[Buddha-l] it's not about belief -= science & Christian religion

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 18:28 -0500, SJZiobro at cs.com wrote:


> Yes, and it simply made the point to Curt that his claims were equally
> false if his claim was that all Christians oppose science.  I took his
> mention of Christendom as shorthand for "all Christians." 

Never in all my years have I heard the word "Christendom" used in that
way. The way I was taught (by a well-known Christian theologian and by
Webster's dictionary) to use the word, it means that part of the world
that is dominated politically and culturally by formal Christian
institutions. So while there may be Christians in China, they are not
part of Christendom. And though I am a Buddhist, I live somewhere in
Christendom.

> Many Church Fathers and later theologian utilized the science of their
> day in their theologizing, their exegesis, etc.  Basil the Great
> easily comes to mind, as does Aquinas.  So, even on this count, I
> judge that Curt's remarks were ultimately specious.

You are now equivocating, as is your wont. The kind of science that Curt
was talking about was pretty clearly that which is part of the post-
Enlightenment enterprise, which is quite specialized and should not be
confused with "science" in the sense of a body of knowledge in general.
Aquinas and other theologians made use of bodies of knowledge such as
grammar, logic and rhetoric, but they knew absolutely nothing of science
as we now use the word, but that sort of science did not exist in
patristic and medieval times. It existed neither in Europe nor in Asia,
nor even in Africa or New Mexico. Indeed, to this day, it exists in only
about 10% of the population in continents of darkness such as North
America.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico