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Christianity and Science and irrational beliefs by atheists

In my latest book buying spree from Amazon, I've acquired How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization by Thomas E. Woods. I'm looking forward to reading it. However, I was inspired to put this post up due to a comment by Liberty Scott on his blog.
Though it has always been like that - ancient Greece was the first great attempt to embrace reason, and it took the Enlightenment to throw off the shackles of oppressive Christianity suppressing science and reason - a process that has yet to be completed against all religions and all philosophies of subjectivist irrationality.
Mr Dennis has already made a very good comment refuting this statement, but I thought I'd give him a hand from the synopsis of the aforementioned book.
By far the book’s longest chapter is "The Church and Science." We have all heard a great deal about the Church’s alleged hostility toward science. What most people fail to realize is that historians of science have spent the past half-century drastically revising this conventional wisdom, arguing that the Church’s role in the development of Western science was far more salutary than previously thought. I am speaking not about Catholic apologists but about serious and important scholars of the history of science such as J.L. Heilbron, A.C. Crombie, David Lindberg, Edward Grant, and Thomas Goldstein.

It is all very well to point out that important scientists, like Louis Pasteur, have been Catholic. More revealing is how many priests have distinguished themselves in the sciences. It turns out, for instance, that the first person to measure the rate of acceleration of a freely falling body was Fr. Giambattista Riccioli. The man who has been called the father of Egyptology was Fr. Athanasius Kircher (also called "master of a hundred arts" for the breadth of his knowledge). Fr. Roger Boscovich, who has been described as "the greatest genius that Yugoslavia ever produced," has often been called the father of modern atomic theory.

In the sciences it was the Jesuits in particular who distinguished themselves; some 35 craters on the moon, in fact, are named after Jesuit scientists and mathematicians.

By the eighteenth century, the Jesuits
had contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes and microscopes, to scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics and electricity. They observed, in some cases before anyone else, the colored bands on Jupiter’s surface, the Andromeda nebula and Saturn’s rings. They theorized about the circulation of the blood (independently of Harvey), the theoretical possibility of flight, the way the moon effected the tides, and the wave-like nature of light. Star maps of the southern hemisphere, symbolic logic, flood-control measures on the Po and Adige rivers, introducing plus and minus signs into Italian mathematics – all were typical Jesuit achievements, and scientists as influential as Fermat, Huygens, Leibniz and Newton were not alone in counting Jesuits among their most prized correspondents [Jonathan Wright, The Jesuits, 2004, p. 189].
Seismology, the study of earthquakes, has been so dominated by Jesuits that it has become known as "the Jesuit science." It was a Jesuit, Fr. J.B. Macelwane, who wrote Introduction to Theoretical Seismology, the first seismology textbook in America, in 1936. To this day, the American Geophysical Union, which Fr. Macelwane once headed, gives an annual medal named after this brilliant priest to a promising young geophysicist.

The Jesuits were also the first to introduce Western science into such far-off places as China and India. In seventeenth-century China in particular, Jesuits introduced a substantial body of scientific knowledge and a vast array of mental tools for understanding the physical universe, including the Euclidean geometry that made planetary motion comprehensible. Jesuits made important contributions to the scientific knowledge and infrastructure of other less developed nations not only in Asia but also in Africa and Central and South America. Beginning in the nineteenth century, these continents saw the opening of Jesuit observatories that studied such fields as astronomy, geomagnetism, meteorology, seismology, and solar physics. Such observatories provided these places with accurate time keeping, weather forecasts (particularly important in the cases of hurricanes and typhoons), earthquake risk assessments, and cartography. In Central and South America the Jesuits worked primarily in meteorology and seismology, essentially laying the foundations of those disciplines there. The scientific development of these countries, ranging from Ecuador to Lebanon to the Philippines, is indebted to Jesuit efforts.

The Galileo case is often cited as evidence of Catholic hostility toward science, and How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization accordingly takes a closer look at the Galileo matter. For now, just one little-known fact: Catholic cathedrals in Bologna, Florence, Paris, and Rome were constructed to function as solar observatories. No more precise instruments for observing the sun’s apparent motion could be found anywhere in the world. When Johannes Kepler posited that planetary orbits were elliptical rather than circular, Catholic astronomer Giovanni Cassini verified Kepler’s position through observations he made in the Basilica of San Petronio in the heart of the Papal States. Cassini, incidentally, was a student of Fr. Riccioli and Fr. Francesco Grimaldi, the great astronomer who also discovered the diffraction of light, and even gave the phenomenon its name.

I’ve tried to fill the book with little-known facts like these.
I would recommend to Liberty Scott that he spend a bit more time researching some of these anti-Christian beliefs of his, as our civilisation is built on Christianity and denying it's centrality to the development of thought over the last couple of thousand years is to deny Western Civilisation itself. You can't pick and choose the past you like and then discard what doesn't suit.

Related Link: How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization

Comments

  1. Good post. This is a popular misconception, and one people aren't too keen to change their minds on.

    As I understand the Galileo affair, both he and those opposed to his ideas were Catholic. This was a dispute on a scientific matter within the church, not the church persecuting anyone. Many in the church had accepted the currently popular idea of the earth being at the centre of the universe, and accepted it as gospel truth, despite the Bible not saying this at all. They then defended their scientific knowledge vigorously, and may have hunted out biblical passages that seemed to back it up, but ultimately they were wrong.

    This has a strong parallel today in the Creation / Evolution debate. This is a serious scientific dispute, with increasing numbers of atheistic scientists rejecting evolution on scientific grounds, in addition to many Christian scientists who do. Creation is currently the minority view, partly due to media / scientific journal editor bias - it is very hard to publish anything that contradicts evolution, however strong your research. But it is a serious view with strong evidence in its favour, and worth debating.

    In my experience at university, the scientists that have the greatest expertise in any area are also more willing to accept there are problems with that area of evolutionary theory - my genetics lecturer (an atheist) completely rejected evolution as unscientific. But within the church, just as in Galileo's day, there are many people who have accepted evolution as absolute truth, have decided God used this to create the world, and cling to this belief as strongly as they cling to any aspect of Christianity. Non-Christians are generally happy to discuss this issue scientifically. But many Christians label you a nutcase and refuse to discuss it - just like in Galileo's day.

    Your greatest opposition on any issue comes from within the Church. There is something about us Christians that is self-destructive. I see the same thing politically too - this is why we haven't got a Christian party into parliament yet, because Christians keep bickering over minor issues (and making spinoff parties) and find it hard to cooperate to counter the liberal socialism that is plaguing this country. This is partly our nature, but in a great part will be due to Satan - he knows if he can keep us divided, however many we are, he can have whatever influence he likes on our nation and we can't stop him.

    We need to recognise that however much we disagree with another Christian on any issue, we still probably have more in common with their overall views than those of a non-Christian.

    Mr Dennis

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  2. "This has a strong parallel today in the Creation / Evolution debate. This is a serious scientific dispute, with increasing numbers of atheistic scientists rejecting evolution on scientific grounds, in addition to many Christian scientists who do."

    Hogwash. Find a credible university biology department which would have a majority of its professors sharing that view. It is the last desperate cling to a lost cause.

    On the main post though, I am willing to take the challenge. My point is more fundamental. Had Christianity never existed and Ancient Greece never been conquered but thrived, science and humanity would today be eons ahead.

    The Dark Ages were a long deathly period of stagnation led by the Church. The enlightenment was not, it was a fight to put the church in its place - a matter of personal choice and faith, not a theocratic dictatorship, which it once was (much as Islamists are today in some countries).

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  3. Libertyscott, Creation is a minority view, as I said. You would be hard pressed to find a university biology department with a majority of its professors supporting a minority view, apart from possibly in some Christian universities in the USA. That does not mean you can't find scientists that do support it, and does not mean it is not a valid scientific viewpoint.

    But this post is not to debate Creation or Evolution. My point stands regardless of which is correct. I am discussing how us Christians tend to fight amongst ourselves, and am using Creation and politics as two examples of that.

    Mr Dennis

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  4. Liberty Scott, when you say "The Dark Ages", what period of history do you mean?

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  5. Had Christianity never existed and Ancient Greece never been conquered but thrived, science and humanity would today be eons ahead.

    Actually, ancient Greece wasn't conquered by any Christian state (there weren't any until the 4th century AD). It was conquered by (pagan) Ancient Rome in the 2nd century BC. And I've read that was, at least in part, because the Greeks obsessed so much about liberty and autonomy that the Romans could play the Greek cities off against each other until they were all so weak the Romans could just walk in and take over.

    In due course, the Roman Empire was overwhelmed by the invasion of German tribes. Many of these were pagan as well. In the East, the Germans didn't attack so much, but there were others like the Slavs, who also brought their own gods.

    So really, a claim that Christianity per se was bad for Europe is to say you'd prefer shrines to Woden. Or Zeus (if belief in him would have survived). Or the Celtic deities in Ireland. Or...you get the picture. Then again, maybe, faced with a weak and divided Europe, the Arabs would have won the Battle of Tours and we'd all be praying to Mecca. Is there any evidence that scientific inquiry would have been better off under any of those, or that Enlightenment values would have been given so much as the time of day either?

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  6. Then again, maybe, faced with a weak and divided Europe, the Arabs would have won the Battle of Tours and we'd all be praying to Mecca. Is there any evidence that scientific inquiry would have been better off under any of those, or that Enlightenment values would have been given so much as the time of day either?

    I don't think you could seriously argue that medieval science would have been any worse of under the religion of Avicenna (who gave us clinical trials and a text that was in European universities for 500 years) the Maragha school of astronomy (which moved on from the Ptolemaic model of the universe and, more importantly, treated astronomy as an observational science not a mathematical game ) and, well, pretty much every mathematician than matters between Greece and and about the 12th century...

    In fact, before the scientific revolution Islamic science had done probably done as much as all the Jesuits Lucyna or anyone else is likely to name. Perhaps the only thing that made Christendom a better place for modern science to develop was the fact that the dogma of that region's religion was so much easier to cast aside?

    Now, Dennis,
    This was a dispute on a scientific matter within the church, not the church persecuting anyone.

    No. The inquisition assembled a panel of theologians (called, I believe The Qualifiers) who ruled that any model of the universe that included a moving earth was "absurd" because it didn't agree with scripture (Chronicles does seem quite specific on it actually...) and that Galileo was not to go around talking about such things. It's certainly true that Galileo wasn't the beacon of pure reason some now believe him to be put he was equally certainly locked away (a sentence late commuted to house arrest) for writing a book that threatened the Church's position. I think that's persecution.

    I know you don't want to argue about evolution but you have made some truly absurd statements in the rest of your post

    "This is a serious scientific dispute, with increasing numbers of atheistic scientists rejecting evolution on scientific grounds"

    Would you care to name one?

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  7. One example would be Dr Michael Denton at the University of Otago, the author of Evolution: A Theory In Crisis.

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  8. Not so much actually, Denton doesn't much like the theory of evolution by natural selection but if you read his other book you'll find he seems to have no problem with fact that evolution has occurred.

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  9. @David:

    I don't think you could seriously argue that medieval science would have been any worse of under the religion of Avicenna (who gave us clinical trials and a text that was in European universities for 500 years) the Maragha school of astronomy (which moved on from the Ptolemaic model of the universe and, more importantly, treated astronomy as an observational science not a mathematical game ) and, well, pretty much every mathematician than matters between Greece and and about the 12th century...

    I'm not denying that Arab scholars in the second half of the first millennium made great contributions to science and philosophy. Nor am I saying that an Islamic society (or a polytheistic one, for that matter) is necessarily the death-knell of science.

    But it is a matter of historical record that science ultimately did best in Western Europe; and you'd be hard-pressed to argue that, in one of the few regions of the world where Christianity was a dominant influence, that the scientific endeavour did well there, and only there, despite Christian belief.

    I also think (though I'm open to correction on this) that the real reason Avicenna, the astronomers, the mathematicians and so on were well received was that they lived in an Arab Empire at the height of its power and prosperity; so there was no real threat to the powers that were. All that began to change when the Seljuk Turks invaded.

    Europe at the time was largely a mess of petty German tribes, some Christian and some not, all squabbling with each other; not to mention outside invaders like the Magyars. The struggle for mere survival, and the lack of time and energy for scholarly pursuits, was probably the main reason why these were the so-called "dark ages". And most of the learning that survived or was introduced from afar was preserved or introduced by religious institutions (monasteries and later universities).

    Perhaps the only thing that made Christendom a better place for modern science to develop was the fact that the dogma of that region's religion was so much easier to cast aside?

    I've heard it was because Christian theology teaches a God of order, who makes his creation understandable; unlike, say, Hinduism, which teaches illusion, or paganism, which teaches caprice, or ancient atheism, which (if I recall correctly) taught randomness.

    I do agree that there is a strong debate at the moment concerning origins. But if you take perhaps the key Christian proclamation - the resurrection of Jesus - science has nothing to say to it, and I've yet to meet anyone whose ability to do science is hampered by their belief in it.

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  10. Mr Gronk,

    I can't disagree too vehemently with any of your points (expect the idea that there exists a real debate in "origins").

    Just wanted to point out that there could be a middle ground between LibertyScott's narrative - (The Greeks where great the the church threw us into a dark age which lasted untill the Scientific Revolution delivered us into an age of reason - is he a Libertarian by any chance?) and the one offered by Mr Dennis and Lucyna (only the Catholic Church's hegemony could have allowed us to develop modern science) ;)

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  11. Thanks for posting this Lucyna, must put that one onto my to-read list. Naturally the Christian-haters won't be swayed since they have a vested interest in ensuring humanity believes in nothing.

    Much easier to commit any old evil when there is no one to answer to and no moral compass is allowed to guide us.

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  12. The Galileo case is often cited as evidence of Catholic hostility toward science, and How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization accordingly takes a closer look at the Galileo matter. For now, just one little-known fact: Catholic cathedrals in Bologna, Florence, Paris, and Rome were constructed to function as solar observatories. No more precise instruments for observing the sun’s apparent motion could be found anywhere in the world. When Johannes Kepler posited that planetary orbits were elliptical rather than circular, Catholic astronomer Giovanni Cassini verified Kepler’s position through observations he made in the Basilica of San Petronio in the heart of the Papal States. Cassini, incidentally, was a student of Fr. Riccioli and Fr. Francesco Grimaldi, the great astronomer who also discovered the diffraction of light, and even gave the phenomenon its name.


    The enlightenment started out from the basis that God had created the Universe so the best way to find out about God was to study his work, so basically every scientist was a Christian.

    Problems cropped up when pretty much everything they found out about Gods universe appeared to directly contradict the holy scriptures: who are you going to believe, the Book of Genesis or your lyin' eyes?

    The Church lined up on the side of the Bible, science went with the facts and western civilisation has never looked back.

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  13. @David:

    I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree, then.

    Just wanted to point out that there could be a middle ground between LibertyScott's narrative...and the one offered by Mr Dennis and Lucyna

    About that, I couldn't agree more.

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  14. Why does the CC cop the blame for the so-called "Dark Ages"? I don't think the CC caused the fall of Rome, Attila the Hun, or Genghis Khan.

    @Danyl:
    The enlightenment started out from the basis that God had created the Universe so the best way to find out about God was to study his work, so basically every scientist was a Christian.
    Yep, several cultural prerequisites had to be in place for science to flourish, and Christian belief was one of them.

    Problems cropped up when pretty much everything they found out about Gods universe appeared to directly contradict the holy scriptures: who are you going to believe, the Book of Genesis or your lyin' eyes?

    You're exaggerating Danyl, it's a matter of interpretation of said Scriptures.

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  15. David: "...the one offered by Mr Dennis and Lucyna (only the Catholic Church's hegemony could have allowed us to develop modern science)"

    I don't actually agree with that statement at all, being Protestant myself! It is Christianity, and the belief that the world was created by an orderly God and could therefore be studied and understood (as pointed out by Mr Gronk), that provided a good base for Western science, not Catholicism per se.

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  16. Yep, several cultural prerequisites had to be in place for science to flourish, and Christian belief was one of them.

    I couldn't be bothered reading your link, but the robust nature of science in pagan Greece and Confucian China makes this idea hard to credit.


    You're exaggerating Danyl, it's a matter of interpretation of said Scriptures.


    Once again, I've learned through long experience debating Lucyna never to bother clicking on the pages you guys link to, so I'll merely observe that the popular notion that the Bible means whatever is temporarily convenient wouldn't have cut much ice with the Church a couple of hundred years back.

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  17. @Danyl

    The science of China and Greece did not exist as a cultural enterprise on a scale remotely approaching Western science over the last 3 or 4 centuries.

    Also, you seem to have conveniently forgotten a little thing called the Reformation. Whilst the Bible is claimed to be "infallible in the autographs" errors may occur in transmission and exegesis; and disputes DO arise.

    the popular notion that the Bible means whatever is temporarily convenient wouldn't have cut much ice with the Church a couple of hundred years back
    Your grudge against the RCC is rather outdated!

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  18. Dennis said...
    That does not mean you can't find scientists that do support it.

    It is irrelevant what scientists say. The truth speaks for itself, ie, testable evidence. Eg, it is irrelevant what Einstein believes, what matters whether the theory he discovered is testable & observable, repeatable throughout the universe.

    If God exists, then show us a testable way to prove it. If you can't, then you're flogging a dead horse. This means that God, doesn't exist, since it is arbitrary. Any claim that is arbitrary must be thrown out in its entirety, simple as that. If you have to accept arbitrary argument , then you're going into infinite regression in logic, ie, one claim that something exists, where the opponents said no it doesn't. The opponents would keep asking for proof, while the proponents keep replying with the answer that it is not testable. That's why arbitrary claims have to be rejected on that basis on infinite regression, because there is no closure or end to it.

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  19. @numerica,
    If I told you I had seen a miracle would you believe me? If I said God speaks to me would you believe me?

    Ultimately I can't offer the conclusive 'proof' you demand, but there is a ton of evidence, if you care to look.

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