Although it isn’t an organized religion like Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, atheism is a religious worldview. With assurance rooted in faith (rather than in proven fact), the theist says “I believe in god(s)/God,” while the atheist with equal confidence says “I don’t believe in god(s)/God.”
Atheism is a religious worldview because it claims to know something fundamental about reality that hasn’t been—or can’t be—proven. Like theists, atheists operate out of a foundational faith or belief that shapes their perceiving, thinking, and living in the world.
61 comments:
It is interesting that Christians were called atheists by the multiculturalists of the pagan Roman empire. Similarly, Buddhists were called atheists, because they did not worship the gods of India. And Buddhists clearly have a religious belief,. So, it similarly makes sense to think of militant atheists as having a religious belief.
Atheists even have mystical contradictions at the root of their worldview. Because we evolved, our logic is only as good as evolution made it. So, why would it be good enough for us to reliably interpret the evidence for evolution from paleontology and biology?
Atheists base their beliefs on empirical evidence, but they use their theories to rule out inconvenient empirical evidence, such as religious visions and miracles. Or they rule them out because such evidence is directly available only to a few people. But you could say the same about laboratory evidence, which is the foundation of those theories. Et cetera...
theism does not claim to know something fundamental about reality, only to know something about oneself. I don't pretend to know there are no gods, I just know that I don't see a convincing reason to believe in any.
Martin Cooke said...
So, it similarly makes sense to think of militant atheists as having a religious belief.
One have a belief that gods do not exist (strong atheism) without being militant, and one can be militant in expressing their lack of belief without being a strong atheist. Your comment here reads like a slur.
Atheists even have mystical contradictions at the root of their worldview. Because we evolved, our logic is only as good as evolution made it. So, why would it be good enough for us to reliably interpret the evidence for evolution from paleontology and biology?
1) That's not a contradiction, it's an argument from insufficiency.
2) Adding in gods that don't exist, or we have no good reason to believe exist, doesn't make our interpretations of evidence more reliable.
Atheists base their beliefs on empirical evidence, but they use their theories to rule out inconvenient empirical evidence, such as religious visions and miracles. Or they rule them out because such evidence is directly available only to a few people. But you could say the same about laboratory evidence, which is the foundation of those theories. Et cetera...
The miracles are not repeatable, but they are expected to be believed anyway. Laboratory results that are not repeatable are written off as errors.
Sorry, the September 01, 2020 6:00 AM comment should start with "Atheism ..."
I've never understood why non-repeatability is assumed to be conclusive evidence of an error. That in turn assumes that everything is repeatable. So you've ruled out the existence of non-repeatable events, not by evidence, but by definition.
We should not expect a miracle to be repeatable. That's what makes it a miracle. If you could repeat it, there would be nothing miraculous about it.
Allow me to re-post my very first contribution to Dangerous Idea, from way back on July 8th, 2010:
Early on in George MacDonald's fairy story Phantastes, we come upon the following scene. The book's main character (Anodos) is suddenly confronted by a magical creature:
"Anodos, you never saw such a little creature before, did you?"
"No," said I, "and indeed I hardly believe I do now."
"Ah, that is always the way with you men; you believe nothing the first time; and it is foolish enough to let mere repetition convince you of what you consider in itself unbelievable."
That little three line exchange is perhaps one of the most profound statements I have ever read about how many people approach the miraculous. Just think about it. Were a person to come across a single lifeform in an otherwise lifeless universe - heck, were he to find a single strand of DNA, he would either refuse to believe it existed, or proclaim it a miracle. But here we are in the real world, surrounded by trillions and trillions of incomprehensibly complex lifeforms, and all too many people dismiss it all as just "the way things are".
The same thing goes for the Resurrection. Its very singularity is a stumbling block to skeptics, but the same people will not be bothered for a second by the fact that there are billions of people alive all around them right now. Why should finding life a second time be any less unbelievable than the first time? So is it "mere repetition", in MacDonald's words, that makes the starkly incredible fact of one's own existence so casually accepted?
I believe that MacDonald has hit upon an unexamined (and therefore unchallenged) assumption underlying skeptical thinking. Let me call it The Singularity Problem. (A problem, that is, for the skeptic.) Basically, the issue can be stated quite simply. A main objection to miraculous events raised by skeptics is that they are not common, or even sui generis. Thus, we frequently hear people objecting to Christ’s Virgin Birth because we don't see such births happening around us as a norm. But why should we? The singularity of the event is definitionally mandated by its miraculous nature. Until we somehow rule out the possibility of one-of-a-kind events on grounds stronger than ruling them out on principle (which, after all, amounts to a "because I said so" argument), we cannot object to their existence on those grounds alone.
I say this underlying assumption needs to be examined and defended, not simply accepted a priori. Otherwise, the skeptic must somehow make the case that we are not quite literally surrounded by countless miracles all the time.
Starhopper said...
I've never understood why non-repeatability is assumed to be conclusive evidence of an error. That in turn assumes that everything is repeatable. So you've ruled out the existence of non-repeatable events, not by evidence, but by definition.
Strictly within the realms of science. Non-repeatable events can be examined by history, archaeology, etc. Please note I was not trying to limit what should or should not be believed, only refuting Martin Cooke's notion that science was not reliable because so few people are in laboratories. I believe we agree on that point.
In particular, I agree uniqueness is not sufficient reason to reject that an event occurred. I would say that such events need a reason to believe in them.
I think we're in general agreement here, One Brow.
I regard "science" as a special case. It's a field with its own internally consistent rules which must be followed, much as the players in a baseball game have to comply with the rules. But not all knowledge is science, and what is verboten in the laboratory may very well be acceptable (or even mandatory) in another context. A shortstop walking down the street certainly does not have to consult an umpire to see whether it's OK to cross over to the other side.
Yet even in science, not all events are repeatable (the "Big Bang" or the origin of life, for instance) or in some cases haven't even happened yet (the heat death of the universe or the discovery of extraterrestrial life, again for instance).
I've long made it habit to be perpetually reading the, Bible - at any time I'll be reading one book from the Old and one from the New Testaments. Last night, I finished reading for the nth time the Book of Wisdom. Most scholars believe it to be the last book of the Old Testament to have been written. Anyways, I was struck by a line I had never particularly noticed before:
You [the Lord] have made all things by measure and number and weight."
(Wisdom 11:20)
Now if that isn't a declaration of a rational universe, I don't know what is. Thinking about this statement, I wondered... Is monotheism a prerequisite for the scientific method? As long as Mankind worshiped many gods, he could (and did) attribute all the phenomena of nature to disparate and often contrary (or contradictory) causes. Poseidon might rule the seas, but Zeus was master of the sky. Even individual rivers had their deity. St. Augustine (employing argumentum ad absurdum) showed the ridiculousness of this line of thought by listing the Roman god of doors, the god of hinges, the god of thresholds, the god of houses, the god of roofs, etc., etc. to show how you could never determine just who was responsible for what.
The clearest example of where this all led is Homer's Iliad, where the fate of Troy hung on the outcome of the quarrels amongst the gods, and who would prevail.
But monotheism made possible the the idea of everything acting in harmony with everything else, and if action A produced result B over here (or today), then it ought to do the same over there (or tomorrow). And once that was unquestioned, then observation and experimentation could proceed.
"What do you mean by "scientific method"?"
The same thing everybody else means by it.
1. Ask a question.
2. Do research.
3. Propose a hypothesis.
4. Test (a.k.a., Experiment)
(There's a possibility of looping here, but we need not go into that.)
5. Analyse results and draw conclusions.
(Again, there may be some looping here.)
6. Communicate results.
All of the above is predicated on the understanding that all things have been made "by measure and number and weight" and not by arbitrary whim or (worse) by conflicting wills.
"I would think that any civilization capable of building houses or structures like the pyramids would have to follow such a methodology."
These pyramid building scientific method following engineers also cheerfully sacrificed their first born children to the gods, burning them alive, to ensure that their structures would not fall down.
These pyramid building scientific method following engineers also cheerfully sacrificed their first born children to the gods, burning them alive, to ensure that their structures would not fall down.
In some ways, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
But they weren't persons.
Back to the subject of the origins of science, my point was that the builders of the pyramids, for all their undoubted engineering skills, were far from being scientists, or having a scientific outlook on the world.
As to the death of the first born of Egypt, the rabbis were unanimous in their commentaries on Moses that the Egyptians brought that disaster (as well as the other nine plagues) upon themselves. It was not the will of an ever-merciful God that they be destroyed, but the consequence of a (human) will set upon evil. By chance, this is explicitly spelled out in the very book (Wisdom, which I just finished) that began this conversation.
(We even see this in the movie The 10 Commandments. When Moses learns that Pharaoh intends to slaughter the first born of the Hebrew slaves, he (Charleton Heston) cries out in despair "Out of his own mouth he has condemned the first born of Egypt!" and immediately prays to God that this not happen.
Change "Christianity" to "monotheism" and we're in agreement. Judaism and Islam (both monotheistic) have proven themselves to be compatible with a scientific view on the world.
Interesting. I wonder what it is (was) about Christianity that made it a suitable incubator for the scientific method.
Islam had a "Golden Age" of scientific thought centuries before Galileo, but it didn't last. It was essentially stillborn. Contemporary Islam is borderline hostile to science. Judaism has produced some of the finest minds in the history of science (e.g., Einstein), but their work was produced in a Christian environment.
Starhopper,
Ever read anything by Stanley Jaki?
I've heard of him, but no, I haven't read anything by him.
I've read a couple of his works and he has an answer to your question.
From Wikipedia:
"Stanley L. Jaki OSB (Jáki Szaniszló László) (17 August 1924 in Győr, Hungary – 7 April 2009 in Madrid, Spain)[1][2] was a Hungarian-born priest of the Benedictine order. From 1975 to his death, he was Distinguished University Professor at Seton Hall University, in South Orange, New Jersey. He held doctorates in theology and in physics and was a leading contributor to the philosophy of science and the history of science, particularly to their relationship to Christianity."
He has lots of books, and some go deeply into physics, so they may not be your cup of tea, but this book by Stacy Trasancos (she has a PhD in Chemistry) looks like it summarizes what you're looking for from his works (although I haven't read it)"
The Intro:
It is a stark claim to say that science was born of Christianity, but do not reject this claim without understanding what it is about, as so many have done. This book provides the historical research and the reasoning in outline form, to be read beginning to end, browsed one chapter at a time, or referenced when presenting and defending the argument to others. The claim that science was "stillborn" in other cultures and "born" of Christianity is more than a claim that man saw order in the world.
Jaki's historical research specifically considers the theological history of science and the effect of ancient religious mindsets on the development of science. This story is about how faith in divine revelation caused a departure from ancient worldviews of an eternally cycling universe and led to the breakthrough that was necessary for the Scientific Revolution to occur. This departure, this breakthrough, this birth, was not based on observation or experiment but on faith in the Christian Creed.
Available in Kindle too.
Interesting. I wonder what it is (was) about Christianity that made it a suitable incubator for the scientific method.
I don't see how the Gaukroger snippet answers the question of why science developed only in Christendom and no where else. Plato and Aristotle both died 600 years before Christ was born and since Greece was a world-wide trading route, their philosophy was known around the Mediterranean and beyond. All civilizations had access to their works for centuries before Christianity existed and for centuries after.
Oops.
"Plato and Aristotle both died 600 years before Christ was born "
Should have been "Plato and Aristotle both died 600 years before Christianity was legal"
"600 years before Christianity was legal"
Is it legal today? I'm not so sure. Christian religion, maybe so. But Christianity? I seriously doubt it.
Just try to go out there and live a genuinely Christian life. You'd be locked up (for your own safety, they'd say) before you got to the end of your street.
Just try to go out there and live a genuinely Christian life. You'd be locked up (for your own safety, they'd say) before you got to the end of your street.
I recall that you are a Christian that practices nudity, so perhaps the authorities have a point ;-)
This is a very brief summary of Jaki's review of history and why science was 'born' in Christendom and 'stillborn' in other religious cultures.
Hal,
First of all, the present topic is why modern day science developed in Christendom and no where else. Your source is not interested in this particular topic, so I think it is irrelevant to the question Starhopper raised.
I think you are interested in interpreting history from an atheistic/naturalistic prospective that I disagree with and your interpretation of your source (your's or their's) confirms that in my mind.
"It provided science with a role that its technical successes, no matter how significant, could by themselves never secure for it."
This is what I meant by contrasting the engineering skills of the pyramid builders with their lack of a scientific grounding to those skills. There is, even today, an almost unbridgeable gap between engineering/technology and "pure" science, and people all too often confuse the two. They say that "science" gave us the airplane and the atomic bomb, when it was technology. Apples and oranges.
Pure science equals research that does not consciously or explicitly have technology as its motivation.
Discovery of the Higgs-Boson particle is pure science.
Development of a COVID-19 vaccine is not.
The discovery and further research into gravitational waves is pure science.
Fusion energy research is not.
Of course, as in all things there is a lot of gray area. I would toss climate change studies into that area.
"Such knowledge does not entail the employment or use of technology."
Not quite. Contemporary research relies heavily on technology (orbiting telescopes, electron microscopes, supercomputers, particle accelerators, etc.). The difference between pure and applied science is that pure research is not explicitly aimed at the creation, development, or improvement of technology, but rather has the acquisition of knowledge as its purpose.
On the other hand, any new knowledge gained from applied science is purely a by-product, and not the intent of any research.
Hal,
The samples you've supplied from Gaukroger seem to show that he thinks western science had nothing to do with the Christian faith at all and was just an historical accident that it showed up in Christendom rather than anywhere else.
The Catholic Church had taught from the beginning that there could be no conflict between faith and reason. It was the eternal God that created the world and entered it, not some lesser demiurge. So we can know God by knowing his creation and we can know that he loves us. That idea didn't just show up in the year 1075.
Islam had all the same human materials as Christianity. It had a unified religion, a stable civilization, access to Greek philosophy and the time to study it. It has the same linear (versus cyclic) idea of history as Christianity since it was influenced by heretical Christian sects from the start. It was ultimately the non-Christian view that the will of God could be in conflict with His intellect that doomed science to a 'still-birth' within Islam. To argue that science would have been born within Islam if Islam had just left those philosophers alone rather misses the point of why science was 'still-born' in Islam.
Universities sprung up within western Christendom once peace prevailed and it's true that Aristotle's philosophy became the pre-req to study theology, but it was the Aristotlean philosophy that had been tweaked by the Scholastics, not pure Aristotle. The 'problem' of the immortal soul was not a problem at all for the Scholastics. Although Aristotle recognized that the intellect and will were immaterial and therefore incorruptible he had no firm answer as to how it came to be part of human nature. The Scholastics did.
It seems the author suffers from stale Enlightenment bias.
Hal,
its consolidation depended crucially on religion being in the driving seat:
What does Gaukroger think was unique about the Christian faith that set it apart from Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Polytheism, etc, and all other faiths and allowed 'western' science to develop? Aristotle's teachings were around since 322 and were available to all civilizations of all faiths for centuries before Christ was born. The faiths of all those civilizations put their particular faith in the driving seat of their cultures.
Here is list of articles summarizing Fr Jaki's explanations for why 'exact science'* could not develop in the cultures of Arabia, Greece, Babylon, India, China and Ancient Egypt regardless of their accomplishments leading to exact science.
You have to scroll down some to the first one The Stillbirth of Science in Arabia.
*'Exact science' is the quantitative study of the quantitative aspects of objects in motion.
Regarding Islam, there is a concept in Islamic intellectual history called the 'closing of the gate of ijtihad'. Ijtihad is 'independent thinking' regarding Islamic law, ie, outside the theocracy, and by extension independent thought in philosophy and science
Ironically, the loss of its application in law seems to have also led to its loss in philosophy and the sciences, which most historians think caused Muslim societies to stagnate before the 1492 fall of al-Andalus, after which Muslim works were translated and led in part to the revival of classical works during the Renaissance, using improved methods, although the Muslims themselves were no longer using these methods in their daily life at all. Sardar argues that once imitation had become "the dominant paradigm of Islamic civilization... Islamic science truly became a matter of history," while "Muslim civilization" itself decayed.[6]
New World Encyclopedia
This article argues that Greek philosophy ran into problems early on within Islam even though there was a initially a large effort to translate the texts.
But the Islamic turn away from scholarship actually preceded the civilization’s geopolitical decline — it can be traced back to the rise of the anti-philosophical Ash’arism school among Sunni Muslims, who comprise the vast majority of the Muslim world.
To understand this anti-rationalist movement, we once again turn our gaze back to the time of the Abbasid caliph al-Mamun. Al-Mamun picked up the pro-science torch lit by the second caliph, al-Mansur, and ran with it. He responded to a crisis of legitimacy by attempting to undermine traditionalist religious scholars while actively sponsoring a doctrine called Mu’tazilism that was deeply influenced by Greek rationalism, particularly Aristotelianism. To this end, he imposed an inquisition, under which those who refused to profess their allegiance to Mu’tazilism were punished by flogging, imprisonment, or beheading. But the caliphs who followed al-Mamun upheld the doctrine with less fervor, and within a few decades, adherence to it became a punishable offense. The backlash against Mu’tazilism was tremendously successful: by 885, a half century after al-Mamun’s death, it even became a crime to copy books of philosophy. The beginning of the de-Hellenization of Arabic high culture was underway. By the twelfth or thirteenth century, the influence of Mu’tazilism was nearly completely marginalized.
In its place arose the anti-rationalist Ash’ari school whose increasing dominance is linked to the decline of Arabic science. With the rise of the Ash’arites, the ethos in the Islamic world was increasingly opposed to original scholarship and any scientific inquiry that did not directly aid in religious regulation of private and public life. While the Mu’tazilites had contended that the Koran was created and so God’s purpose for man must be interpreted through reason, the Ash’arites believed the Koran to be coeval with God — and therefore unchallengeable. At the heart of Ash’ari metaphysics is the idea of occasionalism, a doctrine that denies natural causality. Put simply, it suggests natural necessity cannot exist because God’s will is completely free. Ash’arites believed that God is the only cause, so that the world is a series of discrete physical events each willed by God.
.... According to the occasionalist view, tomorrow coldness might follow fire, and satiety might follow lack of food. God wills every single atomic event and God’s will is not bound up with reason. This amounts to a denial of the coherence and comprehensibility of the natural world.
Hal,
I'm not sure you understand the question I am asking. That's why I provided the link to the Jaki articles and then specifically to Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science. The quotes from Gaukroger do not address why the faith of Christianity is compatible with modern science while the others (mentioned in the Jaki articles) are not.
Not sure why we're talking past each other if you've read the articles.
Regarding Gaukroger:
Why would he pull a snippet from St. Augustine's Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love to argue that Augustine rejected natural philosophy? Augustine is basically saying that knowing everything Steven Hawking knew won't get you to heaven, so it's better to know what gets you to heaven. The book, after all, is about getting to heaven not the latest scientific theories. Complete non-sequitor
Since I'm fairly familiar with Augustine, I was surprised he would say such a thing since it's opposite to the truth.
From the link to Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science:
Far from accepting anything close to the occasionalism and legal positivism of the Sunnis, European scholars argued explicitly that when the Bible contradicts the natural world, the holy book should not be taken literally. Influential philosophers like Augustine held that knowledge and reason precede Christianity; he approached the subject of scientific inquiry with cautious encouragement, exhorting Christians to use the classical sciences as a handmaiden of Christian thought.
I'll be happy to provide quotes from Augustine supporting this view.
Concurrentism is the Thomist view that prevailed in Europe and enabled science to develop instead of the occasionalism of Islam.
Let me know if you'd like to see a discussion of the differences.
BTW. Bet Steven Hawking wish he'd read Augustine's book now:-)
Hal,
He didn't argue that. You've snipped off part of his claim:
...in the context of natural philosophy, that there was a Christian tradition of rejection of natural philosophy as an appropriate topic of study for Christians.
Augustine simply did not reject natural philosophy as an appropriate topic of study for Christians and it was wrong of Gaukroger to imply he did.
So far I haven’t seen a substantial response to his position.
The quotes you supplied do not address the question. The articles I linked to do. If he has a different opinion you have not supplied it.
Looks like you are more interested in comparing various religions attitudes to science. I am not interested in that discussion.
So you want to discuss why science developed in Christendom and no where else but you don't want to discuss the particular Christendom beliefs that are different than others that led to science being developed in Christendom? Sorry. That makes no sense to me.
bmiller,
So you want to discuss why science developed in Christendom and no where else but you don't want to discuss the particular Christendom beliefs that are different than others that led to science being developed in Christendom? Sorry. That makes no sense to me.
As Hal pointed out, you're being a little too expansive. For example, Russia was a part of Christendom, but not a part of these advancements. It's about more than just your religion.
Hal,
I"m interested in the historical events and beliefs that were involved in that development and change. Simply comparing the various beliefs between different religions is not an adequate explanation for the emergence of science in the West.
You just told me that you're not interested in discussing religious beliefs at all. Apparently Gaukoger does not discuss this at all either. Any explanation that ignores this is inadequate. I haven't argued that to fully study the development we have to ignore the attention paid to Aristotle, or historical events that occurred before the institutions of universities.
I do think the author puts too much emphasis on the Investiture Controversy since there has always been a struggle for the State to control the Church. Jesus told us to "Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." so there was always a recognition in Christianity a difference between Church and State. If anything, it led to continued chaos that prevented establishing universities by the Church.
Hal,
Nope, never said that.
What I am not interested in is engaging in a discussion that amounts to an apologetic for Christianity and a dissing of other religions.
I don't know how people can discuss Starhopper's question without discussing the beliefs of different religions. I also don't know how anyone considers objectively comparing those differences is an apology for any of them. I do consider it an attempt at atheistic apologetics to consider discussing religious beliefs as irrelevant or harmful. I could sense that from the author from the first set of quotes.
I've been off-line for the past week, having spilled a glass of water on my computer and frying it. I now have a new laptop. And now my phone is dead! I am a Luddite for good reason!!!
For the record, since I seem to have been repeatedly misquoted in this discussion, I never said Christianity was a prerequisite for a culture adopting a scientific outlook on the physical world. I said monotheism was.
That said... Islam is a special case, since it never developed its own embrace of science. It basically stole it from Byzantium (like it did so much else). And for a couple of centuries the Arabic world ran with the stolen goods, achieving truly impressive heights in the Middle Ages. But without a foundational cultural commitment to science, Islamic science eventually ran out of steam, and it has accomplished little of note for the past 500 years or so.
Interestingly, the polytheistic culture of India has followed a completely opposite path. Like medieval Islam, India appropriated its attitude toward science from the West - it did not organically arise from within Indian culture. But unlike Islam, India has thoroughly, wholeheartedly, and enthusiastically embraced a scientific outlook and there is no end in sight to what they have yet to accomplish.
I fear however that the West may very well go the same route as Islam, now that our culture has abandoned its religious roots. We're already seeing the beginnings of the collapse of western science, in the rise of conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxers, "alternative facts", climate change denialism, etc.
Hal,
Where is an atheistic apologetic in my remarks?
I think it's a weak indirect apologetic. Apology by ommission if you will that he doesn't mention concurrentism. How can I think that?
When I mentioned how the different conceptions of God between Christianity (concurrentism) and Islam (occasionalism) allowed science to move forward in the case of the former and stop in the case of the later you accused me of apologetics:
What I am not interested in is engaging in a discussion that amounts to an apologetic for Christianity and a dissing of other religions.
A faithful Sunni Muslim would not take offense at his view of God being explained so I have to assume that you think the argument is directed against you, atheism or both since you are an atheist, and atheists have an incorrect idea of what God is from both the Sunni and Christian perspective.
Starhopper,
For the record, since I seem to have been repeatedly misquoted in this discussion, I never said Christianity was a prerequisite for a culture adopting a scientific outlook on the physical world. I said monotheism was.
No one misquoted you that I remember, and no one claimed or claimed you said "Christianity was a prerequisite for a culture adopting a scientific outlook on the physical world.".
It's just an historical fact that modern science developed within Christianity and no where else. Given that fact, I pointed to Fr Jaki's theory which actually studies the worldviews, philosophy and theology of other cultures compared to Christianity.
The Gaukroger quotes that Hal has supplied seem to ignore what Christians actually believe(d) about God and rather focuses on which philosophy they ended up with (who knows why) and a fight between the Pope(s) and the king(s) of Germany (while there were no such fights in Italy, France, Britain, etc.) while apparently ignoring theology altogether. It may as well be titled something like A Materialist's Explanation of Religion as far as I'm concerned.
Starhopper,
Why do you think India is advancing scientifically much more than any other culture that came to accept western science. Japan and China come to mind.
bmiller,
Not "much more than any other culture" but "much more than any other polytheistic culture".
Japan's Shintoism does not fit very well into our Western notions of religion. I would be loathe to label it polytheism, despite the fact that Shinto declares there to be an infinite number of "gods" in nature. But none of these spirits (a better term, I think) are worshipped, but are rather venerated or (in the case of one's ancestors) respected.
Neither China's Confucianism nor its variety of Buddhism worships any gods whatsoever, so that is not a polytheistic culture.
But neither is China an especially scientific culture. Technological yes, but knowledge for the sake of knowledge? Hardly. Research in China is expected to have a practical purpose.
I think India's willingness to accept, and even embrace, contradictions is its great strength here. The idea of there being a war between science and religion would make no sense in India. There would be no expectation of the two running in lockstep with each other, and any attempts to "reconcile" them would be met with a shake of the head or a "Who cares?" shrug of dismissal.
Starhopper,
What would you point to as evidence of India embracing pure science as opposed to other non-western countries?
bmiller,
India Mars Orbiter Mission.
Hal,
You've accused Fr Jaki of being an apologist for supplying theological reasons for why Christianity nurtured science while other religions did not. I think he was uniquely qualified to speak on the matter:
He held doctorates in theology and in physics and was a leading contributor to the philosophy of science and the history of science, particularly to their relationship to Christianity.
It seems you're OK with allowing talk about how science developed within a society just as long as we don't discuss anything about the actual religious beliefs of that society. Otherwise it is 'apologetics'. Maybe you can't see your own bias in making that accusation.
You've wrote:
It's just an historical fact that modern science developed within Christianity and no where else.
That is not an historical fact. Modern science did develop in the West, a part of Christendom.
I don't know how your mind works. Western Europe is part of Christendom and science developed in Western Europe. How is it not an historical fact to say science developed in Christendom then when it developed in a part of Christendom? You may want to argue that I'm not being precise enough for tastes but what I said is still a fact. It's like someone telling me that I'm wrong to say that I live in America because I actually live in Kansas.
Starhopper,
I thought you would have classified that as technology rather than pure science. China does space exploration also.
I got the impression you classified pure science as something like theoretical physics.
bmiller,
Getting dangerously close to mind reading here, but there's a huge difference between China's motivations for space exploration and India's. China is in it for practical reasons - colonization, extraterrestrial resources (mining in space), and state power. Indian scientists seem to genuinely want to know what Mars is like, for its own sake. The MOM space probe serves no practical purpose.
"See the difference?"
I see the difference, but its awfully subtle. It's easier to spot when you talk about other cultures, such as Islam vs the Islamic world, or Marxism-Leninism vs the Soviet Union.
Hal,
Sorry. I don't get either of your latest points.
Starhopper,
Getting dangerously close to mind reading here, but there's a huge difference between China's motivations for space exploration and India's.
I suspect there are multiple motivations for nation states to explore space with the biggest motivation being military.
Do they build particle accelerators? Of course findings from those could be for military purposes too.
A big theme of Jaki is that when science separated itself from it's theological and therefore moral foundations, advances in science can and have become curses as well as blessings.
Hal,
I'm interested in what you think of this claim:
Sounds like a description of how modern physics is done.
Hal,
Gee, when Gaukroger points out that in the emergence of modern science it became an autonomous pursuit you think he is gravely mistaken.
My criticism of Gaukroger is that he apparently thinks theology was irrelevant to the development of science within Christendom. I haven't commented on 'autonomous pursuit' at all wrt Gaukroger.
Hal,
Do you think it an apt description for all scientific activities?
No. Physics is only one branch of what we now call science.
Hal,
You're mistaken. He was talking about physics. He called it 'exact science':
"the quantitative study of the quantitative aspects of objects in motion."
Hal,
It appears to me that Gaukroger and Jaki find the conception of modern science to be problematical.
Sorry. I don't understand this post at all.
Hal,
I don't know what you mean. Why would I think Jaki opposed modern science. He had a PhD in physics.
Hal,
In the book she states that it can be used for Christian apologetics.
I was addressing Starhopper's question:
"Interesting. I wonder what it is (was) about Christianity that made it a suitable incubator for the scientific method." He then wondered why other religions failed.
Fr. Jaki addressed this theological question. If one thinks that he is right, then one might be persuaded that Christianity has things more right than other religions and in that respect it may turn some people toward Christianity. I think that's why Stacy Trasanco says it could be used for apologetics.
Do you not agree that he is presenting his Thomistic view of science and how it relates to the Christian faith?
I don't know if he was a Thomist or not. I never read anything where he claimed he was. He compared philosophical/religious commitments of various cultures and showed how they prevented modern science from developing in contrast to Christianity. There's nothing particularly Thomist about that but, more importantly, what precisely do you disagree with? The facts? Or mentioning the facts?
Doesn't he say that any definition of science that differs from his is mistaken?
Who defines physics differently than he does? Why don't you just plainly state what you think is the problem?
Hal,
I don't see anything in that post that was directed towards one of Starhopper's questions.
I'm lost now. I don't honestly know what your beef is with respect to discussing theological differences between religions. Apologetics or something.
Not at all.
And I'm lost here too. You told me apologetics were being practiced and you were not going to participate. Fine. I don't think Gaukroger is qualified to discuss religious beliefs at all from what you've supplied within Christianity or any other religion for that matter. As a result, he is supplying a weak apologetic for atheism.
Hal,
Neither Gaukroger nor myself is engaged in an apologetic for atheism. What are you basing that claim on?
I don't know how people can discuss Starhopper's question without discussing the beliefs of different religions. I also don't know how anyone considers objectively comparing those differences is an apology for any of them. I do consider it an attempt at atheistic apologetics to consider discussing religious beliefs as irrelevant or harmful. I could sense that from the author from the first set of quotes.
Also, I wonder why you keep posting quotes about the various philosophical discussions that took place within Christianity wrt Aristotle. Plato thought there was only one big soul in the universe that individual souls came from and returned to after death in an eternal cycle. Christians didn't buy all of Platonic philosophy, nor did they buy all of Aristotle's philosophy. They took the parts that made sense and rejected the parts that didn't. The quotes do nothing to tell us why Christianity? rather than Buddhism, rather than Hinduism, rather than Islam, rather than Shintoism, rather than pagan Greece itself.
Hal,
I wonder why you keep posting the same sort of things without answering my repeated criticisms and conclude that somehow you are addressing my criticisms.
1) You got offended and defensive because of Fr. Jaki's factual comparison of various religious beliefs and why they all failed to nurture modern science except for Christianity.
2) Gaukroger suits you better because he offers you a weak apologetic for atheism by leaving out the reasons why other religions failed to nurture modern science while Christianity did. It gives you cover to believe there is nothing special about Christianity and it was all an accident that modern science developed within Christianity rather than all those other cultures. Intentionally leaving out facts from an account for the purposes of persuasion is a form of apologetics, albeit a dishonest form of it.
3) The latest Gaukroger quotes you supply are irrelevant to the question of why did modern science develop within Christianity and no where else.
4) You somehow think making a distinction between Christianity and Christendom is relevant, but you don't tell me how. At least One Brow make an attempt by referring to Russia, but you have not provided any reason for anyone to think that this distinction of your's makes any difference.
Hal,
And Gaukroger is not interested in explaining why modern science did not emerge elsewhere,
And so he does not address Starhopper's question. Thank you.
Science didn't emerge within the doctrinal beliefs of Christianity, it emerged within a culture which was dominated by Christianity.
The doctrinal beliefs of Christianity nurtured the development of and the birth of modern science. That is Jaki's thesis. Your distinction makes no difference in this respect.
Finally, it was you that claimed discussing and comparing religious beliefs "amounts to an apologetic for Christianity and a dissing of other religions." That claim looks like a counter-apologetic for an "all religions are the same...and wrong" worldview to me.
Gaukroger may or may not be of that worldview but as far as you've shown, he thinks the development of modern science within Christianity was an accident of history. It could have just as well happened in any culture. At the base, this is the atheist creed. Things happen accidentally......for no reason.
I'll let you have the last word.
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