joedad

Why didn't christianity, the study of physics and history, or the Renaissance originate in Tasmania or Iceland, or Patagonia, or on the Galapagos or in Central America? There must be acceptable reasons, and I look forward to your qualified response.

Religion is embedded within science and science within the larger human experience. Science defined:Religion is certainly a natural phenomenon, as is science. Both attempt to explain the natural.

But let's cut to the chase, Bede. Why and how is it that christianity didn't originate in these other locations? I'm just verifying your credentials.

Family Man

Nah, it has to be the ten atheist myth one. The one that started with myth "There was a historical conflict between science and religion." I read that as no conflict myself, and I don't think it was an unreasonable reading. But your statements on this thread has shed more light on your thinking and I can see your point of view more clearly now.

A better myth would be: "There was such a conflict between science and religion that science was greatly harmed." Many do believe that, but I would agree with you that the conflict that did exist did little that harmed science. Had there been no conflict, I don't think our history would be that much different.

NOGO

Impressive!

I do not know how many diplomas you accumulated.
I base my assessment on the debate I had with you concerning Copernicus, Ptolemy and ancient Greek's contribution to astronomy and science.

Based on that debate it became clear to me that you do not have the depth required to understand the subject matter.

You still question my statement that Copernicus did more than just put the Sun in the middle. Copernicus removed the 24 hour apparent movement of the celestial bodies and derived the actual orbits of the planets. He then computed the centre of rotation which ended up not far the Sun. Copernicus tore Ptolemy's model apart and rebuilt it from scratch.

I challenge you to find anybody who will contradict this statement.

Surely, a Major in Physics can understand this.

You also failed to understand that Eratosthenes' method was correct and that only his means of measuring were limited. Therefore his science and understanding of the situation were right. Method and understanding matters much more in science than accuracy in measurements which rely on present technology.

lpetrich

NOGO:
Bede asks why in Christian Europe and not elsewhere?

And why western and central Europe, and not eastern Europe?

I ask why in ancient Greece and not in ancient Israel?

If the Jews had done, in the field of science, what the Greeks have done we would simply be unable to shut Bede up. But as it stands all that he can do is look foolish.

I agree -- look at what kind of "science" the Bible has. Its writers had very little interest in that sort of subject; one has to work out their views form offhand comments like the Joshua Sun miracle. The noncanonical book 1 Enoch goes into more detail, as Robert Schadewald had described; the Earth is a flat disk and the sky a bowl overhead with doors at its base for the Sun, Moon, and stars to enter and exit; they follow the sky-bowl's rim from their setting places to their rising places.

Leviticus 11 starts off halfway-reasonably, by classifying animals according to their extremities and whether they chew the cud, but moves on to make some serious mistakes, like stating that rabbits chew the cud and that grasshoppers have four legs. If one is careful to check on what sort of feet goats and donkeys have, then why not also do that with grasshoppers? Especially since the rest of the book contains precise details on various sorts of offerings, and tells the story of how Nadab and Abihu were zapped for offering incorrect incense ("strange fire").

At any rate, Leviticus 11 does not come close to Aristotle's taxonomy:

Blooded (vertebrates)
-- Viviparous quadrupeds (land mammals)
-- Birds
-- Oviparous quadrupeds (reptiles and amphibians)
-- Fish
-- Cetaceans (Aristotle did not realize their mammalian nature)
Bloodless (invertebrates)
-- Soft animals (cephalopods)
-- Crustaceans
-- Land arthropods (insects, arachnids, myriapods)
-- Shelled animals (shelled mollusks, echinoderms, etc.)
-- Plant-animals (cnidarians, etc., which superficially resemble plants)

There also isn't anything close to scientific method in the Bible, like examining rival hypotheses.

Amaleq13

Bede,


I don't want to be accused of "piling on" but I've read this entire thread TWICE (and believe me, I wish I had something better to do ) but I cannot find an actual argument defending your assertion:
I found two examples you offered (i.e. Copernicus and Kepler) that you apparently feel supports your case but no explanation of what specifically Christian belief was involved or why it was necessary for the conclusion reached. Those would appear to be fundamental requirements given the bold nature of your claim.

I also note that you offer a somewhat tempered version:
That seems like a much more reasonable claim and I'm not sure anyone would argue with it though I do wonder what, exactly, constitutes "Christian" metaphysics.

Regarding Copernicus, Bede wrote:
But your original claim wasn't just about "religious activity" but about Christianity. What specifically Christian belief was required for him to reach his conclusion? Why should we assume that no other belief system or set of assumptions could have obtained the same results?

Bede wrote:
No, you need to explain what specifically Christian belief was required for him to think of this idea. In other words, how is a belief that Jesus is the Messiah required in order to conceive of heliocentrism?

Bede wrote:
There is nothing inherently Christian about a belief that God could only create a uniform system so this, too, fails to support your claim. A Jew or Muslim could just as easily start out with such an assumption. In fact, an anal retentive atheist could start out with the assumption that orbits must be uniform and proceed from there. In order to prove your claim, you have to show that these are not realistic possibilities.

I think jonatha was on the right track when he wrote:
The only modification I would suggest is that it is not so much a belief in "God's will" that eventually resulted in science but the idea that there is some underlying, coherent structure to the universe. That seems to me to be inherent to just about any religious belief but even that is not sufficient to establish "necessity". It does not seem reasonable to me to suggest that it would be impossible for the human mind to conceive of this idea except from within the context of religious belief and you have certainly not offered anything substantive to compel me to think otherwise (let alone that it is only true for Christianity).

Family Man

I don't think this objection holds up very well. Bede isn't saying that Christianity was the only cause of modern science, but one of the necessary conditions. Eastern Europe could be ruled out because it didn't meet other conditions -- such as economic wealth and trade, perhaps.

That's not to say that Bede has come close to making his case. He hasn't. But I don't think that objection hurts his case either.

Sauron

If another religion or philisophy could have done "just as well", then how can Christianity be a necessary precondition? If Christianity had never come to Europe, are you saying that science would never have been practiced there?

If "no", then you are saying that another religion or philosophy could have filled the same role. Then Christianity is not a necessary precondition after all.

But if "yes", and Christianity is a necessary precondition, then how did science evolve in non-christian countries?

Bede

Where did I question this statement? It was monumentally irrelevant but not wrong. Copernicus was very good at geometry and took decades over his system of triple motion of the earth. But if Ptolemy had started with Cop's axioms he could have done the same thing. The only bit of geometric kit that Ptol lacked was the Tusi couple that Cop used to eliminate equant points. But the equants could have been eliminated with this technique in a geocentric model as well.

So NOGO, what is you point?

Eratos used some very basic geometry and a very long walk to guesstimate the radius of the earth. He used no new theory and didn't prove any existing one. Given his answer was extremely close to the modern accepted one, he must have had a lot of luck too. He was correct but hardly that clever.

Again, what is your point?

Amelq13. This thread is a continuation of earlier ones so might appear somewhat disconnected. The second and third articles here (http://www.bede.org.uk/historyindex.htm) might help, especially the third which, you'll be glad to hear, is short.

On Islam, as many point out, they had much of the same advantages as Latin Christendom and yet science went so far and then no further. The interesting question is why it stopped there and did not stop in the Christian West. The answer may have a lot to do with occasionallism which denies secondary causes and hence makes science pointless.

I have shown that Kep, Newton and Cop all introduced and worked through reformed world systems beause their religious beliefs made the current one(s) unacceptable. Those beliefs may not have been uniquely Christian but they were certainly present in their Christian belief. Hence, it is true to say that Christianity was a necessary impetus to their work.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

lpetrich

If "Christianity" was responsible for the growth of science, then why take such a long time to seriously restart what had stopped in the late pagan Roman Empire? And restart in western Europe, and not (say) the later Byzantine Empire or Russia?

And why doesn't Jesus Christ perform a lot of experiments in the Gospels? Like an early version of Francesco Redi's rotting-meat-and-flies experiment? Or Galileo's balls-down-ramps experiments? Or a lot of others that are easy to do with the technology available in 1st-cy. Palestine. Of course, if Jesus Christ had been God, he could easily have conjured up lots of more advanced technology; it would have been no different from his other miracle-working.

joedad

If those beliefs were not uniquely christian, all you've done is painted yourself into a corner.

Having agreed that christianity is not unique in many ways, it is necessary for you to state those uniquely christian attributes, and then demonstrate their connection to the emergence of science in Europe at this time. I think you owe your readership that much. Or else take the high road and simply state that your zeal got in the way of your professional judgement, and you stepped on it big time. No harm done.

And if you opt for the former, I certainly look forward to your listing some uniquely nonchristian attributes, and an explanation as to how these attributes prevented the emergence of science in religious populations elsewhere.