CJD

In other words, let's blame God for our idiocy and slowness in gaining knowledge of the natural world.

Well, I'm surprised that no one has made mention of the fact that since the beginning of recorded history, sustained societies have been philosophically conservative. (I mean the dictionary definition here, not the modern political notion.) That is, those societies in which important advancements were made and which were sustained over long periods of time have been moderate and cautious, disposed to maintaining existing views, conditions, and institutions.

To put it differently, the existence of Christianity does not make scientific inquiry possible, the existence of a conservative populace (of which the Church in ages past was, inherently) makes scientific inquiry possible. The fact that the ramifications of said inquiries take time to stick is a good thing. Utter chaos would result otherwise. How do I know this? We, as humanity, are not upward bound, for progress is not inevitable. We can't take it for granted (just look around).

CJD

Philadelphia Lawyer

Well, you and I agree that it's well established. But, according to many of the revisionists, including Lindberg and Numbers and Brooke, it's a "myth". Keep in mind too, that these three historians themselves have decried Christian apologetics insinuating itself into the revisionist school. If even the historians who appear to be among the more "moderate" revisionists won't face the simple truth that the Church persecuted Galileo and attempted to suppress the theory of heliocentrism, what does that say about the work of the revisionist school in general?

Besides the question of heliocentrism, I think there is ample evidence that organized Christianity, in general, opposed the theory of evolution. Yet, as I tried to show in my last post, Lindberg and Numbers attempt, unsuccessfully, to "debunk" this simple fact as well. Again, what does this tell us about the revisionist school? Do you not see a pattern developing?

I don't intend to go through White's book and deal with each and every one of his examples and the revisionist response thereto. But I think the point has been made. Did White exagerate? Did he oversimplify? Sure. But was his central thesis wrong? Is it a "myth"? I don't think so.

From my perusal of the revisionists' work, I have found that they often express puzzlement and frustration that the public at large (including Christians) have refused to accept their views. For example:

link

For all their erudition and attention to detail, the revisionists simply can't overcome the conclusion that White's thesis fits the facts. The public sees a secretive, hierarchical, authoritarian institution (the post Counter-Reformation Catholic Church). It sees the record of people burned at the stake for what they believed in (whether they were actually scientists or merely "natural philosophers" or even just simple heretics). It sees the Inquisitions and the Index. It sees all of this and more and determines that the record does not fit the model of an institution devoted to the freedom of thought and freedom of inquiry necessary to the scientific method.

This brings up another isssue. What do the revisionists propose as alternative to White's conflict theory? From what I have read, besides the outright Christian apologists, they talk about "encounters" between the Christianity and science. First of all, every conflict is also an encounter, so on its own terms, this is not a refutation of the conflict theory. Secondly, what authority and power did science have during the period we are talking about (roughly, the period from 1500 to 1900)? None. The Church, on the other hand, had the power to censor, silence, imprison, torture, and execute. Third, there is no disputing, I think, that the course of science in these centuries challenged what had been considered central Christian beliefs. Given all of this, what could the nature of the "encounters" have been but conflicts, and conflicts fought out with a power imbalance favoring the Church.

To use a hypothetical analogy, suppose a historian wrote a poorly documented and exagerated account of the struggle for African-American equality in mid-20th Century America. Suppose this account had as its central thesis that this struggle can best be characterized as a conflict between the Civil Rights movement and the legal, political, and governmental establishment of the Southern States. Now, suppose that a group of revisionist historians attacked this central thesis by demonstrating that some of the author's descriptions of events were inaccurate and/or overblown. Would that disprove the historian's central thesis?

One of the grounds for attacking a reliance on authorities is to suggest that the authorities are biased. I am making no claims that there is a "conspiracy".

Philadelphia Lawyer

Rather than continuing the exchange of snarky comments, I ask that you address the substantive arguments I made in post 142.

lpetrich

I think that a lot of people here have engaged in crude oversimplifications. I disagree with claims that there is 0% conflict, and also with claims that there is 100% conflict, both of which have been expressed here. The reality was a mixed bag.

I think that Philadelphia Lawyer is correct to conclude that this field has been partially hijacked by a certain school of Xian apologetics, one that projects its beliefs onto the people of 500 or so years ago. It's something like those who project advocacy of biological evolution onto various ancient Greek philosophers like Anaximander and Empedocles.

And I think that that's where we ought to look for the beginnings of science. They had a lot of freedom of thought, much more than Europe had had under Xianity until recent centuries. It pleases me to read of Plato advocating that his society's religion should be banned from from his Republic because it was full of (to him) bad examples -- he had gotten away with it!

Richard Carrier has written a master's thesis on how eclipses were viewed in the early Roman Empire; he is working on a PhD thesis on how natural scientists were viewed in that place and time. Here is some of his professional work, including that master's thesis and that PhD thesis (under "Dissertation"). He discussed early Xian theologians like Justin Martyr and Tatian in it, and he concluded that they were anti-intellectual and anti-scientific.

The Xian Church was a blight on scientific inquiry for a long time. As the Xians came to power in the 300's and 400's, the science of the time was often disparaged as paganism, and only a few favorites survived, like Plato and Aristotle.

But while we can credit the medieval Church with starting universities, they were kept on a rather tight doctrinal leash. As Family Man had noted in another thread, it was common for philosophers to discuss controversial issues in fictional terms, like Buridan discussing a vacuum. Something like "We know that a vacuum cannot exist, as The Philosopher (Aristotle) had said, but let's see what would happen if a vacuum existed." And no one had gotten persecuted for heretical scientific theorizing back then.

Copernicus's friend Osiander had taken that approach, and for the Church, it was OK to present heliocentrism in that fashion. However, Galileo got impatient with such fictionalism, and he made his points in cruelly sarcastic fashion. He considered himself a good Catholic, and he argued for an early form of Stephen Jay Gould's Non-Overlapping Magisteria ("the Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go"). However, his theological opponents seemed to think that the Bible would not be completely reliable about going to Heaven unless it was also reliable about how the heavens go.

And Galileo's recantation caused a chilling effect on scientific theorizing. The Jesuits, who made a point about being very learned, retreated from astronomical theorizing; one Jesuit wrote a book about a nova which listed several causes, but refused to try to decide among them. Also, Nicholas Steno stopped his geological researches because of Galileo being persecuted; he must have suspected that if he questioned Noah's Flood, he'd suffer a similar fate.

Sir Isaac Newton is an interesting case. I think that his theological preoccupations were genuine, because they led him to adopt a heresy (Arianism, that the Son is subordinate to the Father and that God is not a Trinity), and he wrote a vast bulk of Bible-prophecy interpretation. He also tried to construct a comparative timeline of Biblical and secular history, including treating the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts as literal history. Though some Unitarians try to claim him, he seems to have more in common with (say) the Jehovah's Witnesses than with the Unitarians.

But he kept quiet about his heresies, letting him seem like a good Anglican despite his lack of church attendance, because being open about those heresies would have endangered his career.

By comparison, a contemporary, Thomas Hobbes, seemed less-than-sincere. He distinguished religion and superstition by saying that they were both fear of invisible power, with religion being allowed and superstition not being allowed by the government. He'd say that pagan religions were derived from confusing dreams with waking life, and also that pagan deities were created by human fear, while our God is the Prime Mover. He also considered happiness a dynamic state instead of a static one, with the exception of the joys of Heaven.

He was rather rigorously rationalist, though he believed in absolute monarchy, he justified it on purely pragmatic grounds instead of using notions of a Divine Right of Kings.

And he got investigated by Parliament for "atheistic writings". Perhaps his making exceptions for Xianity seemed less than sincere to some of the MP's. In any case, it was a good way for him to cover himself.

As to a conflict between science and religion, one may ask what sort of religion. Some religions do not conflict with science very much, while others conflict rather strongly.

I'm disappointed that Bede did not seriously address my speculations that mental physicalism, metaphysical naturalism, and the like might one day be proclaimed as "true Xianity". Complete with contrary views being dismissed in the terms that Bede dismisses geocentrism and creationism.

And I notice that Bede can point to nobody ever being forced to recant fundie-style Biblical literalism, let alone anyone being burned at the stake for that.

spin

What else would explain your attempts to rubbish the guy, while ignoring his context in that you're willing to try and belittle him with some potted factoids, but not understand him? You don't like the fact that he championed the heliocentric view of the solar system -- that's not advocating science to you. You don't like the fact that he advocated multiple such systems and an understanding of the universe which was infinite -- that's just his platonism. You don't like the fact that he preferred to die rather than do what Galileo did -- that was just his character, which you happily and simplistically repackage as dying for what he believed in. You'd probably like to think that there was no impact from Bruno on those who followed him, yet Galileo accepted the same notions of multiple worlds, large, perhaps infinite universe, the non-existence of the spheres, lived through the Nolan era, even came under the eyes of the same inquisitor, Roberto Bellarmino, and was warned off the Copernican system as is obvious Bruno was -- though you want him to have no effect on anyone.

Yes, I think given your reaction, Bruno disturbs you.


spin

Lafcadio

Spin, you're assuming too much and understanding too little.
Let me bring some light to your avengeful ego and point you out that you don't know what I like, what I think and obviously you even didn't understand much of what I've said to you. All your puny accusations are already disproved in my previous replies to you. I won't argue ad nauseam because you argue from piggyheadness.

One friendly advice: read some history and get rid of this sufficient and shallow approach of the subject. You're making a fool of yourself.

spin

You may run away by insult as much as you like. You haven't argued anything. But that's to be expected. Whatever.

The topic had meandered onto the church's efforts to stifle scientific progress, which including the repression of both Bruno and Galileo, both partly because they advocated the Copernican system. Bruno wouldn't renounce his positions and died for it.

One piece of friendly advice: read Bruno, not some tarted up histories -- but then it ain't easy.


spin

Chris Weimer

Bruno, in case you actually feel like reading.

countjulian

So your guys' argument is that Christianity actually helped the rise of science? Interesting. I wonder, then, why the last astronomical observation in antiquity was made by Proclus in the 5th century, and for over a thousand years of Christendom studies in the field did not move forward, until Copernicus got things rolling again? The astronomers of antiquity seemed not to haveused too much advanced technology, surely the christians could look up and record what they saw (outside the context of astrology, of course)?According to Howard Eves' An Introduction to the history of Mathematics, the dark Ages were “A sterile period of learning in Western Europe" and only a "slender thread of Greek and Latin learning" was preserved. In fact, the Europeans don't seem to introduce much into mathematical studies until Fibonacci in the thirteenth century. Ramsay MacMullen says, on page 4 Christianity and Paganism in the 4th to 8th Century, that our Greek and Roman learning was passed "through but not of Christianity's enemies. As a tangential illustration: our sole copy of the sole work about political good sense by the person arguably best able to deliver it from classical antiquity, Cicero, was sponged out from the vellum to make room for our hundredth copy of Augustine's meditations on the Psalms." He also says on the same page that "both secular and ecclesiastical authorities repeatedly destroyed unedifying texts, in well advertised ceremonies...NonChristian writings came in for the same treatment, that is, destruction in the great bonfires of the town square. Copyists were discouraged from replacing them by threat of having their hands cut off." with the burning of the library at Antioch and such (BTW, MacMullen seems to think that the Christians destroyed the Library at Alexandria along with the Serapeum, imagine that) I find it less than odd that a large corpus of Ptolemy survived but most of heliocentric Aristarchus is "lost to us" as they say. I wonder, what other texts might have suffered the fate of Cicero's essay? You all seem to say that Christianity preserved Greek and Roman learning, but if this is so, then how come for such a long time the only thing available in Christendom from Plato was an incomplete copy of Timaeus? And while we are on the subject, when the Christians decided it was time to move science along, how come they all had to go back to pagan Roman and Greek texts for their info? When scientists today want to do science and such, they do not seem to start by going back to thousand year old texts from dead cultures and translating them from their dead language, they consult the most recent work on the subject. Surely there must have been a great corpus of Christian science available? Most of the people of learning who get praise such as the very Venerable Bede were scholars, and then mostly of religion. Where were the scientists? I also wonder, for a very long time in the Hellenic world, people had running water, plumbing, and public baths, yet during the time of Christendom all of these various and sundry activities were supplied for by the local river/ The science of hygiene seems to have been in a rather odd way, since according to the Christian acetic Paula “A clean body and clean clothes betoken an unclean mind.�, and most of Christendom seem to have followed her advice. Indeed, it was only in the last century or so that regular bathing became accepted and encouraged in the West, while the ancient Greeks and Romans saw not bathing as a sign of barbarism and planted baths wherever they went, and oriental cultures seem never to have lost touch with the practice. If you could answer my questions, I would be most grateful.
:huh: :huh: :huh: :huh: :huh: :huh:

lpetrich

I wonder if St. Paula was the saint who called lice "pearls of God" -- and yes, a lot of saints back then considered cleanliness next to ungodliness.

And many ancient texts survived because they had been cleaned off and written over, making palimpsests. Like the only surviving copy of Cicero's De Republica surviving because it had been reused to write yet another copy of St. Augustine's meditation on the Psalms.

Europe started getting learned again in the later Middle Ages, and that was from an influx of medieval Arab learning.

The Arab conquests had created a continuous Koran Belt, as it were, from Spain to India and central Asia. But despite being Muslim, philosophers and the like could get away with saying things that they would have great trouble with in some present-day Islamic countries. This Golden Age of Learning eventually ended, with theologians like Al Ghazzali claiming that philosophy was dangerous to religion, but not before getting Europe getting again. So if anything, the backwardness of the Islamic world shows the dangers of fundamentalism.