{"id":7842,"date":"2014-09-12T04:58:39","date_gmt":"2014-09-12T11:58:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=7842"},"modified":"2014-09-12T07:43:55","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T14:43:55","slug":"the-truth-about-science-and-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-truth-about-science-and-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"The Truth About Science and Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"
by Terry Scambray \/\/ American Thinker<\/a><\/div>\n
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Photo via www.drroyspencer.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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In 1925 the renowned philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead speaking to scholars at Harvard said that science originated in Christian Europe in the 13th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 Whitehead pointed out that science arose from \u201cthe medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher\u201d, from which it follows that human minds created in that image are capable of understanding nature.The audience, assuming that science and Christianity are enemies, was astonished.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Equally astonished are scientists writing in the March 12 edition of Nature<\/em>, the\u00a0respected science journal. These scientists are studying a treatise written in 1225 by Robert Grosseteste, a bishop and theologian, which is \u201cdense with mathematical thinking\u201d as it describes the birth of the universe \u201cfour centuries before Newton proposed gravity and seven centuries before the Big Bang theory.\u201dScience itself developed from the medieval university, another uniquely Western institution.\u00a0 And universities were favored by popes and kings, who were protective of the institutions which they chartered and funded.\u00a0 In fact, \u201ctenure\u201d was instituted in universities in order to maintain their independence when \u201ctown and gown\u201d battles erupted.One of the singularly important pioneers in science was the Franciscan, Roger Bacon, called \u201cthe first scientist\u201d because he emphasized experimentation as opposed to accepting things on authority.\u00a0 He published a recipe for gunpowder in 1242 about the same time as the Chinese invented it.<\/p>\n

Yes, the Chinese invented gunpowder and the misnamed \u201cArabic numbers\u201d actually originated in India.\u00a0\u00a0 But as Stanley Jaki, the eminent science historian has said, Science \u201cwas stillborn\u201d in these cultures.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

For many reasons but two are prominent: Their religions, their worldviews, did not allow for an ordered universe conducive to science.\u00a0 Also the West offered freedom to explore new ideas; elsewhere tyrants crushed anything new and threatening.<\/p>\n

Among the extremely long parade of great scientists who were devout Christians are Copernicus, Newton, Harvey, Boyle, Pasteur, Mendel, Carver, and Georges Lemaitre who gave scientific form to the Big Bang theory.\u00a0\u00a0 Also Raymond Damadian, inventor of the life saving MRI scanner, is worth mentioning.<\/p>\n

Despite these facts, Voltaire and famed historian Edward Gibbon argued that the Middle Ages were the \u201cDark Ages\u201d, and Christianity retarded science, the theme of PBS\u2019s updated Cosmos<\/em> series from last spring.<\/p>\n

Two individuals are invariably used to support this view,<\/p>\n

Giordano Bruno and Galileo.<\/p>\n

Despite being portrayed as a \u201cmartyr for science\u201d, Bruno was a mystic, an occultist who denied church doctrines and was burned at the stake in 1600.\u00a0 Though certainly a dreadful incident, Bruno\u2019s case shows a system without legal protection for free speech, a right that evolved later in Western law.<\/p>\n

In Galileo\u2019s time like ours, Protestants criticized Catholics for downplaying the Bible.\u00a0 So when Galileo insisted that the center of the solar system was the sun not the earth, the Vatican feared that this might appear to contradict the Bible, showing that Catholics were Scripture lite.<\/p>\n

As pressure increased during the Reformation, the Vatican told Galileo to cool it since heliocentrism was unproven, as even the then best astronomer, Tycho Brahe, thought.\u00a0 Besides, Galileo had been wrong about other scientific matters.\u00a0 But Galileo had a big ego, understandable perhaps, since he was a genius and had powerful admirers like popes, cardinals and the Medici family.<\/p>\n

Thus, he overplayed his hand, refusing to back off.\u00a0 As punishment, he was sentenced to spend his remaining years in his villa in Florence with occasional visits outside.\u00a0 There he continued his work, remained a Catholic and died a natural death in 1642.<\/p>\n

He was not convicted as a heretic, imprisoned or tortured.\u00a0 And no evidence exists that during sentencing he mumbled, \u201cStill it moves,” meaning that despite his recantation, the earth does move around the sun.<\/p>\n

Actually it is hard to find\u00a0 \u201cmartyrs for science.” Though one can find examples under materialist, atheistic systems as, for example, during the French Revolution, the Academy of Sciences was closed for a year. \u00a0And revolutionists did guillotine the groundbreaking chemist, Antoine Lavoisier.\u00a0 But Lavoisier was also an aristocrat, a Catholic\u00a0 and a tax collector, not correct affiliations to have during the Revolution.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In an attempt to imitate the prestigious French Academy, Mussolini\u2019s fascist government created The Royal Academy of Italy in 1926 whose members had to swear allegiance to the government.\u00a0\u00a0 Though scientists must have felt some pressure under\u00a0the circumstances, no record exists of any scientist being persecuted.\u00a0 Perhaps Italian scientists knew better than to challenge the authorities.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
In Russia, Stalin ordered Soviet scientists to prove that communism creates unselfish people, a trait which then could be inherited over generations until a perfect society existed.\u00a0 It was a crackpot idea, but many scientists spewed the party line while \u201cdissident\u201d scientists were shipped to Siberia or murdered.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Too bad that many more people know the Galileo legend than know the truth about Stalin\u2019s brutal attack on science.\u00a0 And there is no indication that textbooks as well as PBS\u2019s science programs, which are shown\u00a0 throughout the world in schools and universities, are interested in changing the situation.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read more: http:\/\/www.americanthinker.com\/blog\/2014\/08\/the_truth_about_science_and_religion.html#ixzz3CvPqsFPj<\/a>
\nFollow them: @AmericanThinker on Twitter<\/a> | AmericanThinker on Facebook<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Terry Scambray \/\/ American Thinker   In 1925 the renowned philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead speaking to scholars at Harvard said that science originated in Christian Europe in the 13th century.\u00a0 Whitehead pointed out that science arose from \u201cthe medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[78,79,225,354,842,85],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-22u","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3152,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obstructed-view\/","url_meta":{"origin":7842,"position":0},"title":"Obstructed View","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Terry Scambray Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity Science\u2019s Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism\u00a0by Cornelius Hunter. 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