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Now, would Western culture have made those discoveries without treating God's existence as axiomatic? Well Western culture -- especially during the age of discovery -- is a Christian culture. So, you'd have to ask if a pagan culture is capable of doing this. I don't think so, and there is no evidence for it. That concept, however, is the basis of much science fiction and can be argued indefinitely without coming to an absolute proof. All that can be said definitively is that a pagan culture never made these discoveries or developed the scientific method.

Well now ... It's certainly true that our scientific advances have been accomplished in a society that is essentially Christian. Yet our method of thinking about such matters is inherently Greek. It was ol' Aristotle -- a product of pagan times -- who codified our laws of logic. It was the Greeks who gave us geometry. They actually computed the size of the earth. Eratosthenes.

But no one would claim that the "Zeus hypothesis" is essential for going geometry, or logic, or philosophy, or any of the other Greek achievements. If such a claim were made, you would be among the first to respond: "Come now, one can do geometry without even thinking about the Olympian gods!" Yes, that's true. And one can do physics without thinking about Genesis, or the Sermon on the Mount. I believe the fallacy you are deeply entangled with is known as post hoc, propter hoc (after this, [thus] because of this]. I quite agree that (at least nowadays) our society is congenial to scientific work. But I suspect we could do our science if we were pagan Greeks. Can't prove it.

Another reminder: notwithstanding constant dodges, evasions, excuses, and attempts to provoke a flame war (and thus an excuse to have the thread pulled), we are all waiting for g3k to answer a simple question: HOW OLD IS THE EARTH?. A recent history of this question is to be found at post 1275.

Well now ... It's certainly true that our scientific advances have been accomplished in a society that is essentially Christian. Yet our method of thinking about such matters is inherently Greek. It was ol' Aristotle --

No, (Francis) Bacon's scientific method of inductive reasoning was the rejection of Aristotle's method of deductive reasoning. Science was the product of Christian Europe, not ancient Greece.

If it wasn't why didn't the Greeks split the atom? It took us about 350 years to accomplish this feat since Novum Organum. Independent Greece lasted about that long after Aristotle's death and, of course, Aristotle's methods were adopted by the Romans and even Europe up until Bacon.

If the nuclear science was too dificult how about steamships or a smallpox vaccine?

Aristotle was certainly not stupid but you can make a case that his four elements (or the adoption by conventional wisdom that there were just four elements) may have actually held back scientific advancement. This is what I fear the extreme emotional instance on following a basically Darwinian model may do with science today.

On a related matter, did you ever consider how much better the descriptions of nature that are in the Bible hold up so much better than those of Aristotle or any other ancient work?