Did Science Grow From Christianity? I have heard Christians recently stating that modern, Western science got its start from a base of Christian thought. The first time I heard this, from the evangelical Christian minister, D. James Kennedy, I gaped in wonder at the presumption of the statement. I thought back to the repression of thought and learning during the Dark Ages, the fear Copernicus felt at the thought of publishing his work, the punishment of Galileo, and the execution of Bruno. How could this person claim with a serious face that Christianity was the force that created the movement of modern science? The facts that he brought out in his sermon showed that he had no real idea of what he was talking about, because he listed the originators of many areas of scientific study, and claimed that they were all Christians. This attempt at linkage between Christianity and science means exactly nothing, so far as I can tell, since during the time of the Renaissance, Christianity was pretty much the only game in town. Recently, however, I came across a more thoughtful defense of this idea. The Venerable Bede (who's real name I hope to discover one day) wrote an excellent article titled " How Christianity helped us think straight." In it, he pointed out some concepts that I think are valid and worth considering. One point was that the ancient civilizations of the Greeks and Egyptians were - technically, at least - the equals of Renaissance scientists. I have my doubts as to whether their mathematical knowledge was equal to Newton's, but I won't go into that bother at present. His main point is that the world view of these people was grounded in their religious beliefs - particularly in the concept of randomness and fate being in control, rather than a set of understandable, immutable laws of nature. This, he states, is what kept the ancients from developing a scientific method and advancing into an industrial revolution. While this analysis sounds good, I think it is probably only partly the story. After all, the greats of Greek science, Pythagoras, Archimedes, Eratosthenes and so forth, were able to work quite comfortably in the realm of inviolable rules and logical proofs. I think it a little more important that the lack of technological invention may have been due to a lack of political and economic impetus (yes, I picked this concept up from Marx!). After all, the Industrial Revolution was kicked off primarily because the growing populations of Europe and America created a demand for more efficient means of producing manufactured goods than were available at the end of the 18th century. Getting back to Bede's article, he supports the idea that modern science was due to the Christian outlook by stating that Christians viewed the world as a place where the One God of the Bible ruled over the world with a set of unvarying laws, and the scientists felt no fear in thinking that these moral laws might be reflected in a set of similarly constant physical laws. I expect that there may be some bit of truth in this. I think it was definitely a factor in the tolerance exhibited by religious leaders in the face of increasing interest in science, for as long as the scientists were finding knowledge that didn't contradict the things the church held to be "TRUE" there was no problem with allowing peaceful co-existence. The problems started up only a little while into this voyage of discovery, first when astronomers discovered evidence that the Earth was not at the center of the universe, as all Christian churches of that time believed. Copernicus and Galileo were demonized by the Catholic church (and Martin Luther, if I remember correctly), but after a few generations, the fuss simmered down. Later, when Darwin figured out the first steps in the puzzle of evolution, the uneasy co-existence became an outright war. As an aside, I can't help but wonder at the statement that the Christian world view was of an unvarying God. In reading the Bible, I found the character of God to be a most changeable, even mercurial personality, who was swayed quite often in the Old Testament, and who was presented in the New Testament as having swept away his earlier system of laws by written statute in favor of a "spiritual" law of no set codification and having no real system for enforcement of moral standards. How this could lead to a mechanistic world view is a mystery to me, but I'm sure some would say it's at least partly due to my "lack of spirituality." So we finally come back to the question of whether Christianity can take credit for modern science. I think it is possible to say that the ruling church did not make the rise of science and learning completely impossible, and that it made something of a strategic error, from the viewpoint of its long-term self-interest, in not doing so. However, I think that is about the best thing you could say on the matter. Getting a little closer to my view would be the statement that Christianity was unable to forsee the damage to its position of dominance that would come from allowing science to flourish. I would therefore guess that there has been some feelings of regret over that while making an effort to make the best of the situation and trying to take credit for the rise of science instead.