'Mute inglorious Milton' -- as I've said before, the most significant line of poetry in the language.

A great condemnation of religion, at least as practiced in England up to the 18th century.

A revised thought by Gray. The metaphor in the first version used a classical example.

Why would Milton have been any less Christian if he'd been a farmer?

He'd have been illiterate. But the key word is not Milton but Miltons.

You wouldn't be blogging if religion had kept its stranglehold on human liberty.

As for Milton, he couldn't have been much less of a Christian than he was. He did a lot to cut the heart out of English Christianity.

Ever read him? Paradise Lost requires that we be "lowly wise", placing certain knowledge off limits because we're incapable of reckoning with it.

I thought he was really, really boring.

But, as you have so often pointed out to us, freedom of thought and education are poison to religion, and while nobody pays attention to 'Paradise Lost,' the infection of 'Areopagitica' pervades everything.

He may not have intended it -- although my college prof in the Milton course thought he did -- but we know what the road to hell is paved with.

Freedom of education and thought aren't, statist education is because it's a competitor. That's well on its way to being taken care of though.

Then why has the Church always been terrified of having its members educated?

I know, you'll deny that's the case, but I will counter with the unanswerable argument: Acton

The Church educates its members.

That would explain the educational levels prevalent in S. America, then?

Church schools are shams.

Compulsory education is good, not state education.