Fade the Butcher
01-08-2007, 10:01 PM
Listen to this crank:
"This book is such an attempt. Its thesis can easily be summed up. Great cultures, where the scientific entreprise came to a standstill, invariably failed to formulate the notion of physical law, or the law of nature. Theirs was a theology with no belief in a personal, rational, absolutely transcendent Lawgiver, or Creator. Their cosmology reflected a pantheistic and animistic view of nature caught in the treadmill of perennial, inexorable returns. The scientific quest found fertile soil only when this faith in a personal, rational Creator had truly permeated a whoel culture, beginning with the centuries of the High Middle Ages. It was that faith which provided, in sufficient measure, confidence in the rationality of the universe, trust in progress, and appreciation of the quantitative method, all indispensable ingredients of the scientific quest."
Stanley Jaki, Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1986), p.viii
What a cavalier, arrogant, not to mention ignorant dismissal of the accomplishments of non-Christian science. An obvious objection comes immediately to mind: how is it that the monotheistic Hebrews contributed virtually nothing of importance to science or technology for thousands of years? What did the Bible contribute to science except gross, misleading, laughable errors in virtually every branch of human knowledge that retarded scientific progress for over a thousand years?
"This book is such an attempt. Its thesis can easily be summed up. Great cultures, where the scientific entreprise came to a standstill, invariably failed to formulate the notion of physical law, or the law of nature. Theirs was a theology with no belief in a personal, rational, absolutely transcendent Lawgiver, or Creator. Their cosmology reflected a pantheistic and animistic view of nature caught in the treadmill of perennial, inexorable returns. The scientific quest found fertile soil only when this faith in a personal, rational Creator had truly permeated a whoel culture, beginning with the centuries of the High Middle Ages. It was that faith which provided, in sufficient measure, confidence in the rationality of the universe, trust in progress, and appreciation of the quantitative method, all indispensable ingredients of the scientific quest."
Stanley Jaki, Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1986), p.viii
What a cavalier, arrogant, not to mention ignorant dismissal of the accomplishments of non-Christian science. An obvious objection comes immediately to mind: how is it that the monotheistic Hebrews contributed virtually nothing of importance to science or technology for thousands of years? What did the Bible contribute to science except gross, misleading, laughable errors in virtually every branch of human knowledge that retarded scientific progress for over a thousand years?