you, on the topic of whether religion slowed the rate of human progress, I think the answer is clear: no, it did not. However, I also think that you can point to some serious "one step forward, two steps back" moments in history, especially as concern Europe and its recent (last 2,000 years) affair with the Christian faith.

It would be impossible to cover the entire history of the interaction of religion and human progress, but I do want to talk about some specific high (and low) points that I think make this topic a bit clearer. I should be up-front: I'm not a member of any religion, but I'm not an atheist. You can read more about my personal beliefs in my post about deism.

New York's man-made climate

Hurricane Sandy, 2012

credit: NASA Goddard Photo and Video

By Aaron Sherman

Nothing like it had been seen in a very long time. The hurricane ripped through the eastern seaboard and washed away entire communities in New York and surrounding states. The financial mess that the nation had been through wasn't yet over and the blow came hard in the communities that it hit. It was brutal. It was 1788.

Nothing like it had been seen in a very long time. The hurricane ripped through the eastern seaboard and washed away entire communities in New York and surrounding states. The financial mess that the nation had been through wasn't yet over and the blow came hard in the communities that it hit. It was brutal. It was 1821.

Nothing like it had been seen in a very long time. The hurricane ripped through the eastern seaboard and washed away entire communities in New York and surrounding states. The financial mess that the nation had been through wasn't yet over and the blow came hard in the communities that it hit. It was brutal. It was 1938.

There are two things we know about New York weather:

1. About once a century, a really nasty hurricane will hit.
2. It's clearly precipitated by a financial crisis...

Cumin and Chili Con Carne

Cumin plant and seeds
from Wikipedia

A friend of mine is allergic to cumin and recently claimed that cumin is a recent American ("Tex-Mex") addition to chili con carne. Further, he claimed that most chili did not contain cumin. I had to look into this, because I know food history can be confusing at best, and this was likely not the whole story. After some investigation, I found out a lot about chili powder, chili con carne and Texas culinary history that I didn't now. Here's the highlights:

So, Chili Con Carne doesn't always have cumin listed as an ingredient, but this is misleading.

The best days of cinema were ... 2008?

We've all heard it. The claim goes that, back in the day, they made movies like  North by Northwest, Some Like It Hot and Ben-Hur, and that was just one year! Now we get sequels to movies that sucked, which themselves suck and an endless stream of romcoms that don't even rise to the level of sucking.

But this isn't quite true. Sure, you have stand-out years like 1959, but if you look at IMDB's top 250 movies, you'll notice something interesting. The top-voted movies of all time are fairly evenly spread across the decades with a big bump toward the end. Why? Well, in part a move you've seen recently tends to be more impressive in your memory, so movies that pre-date IMDB aren't always very highly rated.

But that doesn't entirely explain the phenomenon. 2008 for example, has:

The Dark Knight, WALL·E, Gran Torino, Slumdog Millionaire, The Wrestler, In Bruges, Let the Right One In, Changeling and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Now, I'll be the first to say that some of those represent short-term fascination or novelty. Still, I think Gran Torino, Slumdog Millionair, The Wrestler and Let the Right One In certainly do compare well to their historical analogs. Going back a year, you have films like No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. Meanwhile, in 1945, 1956, 1970 and 1971 there is only one movie that made the list each of those years. Why? Because movie-making has been inconsistent throughout history and that's both good and bad.

Certainly, if movie making followed any one formula, no matter how well crafted that formula, it would have precluded some of these films. Instead, it's a hectic and chaotic process that yields one or two great movies every year and a handful of very good films.

2008 had 9 movies last year in the top 250, beating out the next-best year by two movies (1957, 1995, 1999, 2003, 2004 and 2007 all tied at 7 films). While this makes me wish I'd been alive in 1957 to sample the amazing creative output of that generation, it also makes me glad that I'm around now. So far 2010 has 4 movies on the list, and I think we'll see at least one of those (Inception, which immediately jumped to the #3 spot on opening weekend, not an easy feat) stay on the list for many, many years to come.

By year, here's the number of top-250 movies:

1921: 1
1925: 1
1926: 1
1927: 2
1930: 1
1931: 2
1933: 2
1934: 1
1936: 1
1938: 1
1939: 3
1940: 4
1941: 2
1942: 1
1943: 1
1944: 1
1945: 1
1946: 4
1948: 3
1949: 2
1950: 4
1951: 3
1952: 3
1953: 3
1954: 5
1955: 2
1956: 1
1957: 7
1958: 2
1959: 5
1960: 3
1961: 3
1962: 3
1963: 2
1964: 1
1965: 1
1966: 3
1967: 3
1968: 4
1969: 2
1970: 1
1971: 1
1972: 2
1973: 2
1974: 3
1975: 5
1976: 3
1977: 2
1978: 1
1979: 4
1980: 4
1981: 2
1982: 3
1983: 2
1984: 3
1985: 2
1986: 3
1987: 2
1988: 5
1989: 1
1990: 1
1991: 2
1992: 2
1993: 3
1994: 6
1995: 7
1996: 2
1997: 4
1998: 5
1999: 7
2000: 6
2001: 6
2002: 3
2003: 7
2004: 7
2005: 3
2006: 7
2007: 6
2008: 9
2009: 6
2010: 4