Did the emergence of the Abrahamic religions benefit the development of philosophy?

Question

Did the emergence of the Abrahamic religions benefit the development of philosophy?

Answer 1

|No, it stopped both philosophy and science. It took until the reformation for the work the Greeks and Romans did to be continued.

Answer 2

I am no theist, but I am the first one to say 'absolutely'.

________

Most of out famous philosophers were either Bishops or "Saints", connected with the church. Having a religion, like the judeo-christian one, allowed a few people to pursue scholarly work that would have otherwise been impossible to pursue (they would have had to be farmers or merchants, et cetera).

While the Greeks and the Italians - the first of the Western philosophers - got things going, once Christianity set in for good around circa 500 a.d., the great philosophers of antiquity were born thereafter, metaphorically speaking.

All of these men were in some way connected with the Church, which also allowed them to pursue philosophy:

Directly-

1. Augustine.

2. Aquinas.

3. George Berkeley.

4. Rene Descartes.

.....

Indirectly-

1. Kant.

2. Newton.

3. Leibniz.

4. Locke.

5. Spinoza.

Of course, in both lists - especially the former - there are many more men who were directly affiliated with the Church, but I'm just ignorant of it for the time being. For the most part, Western Philosophy would have had a much slower developement had religion not been around, especially the Judeo-Christian religion, which at that time promoted intellectual and academic interest, as well as philosophical research.

Hence the name: the Scholastics - all of whom were in some way connected with the prominent western religions. While after Kant and Hegel, the religion bit died down significantly, we do have religion to thank as a medium by which the modern/medieval period of western philosophy was made possible.