Yellum Notnef

In this thread Radorth asked the question "Is Christianity a hindrance to science or intellectual accomplishment?" (his thread has since turned into another round of "I do history better than you".)

I think a better question to ask is "How has Christianity aided science or intellectual accomplishment?"

Can anyone show me a direct link between scientific/intellectual accomplishment and the supernatural claims of Christianity? I'm NOT asking for a list of scientists who profess belief in Christianity as this proves nothing.
What I'm asking for is direct evidence that Jesus/holy spirit/god or whatever you call it has directly aided humanity in scientific/intellectual endeavors.

Prove that it's NOT humans who happen to call themselves "Christian",but rather the supernatural powers of Christianity itself that's responsible for our current level of technology.

Have at it.

emotional

I don't think this is a fair question. No-one can prove direct divine intervention even if their lives depended on it.

Yellum Notnef

Perhaps people shouldn't credit Christianity for mans achievements if they can't prove the Christianity has anything at all to do with it.

Bumble Bee Tuna

You don't need to prove divine intervention. You just need writings or quotes from scientists who state "I made discovery X because of my religious faith". Though even that wouldn't be very helpful, because from the trends converts and deconverters tend to have the same interests/goals before and after changing their worldviews, implying that people tend to use their worldviews to justify what they want to do anyway. A kid who is interested in science will be a scientist whether he remains an atheist or if he converts, but if he converts he will now claim it is "his calling for the Lord".

-B

BioBeing

In this thread I posted that a scientist claimed (at a national conference) that their work was supported by the Bible. (Note - I wasn't at the conference, just read the report). However, I cannot decide if she read the bible, and then did the research or was doing the work, and then noticed a similarity in the bible... (I would tend to favour the latter explanation, but I might be wrong!)

Gemma Therese

Fenton --

Christianity does not purport to aid science. They are in the business of salvation.

Intellectual accomplishment? Does Aquinas ring a bell?

Gemma Therese

Hugo Holbling

I already covered this in the other thread, but i'll say a few words anyway. Let's see if anyone is willing to make an effort to check out the scholarly sources instead of asserting their opinion.

Shapin has shown that any attempt to claim that Christianity has on methodological grounds hindered intellectual accomplishment is false. The idea that it has in fact aided is covered my many historians, the most relevant being the Merton hypothesis and Jaki (although the latter can seem quite extreme). For a moderate opinion, let's refer to Lindberg, who in writing of the early Church admits that the methodological critique can be sustained, but then says:

This is an answer already, but let's press on. The injection of new learning in the 12th century was to come from another theistic tradition. Following this, the methodological critique can no longer be applied, for men like Boyle and his contemporaries were quite assured that the investigation of nature was testimony to the greater glory of God and only possible because He had ordained a world that had natural laws and regularities which could be discovered by men. Boyle himself noted vigorously that such laws could only be held provisionally because of the possibility of God's intervention (an orthodox opinion in modern philosophy of science, although for different reasons) but that this did not mean that such regularities could or should not be found, hence ruling out the common methodological critique. Boyle and many of his contemporaries considered that their scientific work was supportive of their faith and certainly not injurious to it. Since they considered God to be necessary for the existence of regularities, their endeavours could hardly have proceded without their belief.

It happens to be a pet theory of mine (which i will not argue here) that the hermetic philosophy either held or investigated by many of these men was also a significant contribution to science, based on the injunction "as above, so below". Anyone versed in these ideas may know what i mean.

This is but a brief consideration of the question, but scholars have found that the relationship between Christianity and science was subtle, complex and very much symbiotic. Their influences were mutual and it may be that this important point explains why science was to arise in the west but not more advanced regions. This latter, of course, is where Merton and Jaki come in.

Yellum Notnef

How nice for them to waste all our time by "saving" us from nonsense that doesn't even exist.

The only bell Aquinas gets ringing is the one attached to my bullshit detector.

lpetrich

And what makes Robert Boyle so great?

To me, his viewpoint seems more like eighteenth-century deism than like the more orthodox forms of Xtianity, with the Xtian God and angels and saints and devils intervening all the time.

So waving around Robert Boyle seems to me like proof-texting more than anything else.

Bede

Ipetrich,

I had the privilege of being taught by Michael Hunter, the world's greatest authority on Boyle. I doubt he would recognise what you said. Boyle was, unlike say Newton, 100% orthodox Church of England. Hunter spent an entire course trying to persude us students to break out of the conflict mindset.

B