[Jean S]

This is the oddest article I've read in a long while and I don't understand what you're saying. You can't have science without Christianity? Science didn't exist before Christ?

I don't get your point.

[ronnietherocket3]

Science in this case is defined an attempt to discover laws of nature through rational explanations that can build on each other.

Science didn't exist before Christ?
br>Science did not really exist outside of western Europe or prior to Christianity. You can't have science without Christianity?

You need a certain mindset almost exclusive to Christianity. Judaism also has it, but Judaism was a very small religion.

[Jeff Chandler]

The point is that the Christian mindset was the soil in which the seeds of modern science germinated.

I don't have time right now to read the article and evaluate the supporting facts, but modern science did indeed spring from Christian Europe so the point may be valid.

It would be interesting to hold that theory up to the info in a book I am presently reading on the birth of science, The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe by Arthur Koestler

[humblegunner]

I don't get your point.

Self promotion.

[ishmac]

Modern science, science as we know it, is indeed a product of the Christian west. Other cultures had some very powerful intellects (for example, the Greeks for math and philosophy, the Chinese, Babylonians, and Indians for mathematics) and gave the world powerful speculative systems (the Aristotelian cosmic model is a notable one). But modern science as a self-sustaining enterprise, which discovers the quantitative regularities of material things in motion and provides a built-in basis for its own corrections is the fruit of Christian Europe.

The discovery of the quantitative regularities of material things and the expression of these regularities in mathematical expressions and equations are what characterize modern science. You will scarcely find anything similar in past cultures — at least not on our scale of systematization. And although other cultures had times of breakthrough and discovery, within a generation or two their creative impulse flags and stagnation sets in. The sages end up teaching the “same old, same old.” Only in the west (and areas of the globe deeply influenced by the west) does this adventure of discovery sustain itself over centuries. Only in the Christian west (and again, in those places and peoples strongly influenced by the Christian west) does the process of discovery develop an ongoing impetus that gives rise to permanent institutions.

There’s a lot more to be said about this and I know my views on this are debatable. One thing you should know, however, is that most modern “classics” in the history of science try to downplay the Christian cultural background of its origins. These writers are usually secularists who soft-pedal any possible any connection between Christian faith and the origin of modern science.

This attempt to drive a wedge between modern science and Christianity has a long history. It goes back to at least Voltaire. It is one of the main drivers of secularization in our time. I would suggest picking up a copy of some of Fr Stanley Jaki’s books on the history of modern science. He can give you a fact-based history of how modern science developed from a conservative Christian point of view that isn’t merely apologetics.