They were the old puritans too. It wasn't until someone left puritan society and realized what crap it was and started Rhode Island with freedom of religion and pirates that American really got started.

Fascism is honest socialism.

Never underestimate the ability of intelligent people to communicate around censorship. Galileo wrote a great treatise talking heliocentrists to task with all of the arguments the church had to offer in defense of geocentrism. When he was put on trial for it, he explained that he was trying to help the church overcome arguments a heliocentrist might make, and was in no way shape or form showing how weak the geocentrist arguments really were.

Christianity: The only religion that founds modern Western thought through 2 millennia of debate and discussion, while the rest of the world is trapped in religious dogma. Atheists: Blames Christianity for everything bad in the world.