He seems to be saying that belief in the Incarnation - and in creation from nothing and lack of necessity - are requirements for the development of science. He does not say that they are the only possible requirements, but I get the definite impression that he thinks that no other existent religion could lead to science.
It is true that he does not claim that only Christians have scientific ability, but it seems he does claim that such ability is futile unless existing in a Christian culture. This does not seem supportable given that it took 1200 years or more to happen in a Christian culture - time no other culture had - and it also required the rediscovery of the Greek writings to inspire Western science.
Am I inaccurate in saying that Jaki claims that the idea of creation from nothing is Christian? That all Jewish and Moslem intellectuals of any note are pantheists? That belief in the Incarnation was fundamental to the development of science in our culture? Most of the things you claim I claim he said (like people of scientific ability not arising in non-Christian cultures) I didn’t claim he said.
“Free” to be Christian, or else. Christians were persecuted because they refused to acknowledge any other religions, including Emperor worship; they were the least tolerant of all the religions there. And because they used the Romans as weapons against each other in their doctrinal disputes, turning each other over to the Roman authorities.
I’d give Newton more credit; Galileo just showed that the heavens weren’t perfect, Newton showed that they obeyed the same rules as we do.
And the Church didn’t get to that point until well after Galileo.
But he worked off of accepted cosmology. He didn’t invent the placement of Mt. Purgatory at the antipodes from Jerusalem (and anyone thinking that there was belief in a flat earth back then should really read Dante.) Are you claiming that in 1200 there was belief that the planets were lumps of rock like Earth?
There has already been a discussion about how to define science. If we define it the way you are, then we’ll have to admit that science long predated Christianity. Jaki appears to be defining science as something which began in the Renaissance, with the development of structured experimentation and the scientific method, and I tend to agree.
I don’t think we need to go over the Church being less than happy with his results again.
For Bacon having a clue or for science as we know it not starting directly from him?
Excellent posts in this thread. I’d like to just add that there were many flavors of religion. and all were accepted, as long as one also worshiped the Emperor. THAT was the problem with the Christians.
Oh yeah?. Pull the other one, it has bells on. And of course, as I mentioned, most conversions in Europe were done after the ruler converted.
Not Jews. Few other polytheistic religions cared about one more God, and the Romans did not forbid worshiping whichever gods they chose. Mithraism, for example, was quite popular.
The state worship of Rome wasn’t really so much religious as patriotic. It was a token, mostly symbolic expression of loyalty to the state. No one care what you else worshipped, or even if you truly worshipped the emperor, it was just a ceremonial expectation.
Refusing to contribute some coins at the state temples or acknowledge the divinity of the Emperor was analogous to refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance or stand for the National Anthem. Christians also wouldn’t serve in the military, so they were seen as unpatriotic little douches who wouldn’t fight for their country or show allegiance to their Emperor. It wasn’t really religious.
Constantine did not allow religious freedom, by the way. He persecuted Christian heretics and led military campoaigns against them. He also forced even Christians to honor Sol Invictus (The God he actually worshipped. Despite his political pretense to Christianity and his baptism, he still continued to worship pagan gods and remained the head of the Roman Pagan Priesthood all his life).
Do I have a cite that religion was a unifier? What do I need a cite for, when your own post is pretty much saying the same thing. For some reason, folks in this thread are focusing on Christianity, even though the thread is about religion. Indigenous peoples in the new world were united by religion long before Christianity wandered in. Much (hell, all of) their monumental architecture was devoted to religion. It united them into the large pre-Colombian states, built their cities and much of the culture that still remains.
As for by the sword, so what? Much of human history is devoted to subduing or destroying other peoples by the sword. How does this fact refute that religion was still a unifier (which, presumably was what you were asking me to cite). Christianity (since that seems to be what most of the folks in this thread thing ‘religion’ means) is a perfect example. It spread throughout the world, unifying disparate peoples. Often it did this by the sword, but not in all cases, even in the new world (though many times it appealed to those left alive after the ravages of disease, starvation and mad Europeans bent on shiny metals and rocks). What of that, though? The end result is that a large percentage of those indigenous peoples today (or at least their surviving ancestors) are Christian of one flavor or another…and there are a hell of a lot more of them today than there were before.
My point here is pretty much what I said earlier…religion is certainly a force in human history. Often that force was negative, destroying or causing great harm. However, it also built much of the culture, architecture, arts, even the seeds of science and technology. It preserved a lot of our past that would otherwise have been lost. IMHO (no cite for that, though I suppose my post is my cite for my opinion ;)) it was the initial spark in pre-human history that allowed us to bind together in order to form organizations larger than a hunter gatherer band scrounging for snacks.
Even if that was the case (and I think the key point was simply that there were less people, and that they were more loosely organized and in smaller groupings), so what? A lot of little religions based on regions or a couple of large religions spanning the globe, it’s all the same, since the common thread was that they were all influenced and tied together by some kind of religion. Think about any group of peoples of who’s historical record or remnants survive to this day…how many of them were atheist? How many of them display zero indications of some kind of religion, be it ancestor worship, shamanism, totem worship or something along those lines? Consider that much (most? all?) of the early art work of pre-history humans has shamanistic or totem references, which strongly indicates SOME kind of religion. Or the earth mother figurines.
*There was a young man from Bethlehem
Who was born, died and lived again
He rejoined his father
But found out he’d rather
Hang out with 12 beardy holy men
*
Certain people like to fixate on the Crusades, for example, and act as though this was representative of Christianity in general. Never mind that the Crusades were the action of one specific denomination (the Roman Catholic Church), or that they only occupied a slice of time in history. That’s the problem with many of the anti-religious claims that dopers routinely make in these threads. They pay little or no attention to nuances such as the diversity of religious views or the grand scale of human history.
I read your post as saying that two groups with similar religions would unite thanks to their commonality, and that religion could be thanked for that. If you are actually saying is that religion is used as yet another means of subjugating captured peoples, I can’t argue.
Language is sometimes used the same way, with a native language being banned. Is this a good thing? And of course even after the unification of Europe under Christianity, it only took a bit over a thousand years for them to start fighting for ten decades for the gods they made.
Within a tribe or empire perhaps, but not across empires. While Alexander considered himself to be descended from the gods, he married a Persian princess in her religion. I’m not sure it was true, but I was taught that Alexander is a common Jewish name because he did not try to impose his religion when he conquered Judea (unlike some of his descendants.)
No atheists - but no cultures based on science or rationality either. Most earlier cultures also had a state religion with participation required by the state (not Rome, though.) We seem to get along well without such a thing, and with many religions, and increasingly none. Should the US enforce a state religion to confer the benefits of unity?
Do you deny that many kingdoms in Europe were Christianized not by individual conversions but by conversions ordered by the king - often with those holding the old religions subject to the death penalty? For instance, after Henry the VIII mass converted England to Protestantism, Catholics operating in Elizabethan England and caught would be beheaded and have their heads up on pikes.
Well the RCC was one of only two Christian denominations at the time, and the Crusades were either initiated or supported by the Pope, not some random village preacher. And if you want some consistency in Christian history, you need only consider how my ancestors were persecuted by those loving Christians.
Actually, in the grand scale of human histories most religions thought that their god was one of many, the top guy no doubt, and that other religions were fine for other tribes. Persecution on the basis of god-belief alone was a Christian invention, it seems. Very effective in spreading it, I must admit. So, that is one thing one religion has given us for sure - religious wars.
If you think religion is a better guide to what is right and wrong, why don’t you tell us which religion you choose to give us guidance, how you choose it, and how this choice is in some way more logical than just choosing what is right and wrong directly, guided by ethics of course.
Wars of forced conversion and genocide and the wholesale destruction of cultures are your idea of how religion “unifies” people? What in the world would qualify as something dividing people then?
You aren’t showing how religion has unified people; you are simply trying to define “unify” so broadly that it’s meaningless. You are also implying that mass murder is a good thing, since this is your idea of defending the supposed benefits of religion.
It’s not like Palestine/Israel was taken over by Muslims/Arabs knocking on the doors of Christians
No, most religions did not do that. Inca, China, India, Japan, India/Pakistans, Greek, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Nubians, Mali, Zimbabwe…lots of conquering peoples without “top-guy” mentality.
I won’t.
It’s simply that “I decide what’s wrong” runs contrary to his several decrees on moral issues.