Social scientist Rodney Stark offers an alternative to the Sunday magazine truisms about the relationship between Christianity and science:
The basis for much of the antipathy toward Christianity is the image of the medieval Catholic Church fostered by “distinguished bigots,” as Stark calls Edward Gibbon and Voltaire among other Enlightenment notables. Stark, relying on primary source historians like the renowned Marc Bloch, shows, on the contrary, that medieval Catholicism was the breeding ground for modernity.
Most, if not all, ancient societies believed in fate. However, Yahweh gave humans the wondrous and terrifying attribute of free will, freedom. Individual freedom in the West then merged with the legacy of Athenian democracy and the Roman republican tradition to form “the new democratic experiments in the medieval Italian city-states,” as Stark reminds us.
These rival polities organized the first universities in a unique tradition of institutional learning and discourse which began at Bologna then spread to Oxford, Paris and elsewhere in Europe. From the medieval university science was born.
The distinguished philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead, astonished a Harvard audience in 1925 when he said that science is a “derivative of medieval theology [since it arose] from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher.”Terry Scambray, “No False Gods Before Me: A Review of Rodney Stark’s Work” at New English Review
The Sunday mag truisms are more popular because they involve no hard thinking.
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See also: Psychology: Study of religion takes evidence-based turn. Association with things most people see as positive does not, of course, make a religion “true.” It does, however, make one wonder about the perspective of psychologists who don’t seem able to recognize the pattern.
Science wasn’t invented by Christianity. Any culture that developed, improved and used technology participated in the scientific process. Christianity certainly made a significant contribution, but so did Islam, China, Japan, the Mayans, Incans and capitalists.
To poke the hornet’s nest, I would assert that warfare and aggression have contributed more to science than any religion has.
@ed george
Which one’s knew the universe to be intelligent, rational and worthy of study?
To Ed George:
The development, improvement and use of technology has little to do with the scientific method as we know it today. Science (to paraphrase the late Stanley Jaki) was stillborn in many societies whereas Christianity provided the nurturing womb from which it sprung. Science required the rationality of a benevolent God to allow us to “think His thoughts after Him”.
If you want to “poke the hornet’s nest” you’d better be prepared to get stung!
Buffalo
I don’t know. Do you?
ronvanwegen @ 3
Science flourished for a period in other societies without the dubious benefits of Christianity. You could say that the latest iteration of science was fostered by European Christianity but it is only distinctly un-Christian hubris that claims that science could not exist without it.
This is the same “benevolent” God who is supposed to have wiped out almost all life on Earth because it displeased Him, an irrational act if ever there was one, given that as an omniscient and omnipotent deity He should have foreseen the problem and taken whatever corrective measures He thought necessary without going to the extreme lengths of genocide – should that be biocide?
RV
That might be a surprise to many.
I believe in God, but I don’t believe this. He gave us free will to think thoughts beyond what he wants us to think, with the hope that we wouldn’t. Science is that fine line between the two.
Sting away. 🙂
Please note that Seversky and Ed George are not defending the claim that Atheistic Materialism and/or Methodological Naturalism was the worldview from which modern science was born. (Which is the prevailing worldview taught as the supposedly foundational ‘scientific’ worldview in American Universities).
,,, Which is good that Seversky and Ed George are not defending the Atheistic worldview as the supposedly foundational worldview in which modern science finds its basis, since it is a completely insane worldview that denies the reality of persons, free will, morality, meaning, purpose and value.
Instead of trying to defend their indefensible worldview, Seversky and Ed George instead focus their attack on Christianity and try to say that Christianity was not necessary for the rise of science.
Yet, many noted scholars, who have studied this issue in detail, have found that a culture that was dominated by the Christian worldview was necessary for the rise of modern science
Since Atheists cannot defend their insane worldview as the foundational scientific worldview, Atheists instead focus their attack on Christianity by putting forth a false revisionist history. This false revisionist history put forth by Atheist is called the “Warfare Thesis”
Several Myths that have been put forward in the atheist’s ‘warfare thesis’ are debunked in the following site:
The main theme of this false revisionist history of the ‘warfare thesis’, that is put forward by atheists, is that ‘enlightenment’ thinking supposedly saved us from the ‘dark ages’ of Christianity:
Another ancient historian, through his studies of ancient history, also finds that the belief that the ‘enlightenment’ thinking saved western civilization from the ‘dark ages’ of Christianity is a false revisionist history. The truth turns out to be that Christianity saved western civilization from the ‘dark ages’ of the Greeks and the Romans.
Thus in conclusion, the simple fact of the matter, despite what may be taught by Atheists in American Universities, is that Atheistic materialism, and/or methodological naturalism, is NOT the foundational worldview in which modern science finds its basis, (indeed, to repeat, Atheistic materialism is a completely insane worldview), but instead, the only way that Atheists are able to present their worldview as remotely scientific is by relying on the wholesale lies and deception that are inherent in their false revisionist history against Christianity, i.e. the false ‘warfare thesis’.
One final note, not only was a culture that was thoroughly dominated by the Christian worldview necessary for the rise of modern science, I also hold that by allowing agent causality back into the picture of modern physics, (as quantum physics itself now demands, and as the Christian founders of modern physics originally envisioned, (Sir Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday, and Max Planck, to name a few), then a empirically backed reconciliation, (via the Shroud of Turin), between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, i.e. the ‘Theory of Everything’, readily pops out for us in Christ’s resurrection from the dead.
Verse:
BA77
Agreed. I did not say that. I was just pointing out that the claim that Christianity was responsible for modern science is not only false hubris, it is just plain false. Modern science evolved over many centuries with the assistance of many cultures and worldviews, including naturalism.
Every worldview (Christian, Muslim, atheist, materialism, etc.) comes to the table with their own set of biases, blind spots and taboo avenues of inquiry. Science has evolved over the centuries by acknowledging them and, not always successfully, trying to set them aside.
The only false hubris is in your own imaginary and unsubstantiated, beliefs which are based on ignorance and/or atheistic lies and deceptions.. I provided references and can provide more.
Remember, we are not talking ‘stillbirths’ of modern science or occasional flashes of insight here or there.. We are talking about an entire culture dominated by the Christian worldview, i.e. of a rational creator and that we are ‘made in his image’,,,where modern science could germinate, take root and flourish throughout the entire society into the fruitful field that it has become..
And again, atheism in particular (which you tried to sneak into your list of worldviews)), contributed absolutely nothing to the birth of modern science. NOTHING!
Atheistic materialism is a completely insane worldview.
BA77
I’m not an atheist. But thank you for concluding that my opinions are based on ignorance or lies. Obviously there is no value in attempting to have an honest discussion with you. I will continue to read your comments, as I find many of them very interesting, but this will be my last comment to you. I wish you a very merry Christmas and may you find what you are looking for in life, and after.
Ed George, I am more than willing to have an ‘honest discussion’. Unfortunately, since you, like Darwinists in general, steadfastly refuse to ever admit when you are wrong, having an ‘honest discussion’ is not an option. My only avenue is to shine the light of truth on your false claims and expose them for what they are.
Since you have not even attempted to rigorously defend your claims with trustworthy sources, but have only repeated your false claims and then feigned hurt feelings when they were refuted, I am more than satisfied that the unbiased reader will, thus far, clearly see who is being forthright with this issue and who is not.
And, since you have not even attempted to defend atheistic materialism as the supposedly scientific worldview, (as is taught in most American Universities), I am also more than satisfied that I have made the main point I was trying to make clear,, i.e. that atheistic materialism is a completely insane worldview.
Supplemental note:
One of the ironies of modern atheistic naturalism, whose proponents often posture as self-appointed defenders of science, is that naturalism, or its insane twin materialism, cannot provide an adequate basis for science. For example, the fact is we cannot even begin to do science unless we make some metaphysical assumptions about science. Another irony, at least according to physicist and theologian Ian Barbour, is that the assumptions that a scientist must make to do science are basically Biblical assumptions.
“A good case can be made,” Barbour writes, “that the doctrine of creation helped set the stage for scientific activity.”
Christian philosopher Peter S. Williams, who provides the above quote from Barbour in his on-line article, “Does Science Disprove God?” lists several presuppositions of science that he argues “derive warrant from the theistic doctrine of creation:
Again, notice that these presuppositions themselves cannot be proven by empirical science. Therefore, a science based epistemology, i.e. “scientism,” of any kind cannot be true.
Williams observes that, “There is thus a wide-ranging consonance between Christianity and the presuppositions of science.” He then goes on to quote Barbour again.
“Both Greek and biblical thought asserted that the world is orderly and intelligible. But the Greeks held that this order is necessary and that one can therefore deduce its structure from first principles. Only biblical thought held that God created both form and matter, meaning that the world did not have to be as it is and that the details of its order can be discovered only by observation. Moreover, while nature is real and good in the biblical view, it is not itself divine, as many ancient cultures held, and it is therefore permissible to experiment on it… it does appear that the idea of creation gave a religious legitimacy to scientific inquiry.”
http://www.bethinking.org/does.....scientific
Barbour is not alone here. Both Alfred North Whitehead and American physicist Robert Oppenheimer understood that historically a Christian milieu was in fact necessary for the development of science. The famous Christian writer and University of Cambridge professor C.S. Lewis summarized the position this way: “Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a [Lawgiver.]”
Indeed, all the early scientist who were part of the so-called scientific revolution: Galileo, Kepler, Newton were Christian theists.
Seversky @5,
You sound like a little kid whose Dad spanked him for riding his tricycle in the street, carrying on about how cruel his Dad was for spanking him for no good reason whatsoever. After all, it is obvious to everybody that there is a lot more room in the street than there is in the driveway. “I was just wanting a little more room to ride around in; I wasn’t doing anything bad to anybody. Then, out of the blue, Dad rushed at me with a look of panic on his face, yanks me off of my trike with one hand, picks up my trike in the other, and marches me back onto the driveway, yelling something about a car, and then spanks my butt! And I didn’t see even one car! My Dad is obviously a liar and a monster!”
You owe every contented and happy moment of your life to God, Who holds you in existence instant by instant. He paid the debt for the evil you have done in your life, through suffering you can’t even imagine, and offers you eternal happiness if you will just take Him up on it. His thoughts are farther above your thoughts than were the father’s thoughts above his child he spanked.
God owns you twice. First, because He created you and holds you in existence, secondly, because He redeemed you. Human life belongs to God. He calls it forth, and He calls it back to Himself when He is good and ready to do so. His command to us was “Thou shalt do no murder.” When God takes human life, it isn’t murder or “genocide,” as you put it. God can do what He wants with what He owns.
What is irrational is a cynical self-centered and self-righteous individual trying to convert everyone he encounters on-line to his narrow cynical worldview.