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Real science only arose in one place at one time, namely in Christian Europe. It never arose in any other spatial or geographic setting. That alone tells us something. Egypt, China, the various Islamic states and empires, India, ancient Greece and Rome - all these had their pre-scientific and pre-Christian inventions, creations and insights. Alchemy, astrology, and aspects of math, engineering and logic all find their places in various ancient empires. But none of them produced the modern world. That single fact makes it clear that far from hindering secular rationality, Christianity must have promoted it.
As the prominent early 20th century mathematician and philosopher Alfred Whitehead suggested; science arose in Europe because of the: “faith in the possibility of science....derivative from medieval theology.” It was only in Europe that we have the “.....medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher.” Whitehead is perfectly correct. Christianity must have been a key component in the creation of science.
In reading about the badly named 'middle ages', it is clear that the Christian world was not a monolithic Catholic barbarity fighting against reason. The opposite was true. In fact it is clear that Christianity was certainly responsible for Europe's ascension to science and rationality. We know this must be a valid thesis because non-Christian states and empires did not produce the modern world. In fact they never came close. In general we can forward a universal law which would withstand any serious scrutiny and state that non-Christian theologies militate and obstruct against the development of reason and science.
There are many reasons why non-Christian philosophies are so primitive. Most non-Christian belief systems are circular and irrational. Their Gods are impersonal and not prone to reason. The universe is considered to be one large mystery, and inner peace and self-worth can only be achieved through meditation and mystical insights. Reason is not celebrated. Neither is individualism.
Centuries of meditation and platitudes about brotherly love and accepting one's 'fate' in life; does not produce science. Christian theology is different in that the various schisms, sects and debates within the Christian universe, led to, and reinforced, the nascent European propensity for rational inquiry. Some of the best minds that the human species has produced knew that scientific truth was a pursuit of creation. Newton, Kepler, Galileo, and Descartes all justified their search for natural laws and natural-scientific truth, on the basis that a perfect God would want man to understand the perfect world of reality. This cultural innovation, premised on the non-mystical Christian ideology, was instrumental to establish rational enlightenment.
Non-Christian philosophies are thus not only mystical systems of irrationality piety, but also ortho-praxy belief systems, or 'correct practices'. Christianity is ortho-dox, or a system of 'correct thinking'. Islam is the the ultimate expression of orthopraxy submission. The entire edifice of Islamic 'thought' is simply to impose 'correct practices' and make sure that people follow these rituals. For Muslims, the Koran is the word of a supposed 'God' who is in fact Ali-ilah or the male Meccan moon deity. Allah is as far removed from the Christian ideal of God, as Taoism is from the Christian ideal of non-mystical, rationality. Islam does not encourage investigation or truth-seeking. It is a system of conformity, intent on social management, and the expansion of the cult at the expense of the 'other'. In such a mind-set orthopraxy is mandatory. Rationality would only lead to fragmentation and disputation and distract the 'group' from the main task at hand, namely; universalist supremacy and control.
Islam also mistakenly accepted in-toto, the elements of Greek thought and accepted them as 'facts' which could not be improved. This is a decidedly Muslim cultural attribute. Once something like the Koran, or the terrible philosophies of Plato; or the mystical explanations of Aristotle, are accepted as 'truth', the Muslim carefully stores them away and pronounces them ineffable and irrefutable. The rest of the cult are told to worship these 'self-evident' verities and simply submit to them. No inquiry is allowed. Islam is the opposite of a system of individualized, free-will and rational investigation. It is a system of obedience and acceptance. In Western Christian states, the ancient Greeks were held up to investigation, ridicule, enhancement and all manner of change and re-shaping. None of the ancient thinkers and scribes were accepted as omniscient.
After the replacement of Rome by the three main Germanic Kingdoms, we are told that Europe entered a 'Dark Age'. This is of course a dark lie. Europe never 'lost' ancient thinking and Roman-Greek literature and philosophies. Roads, cities, and trade caravans did not instantly plunge into the abyss during 476 A.D. What post Roman Europe did reject over time was the Greco-Romano belief system that history was circular; reason subordinate to the whims and fancies of a number of Gods; and that the human was not possessed of any particular attributes of free-will or deep comprehension. In short Christian Europe began to reject the mystical aspects of Roman-Greek philosophy. The development of Christian culture made this an inescapable reality. In fact, a very good argument can be made that far from initiating science and secular reasoning in the West; ancient Greece and Rome militated against it.
The empires of Greece, and Rome were all slave empires. Justifying slavery is most easily done with a system steeped in fatalism, racism or supremacism, and mysticism in which Gods play games with human souls. Any theology of morality and science immediately rejects slavery as evil and unproductive. Slavery always obstructs moral, social and technological progress. Greek and Roman pantheism and culture enshrined and justified slavery. Greek inventors knew of the steam engine; Roman engineers had the skills to build water mills; and both had insights into alchemic processes which should have produced rational science. Yet modern rationality failed to develop in Greece and Rome. The culture prevented it as did the multitudes of laboring slaves. Why bother with innovation and the freeing of millions of humans ? Won't they then rise up and crush the state and the carefully-created system protected by various Gods? The same is true of China, India, and all the Islamic states and empires of the past 1400 years. These non-Christian states, never possessed the Christian urge to attain both spiritual and rational knowledge and truth and were thus mired in slavery and anti-modern mysticism.
Christianity ended slavery by 800 AD in Europe and it was the Christian church in alliance with the Royal Navy and Northern US armies, which eradicated slavery in the southern US and slave trading on the world's oceans. No other theology in world history ended slavery. No other ideology manufactured the moral and military armaments needed to end the immoral practice of human enslavement and degradation. No other conception of human affairs elevated both the spirit and the pursuit of rationality. Far from being opposed to science, a good argument can be made that Christianity created it.
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