Posted on 04/15/2017 8:48:53 AM PDT by Kaslin
It’s Easter, a time when Christians the world over commemorate the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of their Lord and Savior.
However, it isn’t just Christians, but anyone and everyone who regularly reaps the incalculable benefits of Western civilization that should be grateful for the fact that Jesus of Nazareth walked among us. In virtually every conceivable way, Jesus, courtesy of the legions of disciples that He spawned throughout the centuries, has made the world that we take for granted.
Though it will doubtless come as an enormous shock to such Christophobic atheists as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and their ilk, it is nonetheless true that one especially significant contribution that Christianity made to the world is that of science.
No one has better established this than Rodney Stark, a sociologist of religion who makes his home at Baylor University, the school from which I received a master’s degree in philosophy. Stark’s The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, though published 12 years ago, is worth revisiting, particularly at this time when, not unlike at Christmas, journalists and others in the media presume to address the topic of Jesus.
In his introduction, Stark cuts to the quick in identifying why all too few Westerners are unaware of the richness of their religious inheritance. “During the past century, Western intellectuals have been more than willing to trace European imperialism to Christian origins, but they have been entirely unwilling to recognize that Christianity made any contribution (other than intolerance) to the Western capacity to dominate.” Instead, “the West is said to have surged ahead precisely as it overcame religious barriers to progress, especially those impeding science.”
Stark’s reply to this conventional wisdom is to the point: “Nonsense.”
He is unequivocal: “The success of the West, including the rise of science, rested entirely on religious foundations, and the people who brought it about were devout Christians” (emphasis added).
Christians, in stark contrast to virtually every other ancient tradition, endorsed a linear conception of time and a resolutely non-cyclical vision of the universe. The universe had a beginning because it was created by one, supreme, rational God. These metaphysical ideas in turn gave rise to the belief that the material world was at once good and rational. Hence, it warranted exploration.
From this metaphysic sprang as well the belief in progress.
The emergence of modern science was the culmination of centuries’ worth of the achievements of medieval Christian thinkers. Specifically, science was made possible by the twelfth-century creation of the university—another of Christianity’s gifts to humanity. The belief in the rationality of the material world is nothing more or less than a belief that the universe is governed by natural laws. In the absence of this idea, science never could have come about.
Stark draws our attention to the common error of confusing technology and observation with science. “Science,” he writes, “is a method utilized in organized efforts to formulate explanations of nature, always subject to modifications and corrections through systematic observations” (emphases original).
What this means is that science consists of two parts: theory and research. “Hence, the earlier technical innovations of Greco-Roman times, of Islam, of China, let alone those achieved in pre-historical times, do not constitute science and are better described as lore, skills, wisdom, techniques, crafts, technologies, engineering, learning, or simply knowledge.”
Stark is blunt: “Real science arose only once: in Europe”—in Christian Europe. “China, Islam, India, and ancient Greece and Rome each had a highly developed alchemy. But only in Europe did alchemy develop into chemistry. By the same token, many societies developed elaborate systems of astrology, but only in Europe did astrology develop into astronomy.”
The reason for this has everything to do with Christian Europe’s vision of God.
To further substantiate his point, Stark quotes Alfred North Whitehead, a 20th century philosopher and mathematician who co-authored, with the famed atheist philosopher, Bertrand Russell, their Principia Mathematica. While delivering a Lowell Lecture at Harvard in the 1920’s, Whitehead shocked his fellow academics when he remarked that “faith in the possibility of science” derived from “medieval theology.”
Whitehead elaborated: “The greatest contribution of medievalism to the formation of the scientific movement,” he remarked, was “the inexpugnable belief” in “a secret that can be unveiled.” That this “conviction” has seized “the European mind” can only be explained in terms of “the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher.”
This conception of God led to the notion that every “detail” in nature “was supervised and ordered: the search into nature could only result in the vindication of the faith in rationality.”
And there is no question that all of the great scientists of the early modern era, men like Descartes, Galileo, Newton, and Kepler, “confess[ed]…their absolute faith in a creator God, whose work incorporated rational rules awaiting discovery.”
In summation, Stark writes: “The rise of science was not an extension of classical learning. It was the natural outgrowth of Christian doctrine: nature exists because it was created by God. In order to love and honor God, it is necessary to fully appreciate the wonders of his handiwork. Because God is perfect, his handiwork functions in accord with immutable principles. By the full use of our God-given powers of reason and observation, it ought to be possible to discover these principles.”
He concludes: “These were the crucial ideas that explain why science arose in Christian Europe and nowhere else.”
Science, with all of the ways in which it has enriched human existence, would never had come about if not for Christianity.
Remember this the next time some historical illiterate, like one of the so-called “new” atheists, tries to reinforce the fiction that Christianity and science are at odds.
“Your argument seems to be that Descartes was persecuted by the Church, therefore he was not a product of Christian culture and cannot be said to have been produced by Christian culture.”
The author premises that the Christian Doctrine is what promoted our science. He then lists first Descartes as an example.
WTH! Descartes was the antithesis of the Christian Doctrine that banned his works!
“This article is complete and utter garbage designed to make Christians feel good about themselves.”
Poster should have put it under religion.
Fear of persecution by the Christian church is always remediable by finding refuge in the Christian God.
“That is the counter argument. Science sprang from Christianity, and not from other religions. The persecutions of the Church were relatively feeble attempts that did not stop the development of science.”
Burning people at the stake is a feeble attempt?
“In fact, the Church did numerous things to promote science. The pope funded Galileo, as noted above, as it did many early scientists.”
In 1979 the church set up an academy to investigate Galileo. After 12 years of study they finally concluded that Galileo was right and the Church was wrong!
“Fear of persecution by the Christian church is always remediable by finding refuge in the Christian God.”
?
That is all I am saying.
“Because their basic philosophies were not compatible with scientific inquiry and the search for truth.”
“Bruno’s pantheism was also a matter of grave concern.[4] The Inquisition found him guilty, and he was burned at the stake in Rome’s Campo de’ Fiori in 1600.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno
It's hard to publish under those conditions. He was ill, not dead.
afraid of the Christian Church
Not sure what that means. It was a novel theory. Not just the Church found it extraordinary, but everyone--starting with other scientists. But as I say, the Pope of that time was very interested in his work, and his own bishop insisted he publish everything he had.
Galileo showed that the planets orbited the sun by documenting the phases of Venus
. . . but nothing could be proven because there were no telescopes with fine enough resolution until the 19th century. Showing isn't proving.
LOL!
? Not sure what you mean.
” But as I say, the Pope of that time was very interested in his work, and his own bishop insisted he publish everything he had.”
Actually no.
“? Not sure what you mean.”
You don’t understand what it means when someone laughs at you?
“but nothing could be proven because there were no telescopes with fine enough resolution until the 19th century. Showing isn’t proving. “
OK. Galileo showed that Venus did not orbit the earth proving that the earth was not the center of the universe ...
The author premises that the Christian Doctrine is what promoted our science. He then lists first Descartes as an example.
They are:
Linear time and a non-cyclical view of the universe.
A belief that the world follows specific, rational, rules
In addition, Christianity believed in truth, and that studying nature was another way to discover truth.
You are not addressing the claims of the author.
“You are not addressing the claims of the author.”
I am addressing his use of Descartes as an example of his misunderstanding history.
“Linear time and a non-cyclical view of the universe.”
Which may be proven to be wrong.
Oh, I do.
Open a book, or go online. Look up "Copernicus." I gather you can read, so take it from there.
Then get back to me and tell me about Copernicus and why he published his theories of planetary motion. I'll be here.
“Open a book, or go online. Look up “Copernicus.” I gather you can read, so take it from there.
Then get back to me and tell me about Copernicus and why he published his theories of planetary motion.”
If he had the support of the church, then why was it banned by the church?
In 1539 Georg Joachim Rheticus, a young mathematician from Wittenberg, arrived in Frauenburg (Frombork) to study with him. Rheticus read Copernicus’ manuscript and immediately wrote a non-technical summary of its main theories in the form of an open letter addressed to Schöner, his astrology teacher in Nürnberg; he published this letter as the Narratio Prima in Danzig in 1540. Rheticus’ friend and mentor Achilles Gasser published a second edition of the Narratio in Basel in 1541. Due to its friendly reception, Copernicus finally agreed to publication of more of his main work—in 1542, a treatise on trigonometry, which was taken from the second book of the still unpublished De revolutionibus. Rheticus published it in Copernicus’ name.
Under strong pressure from Rheticus, and having seen that the first general reception of his work had not been unfavorable, Copernicus finally agreed to give the book to his close friend, Bishop Tiedemann Giese, to be delivered to Rheticus in Wittenberg for printing by Johannes Petreius at Nürnberg (Nuremberg). It was published just before Copernicus’ death, in 1543.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_revolutionibus_orbium_coelestium
“In addition, Christianity believed in truth, “
Then why did they burn people at the stake for exposing new ideas?
“In addition, Christianity believed in truth, “
Then why did they burn people at the stake for exposing new ideas?
Straw man argument. Believing in truth as a concept is separate from penalties for “exposing new ideas”.
Yes, Bruno was burned at the stake. He was also shielded and protected by protestant Christians and Henry III. He was arrested after he returned to Italy, and executed seven years later.
It is not hard to find examples of injustice. It is hard to find examples of other civilizations that believed in a rational universe, the existence of truth, and linear time.
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