But why did people believe and think all these immortal nonsense so stubbornly throughout the ages? Why did thousands and thousands of naive and deceitful individuals, influenced by the priests, put them in their minds? Why did they destroy the classical ideals of ancient Greek civilization over the centuries, turned "the wisdom of this world into foolishness" (1 Corinthians 1:20), threw the East and the West into this dark swamp of ignorance and prejudice, the deception of relics, miracles and pilgrimages, spiritually buried the peoples in there, expelled general education from schools, sacrificed the entire education and placed it under Christianity, because they equated their theological fantasies with the concept of learning, so that even Thomas Aquinas could call the pursuit of knowledge a "sin" if it does not aim at the "knowledge of God".