Revisionist History

[marketandchurch]

I'm tired of this Lie, and yes, it is a Lie, that is being peddled by atheists, trying to revise the history of science & Christianity's contributions(or impediments) to it.

The greek golden years in math and science ended 200 years before the birth of Christ. And between then and 1100, it was the world of Islam that had preserved & pioneered scientific thought. But around 1100, when Christian Europe began to recover from the barbarians, was when scholars & logicians of all stripe began to re-embrace the sciences of pagans, from the Egyptians, to the Babylonians, and certainly the Greeks.

It was the Byzantines who moved heaven and earth to unearth Greek pagan knowledge of mathematics, and would work with Muslims, who have perserved much of Greek literature, and Greek pagan science mathematics, to advance early Christianity's body of knowledge about philosophical naturalism, as it was called during those days. From 1100, to 1600, began the first on-going study of science via the establishing of the University System, to building of the body of science, that would create the science-literate public, necessary to launch the Scientific revolution.

Medevil Christians were so comfortable with viewing the Universe as a natural entity, wherein the Supernatural was outside of it, that they often referred to the Universe as a Machine, with Mechanics, that work in accordance to the laws and limitations of the natural Universe. And much of what helped the Christians to launch the scientific revolution was their view that God was outside of nature, and that this God & law-giver has created, and ordered a lawful Universe. The Pagans believed that nature had a will of its own, and that the supernatural existed within the natural, and was their great impediment to advancing science. We thank Christianity for Oresme, Darwin, St. Aquinas, Newton, Kepler, Copernicus, & everything from Newtonian Mechanics, to our theory of Optics, is owed to them, and the Christian framework they worked under, that brought about the Scientific revolution.

And by the end of the middle ages, there were 100's of Christian Universities across Europe, funded & led by Christians, tuning out 10's of thousands bright scientists, theorists, and logicians. Galileo's assessment of the Copernican theory was based on the clergy Oresme's findings, 300 years before Galileo. The Aristotelian view of the world is what slowed the progress of science in Europe, which is not saying much considering how much Europe advanced in that period of 500 years, in light of the scientific community's strident upholding of Aristotle's views.

I've been reading the work of Pierre Duhem, Alistair Crombie, and a number of other Historians/Scientists. It was Christian Europe who launched the Scientific revolution, and Clergy who built the body of knowledge that modern science is based upon. Science had been going on around the world prior to Christian Europe's advancement, the Chinese had brilliant science, so did the Arabs, but none of them ever launched a scientific revolution, and Christian Europe did.

Atheists on here state it as a fact that Christianity was anti science, and the reason for the lack of scientific progress over the course of 500 years, and that is a LIE, and unless you want to make a thorough case for it, please do not state it as fact. It is revisionary history, an interpretation of history that the facts do not support. I've run into 4 atheists on this site who just say it passingly, as if it's just a throw-away line, a given, a truth, and if you are going to state such a claim as fact, make the case for it.

[marketandchurch]

Just some additional thoughts...

The Aristotelian view dominated the academic and politics of much of that period, in the same way that the Universe had no beginning and the material has always existed dominated much of the scientific community's framework, 200 years prior to Einstein's theory of General Relativity, & even 40 years after General relativity, many in the Scientific community couldn't bring themselves to embrace the Big Bang.

Do we blame the non-advancement in Physics and Cosmology on the preferred views of scientists? Their lab coats is not a cloak that makes them impervious to the failings of the human condition. Even Einstein himself bragged how he wanted the Universe to spread from everlasting-to-everlasting, even after his theory of general relativity was suggesting a Universe that was expanding, one that was expanding from an initial point...

The incident surrounding Galileo shouldn't be cited as the anti-science position of the church, but rather, a freak accident of great rarity. Don't argue the incident of Galileo as proof of the church's anti-science bigotry unless you can defend it. And if you do defend that, then defend the Scientific community's roasting of many other characters throughout history, such as when the Big Bang Theory was first presented in the early 1900's, and excused as anti-science creationist drivel, even though much of it was good science, whose underpinnings date back to Kepler & Newton, much in the same way that many academics who held Aristotle's view of the world accused Galileo as having an unfounded basis for his heliocentric views, which by the way, could not be proven in Galileo's day...

It is a double standard to blame the failings of science between 1100 through 1600 on Christianity, then champion the foundings of science between 1600 and today as evidence of what happens when the church's presence recedes. Galileo is also not a good example of anti-science sentiment on behalf of Christian Europe.

[kayky]

I think the role of Christianity in scientific progress has been a mixed bag. Its earliest effects were disastrous. We will never know for certain the enormity of what was lost when Christians burned the library at Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. There can be no doubt that there was a great deal of antipathy between the early church and what it perceived as the evil of "pagan" knowledge. It was this very antipathy that plunged Europe into the Dark Ages. To be fair, it was the Irish monks in their remote monasteries that preserved some of this ancient knowledge by painstakingly copying the manuscripts they managed to get access to by hand.

It was the rise of Protestantism and the decline of the power of the church in Rome that made the Renaissance possible. So I suppose it would be only fair to say that Christianity had a role in this as well. But it is hardly a point of evidence to name all the Christians who began to contribute to science during this time, and even later, since most Europeans would have considered themselves Christians at this point.

Galileo is an excellent example of the anti-science stance often taken by the church. I can't imagine why anyone would try to claim otherwise.

[Nilloc James]

I think it is important not to generalize too much here. There was a time when the mulsim states where the most scientifically advanced - then they ceased to be that way. What is pro-science and what iisnt cant change because religons arent stagnent, they change.

What I see in christianity looking from the outside is a division. Part of christianity is moving towards science and part of it is fearful of science. Which side wins will determine if the christain countries will continue to be the most scientifically advanced.

If the reactionist part of christianity wins, then I suspect one or more of the asain countries will become the next scientific leader.

[kayky]

[Replying to post 4 by Nilloc James]

I think we "westerners" sometimes forget that human society has always existed outside of "western civilization"!

[marketandchurch]

I think the role of Christianity in scientific progress has been a mixed bag. Its earliest effects were disastrous. We will never know for certain the enormity of what was lost when Christians burned the library at Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. There can be no doubt that there was a great deal of antipathy between the early church and what it perceived as the evil of "pagan" knowledge. It was this very antipathy that plunged Europe into the Dark Ages.

Let's Frame Alexandria In The Proper Context:

The burning of Alexandria was not anti-science. It was anti-pagan. They stormed the library burning what they thought was a pagan-bastion, with their tools & instruments & literature. The Christians at the time of the burning knew what a colossal loss to humanity that the burning of the library was. It was purely anti-pagan sentiment paired with a power-trip, with the Christian leadership of the time fanning the flames of hate & distrust amongst the early Christian to wipe out every sentiment of heathen literature, thought, understanding, etc. This incident happened in one spot, Egypt. Christiandom was largely in Europe. It is not fair to Christianity to blame one specific accident in Alexandria Egypt, as being the Christian position on science. It was, after all, Christanity who fought tirelessly to recover the Greek, Babylonian, and Egyptian texts, to fill in the gaps of history that were largely lost in the attempt to Christianize these areas. They worked with the Muslims, who had preserved the pagan natural philosophy of the Greeks, the mathematics of the Egyptians, and the Astronomy of the Babylonians, to achieve this.


Contrast With Islam:
This was, by the way, during the infancy of the religion, Christians in Egypt, who are in no way representative of the Christian collective, burned down a library because it was a heathen symbolism, and rebounded to fully embrace science following the barbarian invasions of Europe. Al Mansur burned down Al Hakam's great Library of Cordoba, also one of the greatest libraries that ever existed, and Islam never recovered scientifically.


How Does This Prove Anything?
How does all of this support your reasoning that the Burning of the Library of Alexandria was Christianity's plunge in to the supposed "dark ages." Which I might add, that this time was a volatile time in Church history, considering the wars that it was involved with, and the process of nation-building an entire empire from the ground up, with this new religion.

The event happened isolated from the rest of the Christian world, by a small pocket of Christians. A more representative view of Christianity and its position towards science can be seen in St. Augustine, who actually lived in Christian-dom, and founded the concept of the Catholic Church. Augustine and the large body of followers he amassed embraced pagan sciences, and called for a non-literal reading of the 7 day creation account in Genesis. It would be this Augustine tradition that would begin the founding of the Modern University, as an institution to collect science, from the pagans, through reaching out to the Greeks, Egyptians, and namely Islam, to initiate what would become the first ongoing study of science in human history.

[marketandchurch]

To be fair, it was the Irish monks in their remote monasteries that preserved some of this ancient knowledge by painstakingly copying the manuscripts they managed to get access to by hand.

It was the rise of Protestantism and the decline of the power of the church in Rome that made the Renaissance possible. So I suppose it would be only fair to say that Christianity had a role in this as well. But it is hardly a point of evidence to name all the Christians who began to contribute to science during this time, and even later, since most Europeans would have considered themselves Christians at this point.

The University & Christianity's Embrace of Pagan Science:
It was the University that begin the first on-going study of science. It was a requirement of every theologian in the middle ages, as early as 1100, to be thoroughly versed in "natural philosophy," or in other words, greek pagan science. Every member of clergy read Archimedes, Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and Ptolemy. They studied geometry, they studied motion, and would lay the groundwork for the next generations of scientists/clergy.

It was St. Aquinas and St. Albert, who arose out of the Augustine tradition, who were the biggest movements and force in Christianity's embrace of pagan greek science. They transformed the academics of those times into archaeologists, mad with fervor to uncover the lost history of the times that came before them. It would be St. Aquinas evangelism of Greek science that would influence the great Bishop clergyman Nicholas Oresme, a great mathematician and physicist, and it is his works in motion and mathematics, that would help underpin Newtonian mechanics.


It isn't a matter of fairness:
To dismiss the science that was founded by the catholic church(the biggest supporters and funders of the University), is to dismiss Oresme, Galileo, Brahe, Bennedetti, Augustine, and all the science that underpinned the scientific revolution.

It's not a matter of fairness to acknowledge the truth of central role that Christianity played in the development of science. Chinese, Arab, and Greek science did not give us Descartes after all.


(a)Religious Identity:
That some suggest that the receding of religion gave us the science & scientists of modern times is entirely a moot & meaningless point then... since the religiosity or non-religiosity of a person does not factor into the darn good science we have.... the pagans had great science, the Christians(especially the Catholics) had great science, and now the atheists have great science, and in nowhere along the way was the contributions of any group any-less important and any-less monumental because of their theistic or non-theistic identity. You might as well grade scientists by their choice of music, or any other way you want to divide this group by.

[marketandchurch]

I think it is important not to generalize too much here. There was a time when the mulsim states where the most scientifically advanced - then they ceased to be that way. What is pro-science and what iisnt cant change because religons arent stagnent, they change.

To be honest, the majority of the body of knowledge that the world of Islam had wasn't Islamic Science, it was Arabic science that was now under the rule of Islam. Islam came about around 600 AD, and it's run with science was about 500 years, in which time, it was largely a collection of what it had taken from those who came before them, such as the Egyptians, Babylonians, and their interactions with the Gelations, and Persians, and even as far east as India.

But it's scientific pursuit and aspirations died, and the seminal event that many scholars point to in Islamic history as it's fallout with Science, was the burning of the Library of Cordoba, at around the end of that 500-600 year run with science. The library was burnt to please Muslim clerics in Spain, and it was from that point on that the faith as a whole turned hostile towards science that didn't comport to it's theological views. They even became hostile towards Greek philosophical thought, and had the Christian Byzantines not worked tirelessly to unearth and collect as much pagan science as it possibly could, especially from it's sources in Cordoba but as well throughout the Muslim world, then most of that body of knowledge would have been lost to history, and there is a very likelihood that Christian Europe would not have been able to launch the Scientific Revolution.

[marketandchurch]

What I see in christianity looking from the outside is a division. Part of christianity is moving towards science and part of it is fearful of science. Which side wins will determine if the christain countries will continue to be the most scientifically advanced.

If the reactionist part of christianity wins, then I suspect one or more of the asain countries will become the next scientific leader.

I seem to be in a minority in the following assessment I am about to make... but I'll make it anyways.

The Christian opposition to Evolution is not anti-science. Unless opposing any bit of science makes one anti-science... They only oppose half of evolution, the macro-evolutionary half, and that is only one of many aspects of biology, which is only 1/3 of the natural sciences, and the weakest of the three. The only fully hard science is physics, and to a slightly lesser extant, chemistry. So if one opposes Macro-evolution, and thinks that the world was made in a literal 7 day creation account, then fine. They aren't going to make any less great a pediatric heart surgeon, pharmacologist, or nuclear engineer for holding such a position.

Being opposed to 1/2 of 1/3 of the sciences doesn't make you anti-science.


Atheists get all wound up and over-inflate evolution, because it is a religious holy tenant of atheism. Denounce Newtonian mechanics because you can't square it with General relativity, and people could care less. That's your business, which in any case, who cares about math and physics... but dare to denounce Evolution, and you will face the full inquisition of atheism. That they do care about.

[Nilloc James]

[Replying to post 4 by Nilloc James]

I think we "westerners" sometimes forget that human society has always existed outside of "western civilization"!

Could you clarify what is beig said here?