oblig. Einstein repeatedly argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer. Fred Brooks, p. 184 The Mythical Man-Month 2nd ed. It's interesting to me that several people I greatly admire in comp sci/technology are religious: Fred Brooks, Knuth, Larry Wall and Clayton Christensen ( The Innovator's Dilemma ). To me, on…
Most people are religious and that number is only decreasing recently, thus one should expect a certain number of luminaries in any domain to be religious. Looking through history and trying to discern intent is a difficult thing to do. I don't think any of the development of God(s) as a concept was done with much long term intent but was likely as most things are done the result of mutually beneficial agreements mad…
This is a very superficial perspective, born of a bad recollection of history.
Christianity gained dominance and power during the fall of Rome, a movement born on the streets of a decaying society, with the Christians prosecution having the negative effect of drawing the attention of the public ... a public which was hungry for a saner sense of moral values.
The power grabbing taking place was only to secure their freedom of religion, at least initially.
Of course, as with all religions ... Christianity was used to control the masses and did ended being used for power grabbing. But that's mostly because uneducated masses are stupid as cows ... and you can credit the translated Bibles for people's willingness to learn how to read.