now here's someone who has no idea about what he's talking about. leave your math books for a day and try history books, for a change
so...you're telling me that there was really great scientific advance in the 800-1600 period compared to the centuries before and after that?

I may not be the history expert around here but everyone would know this...

Since people were burned at stakes for trying to study it.
People were burned for trying to propagate ideas that did not fit in with the church doctrines. Since the Bible does not have too many references to math, they didn't really argue with whatever little mathematical progress there was. They did go after science much more violently since that contradicted their ideas for the most part, but even then they could only attack spreading ideas and not things that people were discovering privately and keeping a secret of.
Oh, it has started again. Next thing we know there'll be thirty pages long posts and nobody will check this thread except the both of us.
Actually, I would dig that thread back up if I had another six hours of time to write a post.

They could use of violence to show the right way. The government would have just as much trouble as enforcing a law against murder in a society which thinks there's nothing wrong with murder.
Today perhaps, but in the future I doubt it, just as this law is next to impossible to enforce today but is conceivable quite easy to do so in the future. If these laws are gradually implemented over very large periods of time, most people will not really notice or care.
