Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Vorkosigan · 10-30-2002, 07:11 PM

What secular thought? It didn't exist until the eighteenth century when it gave us the French terror and then Marxism.

ROTFL. Marxism is Christianity with god -- the same instituational structures, the same teleological view of history, the same violence and terror. The French terror was performed by believers in Deistic gods, who executed atheists and outlawed atheism.

Starboy · 10-30-2002, 08:05 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by NOGO:
<strong>
So, I have two questions
was Christianity a necessary prerequisite for modern science?
and why did modern science appear in Europe first?</strong>

In answer to both your questions, it depends on what you mean by modern science. You may be right that Christianity gave birth to modern science as we know it but I expect science to be the death of Christianity. What science has done is show that everything can eventually be explained using natural causes. It has created a world of quarks, genes and galaxies; we no longer explain things in terms of gods, sin and demons. Science is how we understand our surroundings. This has the effect of making those that accept ancient religious mumbo jumbo look like morons. It erodes the very foundations of Christianity. There is an old saying that goes something like "The seeds of destruction are contained in the fruits of success." Science may or may not be the fruit of Christianity but I am sure that science will be the death of Christianity.

Starboy

joedad · 10-30-2002, 10:18 PM

Quote:

DB:
It seems to me that if Christianity were uniquely responsible for the rise of science (or natural philosophy) then science should have risen along with Christianity, and by the fourth century or so been a hallmark of western civilization.
Bede:
First, I said it was one necessary cause. There were others, including the work of the Greeks and Arabs.
Ipetrich:
However, essentially all of the Greek ones had been pre-Constantine, and many of them pre-Jesus-Christ. So why didn't the early Xians take up exactly where the pagans had left off? Why did they wait a thousand years for that?

Giving any special credit whatsoever to christianity when trying to account for the rise of scientific thought is patently absurd imho.
This particular area of the globe enjoyed many advantages in terms of natural resources compared to a Tasmania or Australia for example.

If one is going to list christianity as a significant cause in the rise of Science, I do not see how one cannot grant equal significance to every other preceding event in history and human history, to include the Big Bang. The association is nothing more than coincidental.

joe

10-31-2002, 04:32 AM

Quote:

Galen (121-200) did do autopsies, Bede. Perhaps the Romans in general did not?

Actually, Vork, I think you'll find that Galen was not allowed to do human dissection. He had been a doctor of Gladiators but his medical work was done on animals which he assumed were the same as people. This meant he made some mistakes that were not realised until Vesalius - who was the first to point out Galen could only have used animals.

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede's Library - faith and reason</a>

Vorkosigan · 10-31-2002, 05:12 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Bede:
<strong>

Actually, Vork, I think you'll find that Galen was not allowed to do human dissection. He had been a doctor of Gladiators but his medical work was done on animals which he assumed were the same as people. This meant he made some mistakes that were not realised until Vesalius - who was the first to point out Galen could only have used animals.

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede's Library - faith and reason</a></strong>

Fascinating. You're right. Doesn't the Koran specifically forbid autopsies?

NOGO · 10-31-2002, 05:26 AM

Bede mentions Galileo again.

Bede wants us to believe that Galileo wrote his last book on the Heliocentric system for the sole purpose of making fun of the Pope and this is the only reason for which he was punished.

Although I think that this is a rewrite of history and is totally absurd, it is also totally irrelevant.

All the churches spoke out against the Copernican system. They all in one form or another prohibited people to speak publicly about this "heresy". Kepler for instance learned it from his teacher, M. Maestlin, in private since he was ordered not to teach it nor speak publicly about it.

So Bede's point of view is as follows:
Since the chruches did not massacre 20,000 Corpernican believers they did little to stop the progress of science.

NOGO · 10-31-2002, 10:52 AM

Quote:

Bede
The preservation of literacy in the Dark Ages

Because it is a literary religion based on sacred texts and informed by the writings of the early church fathers, Christianity was exclusively responsible for the preservation of literacy and learning after the fall of the Western Empire. This meant not only that the Latin classics were preserved but also that their were sufficient men of learning to take Greek thought forward when it was rediscovered.

Bottom line, Bede is saying that if it were not for Christianity all ancient documents would have been lost.

I doubt it. I distinguish between people copying documents and Christians copying documents. Europeans would have been interested in perserving their cultural heritage whether Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Communist, atheist or anything.

Any other opinions on this one?

NOGO · 10-31-2002, 10:58 AM

Quote:

Bede
The doctrine of the lawfulness of of nature

As they believed in a law abiding creator God, even before the rediscovery of Greek thought, twelfth century Christians felt they could investigate the natural world for secondary causes rather than put everything down to fate (like the ancients) or the will of Allah (like Moslems). Although we see a respect for the powers of reason by Arab scholars they did not seem to make the step of looking for universal laws of nature.

Laws are laws.
"Thy shalt not kill" and F = ma
"Thy shalt not steal" and E = mc2

How come I didn't see that one?
Right!
I am not a Christian, silly me.

NOGO · 10-31-2002, 11:13 AM

Quote:

Bede
Christians insisted that God could have created the world any way he like and so Aristotle's insistence that the world was the way it was because it had to be was successfully challenged. This meant that his ideas started to be tested and abandoned if they did not measure up.

Wishful thinking and complete out of touch with reality.
For examle Ptolemy tried to model the universe based on observation and mathematics and he wasn't a Christian.

The three quotes below shows how the majority of Christians received the Copernican theory. Note that Bellarmine studies astronomy but then stopped. Basically he refused to give himself the permission to think.

Cardinal Robert Bellarmine
"To say that the assumption that the Earth moves and the Sun stands still saves all the celestial appearances better than do eccentrics and epicycles is to speak with excellent good sense and to run no such risk whatever. But to want to affirm that the Sun, in very truth, is at the centre of the universe and only rotates on its axis without travelling from east to west, and that the Earth is situated in the third sphere and revolves very swiftly around the Sun, is a very dangerous attitude and one calculated not only to arouse all Scholastic philosophers and theologians but also to injure our holy faith by contradicting the Scriptures."

Martin Luther: (referring to Copernicus)
"People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is of course the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth."

Melanchthon
"The eyes are witnesses that the heavens revolve in the space of twenty-four hours. But certain men, either from the love of novelty, or to make a display of ingenuity, have concluded that the earth moves; and they maintain that neither the eighth sphere (ie the stars) nor the sun revolves.... Now, it is a want of honesty and decency to assert such notions publicly, and the example is pernicious. It is the part of a good mind to accept the truth as revealed by God and to acquiesce in it."

and also ... "the earth can be nowhere if not in the centre of the universe."

10-31-2002, 12:56 PM

You're problem NOGO, is that the other side of the Copernican argument were just as Christian as the guys you quote, all of whom make plain that they think empirical evidence supports the Bible. When it doesn't, like with the flat earth, there is no problem reading the bible figuratively. You can fully explain oppposition to Copernicanism without recourse to the Bible as demonstrated by the fact that once it was proven by Kepler, and explained by Newton, the opposition pretty much went away. New science won the argument with the old science, but religion sailed serenely on. The argument over Copernicanism was argument between Christians and a Christian side won. It is not valid simply to label one side as more Christian, especially when Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo are all intensely devout men.

David, it is certainly true that another worldview, perhaps a varient of paganism, could have fulfilled the role that Christianity ended up doing. NOGO is wrong to claim Europeans were interested in copying - the barbarian tribes had no interest in Classical culture and it was only Christianity that provided continuity. However, I suppose a sufficiently attractive paganism could have converted the barbarians and similarly preserved literature - it is just that we have no evidence that such a paganism existed or looked like developing. I am reading Robin Lane Fox's excellent Pagans and Christians and he shows convincingly that almost all pagan religion had no intellectual content outside Homeric images. The philosophy we now rever was very much a minority pursuit dependent on rich individuals' interest rather than the institutional academia of the Christian church.

BTW, my class tonight, with Professor Michael Hunter, was relevant. We are looking at science and religion in the seventeenth century and Professor Hunter has been at pains to explain to the class (most of whom would have agreed with the infidels on this thread) that the contrast between science and religion is a false dichotomy. Indeed in our reading the Christian side was being scientific while the sceptics were just being polemical. All this proved rather hard for some of the class to swallow...

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede's Library - faith and reason</a>

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10-30-2002, 07:11 PM	#41
Vorkosigan Contributor Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Barrayar Posts: 11,866	What secular thought? It didn't exist until the eighteenth century when it gave us the French terror and then Marxism. ROTFL. Marxism is Christianity with god -- the same instituational structures, the same teleological view of history, the same violence and terror. The French terror was performed by believers in Deistic gods, who executed atheists and outlawed atheism.

10-31-2002, 05:26 AM	#46
NOGO Veteran Member Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Canada Posts: 1,562	Bede mentions Galileo again. Bede wants us to believe that Galileo wrote his last book on the Heliocentric system for the sole purpose of making fun of the Pope and this is the only reason for which he was punished. Although I think that this is a rewrite of history and is totally absurd, it is also totally irrelevant. All the churches spoke out against the Copernican system. They all in one form or another prohibited people to speak publicly about this "heresy". Kepler for instance learned it from his teacher, M. Maestlin, in private since he was ordered not to teach it nor speak publicly about it. So Bede's point of view is as follows: Since the chruches did not massacre 20,000 Corpernican believers they did little to stop the progress of science.

10-31-2002, 12:56 PM	#50
Bede Guest Posts: n/a	You're problem NOGO, is that the other side of the Copernican argument were just as Christian as the guys you quote, all of whom make plain that they think empirical evidence supports the Bible. When it doesn't, like with the flat earth, there is no problem reading the bible figuratively. You can fully explain oppposition to Copernicanism without recourse to the Bible as demonstrated by the fact that once it was proven by Kepler, and explained by Newton, the opposition pretty much went away. New science won the argument with the old science, but religion sailed serenely on. The argument over Copernicanism was argument between Christians and a Christian side won. It is not valid simply to label one side as more Christian, especially when Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo are all intensely devout men. David, it is certainly true that another worldview, perhaps a varient of paganism, could have fulfilled the role that Christianity ended up doing. NOGO is wrong to claim Europeans were interested in copying - the barbarian tribes had no interest in Classical culture and it was only Christianity that provided continuity. However, I suppose a sufficiently attractive paganism could have converted the barbarians and similarly preserved literature - it is just that we have no evidence that such a paganism existed or looked like developing. I am reading Robin Lane Fox's excellent Pagans and Christians and he shows convincingly that almost all pagan religion had no intellectual content outside Homeric images. The philosophy we now rever was very much a minority pursuit dependent on rich individuals' interest rather than the institutional academia of the Christian church. BTW, my class tonight, with Professor Michael Hunter, was relevant. We are looking at science and religion in the seventeenth century and Professor Hunter has been at pains to explain to the class (most of whom would have agreed with the infidels on this thread) that the contrast between science and religion is a false dichotomy. Indeed in our reading the Christian side was being scientific while the sceptics were just being polemical. All this proved rather hard for some of the class to swallow... Yours Bede <a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede's Library - faith and reason</a>

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