Posted on 11/30/2005 5:33:26 AM PST by rhema
Rodney Stark's latest book, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (Random House, 2005), is scheduled for publication next Tuesday. It's a useful corrective for folks in Austin, Boston, and other blue spots who think of Christianity and rationalism as opposite historical forces and philosophical concepts. The veteran Baylor professor discussed with WORLD how the Christian sense of progress led to political, technological, and economic advances.
WORLD: How is Christianity unique in emphasizing the idea of progress?
STARK: The other great faiths either taught that the world is locked in endless cycles or that it is inevitably declining from a previous Golden Age. Only Christians believed that God's gift of reason made progress inevitable—theological as well as technical progress. Thus, Augustine (ca. 354-430) flatly asserted that through the application of reason we will gain an increasingly more accurate understanding of God, remarking that although there were "certain matters pertaining to the doctrine of salvation that we cannot yet grasp . . . one day we shall be able to do so."
Nor was the Christian belief in progress limited to theology. Augustine went on at length about the "wonderful—one might say stupefying—advances human industry has made" and attributed all this to the "unspeakable boon" that God has conferred upon His creation, a "rational nature." These views were repeated again and again through the centuries. Especially typical were these words preached by Fra Giordano in Florence in 1306: "Not all the arts have been found; we shall never see an end to finding them."
WORLD: But a lot of us learned that Europe fell into the "Dark Ages." How did that historical understanding originate, and what's wrong with it?
STARK: The Dark Ages have finally been recognized as a hoax perpetrated by anti-religious and bitterly anti-Catholic, 18th-century intellectuals who were determined to assert their cultural superiority and who boosted their claim by denigrating the Christian past—as Gibbon put it in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, after Rome came the "triumph of barbarism and religion." In the past few years even encyclopedias and dictionaries have begun to acknowledge that it was all a lie, that the Dark Ages never were. This always should have been obvious since by the end of the so-called Dark Ages, European science and technology had far exceeded that of Rome and Greece, and all the rest of the world, for that matter.
WORLD: Could you be specific? What were some of the "Dark Ages" innovations that show the folly of considering Greek and Roman culture the apex of civilization until recent times?
STARK: How about the perfection and widespread use of waterwheels, windmills, and pumps, the invention of the compass, stirrups, the crossbow, canons, effective horse harnesses, eyeglasses, clocks, chimneys, violins, double-entry bookkeeping, and insurance? This list doesn't begin to do justice to this era that historians of science now refer to as an age of remarkable innovation and discovery.
Perhaps the most revealing instance involves the "story" that in order to gain backing for his great voyage west, Columbus had to struggle against ignorant and superstitious churchmen who were certain that the earth was flat. Truth was that all educated Europeans, including bishops and cardinals, knew the earth was round. What produced church opposition to the Columbus voyage was that Columbus believed the circumference of the earth was only about one-fifth of its actual distance. Thus, the church scholars who opposed him did so because they knew that he and his sailors were bound to perish at sea. And they would have done so had the Western Hemisphere not been there to replenish their food and water.
WORLD: So Christians were pro-science, but you suggest that the Muslim conception of God held back the rise of science in the Islamic world?
STARK: Allah was not conceived of as creator of a universe governed by "natural" rules, in contrast with the prevailing Christian conception of Jehovah as the Great Clockmaker. Instead, their image of Allah encouraged Muslims to focus their attention on interpreting divine laws governing human behavior, not to search for the divine "secrets" that govern the universe.
WORLD: You say the Christian doctrine that sin is a personal responsibility made a difference in the extension of liberty and economic opportunity in the early modern era.
STARK: The admonition "Go and sin no more" is absurd if we are mere captives of our fate. Christianity teaches that we have free will and therefore must be relatively free of compulsions. This theological insight led directly to doctrines that opposed repressive states, slavery, and other forms of exploitation and in favor of private property and freedom of conscience. These freedoms often were not achieved, but their clear basis in Christian doctrines did result in some relatively free, early European societies, initially in the medieval Italian city-states, and in the eventual spread of democracy.
WORLD: You argue that the problems of the Spanish empire display, among others things, the disadvantages of having a state church. How?
STARK: In two primary ways. First of all, a "kept" church is lazy. When clergy do not rely on the laity for their support, they tend to neglect their pastoral duties. In the case of the Spanish church, because everyone was by law a Roman Catholic, nothing needed to be done to convert them or even to attract them to Mass. In fact, the state collected the church tithes so the clergy had no need to bestir themselves even for money. And that's why until very recently most people in Latin America were only nominal Christians, if that.
The second great shortcoming of state churches is that they are captives of their political rulers. By treaty the King of Spain chose all bishops and cardinals, not only in Spain, but in the empire. Moreover, no church pronouncements, including papal bulls, could be published in any Spanish area without prior consent of the king. As a result a whole series of 15th- and 16th-century papal condemnations of slavery were unknown in Spain and Latin America and were ignored by historians until the past decade or so.
State interference in religious affairs was not unique to Spain. Whether ruled by despots or merely by politicians, where there is a state church the state can never keep itself from interfering in religious affairs. In Scandinavia, where Lutheran state churches prevail, parliaments revise doctrines and even concern themselves with details such as the contents of hymn books. Indeed, in Sweden pastors of the state church (and of other churches as well) are now prohibited from reading in public any portion of the Bible that is critical of homosexuality.
WORLD: You've emphasized in your writing the advantages of church competition and religious entrepreneurship. Are those advantages also contributing to the recent growth of Christianity in Latin America, Africa, and China?
STARK: In 1881-82 William F. Bainbridge, a prominent American Baptist, visited all American Protestant overseas missions (in those days they were still all coastal and easily reached). He found that in some places the denominations had cut up an area and granted each group an exclusive mission field, but in other places all the denominations competed for converts. He observed that the missionaries were far more successful where they competed. This remains the case. Consider that for centuries Roman Catholics had an exclusive right to missionize Latin America, at the end of which most of the continent was unchurched. Then Protestant missionaries were allowed to enter. The result has been not only the conversion of millions to active Protestantism, but also to so greatly revive Roman Catholicism that it now is growing, too. Meanwhile, the Christianization of Africa is being accomplished by hundreds of competing denominations, most of African origins.
WORLD: What do you think the shape of Christianity will be in 2050?
STARK: By then Christianity may well be the dominant religion in China. Latin Americans probably will be as churched as North Americans. Africa will be more than half Christian. As for Europe, it will be well along in a major revival of religion, one way or the other: Christian or Islamic.
I also think Christianity is largely responsible for the idea of human equality gaining ground in Western civilization. I believe that the Christian belief and teaching that all people, no matter how poor they are or how sinful they have been in the past, have equal rights with Kings to enter heaven based on accepting Christian teachings led ultimately to the belief in human equality here on earth as well. It is this idea, I believe, that ultimately led to the abolition of slavery in Western civilization.
ping for later
Looks like he's doing some good work to dispel some myths, while creating myths of his own. For example, completely dismissing scientific and cultural advances under Muslim rule so he can say "Christianity did it all." Various advances in China also seem to be ignored.
There were none.
The only possible exception that an apologist for Islam can cite is the fact that during the three hundred year renaissance of mathematical research which took place in early Medieval Persia, Persia was converted to Islam during the last third of the period.
They fail to notice that once Islam took over, the mathematical accomplishments achieved in Persia began to peter out.
Everyone loves to cite the etymology of the word "algebra", but the fact remains that the "cultural and scientific achievements of Islam" were in reality the ongoing cultural and scientific achievements of Persia and Byzantium - cultures which were conquered and then systematically destroyed by Islam.
It's interesting that all these so-called "achievements of Islam" completely dried up during the 10th century - just as Islam consolidated its full political and military strength.
+
Islam: parasitic. China: paralytic.
Amen to that. Go and look at a great cathedral. Then look at squat moorish key-hole arches in e.g. Andalucia and Grenada. There's no comparison. And those cathedrals were built in "the age of primitive superstition".
Non-christian civilisations developed amazing things ... and then stagnated. I belive that Christian societies have historically been more able to fire on all cylinders.
Christianity insists upon the spiritual equality of the sexes, and the spiritual equality of the rich and the poor. There is no Khoreish, no tribe of the blood, no caste of spiritually superior beings in Christianity - and women and men are on the same spiritual footing, which is a very big deal indeed.
In Christianity there is no *spiritual* cap to achievement. Christians are Children of the Living God with one, and only one life to lead. They are not halfway to their next life on the wheel of Karma: they are not looking inwards at an internal Nirvana and they are not bowing down to a rabid sex-crazed Death God. It's no suprise that this intrinsic freedom of Christian nations has been reflected in the economic and technological sphere.
"STARK: The Dark Ages have finally been recognized as a hoax perpetrated by anti-religious and bitterly anti-Catholic, 18th-century intellectuals who were determined to assert their cultural superiority and who boosted their claim by denigrating the Christian past—as Gibbon put it in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, after Rome came the "triumph of barbarism and religion." In the past few years even encyclopedias and dictionaries have begun to acknowledge that it was all a lie, that the Dark Ages never were. This always should have been obvious since by the end of the so-called Dark Ages, European science and technology had far exceeded that of Rome and Greece, and all the rest of the world, for that matter."
I wouldn't be surprised if this were all true. It's amazing and ironic the backlash set out by Protestants of various types against Catholics specifically.
I think the only real reason they may have been rightly called the Dark Ages was because (it seemed) Europe was still a political mess of in-fighting w/little stability.
However, I also think those who use the "Dark Ages" sobriquet in connection w/the rise of Christianity do it from the ignorance of what was in greater Europe before. From our knowledge of Roman society and what has happened since, it may have seemed "dark", but just what was life like in Europe as a whole and proper before Christianity (mostly due to Rome) spread? Surely, tribal primitive societies largely "flourished" - and fought. We just don't have a non-Rome Europe to compare. The folly is in not knowing much at all how primitive and brutal that pre-Christian Europe was.
"STARK: In two primary ways. First of all, a "kept" church is lazy. When clergy do not rely on the laity for their support, they tend to neglect their pastoral duties. In the case of the Spanish church, because everyone was by law a Roman Catholic, nothing needed to be done to convert them or even to attract them to Mass. In fact, the state collected the church tithes so the clergy had no need to bestir themselves even for money. And that's why until very recently most people in Latin America were only nominal Christians, if that.
"The second great shortcoming of state churches is that they are captives of their political rulers. By treaty the King of Spain chose all bishops and cardinals, not only in Spain, but in the empire. Moreover, no church pronouncements, including papal bulls, could be published in any Spanish area without prior consent of the king. As a result a whole series of 15th- and 16th-century papal condemnations of slavery were unknown in Spain and Latin America and were ignored by historians until the past decade or so.
"State interference in religious affairs was not unique to Spain. Whether ruled by despots or merely by politicians, where there is a state church the state can never keep itself from interfering in religious affairs. In Scandinavia, where Lutheran state churches prevail, parliaments revise doctrines and even concern themselves with details such as the contents of hymn books. Indeed, in Sweden pastors of the state church (and of other churches as well) are now prohibited from reading in public any portion of the Bible that is critical of homosexuality."
This is a superb set of examples of the REAL reasons the Founders didn't want a Church of America. It was 2-fold; it didn't go 1 way as the "separatist" liberals would have us believe. It was not just so a church might not control the state (Catholic), but so the state would not control the church (Anglican). Not to mention so that individuals were not forced to pay stipends to support a church they didn't believe in.
"the fact that during the three hundred year renaissance of mathematical research which took place in early Medieval Persia, Persia was converted to Islam during the last third of the period.
"They fail to notice that once Islam took over, the mathematical accomplishments achieved in Persia began to peter out.
"Everyone loves to cite the etymology of the word "algebra", but the fact remains that the "cultural and scientific achievements of Islam" were in reality the ongoing cultural and scientific achievements of Persia and Byzantium - cultures which were conquered and then systematically destroyed by Islam."
That is more interesting info that I did not know. Thanks. I know about "Moslem science/math" advances - and how short a period it was - but not about it really being from Persia which was beaten by the Moslems.
How about even cultural beauty supposedly exemplified by such as Omar Khayyam? Or is he just a Persian? Or the "beautiful" sound architecture - found included in Spain as well as Morrocco, etc.?
Now how about China? There really were a few good things going on over there, weren't there?
Oh yes. They came very close to having an industrial revolution of their own. They didn't, for very interesting reasons. If you're interested do check out "The Lever of Riches". It's a very well respected book that covers this sort of thing.
Likewise the Taj Mahal, built by Moslems in the 1600s, is a perfect example of the ancient Persian architectural tradition.
the authentic architecture of Islam - the kind that is not based on any Persian or Greek model but which is entirely native to Islam is the Holy Mosque of Mecca.
It's essentially a box with minarets and decorated doorways.
About as exciting and impressive as a combination football stadium/convention center.
How about even cultural beauty supposedly exemplified by such as Omar Khayyam?
Besides the fact that his Rubaiyat is notable for its complete opposition in subject matter and philosophy to Islam (its advocacy of wine drinking, its generally Epicurean worldview), Khayyam's poetry is written in Persian in a style and with a vocabulary that long predates the entry of Islam into Persia. The very concept of writing purely secular verses for pleasure alone was anathema to Islam.
In the Islamic world his work has always been a guilty pleasure when it was not banned outright.
Now how about China?
In the time period we are discussing, China was a vibrant culture in the area of painting, sculpture, architecture and literature, as well as serious technological innovation.
The problem with the whole bit of Moslem rhetoric about "their" achievements is that the four areas of achievements most commonly touted: architecture, algebra, the navigational aids (astrolabe and compass) and medicine all come from other sources than the Islamic world.
Islamic architecture was Greco-Persian.
Islamic algebra was Indo-Persian.
Islamic navigation was Greco-Chinese.
Islamic medicine was Greco-Persian.
One of the most notable facts of world history is that the millions and millions Arabs who have historically made up the vast bulk of the Islamic world have basically invented nothing. They kill and conquer other people and take their stuff and that's essentially what they do.
Even the Koran itself is a mishmash of Jewish and Nabataean narratives.
"One of the most notable facts of world history is that the millions and millions Arabs who have historically made up the vast bulk of the Islamic world have basically invented nothing. They kill and conquer other people and take their stuff and that's essentially what they do."
My heavens; are you suggesting some race hasn't done much, and indeed is brutal? Tsk tsk.
Actually, as I stated earlier, we really don't know much about non-Roman Europe. As far as I'm concerned, it was nothing but primitive tribes probably w/many of the same insular, 1-dimensional and brutish ways you associate w/Arabs. To me (non-scholar that I am), it was not just Rome but Christianity which raised Europe out of its true dark ages!
The anti-Christian enthusiasts of pre-Christian Europe seem to ignore the fact that their lauded Vikings, Goths and Vandals were essentially a bunch of shiftless brigands and thieves and that the wonderful Celts were not above human sacrifice and ceremonial bestiality.
Unlike certain other FReepers, I have no illusions that my Northern European ancestors were of some naturally nobler stock.
The Muslims were great at recognizing works in progress of their territories and promoting them, even advancing them. They were also big-time traders, so they brought knowledge from all over the known world.
They also valued literature, literally paying gold by weight for translated ancient texts so they could be stored in libraries, or just hiring scholars to translate Greek texts. Quite a few of the ancient texts we have today are only because of that preservation.
They also established hospitals (which were also used as teaching hospitals as we do to this day) and a licensing system for physicians. Strange concept, they actually kept records on their patients. They even had a code of ethics for physicians, going further than Hippocrates. Their medical texts lasted several hundred years, even in the West, generally not being superseded until well after the Renaissance.
They also highly valued education, so much that a captured enemy could pay his ransom by teaching Muslims to read and write.
They fail to notice that once Islam took over, the mathematical accomplishments achieved in Persia began to peter out.
Islam owned Persia by the mid 600s, but their mathematical achievements continued through the 1100s. Your timeline is a bit off.
It's interesting that all these so-called "achievements of Islam" completely dried up during the 10th century - just as Islam consolidated its full political and military strength.
Their medical achievements continued easily through the 1200s. Around that time, the Muslims started losing. The Mongols trashed Baghdad, then the Muslim center of learning, and the Caliphate (the only thing that kept them unified, and thus capable of continued cultural advancement) was gone.
Of course, their accomplishments as a culture ended long ago, and the speed of their regression was amazing, but that's no reason for historical revisionism.
Wheelbarrow, paper money, cast iron, propellers, decimal system, seismograph, matches, rockets, paper...
BTW, the Muslims got the paper indirectly from China, improved it, and introduced it to Europe. It was the finest paper available, the secret of its production closely held. The Italians then improved on that during the Renaissance.
Overstatement.
Big deal. International trade wasn't a Moslem invention.
They also valued literature, literally paying gold by weight for translated ancient texts so they could be stored in libraries, or just hiring scholars to translate Greek texts.
Moslems did a pretty good job of destroying books and libraries as well - the cultivation of literature by certain princes and individuals was accompanied by the rampant destruction of non-Moslem materials by others.
Quite a few of the ancient texts we have today are only because of that preservation.
This is the most typical and the biggest falsehood relating to the whole Moslem revisionist project. If the Moslems had not destroyed and impoverished the large Christian monasteries of the Byzantine and North African world, we would have a much larger corpus of ancient texts.
The net impact of Islam on the transmission of ancient texts was completely negative.
They also established hospitals (which were also used as teaching hospitals as we do to this day) and a licensing system for physicians.
The Romans and the Indians had hospitals for centuries before Islam came into existence. The Christian Council of Nicaea in 325 mandated the establishment of hospitals in every diocese.
In these hospitals, or valetudinaria aspiring physicians learned their trade while helping veteran physicians and physicians had to be licensed by the bishop to work there.
So did the valetudinaria. hardly a strange concept - the Muslims adopted it from Christians.
They even had a code of ethics for physicians, going further than Hippocrates.
So did Christians before Islam existed.
Their medical texts lasted several hundred years, even in the West, generally not being superseded until well after the Renaissance.
Their medical texts were superseded in many respects during the Renaissance and their medical texts represented precious few advancements over Galen. The Persian Moslem Avicenna's Canon, which was the standard medical text used in the East and the West, did not improve upon Galen's theoretical knowledge. It was basically Galen with a large number of case descriptions added as well as discussions of the properties of many plants with which Galen would have been unfamiliar.
Avicenna and Rhazes were masterful observers and commentators, but they never challenged the basic theoretical construct of Galen.
They also highly valued education, so much that a captured enemy could pay his ransom by teaching Muslims to read and write.
There are few cultures that do not place a premium on education.
Ransoming a captured enemy in exchange for tutoring was a practice known before the rise of Islam and was never a formal part of Moslem law.
99% of Moslems, then as now, consider education to be primarily the ability to read the Koran and works of Moslem law.
After Khwarizmi did his important work in linears and quadratics in 800 the innovation pretty much ceased.
There were learned mathematicians in Persia in the 1100s, but with the sole exception of Alhazen who, around 1000, finished the work Khwarizmi had begun in applying algebra to geometry not much happened after Khwarizmi.
the Caliphate (the only thing that kept them unified, and thus capable of continued cultural advancement) was gone
Early modern Europe, far from being unified, was locked in a vicious, internecine religious war. Europe, at its most intellectually creative and technologically fertile, was radically disunited and decentralized in a way it hadn't been since pre-Charlemagne.
That contention just doesn't hold water.
Newton, Leibniz, Harvey, Locke, Copernicus, Brahe, Veselius, Linnaeaus, etc. all seemed to get along well without the benefit of a Caliph.
"The only possible exception that an apologist for Islam can cite is the fact that during the three hundred year renaissance of mathematical research which took place in early Medieval Persia, Persia was converted to Islam during the last third of the period.
They fail to notice that once Islam took over, the mathematical accomplishments achieved in Persia began to peter out.
Everyone loves to cite the etymology of the word "algebra", but the fact remains that the "cultural and scientific achievements of Islam" were in reality the ongoing cultural and scientific achievements of Persia and Byzantium - cultures which were conquered and then systematically destroyed by Islam.
It's interesting that all these so-called "achievements of Islam" completely dried up during the 10th century - just as Islam consolidated its full political and military strength."
I have to agree all the so called Muslim achievements seem to happen when they absorb new cultures, then cease as that culture becomes fully Islamic.
No, but trade pretty far out was a specialty of their culture. It's how they got rich.
Moslems did a pretty good job of destroying books and libraries as well
Does this have anything to do with the myth of Muslim destruction of the Library of Alexandria? It was pretty much gone by Mohammed's time, and was even mostly cleared out by the time Christians started destroying what was left. Can't have those pagan temples around, and remember the Library was one big temple complex.
If the Moslems had not destroyed and impoverished the large Christian monasteries of the Byzantine and North African world, we would have a much larger corpus of ancient texts.
Not a chance. When Christians were burning books considered to be pagan or heretical, Muslims were having them transcribed. Their love for the destruction of knowledge came later.
The Romans and the Indians had hospitals for centuries before Islam came into existence.
Not like we're thinking. The Roman hospitals were mainly military.
So did the valetudinaria. hardly a strange concept - the Muslims adopted it from Christians.
And improved, as usual.
heir medical texts were superseded in many respects during the Renaissance and their medical texts represented precious few advancements over Galen.
Interesting you mention Galen, as his texts only survive because of the Muslims. They kept his theory and practice alive, and improved on it.
In the end, no science grows in a vacuum. Everything is based on the works of those before. All it needs is a society that appreciates scientific advancement, and that was found in the Muslim culture for several hundred years.
Religion itself can be a help or hinder to this advancement. Christianity had its period of hindering advancement around the time that Islam helped. They seemed to have made a switch around the 1200s though. Until then, most Christian innovation was in construction and weaponry. After then, most Muslim innovation was in barbarism.
You remind me of the people on the History Channel who made that rediculous show on Hitler. Hitler was bad enough, but they had to make up stuff to make him look even worse. Similarly, what Muslims have done is bad enough, but you have to hide any accomplishments to make them look worse.
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