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

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Thu, 2006-01-05 at 18:49 -0500, Stanley J. Ziobro II wrote:

> As is your wont, you fail to understand that even the sort of science Curt
> by your count claims is ultimately a specialized body of knowledge
> expressed by a particular methodological habit.

No, Stan, I do not fail to understand that at all. Indeed, it is my main
point that what distinguishes science from all other human enterprises
is its methodology and its insistence to questioning its own conclusions
and its refusal to see anyone at all as un unquestionable authority on
anything. This makes scientific culture different in kind from any other
kind of human culture.

> Where the difference lies is in the object of knowledge, not the fact
> that there is a specific body of knowledge allied thereto.

Noam Chomsky has observed that what distinguishes entomology from
butterfly collecting is not the subject matter, but the methodology and
the overall attitude involved in pursuing the subject matter. So I would
still argue that there was precious little anywhere in the world that
qualified as science before the 18th century or so. Sure, there were
astrologers and alchemists, but there were not astronomers or chemists.
There were plenty of people advancing technology, but hardly anyone was
advancing a purely theoretical understanding of the world in which we
live, without reference to questions of what is worthwhile and what is
helpful to man human beings more capable of discovering their own
purpose in the cosmos.

> Well, as long as you are going to make a trivial claim here, I'll oblige
> you and gently indicate that you are mistaken in part.  Curt claims that
> "Christendom" is an enemy of science.  Absurd.

I agree. Indeed, there probably would not be such a thing as science as
we now know it had it not been for certain theological predispositions
held by a number of Christians, mostly Protestants. It is widely
accepted that the Protestant belief that God is so utterly transcendent
that she (or he or it) cannot be known at all except through signs is
what prompted people to discover the mind of the creator by studying
creation. Of course, eventually scientists began to distance themselves
from Christian dogmas, and SOME (but by no means all) Christians then
began to take strongly anti-science positions. The movement that came to
call itself Fundamentalism was an explicit reaction to recent scientific
discoveries, especially the work of Darwin. But, as I hope everyone
knows by now, not all Christians are Fundamentalists.

> Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon all made use of the science of their day

They made use of the knowledge of their day. But there was no science
for them to make use of, at least not in the sense of the word "science"
I have been discussing.

> The point, then, is that these thinkers, and
> many Christian thinkers before them, freely utilized and studied the
> sciences of their day, including positive sciences, and that they were
> thereby no enemy of any science. 

Right, Christians could not be enemies of something that did not yet
exist. But when science did begin to emerge, many (but not all)
Christians began to see the new methodologies, which were formed by a
deliberate questioning of traditional authorities such as the church, as
antithetical to the Christian agenda. And, as Curt fails to recognize,
the Christians are by no means unique in this respect. All religious
traditions have certain factions that have reacted quite negatively to
science, every bit as negatively as the Christian fundamentalists have
done. 

> How is one an enemy to something that post dates one's existence?

Exactly my point.

> Finally, what neither you nor Curt appear to consider is that things
> do not occur in a vacumn.

Frankly, I am having a hard time figuring out what, if anything, Curt
thinks about these things. Speaking only for myself, I certainly do not
think that things occur in a vacuum, nor can I see why anyone would
construe anything I have said as assuming such a thing.
 
>  Without Christendom there would be no science as we know it today.

Again, it was not Christendom as such that promoted science. Rather, it
was the theological predispositions of a handful of Christians, many of
whom eventually felt they had to flee from Christendom (by which I mean
the Christian institutions that wielded the considerable social and
political power of Europe at one time).

> Even in its revisionism the Enlightenment is a child of Christendom,
> but to see that point one will need to understand how the roots of
> secularism arise squarely from the effort to reduce the symbolic
> horizon of religion to routinized and rationalized  forms.

That is almost an accurate way of characterizing my agenda as a
secularist. I would be quite happy to see religion disappear altogether
from the public square and promoted only in homes and churches. The only
legitimate approach to knowledge in the public sphere, I would argue, is
science. I don't think science is an effort to reduce the symbolic
horizon of religion. I think science qua science just ignores religion
and conducts inquiries into nature as if religion did not exist at all.

-- 
Richard