NOGO

My guess is that sometime during that millenium where Europe went brain dead, people would have picked up where the Greeks and Romans left off instead of spending their time looking at their bellybuttons and praising God for it.

GakuseiDon

Isn't that the inference of the OP, though, Chris?

I think this is the key. Scientists WERE encouraged. The first major modern universities were set up by the Church, for example. Having a belief in a God who set up a world that ran on consistent and predictable natural laws would have encouraged the development of the scientific method.

Other than cosmology, what threatened Christian doctrine before Darwin?

Harry Bosch

Religion grew because it was able to describe events that could not be easily understood. However, science has weakened religion, as it became the basis of describing phenomena. Rational people now turn to science. Just a couple days ago, a southern Baptist blamed the New Orleans flood on the sin that was based there. Supposedly, God was punishing the wicked. People suffering from mental illnesses were thought to have been possessed by demons rather than suffering from a chemical imbalance.

rob117

What is OP? I'm not good with acronyms. :huh:

BTW, jesusneverexisted.com (the site the first poster linked to), is what I like to call "secular backlash"- I'm just as atheistic as they are, I'm just not as angry.

A much better and more trustworthy source for a secular viewpoint would be infidels.org or skepticsannotatedbible.com

GakuseiDon

"OP" means "opening post in the thread" - or at least I think it does! I couldn't find it in any abbreviation lists, strangely enough.

neilgodfrey

Surely "Christianity" has been manipulated and shaped to justify both open-minded enquiry and closed-minded intolerance, science and superstition, racism and universal brotherhood, life and death, etc etc etc -- it is surely more often than not the rationalization employed by various actors and other movements and scarcely ever the driving force.

We have enough experience to see how science and technological progress make their greatest strides via the war industry. Jared Diamond (of "rise and fall of civilizations" fame) hypothesizes that it was the same with Europe at the end of those "dark ages". The evolutionary pressure of elbow-close rival and warring states, not scientists working in their basements and laboratories, was the primary mover that forced this or that particular new discovery to take off in a serious practical way, dragging the whole scientific and technological apparatus forward with it. Scientific and technological advances don't just come along and change a society at will. Established interests are a sure guarantor that things will never work that way, -- unless and until the established interests have the most to gain by the war industry itself.

Neil

Jabu Khan

I dont think it would have changed much it would just be the widely ignored, even by its own adherents, rules of a different religion that a sect uses to the way the various elites do today. It's not like there was a shortage of messianic jewish splinter groups when Rome chose christianity as its stae religion there isn't even a shortage now.

Philadelphia Lawyer

How about geology, medicine, philology and meteorology, for starters?

Bede

Clive, Humphrey's site, which the OP pointed to, makes very clear that if it were not for Christianity then we'd all be taking our holidays on Mars. So do be kind enough to read what I'm responding too before accusing me of strawmen. We both know that the Church would not object to glasses but given many people believe it objected to zero, a spherical earth and lightning conductors, the idea is not ridiculous enough to be a strawman. If Humphries said "The church said blindness was caused by God and it was impious to correct it" there would be some people who'd believe it.

On the other hand, this thread is quite encouraging. With a few exceptions, nobody is trying to defend Humphreys or the OP. Lot's of theories about what caused science and the renaissance, but not a lot on how the Church stopped it. Progress is being made, even at II.

Best wishes

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

PS: Forgot to mention, the story that the Inquisition went after Vesalius is another myth. Whenever you come across any a story about how the church attacked science, its safest to assume its bollocks because 90% of them are.

GakuseiDon

I don't know. How about them? Which church leaders attacked these things on doctrinal grounds before the time of Darwin? Can you give some quotes?