I just finished a remarkable book called, For The Glory of God, by University of Washington sociology and comparative religion professor Rodney Stark (Princeton University Press). He argues quite persuasively that a lot of what we've learned in school about Christianity's role in history is baloney. Science, he says, wasn't begun by the rediscovery of Greek learning during the Renaisance; Christianity gave birth to science. Also, he said, Christianity is responsible for ending slavery, and - unfortunately - he says it provided the theoretical basis for witch hunts.
Just to show that he isn't an airhead, let me follow as best I can his argument that credits Christianity with giving birth to science. First, he says that the Christian belief that the universe was created by God and is a real entity (rather than merely a shadow of reality, or a complete illusion) makes creation worthwhile to examine. Second, he traces how science actually came about. During the Middle Ages, he writes, Christians set up universities all across Europe, and these were not, as has been claimed, just centers where scholastics argued over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin (though I'm sure there was plenty of that), but they were schools for thinkers, many of whom had a real interest in investigating the world God created, and the scholars from these schools created science.
Too often I am able to summarize an entire book in one sentence (and I am annoyed that the author needed to spend 150 pages telling me what he could have communicated in a sentence), but I can't come close to doing that here. I've seldom read a book so packed with information so clearly presented. Fascinating!
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