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Comment by rkk3 | Hacker News Reader

"Since the invention of the printing press, every new revolution in information technology has prompted apocalyptic fears. From the panic that easy access to the vernacular English Bible would destroy Christian orthodoxy... And yet society has always managed to adapt and adjust"

How is Catholics & Protestants killing each other for hundreds of years in Europe considered a good example of society adjusting to innovation?

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Protestants weren't the first of their sort - they were there well before the printing press made it there. Protestants were just the first to get political backing and remain successful enough to persist unlike their deceased elder sibling heresies of the Lollards, Hussities, and Waldesians. These weren't stubborn local heterodox traditions which stuck around despite corrections from Rome but arose from dissent. The Catholic Church had far too many transparent self contradictions in preaching poverty and mercy while being covered with gold, not providing sufficiently for the destitute, and sentencing people to death (regardless of any semantics or sleight of hand in turning the condemned over to secular authorities).

Do you disagree that a large factor in the reformation being more successful (and bloody) was the printing press? That there were similar, smaller, failed movements beforehand seems irrelevant.

I still don't understand why the author, in an anti new technology article, would cite the printing press and protestant reformation as an example of people being overly concerned about new technology. To me it seems like there were severe immediate consequences from that technology.

How is Catholics & Protestants killing each other for hundreds of years in Europe related to easy access to the vernacular English Bible?

The Bible was originally in Greek/Latin which only the Clergy were trained in, not the language of the people (Vernacular). Democratizing access was a direct result of the printing press and was a very contentious part of the protestant reformation [1]. I wouldn't have specified "english" vernacular, but England, like the rest of Europe, has a very bloody history [2] here see "bloody" Mary and Henry VIII. Until eventually King James approved of what is known as the Kings James bible.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Bible 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Modern_English_Bible_tra...

People were dividing into groups and killing each other long before the 1600s. Graphs of killings dropping: https://media.gatesnotes.com/-/media/Images/Articles/About-B... (from pinker and gates notes)

Also having some familiarity with the conflicts in Ireland it was never much about varieties of Christianity - it was about the English colonising Ireland and pushing the native Irish around as second class citizens - see the potato famine and the like. Catholic vs Protestant was just a way to identify the two sides.

Henry VIII and Bloody Mary were 1500's. Not sure what point you are trying to make but that graphic is for homicide which is very different than deaths from state genocide and war.

The Irish oppression started in large part because of the Irish were Catholics & Henry VIII was excommunicated by the pope. The potato famine was in the 1840's which is over 300 years into the conflict, ignoring the role religion played over that time is missing a massive historical context.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwellian_conquest_of_Irelan... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformation_in_Ireland

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