[PatrickHenry]

I appreciate your thumbnail descriptions of how some other religions deal with the truth/godhead issue. Most informative, and as we all should have suspected, not dispositive.

As a side note, Asimov once wrote -- in one of his rare moments of saying anything favorable about theism -- that the development of Western science might be, at least partially, attributable to our tradition of monotheism. That is, among the Greeks, the observation of confusing or inconsistent facts could be shrugged off as due to conflicts among the gods. In the monotheistic worldview, however, there had to be only one answer, one cause, one explanation.

[chronic_loser]

As a side note, Asimov once wrote -- in one of his rare moments of saying anything favorable about theism -- that the development of Western science might be, at least partially, attributable to our tradition of monotheism. That is, among the Greeks, the observation of confusing or inconsistent facts could be shrugged off as due to conflicts among the gods. In the monotheistic worldview, however, there had to be only one answer, one cause, one explanation.>>>>>

Actually Asimov was simply borrowing a thought (most of us do, you know, almost all the good thoughts have already been thunk) from Alfred North Whitehead.
Whitehead accurately stated that science as we know it is a product of a Christian worldview, in that the requisite belief in an orderly, observable, and consistent cosmos are the product of a Christian view of the universe. Modern science was birthed in such a world, and would not have been able to be sired elsewhere. So says Whitehead, anyway.

[AntiGuv]

Not too sure I can agree with Asimov on that one. The state of Christian logic was in rather sorry shape until the works of Aristotle were 'rediscovered' by Europe in the libraries of Moors during the Reconquista. So far as I can tell, you can brush off everything between Ptolemy and Galileo and not be much worse for wear as far as this topic..

I cannot think of a single instance where the Greek philosophers shrugged off enigmas or paradoxes as the caprice of the gods. It would not have made much sense considering they did not regard the universe as ultimately contingent upon the gods. Maybe they just didn't bother writing about such perceptions, if they ever actually had them.

Wonder how Asimov would explain the Muslims stuck in the 14th century..

[js1138]

In the monotheistic worldview, however, there had to be only one answer, one cause, one explanation.

For those inclined to attribute science to Western theism, I ask why Eastern theism isn't more suited to science. It is certainly more easily conformed to modern physics.