In an earlier post, I asked for a response to a quote about the negative aspect of belief in God, [I'm not claiming all theistic belief is negative] that which inspires actions like the Crusades, suicide bombings, etc. In the quote, the implication was clear that since atheists don't have a god, they can't feel "divinely inspired" to murder, or justify fascism using divine fiat or appointment. I received, just this morning, a thoughtful response from an anonymous reader. The reader made two major points: 1) Science was birthed from the Reformation, 2) Morality depends upon God. I will copy the comment, and my response to part (1), below.
Anonymous wrote:
First, I can't find the exact quote, after doing some Google searches. Perhaps you paraphrased?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I suppose I can infer from your separation of Catholics from Protestants, and extolling Protestants for laying the foundation [supposedly] for scientific progress, that you consider yourself in the latter camp? Forgive me if I presume wrongly.
You said:
Some of the same Catholic leadership and Papists were dogmatic against certain scientists, but scientists and tradesmen within the Protestant movement were the ones that brought almost all of the science and engineering paradigm from which we have piggybacked off of today. Not Catholics.
One thing you may omit here is that the only erstwhile educated were those in a seminary. There was no "secular institution" to speak of, nor a "secular education". All philosophy was theology, and all "science" was natural theology. Therefore, it is logically fallacious to claim it as a "piggyback" that science came from men who were educated in this same tradition. The only men (I'm not being sexist, since men were the only ones educated at the time) able to actually do and learn the method of science were indeed quite often of a Christian persuasion, but do we thank their persuasion for science? Indeed, when we examine Christian teachings in the day of the Reformation, do we find an openness and willingness to pursue some sort of value-neutral knowledge about the natural universe...? Hardly. We have the Greeks to thank for the slight advances made during the Scholastic period, and for making the hairline fractures in the dam of dogma that held back freedom to investigate and draw conclusions about our world independently of what the Scriptures taught. The flood of the Enlightenment was no thanks to the Reformation itself, but perhaps accelerated by the bloodshed between Protestants and Catholics in Europe at the time--and the disillusionment with religion that followed.
Notice that post-Enlightenment, the only "piggyback" that we're still dealing with today is in slicing away religious attachments to moral philosophy. In science, the most prestigious body of scientists, the National Academies, reports that of its members, a paltry 7% believe in any kind of personal God. However long you claim religion carried science, it is quite clear that science eventually got too big and crushed its ride. Whatever you can infer from Protestantism and the Reformation generally, if it inspired Science, then Science must have been a cannibal child which ate its own mother.
I don't necessarily disagree that those who dogmatically pledged obedience to the Church were less inclined to teach against it. Unfortunately, those who dogmatically pledged to believe the Bible in all its teachings (Sola scriptura) fall into the same trap.
A few questions for you -- how is it that Protestant adherence to Biblical inerrancy leads to scientific discovery? What scientific discoveries were "facilitated" by faith? (Note here that I am not asking which discoveries can be reconciled with some interpretation of the Bible) I would bet [reckon] that you are pointing more to the "uniformity of nature", the "laws" which you think "imply a lawgiver", as a sort of basis for science. Perhaps you are thinking of Aquinas? Of course, you are ignoring the ancient Greeks, the materialists of the ancient world, who understood the forces of nature and principles of uniformity long before Christianity rolled over Europe. The rediscovery of Greek thought during the Scholastic period of the church is indeed what inspired the later schism--being exposed to the greatness of thought that was to be found in the ancient world upset the idea of blind obedience to the Church and her teachings. One need only read of Roger Bacon and William of Ockham to see the power of Greek thought on orthodoxy, and the fear it inspired in those all around them. One need only see the treatment of Erasmus and Servetus to see how freedom of thought was held in check by Catholics and Protestants alike.
You can't "just blame the Catholics" for burning heretics, much as you'd like to.
Indeed, my friend, it was not the Reformation, nor the Bible, that freed men from dogma and superstition, that led them to the Enlightenment, the Reformation was only the trading of the authority of the Church for the authority of the Book. Dogmatic adherence to the Book is what hindered the Enlightenment's onset, and we can all agree, I think, that "higher criticism", once unleashed on the Bible, marked the beginning of the end for the Book's authority, and the beginning of the beginning for the Age of Reason and her child, Science.
Did you know that Luther and Calvin both, as Protestants, denied heliocentricity, and taught against it, because of the Scriptures?
"Scripture simply says that the moon, the sun, and the stars were placed in the firmament of the heaven, below and above which heaven are the waters... It is likely that the stars are fastened to the firmament like globes of fire, to shed light at night... We Christians must be different from the philosophers in the way we think about the causes of things. And if some are beyond our comprehension like those before us concerning the waters above the heavens, we must believe them rather than wickedly deny them or presumptuously interpret them in conformity with our understanding."
Martin Luther, Luther's Works. Vol. 1. Lectures on Genesis, ed. Janoslaw Pelikan, Concordia Pub. House, St. Louis, Missouri, 1958, pp. 30, 42, 43. (Source, my friend, Ed Babinski)
"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 [or 'man'] 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."
Martin Luther, Table Talk
"Those who assert that 'the earth moves and turns'...[are] motivated by 'a spirit of bitterness, contradiction, and faultfinding;' possessed by the devil, they aimed 'to pervert the order of nature.'"
John Calvin, sermon no. 8 on 1st Corinthians, 677, cited in John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait by William J. Bouwsma (Oxford Univ. Press, 1988), A. 72
"The heavens revolve daily, and, immense as is their fabric, and inconceivable the rapidity of their revolutions, we experience no concussion -- no disturbance in the harmony of their motion. The sun, though varying its course every diurnal revolution, returns annually to the same point. The planets, in all their wandering, maintain their respective positions. How could the earth hang suspended in the air were it not upheld by God's hand? (Job 26:7) By what means could it [the earth] maintain itself unmoved, while the heavens above are in constant rapid motion, did not its Divine Maker fix and establish it? Accordingly the particle, ape, denoting emphasis, is introduced -- YEA, he hath established it."
John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, Psalm 93, verse 1, trans., James Anderson (Eerdman's, 1949), Vol. 4, p. 7
I would also ask you today, which body of Christians is most vehemently anti-science? Protestants or Catholics? Whatever freedom the Reformation gained believers from a Church of authority, it apparently lost them in freedom from blind adherence to Biblical doctrines which are unscientific. The creation-evolution "controversy", uniquely Protestant in character, is only one symptom manifesting thereof.
In conclusion, I would say you have more work to do if you want to convince me (or anyone else, likely), that Science "piggybacked" Protestantism.
Please respond with more thoughts, if I misrepresented you or attacked a strawman of your arguments.
Best regards,
Daniel
The Crusaders were Catholics (deemed by many as Papists commanding false doctrines not in the Bible as finally protested in the OPEN against by Europeans during the Reformation) who were going to remove Muslim invaders who they deemed as following a false prophet/Caravan trader that wrote the Koran that was basically plagarized from what he had learned from Jews and Christians, molded into his own dogma which he said came from an angel). Some of the same Catholic leadership and Papists were dogmatic against certain scientists, but scientists and tradesmen within the Protestant movement were the ones that brought almost all of the science and engineering paradigm from which we have piggybacked off of today. Not Catholics. The Puritan group that killed the witches in Salem etc. were a shortlived group following some goofy legalists. Muslims have the potential to annilate infidels, but only a few million of them have the stomach to use mentally disabled suicide bombers(someone gullible enough to believe they will be with beautiful virgins after killing a lot of people, even young babies)to take over the earth. Atheists can do whatever they want as long as they can get away with it, because once they get past man, they have no god to punish them. They can be good or bad depending on what they want. I say "entrust yourself to no man for I know what is within man". Guess who taught that?
First, I can't find the exact quote, after doing some Google searches. Perhaps you paraphrased?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I suppose I can infer from your separation of Catholics from Protestants, and extolling Protestants for laying the foundation [supposedly] for scientific progress, that you consider yourself in the latter camp? Forgive me if I presume wrongly.
You said:
Some of the same Catholic leadership and Papists were dogmatic against certain scientists, but scientists and tradesmen within the Protestant movement were the ones that brought almost all of the science and engineering paradigm from which we have piggybacked off of today. Not Catholics.
One thing you may omit here is that the only erstwhile educated were those in a seminary. There was no "secular institution" to speak of, nor a "secular education". All philosophy was theology, and all "science" was natural theology. Therefore, it is logically fallacious to claim it as a "piggyback" that science came from men who were educated in this same tradition. The only men (I'm not being sexist, since men were the only ones educated at the time) able to actually do and learn the method of science were indeed quite often of a Christian persuasion, but do we thank their persuasion for science? Indeed, when we examine Christian teachings in the day of the Reformation, do we find an openness and willingness to pursue some sort of value-neutral knowledge about the natural universe...? Hardly. We have the Greeks to thank for the slight advances made during the Scholastic period, and for making the hairline fractures in the dam of dogma that held back freedom to investigate and draw conclusions about our world independently of what the Scriptures taught. The flood of the Enlightenment was no thanks to the Reformation itself, but perhaps accelerated by the bloodshed between Protestants and Catholics in Europe at the time--and the disillusionment with religion that followed.
Notice that post-Enlightenment, the only "piggyback" that we're still dealing with today is in slicing away religious attachments to moral philosophy. In science, the most prestigious body of scientists, the National Academies, reports that of its members, a paltry 7% believe in any kind of personal God. However long you claim religion carried science, it is quite clear that science eventually got too big and crushed its ride. Whatever you can infer from Protestantism and the Reformation generally, if it inspired Science, then Science must have been a cannibal child which ate its own mother.
I don't necessarily disagree that those who dogmatically pledged obedience to the Church were less inclined to teach against it. Unfortunately, those who dogmatically pledged to believe the Bible in all its teachings (Sola scriptura) fall into the same trap.
A few questions for you -- how is it that Protestant adherence to Biblical inerrancy leads to scientific discovery? What scientific discoveries were "facilitated" by faith? (Note here that I am not asking which discoveries can be reconciled with some interpretation of the Bible) I would bet [reckon] that you are pointing more to the "uniformity of nature", the "laws" which you think "imply a lawgiver", as a sort of basis for science. Perhaps you are thinking of Aquinas? Of course, you are ignoring the ancient Greeks, the materialists of the ancient world, who understood the forces of nature and principles of uniformity long before Christianity rolled over Europe. The rediscovery of Greek thought during the Scholastic period of the church is indeed what inspired the later schism--being exposed to the greatness of thought that was to be found in the ancient world upset the idea of blind obedience to the Church and her teachings. One need only read of Roger Bacon and William of Ockham to see the power of Greek thought on orthodoxy, and the fear it inspired in those all around them. One need only see the treatment of Erasmus and Servetus to see how freedom of thought was held in check by Catholics and Protestants alike.
You can't "just blame the Catholics" for burning heretics, much as you'd like to.
Indeed, my friend, it was not the Reformation, nor the Bible, that freed men from dogma and superstition, that led them to the Enlightenment, the Reformation was only the trading of the authority of the Church for the authority of the Book. Dogmatic adherence to the Book is what hindered the Enlightenment's onset, and we can all agree, I think, that "higher criticism", once unleashed on the Bible, marked the beginning of the end for the Book's authority, and the beginning of the beginning for the Age of Reason and her child, Science.
Did you know that Luther and Calvin both, as Protestants, denied heliocentricity, and taught against it, because of the Scriptures?
"Scripture simply says that the moon, the sun, and the stars were placed in the firmament of the heaven, below and above which heaven are the waters... It is likely that the stars are fastened to the firmament like globes of fire, to shed light at night... We Christians must be different from the philosophers in the way we think about the causes of things. And if some are beyond our comprehension like those before us concerning the waters above the heavens, we must believe them rather than wickedly deny them or presumptuously interpret them in conformity with our understanding."
Martin Luther, Luther's Works. Vol. 1. Lectures on Genesis, ed. Janoslaw Pelikan, Concordia Pub. House, St. Louis, Missouri, 1958, pp. 30, 42, 43. (Source, my friend, Ed Babinski)
"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 [or 'man'] 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."
Martin Luther, Table Talk
"Those who assert that 'the earth moves and turns'...[are] motivated by 'a spirit of bitterness, contradiction, and faultfinding;' possessed by the devil, they aimed 'to pervert the order of nature.'"
John Calvin, sermon no. 8 on 1st Corinthians, 677, cited in John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait by William J. Bouwsma (Oxford Univ. Press, 1988), A. 72
"The heavens revolve daily, and, immense as is their fabric, and inconceivable the rapidity of their revolutions, we experience no concussion -- no disturbance in the harmony of their motion. The sun, though varying its course every diurnal revolution, returns annually to the same point. The planets, in all their wandering, maintain their respective positions. How could the earth hang suspended in the air were it not upheld by God's hand? (Job 26:7) By what means could it [the earth] maintain itself unmoved, while the heavens above are in constant rapid motion, did not its Divine Maker fix and establish it? Accordingly the particle, ape, denoting emphasis, is introduced -- YEA, he hath established it."
John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, Psalm 93, verse 1, trans., James Anderson (Eerdman's, 1949), Vol. 4, p. 7
I would also ask you today, which body of Christians is most vehemently anti-science? Protestants or Catholics? Whatever freedom the Reformation gained believers from a Church of authority, it apparently lost them in freedom from blind adherence to Biblical doctrines which are unscientific. The creation-evolution "controversy", uniquely Protestant in character, is only one symptom manifesting thereof.
In conclusion, I would say you have more work to do if you want to convince me (or anyone else, likely), that Science "piggybacked" Protestantism.
Please respond with more thoughts, if I misrepresented you or attacked a strawman of your arguments.
Best regards,
Daniel
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