Christopher Monckton of Brenchley sends this article by Grant Goldman, a popular radio host in Sydney, Australia.
In July 1937 when the Marco Polo Bridge incident launched Japan’s aggression against China, that was not important enough for Australian religious leaders to write to the government demanding strong action against Japan.
In March 1939 the German occupation of Czechoslovakia was not important enough for Australian religious leaders to write to the government demanding strong action against the Nazis.
In November 1956 Soviet troops overrunning Hungary was not important enough for Australian religious leaders to write to the government demanding strong action against the USSR.
In October 2013 the massacre of Syriac Orthodox Christians and destruction of 14 churches in Sadad in Syria was not important enough for Australian religious leaders to write to the government demanding strong action against the Jihadis responsible.
The likelihood that there are more slaves in the world today than at any previous time in human history is not important enough for Australian religious leaders to write to the government demanding strong action against the slave trade.
Three terrible genocides were perpetrated in the twentieth century. By the Turks against Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Christians in 1915, by the Soviets against the Ukrainians in 1932-1933, and of course by the Nazis against the Jews from 1939 to 1945.
None of these horrible events prompted Australian religious leaders to act with one voice.
Why am I telling you all this?
What is important enough for Australian religious leaders purporting to represent Anglicans, Catholics, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews, to get together and write to the Government and the Opposition demanding action?
Well, a person named Thea Ormerod, representing a numerically insignificant outfit called Australian Religious Response to Climate Change, drafted a letter for them all to sign, calling for a 40% cut in the level of carbon dioxide emissions compared with 1990 levels by the year 2025, and an 80% cut by 2030.
We are talking here about the comprehensive economic destruction of Australia, with mass unemployment, grinding poverty, widespread hunger and disease, shocking child mortality and truncated lifespans for everybody who is not amongst the elite.
Thea Ormerod is likely related to Neil Ormerod, who is Professor of Theology at the Australian Catholic University. Oh yes, this is the educational institution which a month ago awarded two scholarships, each for full tuition fees for four years, to honour executed drug smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.
This leads me to observe that the worthy goal of getting Australia to lead a worldwide campaign to abolish capital punishment is not important enough for Australian religious leaders to write to the government demanding strong action. But strong action against carbon dioxide is what they want.
The Church of England has been pushing the anti-energy barrow for some time. They actually ran a Global Divestment Day on February 14 this year. It attracted little attention because St Valentine’s Day is the day when most people are busy chatting each other up and eating chocolate.
What issues do you want your Church to concentrate on? World peace? Ending poverty? Defeating disease? Combatting crime? Protecting minorities? Saving children from sexual abuse? Helping the homeless? Maybe, just maybe, even campaigning against sin?
What about preaching forgiveness? That is what churches used to do. Or do you want your church to act like basically a subsidiary of the Greens?
It’s your Church, and it’s your money that pays the bills. If the Churches do forget that, then people will get baptised, married and buried online. It’s cheaper.
The Church of England is part of a push to reduce Australia’s carbon dioxide emissions compared with 1990 levels by the draconian figure of 80% in the next fifteen years, which would make Australia unable to feed, house and clothe Australians.
In Britain, North America and Australia the Church of England has declared war on coal, through a combination of divestment programs and propaganda from the pulpit.
Time for some facts about coal. The gerontologist and evolutionary biologist Caleb Finch tells us that since the early 1800s life expectancy in Europe has doubled. The single greatest factor in the longevity revolution has been coal.
Beginning in the eighteenth century and accelerating into the nineteenth century, coal made possible stunning increases in productivity. Coal saved from destruction the forests of Britain which by the mid eighteenth century were rapidly disappearing.
Coal dramatically reduced pollution caused by cooking and heating with wood and animal dung. Coal permitted large scale smelting of metals. Coal made possible modern medical science and modern agriculture. Coal opened the way to commerce and freedom of movement on a scale never before imagined.
Thanks to coal, for the very first time ordinary workers who were not members of the aristocracy nor of the clergy had leisure time. Life was still tough, but thanks to coal life rapidly improved.
Instead of being permanently enslaved to tasks like collecting wood to heat and to cook, women had the opportunity to learn to read and become educated or musical or artistic or political or charitable as they wished.
Coal made possible the growth of democratic institutions and, vitally important, the abolition of slavery. Nineteenth-century Britain saw the flowering of culture with bands, orchestras, choirs, drama societies, literary societies, trade unions, and, of course, the flowering of the Church of England.
I’ll mention some of the great hymnists of the late eighteenth century and the nineteenth century. In chronological order (top left to bottom right): John Wesley (1703-1791); Edward Perronet (1726-1792); William Cowper (1731-1800); John Newton (1725-1807); Reginald Heiber (1783-1826); Joseph M. Scriven (1819-1886); Matthew Bridges (1800-1894); Carl Gustav Boberg (1859-1940).
Thanks to coal, hymn books could be printed cheaply and thanks to coal there were trees left in the land to make the paper.
In Britain, by 1860 around 400,000 coal industry workers were each producing around 175 tonnes of coal in a year for an annual total of seventy million tonnes of coal. In 1913 around 1,100,000 coal industry workers were each producing around 264 tonnes of coal in a year for a total of 290 million tonnes.
This great increase in coal production coincided with wonderful progress in every aspect of society. People lived longer, ate better and their purchasing power increased year by year.
As the twentieth century dawned, coal was already popularising the wonderful blessing of electricity. The former major disadvantage of coal-fired power – sulphur dioxide emissions – was overcome with fluidised bed combustion using limestone, and coal has continued as the world mainstay of electrical power.
Tragically, 1.3 billion people – eighteen percent of the world’s population – have no access to electricity and so are deprived of all the wonderful things we take for granted. Expansion of coal production is vital as part of the energy mix necessary to offer the poor and disadvantaged of the world an escape route from poverty, misery and short lifespans.
By declaring war on coal, people who purport to represent the Church of England are committing a terrible crime against the world’s poorest people.
My suggestion to the people purporting to lead the Church of England is re-read the Parable of the Talents. It’s still there in Matthew Chapter 25, verses 14-30.
The Parable of the Talents (etching): Lucas van Doetechum (floruit 1554-1572)
“Religious leaders should stop bleating about global warming”
Why? Global Warming is a religion.
This is an excellent article, with two very important points, one about hypocrisy, the other a reminder of the crucial role played by coal in fueling the Industrial Revolution, which by any measure is one of the most significant events in the history of mankind.
So, let’s not forget to dance wit’ de guy wot brung us.
“I’m Gonna Dance Wit de Guy Wot Brung Me
Harry Reser and the Six Jumping Jacks
Harry Reser (1896-1965) is something of an unknown musical genius. Said to have perfect pitch, he was performing with guitar as a child, and was first cousin of Wilbur & Orville. I can’t find credit for this song, so I’ll have to assume that it was Reser’s.
And you talk about rhythm!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Reser
Cue toe tapping…
– – – – – – –
I suggest to Christopher Monckton that he add another paragraph after the one I cited above. I suggest the following additional paragraph which would become the final paragraph,
John
There was no link provided, but my understanding is that this post by the host was inspired by a tip from Christopher Monckton of Brenchley about an article by Grant Goldman.
This understanding is based on the italicized part hidden away at the very beginning. I see no point where either the host or C. Monckton chimed in, and I think the whole thing after the first sentence was penned by G. Goldman.
Your curious use of the b-l-o-c-k-q-u-o-t-e tag creates a reality distortion field that makes it seem like a dialogue has taken place somewhere, and perhaps it has, otherwise, you’ve lost me.
Whatever the case, I admire your confidence in suggestion to CM what he ought to say.
The entire text, aside from the italicized paragraph crediting the author, is indeed by the splendid Grant Goldman, edited very lightly to combine two of his recent hard-hitting editorials and also illustrated.
Mr Goldman’s two points, that religious leaders were culpably and serially silent about events squarely within their remit but for partisan political reasons are speaking out about the non-problem of global warming, and that coal has been and will continue to be of great net benefit to Man, are worthy of wider circulation.
Steve P on May 30, 2015 at 11:54 am
– – – – – –
Steve P,
You are correct. I did not make it clear that the article by Monckton was almost entirely the content of an article by Goldman; especially the final paragraphs in Monckton’s article were by Goldman. Monckton was quoting him in the final paragraphs that I referenced. Thank you for pointing that out. I should have made it more clear that either I was asking Goldman to add my suggested paragraph or instead that I was asking Monckton to add my suggested paragraph after the quoted Goldman final paragraph.
John
The church of England would have withered on the vine long time ago if not supported by taxpayer money, just as it’s sister churches (Episcopalian) are withering on the vine in the U.S. Their leaders are christian in name only most of them don’t believe the Bible was inspire by God and is only a “product of it’s times”. Some of them even have announced that that there is no god! As one commentator has stated “if you don’t believe in god you will believe in anything,’\” and I think that explains the bleating quite well. I don’t think you will find the churches that are on the front lines fighting sin diverting their attention to this nonsense.
Could we please stop the religion bashing on this website. More ministers are not signing climate change declarations than ones that are.
Also, it would be nice if people would notice that science came into exist in Christian Europe. It came into existence there because unlike Eastern Religion/Philosophy it requires that the universe be real and unlike Islam it requires that the universe be independent and self-sustaining; Islam believed laws of nature were an insult to Allah. We have science precisely because there was Christianity in Europe.
The “war against science by religion” is a myth created by Marxism to conceal that fact that it’s scientific materialism was bad economics, bad social policy, and usually bad science. The current corruption of science by government funding–bogus science used to justify more government regulation–is a result of this war against science myth.
A few more benefits of Christianity in Western culture: the idea that everyone is equal before the law, the rights of women, the rights of children, the end of slavery (which exist today in most of the world that has not been influenced by Christianity), the idea of war crimes, freedom of conscience.
So instead of the knee jerk I’m-for science-and therefore-against-religion silliness, how about an intelligent and tolerant treatment of religion, or at least, an end to the anti-religion rants that have nothing to do with the issue of whether human created CO2 emissions can really effect the Earth’s climate. Real science tries to understand the mechanisms that allow the Earth to be a stable life-sustaining planet–and that is exactly what Christianity has always allowed science to do.
tgasloli on May 30, 2015 at 11:26 am
– – – – – –
tgasloli,
Show me.
Show me the ‘bashing’.
I am very critical of your perceptions.
John
The bashers will be with us soon enough….if not here already…HMMMM?
Paul Westhaver on May 30, 2015 at 12:12 pm
– – – – – – –
Paul Westhaver,
Critical evaluation of every aspect of statements made by commenters wrt someone initiating religious discussion at WUWT is consistent with critical evaluation of any topic introduced at WUWT.
Remember the old saying,
John
Read below… they have arrive in full glory. Also I do not know of the “sauce for the goose” saying. Nver heard of it.
Paul Westhaver,
I did indeed “[r]ead below”. So, Paul Westhaver, please show me the ‘bashing’ in the ‘below’ you are referring to.
The full quote that the expression “sauce for the goose . . .” refers to is,
The condensed version “sauce for the goose . . .” was made famous by a line spoken by the Spock character in a Star Trek movie.
John
Tgasloli, I could cite other reasons for being critical of religions. I for one suffered under a religious regime in a primary school because I dared to say (not understanding the consequences) that the doctrine that was being force-fed to us did not make sense to me.
Since one is compelled to attend school, the government has a duty to ensure that one may do so free from ‘grooming’ by any cult, religion or other group of self-interested and possibly unsavoury individuals.
Of course, the problem for religions would be that without the grooming of a captive audience which takes place in schools, most of their followers would disappear after one generation.
Well…now the students are groomed by a whole new set of religious doctrines, like the Green Movement, feminism. occupy… etc etc.
tgasloli
May 30, 2015 at 11:26 am
“…..and that is exactly what Christianity has always allowed science to do.”
===============
“allowed” ??
You might want to work on that sentence.
It seems rather………constraining.
Also, it would be nice if people would notice that science came into exist in Christian Europe – because…..
____________________________
It came to exist beause of the Reformation – a century-long war againt the tyranny of the Catholic Church, in which Britain endured a civil war and Germany lost1/3 of its population. (The Wars of Religion.)
The result was a victory for the League of Augsberg and the Protestant Church (incl the Church of England), and the beginning of the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason – which would not have been possble under Catholic control. This allowed the Invisible College to come out into the open and be renamed as the Royal Society, the world’s foremost scientific institution in that era.
Thus science only blossomed once the Catholic Church had been defeated.
R
Modern science arose in Christian Europe because of a revival during the Renaissance of pagan science, which had laid largely dormant for about 1200 years after the Late Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its state religion.
The Reformation was not unimportant, but the first two leading lights of the scientific revolution, Copernicus in physical science and Vesalius in life science, were northern European Catholics. However Copernicus waited until the end of his life, in that annus mirabilis 1543, to publish “On the Revolutions”, at the urging of a Protestant and by a German Lutheran printer. Vesalius’ “On the Fabric of the Human Body”, was published the same year by a Swiss Catholic printer.
As Copernicus broke with Aristotle and Ptolemy, so did Vesalius dare to disagree with Galen and the Muslims, for which he was ridiculed and reviled. Both scientists elevated observation over adherence to the authority of the ancients. After the Fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, producing refugees to the West, and the invention of movable type printing a few years earlier, pagan scientific texts became available in their original Greek, without the need for Arabic translations, and more students, such as Copernicus, learned Greek themselves.
Many important scientists have indeed been devout Christians and some still are. But the fact remains that Copernicans were persecuted and prosecuted by the Catholic Church. Even the Unitarian Isaac Newton had to keep his heretical beliefs secret in relatively tolerant late 17th and early 18th century England.
Some interesting facts on Copernicus. When he printed his “On Revolutions”, he included a letter from the Vatican begging him to publish his ideas, the papal imprimatur for the book, and a note of thanks to the pope. Regarding his wait to print his until his death, that is not true. A preview of his work,the “Narratio Primo” was published a few years before his death. Immediately after Copernicus’s death, the church decided that it was more appropriate to bury him right inside the Cathedral instead of a regular cemetery because of his long service to the church.
P.s. Another interesting fact is that, statistically, the Copernican model doesn’t perform any better than the Earth-centered model (because of the use of circles instead ellipses).
Joe,
Narratio Prima was published three years before Copernicus’ death. To me, that’s near the end of his life, and it took a lot of urging from his Protestant pupil to get him to agree to it.
Yes, even Galileo was loathe to give up on perfectly circular orbits. But Kepler’s analysis of Tyco’s observations was accepted by the next generation and finally explained by Newton.
Sturgishooper,
Copernicus’s Protestant student, Rheticus, was critical to the final publication of “On Revolutions”. The other major player was the Catholic bishop, Bishop Giese. After Rheticus arrived, Giese hosted both Copernicus and Rheticus for several weeks while they ironed out what must be done. Copernicus wanted to publish only his tables, trusting that the wise would be able to read between the lines. It was Giese who convinced him that he had to publish his theory as well. Giese even warned him to expect pushback from astronomers. Speculations on his delay in publishing being due to fear of the Church reaction is just that, speculation.
You folks might be interested in this.
DB,
Not bad.
Copernicus got to study astronomy because medicine then included casting horoscopes and the distinction between astronomy and astrology was not hard and fast. Although his doctorate was in canon law, he also studied medicine at the University of Padua and probably previously.
sturgis,
FYI: that page was just part one.
Actually, the Heliocentric model of the Solar System has been known for thousands of years. Copernicus was known in Masonic circles as the Great Liar, for pretending that he invented it. And he did not even dare challenge the Catholic Church, until he was on death’s door. Some hero, huh?
Here is the 1st century Jewish zodiac, from Hamat Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee. As you can see, Helios the Sun holds a blue-green spherical Earth in his (gravitational) grasp, demonstrating that the Heliocentric model was well understood. This is also a favourite motif on coinage, in this era.
So yes, the Enlightenment was in many cases rediscovering the lost knowledge of the Egyptians and Greeks. But this would not have happened without the Reformation and the destruction of the dead weight that was tied to the ankle of humanity, otherwise known as the Catholic Church.
http://i1053.photobucket.com/albums/s462/locuster/Hamat-zodiac2_zps062d0e84.jpg
Ralph,
Some ancients did indeed argue for heliocentrism, but they were dismissed as impious even by their fellow pagans.
Copernicus was not a liar. He did not claim to have invented or discovered heliocentrism himself. That is a false accusation. In the introduction to his book, Copernicus credited ancient Greeks such as Aristarchus and Philolaus with the heliocentric hypothesis. He mastered Greek and had access to copies of surviving original works of ancient science.
What he achieved was a mathematical exposition of the sun-centered system hypothesis, challenging the prevailing Ptolemaic geocentric model.
Silver ralph
May 30, 2015 at 10:50 pm
You are confusing the mostly 18th century Enlightenment with the 14th to 17th century Renaissance.
At one time it was thought that lifespans in the Stone Age were so short because of disease, hunger and violence. IIRC new evidence suggests it was more likely a consequence of lung damage caused by smoke from unflued wood fires in a confined living space. The problem apparently still exists in some parts of Africa. The best thing we can do for such people is to provide them with commercially-generated energy so they don’t have to burn fuel in an improper manner and hence ruin their health.
That way they can smoke cigarettes in their nice clean kitchens.
..and marijuana… don’t forget the dope!!!.
Great Article Lord Chris.
Since science doesn’t really yield the justification for massive wealth transfer based on carbon credit market, the only other justification is either political and religious. I maintain that the left is populated by a breed that rejects mainstream religion and submits to a more ancient and primitive earth worship that has also percolated into their politics. I think that this is an artifact of the socialist mind and therefore, wherever you find the lefties you ultimately will find a coven of earth worshipers even if they hide within the larger more established religions.
I think when you hear climate-related commentary from religious types, you are hearing from the “socialists” in seep into and abuse the religions to carry their agendas.
I wish the socialist would pipe down in their respective religious affiliations, but I wish every day was sunny and that there was a cure for the common cold too.
In Scotland this May, just about every day has been sunny. And we’re working on a treatment for the common cold that shows some promise.
The rain may never fall till after sundown; by eight, the morning fog must disappear.
Thea Ormerod
Oh my god!
For those who think Christianity had anything whatever to do with the origin or success of science in Europe: Andrew D. White’s A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom , should forever disabuse you of such ideas. Science recovered in Europe — recovered not originated, because it originated during the Greek Enlightenment — despite, not because of, Christianity. The same is true of Islamic societies; such science as was there existed despite, not because of, Islam.
The war of religion against science isn’t a ‘Marxist myth.’ It’s a fact of history.
While pointing to an interesting discussion, that is a ridiculously categorical statement. The list of devout, deeply religious scientists from the last two thousand years can be made pretty extensive. Are they not Christian to you then? Would you say that Johannes Kepler was not Christian? What about Leibniz? Or Nicholas of Cusa? What about Copernicus? Pascal? Carl von Linné? William Herschel? What about Ampere or Dalton? What about Gregor Mendel? I will stop there.
i think you will find that while organized Christianity, or the “Church”, might have been anti-scientific, or even exceedingly so at times, there is still a myriad of scientists to choose from who considered themselves devout Christians. They would rather claim divine inspiration than lamenting that they were held back by religion, wouldn’t you guess? Christianity is not only the church, but also the personal relationship to God of all the people who call themselves Christian.
Something that people who have not been exposed to religion don’t understand… good points.
Religion isn’t blindly following the “leaders”. The Catholic church did horrible things over the years, which is the reason Protestants even exist. But the religion is not what the church says it is, it’s what is in one’s soul.
Being told what religion is by atheists and anti-religion types is ridiculous. Many of these people think that Christians believe God is a “man” who “lives in the clouds”. Some even believe that islam is a “religion of peace”.
Great response to Pat Frank, Gard. The consistency of the philosophical underpinnings of Christianity with modern science continues to be demonstrated by people like Francis Collins (Director of the National Institutes of Health and sequencer of the human genome).
>>The list of devout, deeply religious scientists
>>from the last two thousand years
The most specious argument ever.
Since being a Christian was compulsory, on pain of death, it is hardly surprising that early scientists were Christians. And those who would not bow to Catholic supremicy, like Tyndale and Bruno, were burned to death. A great incentive for calling yourself a Christian, eh?
Its a bit like the USSR claiming that all scientists were good Communists. Anyone surprised by that? Or Islam claiming that all Eastern scientists were Muslims, when the penalty for becomming an Apostate was (and still is) death. Anyone surprised that they found a few ‘Muslim’ scientists?
Do get real, folks, science reinvented itself despite Catholic Christianity, not because of it.
R
As I said, while the relationship between faith and scientific knowledge might provoke enormous clashes, and that this is a very interesting discussion, you can’t go off from the starting point that “Christianity had [nothing] whatever to do with the origin or success of science in Europe”. Categorical statements like that will most obviously be untrue, as it directly contradicts what a whole school of scientists say about themselves. When scientists like Kepler, Leibniz, von Linné and others claim that they their belief that God created an orderly, knowable universe helped them to make their discoveries, I see no reason not to believe them. While organized, centralized religion many times have prosecuted and tormented their “apostates”, personal religious faith has inspired thousands of researchers and scientists, by their own account. Claiming that they were all afraid of religious persecution and ldecided to lie about where they got their inspiration is so silly that I am not going down that road. A certain Monty Python sketch comes to mind.
You know, I’ll make the (not-so) controversial statement that several processes might be going on at the same time? Repression by religious dogma and inspiration by faith in the divine? There are always several processes at play at the same time in history. And in climatology, too. That’s what is making climate modelling incredibly difficult, among other things.
Pat Frank
Andrew White’s book was debunked long ago. But there will always be people who prefer to believe in junk history rather than real history. It’s rather like some people preferring to accept Archbishop Usher’s claim that the world is only 6,000 years old. They prefer the original rather than the debunking.
Gard R Rise
Apart from the perennial bleating about Galileo can you give us any other examples of the ‘organised Church’ being anti-scientific?
One problem with any reference to the ‘organised Church’ is that since the Protestant Reformation any Tom, Dick or Sally thinks that he or she can set up their own organisation and call it a ‘Church’. The consequence is that there are now several thousand Protestant denominations. There is a fair chance you will find one or more of these Protestant denominations promoting examples of any notion you can think of.
But the leaders of such denominations speak only for themselves. They have no authority to speak on behalf of Christianity. It might also have been more accurate in the article by Mr Goldman to have referred to Anglican Churches. The Church of England does not exist outside of ……well, England!
Alba:
Well, when it comes to religious persecution of not only scientists, but any public figure, the Spanish Inqusition in general does rather spring to mind, doesn’t it? Other than that, I am not really that much of an expert on the issue of religious suppression of science. I do, however, have a passing knowledge of religious adherence to dogma and suppression of differing views in various Lutheran sects. But I suggest you go to Pat Frank, he seems to be the expert on that side of the issue.
You point to both the biggest benefit and the biggest fault of the Protestant movement: it provides religious freedom but also fragmentation of the church. While, in the pursuit of truth, it is sometimes necessary to take a different way than the “main” church, there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to reconcile the sects at a later point in time. The church remains fragmented.
Alba, contested is not “debunked.” None of White’s factual references to instances of oppression or stupidity have been disproved. Contested is the warfare idea.
The rest of your comment to me, about Bishop Usher, etc., is mere manufactured dismissal. Ironic, though, that you’d choose an example of religion-inspired nonsense to dismiss a history of religion-inspired nonsense.
Pat, although it’s about much more than science Larry Siedentop’s acclaimed Inventing the Individual: The Origins Of Western Liberalism last year rethinks the relationship between western liberalism, ancient Greek thought and some little known thinkers of the late Middle Ages. From the evidence, including a distinct lack of what became western values in the Greek and Roman world. This is relevant to the growth of science in the West though I’m sure there are still arguments to be had!
Richard, it’s very difficult to countenance that “belief in individual liberty derived from the “the moral revolution carried out by the early church,” as the Amazon write-up has it, when slavery and serf-bondage persisted universally within Christian societies from the earliest days right up through the 19th century (in Russia at the last).
Slaves were owned and serfs were bound over by the churches themselves, including the Catholic Church, throughout that history. While some religious thinkers and early movements criticized slavery, their ideas never gained official or widespread acceptance. Those institutions were never denounced from the pulpit or by canon law, certainly, until among the Quakers on the entrance of Enlightenment thinking.
The history of heresy and the large body of laws violently restricting personal and private behavior argue strongly against any Christian tradition of personal freedom.
Hi Frank, it’s possible for Amazon blurbs not to do full justice of a text like this. In similar vein I feel the need to apologise to William of Ockham for my description of him as a little known thinker of the late Middle Ages. Such are the dangers of summaries. 🙂
I think the dynamism and commitment to radical righting of social wrongs like slavery in the first three hundred years of the church can hardly be underestimated. But I wouldn’t be interested otherwise so I can also understand your scepticism. The evidence is incomplete.
Siedentop makes quite clear that what became western values had a ugly fight with the established churches before they prevailed. To the extent they did. (Hypocrisy or failure to live up to past ideals isn’t limited to Russian churchmen or anyone else of course.)
Beyond that, I simply recommend the book. The UK political philosopher John Gray certainly wasn’t calling himself a Christian last term I heard and thinks it ain’t half good, as do others. Mind-expanding.
For Frank read Pat. Not the first time. Apologies!
Probably should choose your sources more carefully. White’s book is considered a joke by modern historians.
“Joke” is hardly a fair description, joe.
Ronald Numbers is a historian leading the charge against White’s combat thesis, but even in his critical “Religion and Science” article [(1985) Osiris 1, 59-80], Numbers finished his criticism by stating, “I do not wish to suggest, however, that Christianity has generally fostered science, as some would have us believe, or that conflict never arose — only that we carefully define the nature of the interaction and clearly identify the participants.”
Regardless of revisions, or references to this or that benignly disposed church official, one cannot erase from history the persistent attacks of religious authority against the scientific thinkers who threatened a sacralized nature, nor the persistent and official mortal threats against them. Nor can any revision remove from history that the rise of modern science only followed the loss of police power by religious authority.
Nor can any historical re-thinking remove the fundamental opposition between revealed absolute truth and contingent knowledge, between faith and demonstration, or between ideology and methodological empiricism.
Gerd, the fact that someone is religious does not at all imply that the religion, itself, was the source of that person’s accomplishments.
It is as much a non-sequitur to suppose that Catholicism was the source of Copernicus’ heliocentric theory or Newton’s physics, as that paganism was the source of Archimedes’ Physics or Euclid’s mathematics.
Religion is about accepting on faith the untestable and the indescribable. This is the opposite of science.
Absolutist religions — those that claim an absolute god-given truth — must necessarily regard all dissent as absolute error. There is no room for independent thought in such religions. The history of heresy demonstrates this. That is, the history of heresy demonstrates the necessity for dissenters to leave their original religion. The invariable persecution of heretics demonstrates the intolerance of independent thought fundamental to absolutist religions.
Throughout the pre- and early-modern history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the value of an individual has been determined solely by acceptance of the truth-canon. Those who confessed the canon — the pious — were reckoned good. They were given humane standing and received some protection of law. Those who denied the canon — the disbelievers — were reckoned evil. They were denied humane standing and received the indictment of criminality.
After the Enlightenment (1650-1800), humans attained value by virtue of their humanity, not by their beliefs. The Enlightenment grew strictly out of the rediscovery of classical Greco-Roman thinking; notably the De Rerum Natura (The Nature of Things) of Lucretius Carus. The rationality promoted by the Enlightenment did not come from Christianity or Judaism. This is demonstrated by the fact that these religions existed for some 2500 years or 1500 years, respectively, without ever producing any thread of independent rationalism or notion of human value apart from belief. Logical elaboration of dogma and theology, as by Thomas Aquinas, does not constitute independent rationalism because it is entirely a derivative of religious ideology.
To bring home this point, the conflict today with Islam solely rests on the fact that of the three main religions, only Islam has been untouched by Enlightenment values. It retains all the absolutist intolerance of the past. At its bottom, Islam is just Arabist triumphalism; a racist element the other modern religions now reject in its entirety and on principle.
So, if one wishes to contemplate the reality of living among the religious societies of the European past, one need only look at Islamic societies of the present. The details are different, but the attitudes are similar.
It is to their extreme credit that both Judaism and Christianity have responded positively, in the main, to Enlightenment humanism. So far as I know, these are the only examples of ideological believers voluntarily changing their stance on rational principled grounds. Marxists, for example, and Muslims, have so far signally failed this test.
So my hat’s off to all you humane Christians and Jews out there, for your moral strength, intellectual courage, and flexibility of mind. You’re historically unique. You have commendably modified your belief system in light of science. But your belief system did not originate science nor, initially, tolerate it.
I’d hate to restate my point; but I really see no other way. I am talking about Christian scientists’ belief in a knowable, truthful, beautiful universe in enveloping creation. This belief makes them confident that they can indeed understand and know the laws of the universe. This firm belief in the lawfulness of the universe is supposed to be non-scientific? I am a bit at a loss there, really. There is also the issue of inspiration. Who are you to say that they don’t actually mean it when they claim divine inspiration, when they certainly say so themselves? It doesn’t really matter what you or I think about their way of being inspired, when we do have written sources to rely on. Start out with Johannes Kepler, for instance, he is very communicative on the subject.
Thank you for the explanation of your views, but you are still making categorical statements about two thousand years of European history. What seems to be your version of the history of culture, religion and science is not at all wrong, but only one side of the story. It looks more like a critique of the monolithic, dogmatic organisation of centralized religion and all of the power struggles and agony that ensued from this. This is an old discussion, really, but still very much relevant.
Gerd, the origin and existence of science in ancient Greece, and in Greco-Roman society, removes any necessity for a “belief in a knowable, truthful, beautiful universe in enveloping creation” as a prerequisite for, or element of, any impulse toward scientific thinking or regular (what you term “lawfulness”) physical behavior.
The fact that some scientists living in a Christian context also maintained Christian beliefs is a scientific epiphenomenon.
Please note that nowhere did I write that, “they [scientists] don’t actually mean it when they claim divine inspiration, when they certainly say so themselves?” Where you got that from is anyone’s guess.
You’re right that my post is, “a critique of the monolithic, dogmatic organisation of centralized religion and all of the power struggles and agony that ensued from this.” That’s been my point all along (and A. D. White’s).
Individual religious people have run the usual gamut of wonderful to horrid and productive to corrosive (with a majority nearer the wonderful and productive, as gifted to us by 50 million years of primate social evolution). The issue at play is that inflexibility and intolerance are encouraged by the religious ideology of revealed absolute truth. Judaism and the religions derived from it make absolutist claims. As a consequence, their history is replete with oppressive authoritarians, wrecked lives, and stunted intellectual growth.
It was with the seductions of religious ideology in view that Steven Weinberg wrote that, “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” These days, one should add that it also takes political ideology, e.g., Marxism.
It’s Gard, with an ‘a’.
Intellectual exercises of the “what if” type may be interesting when it comes to history, but not much more. The exceedingly hypothetical “what if there were no Christianity” is not something I want to spend a lot of time on. Suffice it to say that Christianity has influenced European history in such a profound way that very little can be said to have happened for two thousand years that has not been influenced by Christian thought. That goes for the good ideas, and that goes for the bad ideas as well. If you want to go into how Greek philosophy has influenced Christian thought, there are volumes written on the subject and it is a very fascinating study.
I am not sure what you mean in your first paragraph, though. Do you assume, then, that the Greeks and the Romans had no firm, dogmatic religious beliefs? If anything, I would suspect that they were even more dogmatic than the Christians? And again, are you trying to say that belief in the beauty and truth of the universe would not be a powerful incentive, and indeed, a prerequisite and an impulse to new discoveries and scientific thought? That seems very, very strange.
I will clarify once more what I meant so you won’t have to guess. English is not my first language, so I might be involuntarily opaque on some issues. I will try to state it in as simple terms as possible:
When a scientist states that he/she was inspired by God in his/her work, I assume that he or she means it, and that this inspiration was essential to the completion and success of the work. You seem to claim that religion was really only a hindrance to his or her scientific work; that is where you in fact state that they don’t really mean what they say. Or at least that they didn’t know what inspired them, even though they claim they did. That is pretty arrogant of you, even though the people you are talking about are long dead.
Ah, here it is, as I remembered Freeman Dyson had something to say about your Weinberg quote:
“Weinberg’s statement is true as far as it goes, but it is not the whole truth. To make it the whole truth, we must add an additional clause: “And for bad people to do good things—that [also] takes religion.” The main point of Christianity is that it is a religion for sinners. Jesus made that very clear. When the Pharisees asked his disciples, “Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?” he said, “I come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.” Only a small fraction of sinners repent and do good things but only a small fraction of good people are led by their religion to do bad things.”
Dyson has a couple of interesting things to say about global warming too, although he doesn’t seem to go full skeptic:
“I’m not saying the warming doesn’t cause problems, obviously it does. Obviously we should be trying to understand it. I’m saying that the problems are being grossly exaggerated. They take away money and attention from other problems that are much more urgent and important. Poverty, infectious diseases, public education and public health. Not to mention the preservation of living creatures on land and in the oceans.”
(Not that I necessarily agree with all his religious and climatological views, but thought it might be of interest anyway.)
Gard R. Rise
May 31, 2015 at 1:13 pm
Greek and Roman pagans weren’t generally dogmatic.
As the Apostle Paul noted, the pagans in Athens were always ready to hear new things. They didn’t buy what he was selling immediately, but they didn’t get all dogmatic on his posterior.
The Romans sometimes required residents of their cities to sacrifice to Roman gods as a civic virtue. Christian martyrs refused to do so, hence provided entertainment for the masses at the games or were burned as human torches to light dinner parties.
Ah, but they pretty much got “all dogmatic” on poor Socrates’ “posterior”, wouldn’t you say? And then Christians fed to Roman lions? You are cracking a joke or something here. People dying for their faith is seldom funny, though.
Gard, you wrote, “…that is where you in fact state that they don’t really mean what they say. Or at least that they didn’t know what inspired them, even though they claim they did. That is pretty arrogant of you, even though the people you are talking about are long dead.”
In fact, I never wrote that, nor anything like that. I’d corrected your misrepresentation once already before you wrote that. But you’ve persisted. Once may be a mistake. Twice looks deliberate. So, is it “arrogant” to persistently falsify another’s position, or just a habitual carelessness?
Since you don’t seem to understand yet, I will try to explain a third time, in even simpler terms if possible:
Your claim (as far as I have understood it):
Christian religion was always a hindrance to scientific thought. Scientific progress happened despite of Christianity.
Christian scientists’ claim:
Christianity was a great help and inspiration in their scientific work. Progress in their scientific work would not have happened without their faith in God.
Both statements can’t possibly be true if we are to take your argument the least bit seriously. That is because you are ridiculously categorical in your claim. You are (as far as I can tell) saying that the first statement is always true, therefore the second statement must always be false. Calling the second statement false is saying that what the scientists claim about their own work is a lie. That is extremely arrogant, and it would be offensive to the scientists, were they still alive.
Now for the main point of the discussion: if you were to moderate your initial statement it might become a different argument, but you (wrongly) stated:
“For those who think Christianity had anything whatever to do with the origin or success of science in Europe: Andrew D. White’s A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom , should forever disabuse you of such ideas. Science recovered in Europe — recovered not originated, because it originated during the Greek Enlightenment — despite, not because of, Christianity.”
Read your words again and think twice about what you are really saying there. You are in essence removing the individual from history, you are by implication removing the individual expression of faith from history by viewing Christianity as a monolithic whole. It is a Marxist view of history (as you correctly pointed out), and it’s a falsehood. And please, try to read up on the history of religion and science until the next time. If you believe that science existed in some kind of religious dogma-free Elysium before Christianity, you need to think again. Religion and science have co-existed and interacted for good or worse since the Egyptians and Babylonians and probably as far back in history that we know of. That certainly goes for the Greeks and the Romans as well. The dichotomy between faith and scientific knowledge has been a source of both anguish and inspiration for scientists for ages, and it still continues. You are taking the reductionist view that Christianity (and you throw in Islam there also, which you probably know nothing about) was always contra-productive to science, I call that nonsense in the extreme. Think again, moderate your initial statement and you might come up with a theory that is closer to truth. Good luck with that.
Gard, none of my posts include speculation about “what if there’s no religion.” Nor do I anywhere dispute that Christianity had a very large influence on European history. You’re making discursions that have no particular reference to anything I’ve actually written.
Regarding my first paragraph, I inferred from what you wrote about, “Christian scientists’ belief in a knowable, truthful, beautiful universe in enveloping creation” that you meant Christianity, as such, inspired European scientists. Otherwise, why specify that religion?
Given that specificity, of what relevance is it whether, “the Greeks and the Romans had … firm, dogmatic religious beliefs,” or not? The Greeks and Romans were pagan. Did paganism also lead ancient scientists to believe in a “knowable, truthful, beautiful universe in enveloping creation?
Are you suggesting that mere belief in some religion, any religion, will inspire scientists to their vision of a “knowable, truthful, beautiful universe in enveloping creation“? If so, then what is the particular value of Christianity?
In the context of our conversation, the point of referring to the Greek Enlightenment is that it obviously does not take Christianity to inspire people to a life of science. yankwanker (strange name, that), has already pointed out that Greeks and Romans were not particularly dogmatic. This is shown by their tolerance of an almost bewildering variation of beliefs and gods among pagan sects, and the virtually complete lack of evidence of violent contests among them.
The very first sentence of my very first post in this thread, began with, “For those who think Christianity had anything whatever to do with the origin or success of science in Europe…” The capitalization references the religion itself, not anyone’s personal religious sentiment. Your focus on personal sentiment, i.e., “inspired by God in his/her work,” misses the critical point.
Gard, your first statement about my claim is categorically distinct from your second about scientists.
You are supposing that personal religious sentiment is identical with the religion itself. It is not; any more than one’s personal sentiments about science are identical with science itself.
Religion itself is the body of beliefs, declarations, deductions, and regulations of personal behavior that make up the system to which the religiously believing individuals submit themselves.
Personal religious sentiment is the subjective response of the believer to the belief.
Your first recapitulational statement concerns the religion itself. Your second concerns personal religious sentiment. As these are categorically distinct statements, your conclusion that, “Both statements can’t possibly be true …” is not correct.
Following that baseline error, all of your further deductions fail. It seems you’ve consistently imposed your own meaning onto my words. Following from that you then reacted to your own supposed meaning, rather than to the meaning of what I actually wrote.
You wrote that I have viewed, “Christianity as a monolithic whole.” Rather, I described Christianity in terms of its invariable claim of absolute god-given knowledge. There is no dispute that claim is universal and central among all Christian sects. It has been the source of virtually all of the religious warfare that has scarred European history.
There is also no dispute that the same absolutist claim is also the central organizing factor of Judaism and Islam; a point also made.
Noting the obvious centrality of absolutism to Christianity has nothing to do with Marxism. Noting that science originated among pagan Greeks does not imply anything about a religion-free Elysium. It does, however, reference the fact that science originated before any historical hint of religious absolutism. It is almost self-evident that an absolutist stance must necessarily be mortally hostile to the contingent novelty of scientists and scientific thinking.
You wrote that, “You are taking the reductionist view that Christianity (and you throw in Islam there also, which you probably know nothing about) was always contra-productive to science, I call that nonsense in the extreme.”
Rather, I take a holistic view that Christianity, at large and as such in its beliefs, declarations, deductions, and regulations of personal behavior, has been institutionally opposed to independent thinking, and to science as a subset of that thinking. And why should it not be? Christian authorities, especially prior to 1800, claimed a monopoly on truth. Dissent was not brooked. That history is not gainsaid by the personal sentimental constructs of individuals.
There’s nothing wrong with reductionism, by the way. It’s the program of science and has been nothing but successful.
About the extent of my knowledge, you have no knowledge. Your label of “nonsense in the extreme” is no more than unsubstantiated opinion. You’re welcome to it.
You were the one that singled out Christianity (and Islam) in your incompetent and fallacious initial hypothesis/rant. Yes, I most certainly believe that some of the “pagans” as you call them had elements in their religions that made them believe in a knowable, truthful universe. We could probably discuss the religion of Socrates for several hours. Some “pagan” religions were completely different, however, and perhaps anti-scientifical in their nature. Christian philosophy inherited many of its best ideas from Jewish philosophy, naturally (and then by extension, Egyptian philosophy), but also a whole set of ideas that is connected to Greek, both Platonic and Aristotelean thought. The Roman contribution to the history of ideas is rather more focused in the direction of organization of society than philosophy and science (which they in a large degree inherited from the Greeks), so I don’t think we need to delve too long on them. The Babylonian influence on the Bible is likely also there, but not necessarily for the benefit of either the Christian or the Jewish religion. Christianity has elements of many different philosophies along with its own perfectly unique elements.
“The capitalization references the religion itself, not anyone’s personal religious sentiment”
This is exactly what you can’t do. I don’t really care how you try to rationalize this reduction in your extended discussion of this point. You can’t separate anyone’s personal sentiment from the process of history, especially not when it comes to such a fundamental aspect of a person’s life as faith. That is exactly where you display incompetence; not so much in any of your individual arguments, but exactly there. I have tried to explain that to you several times, but you refuse to listen.
For the nth time: It doesn’t matter whether you believe that Christianity (and Islam, which I still suspect you know very little about, not many people seem to do nowadays) was detrimental (or at best, didn’t contribute at all) to the development of science, when the people who actually did the science disagree with you in countless books, private letters, treatises and any written document we may have at our disposal. Please, please get this. You can’t maintain an argument that requires several “special conditions”; one of them being that we cannot take into account people’s private, religious sentiment in order for it to be true.
Gard, you wrote, “You were the one that singled out Christianity (and Islam) in your incompetent and fallacious initial hypothesis/rant.”
I refer you to the posts of tgasloli, of Silver ralph, of sturgishooper, again of Silver ralph, all of which discussed the influence of Christianity on European science before I posted.
You labeling of my original post as “ incompetent and fallacious” is merely a pejorative dismissal, because your view is unsubstantiated in any of your responses. The content doesn’t support your claim of “rant,” either.
You wrote, “Yes, I most certainly believe that some of the “pagans” as you call them had elements in their religions that made them believe in a knowable, truthful universe.”
And the evidence of that in their writing is . . .?
Quoting my, “The capitalization references the religion itself, not anyone’s personal religious sentiment”, you wrote, “This is exactly what you can’t do. I don’t really care how you try to rationalize this reduction in your extended discussion of this point. You can’t separate anyone’s personal sentiment from the process of history, especially not when it comes to such a fundamental aspect of a person’s life as faith.”
I distinguished between the structure of a religion itself, and an individual’s subjective response to that religion. You then decide doing so separates personal sentiment from the process of history (whatever that means).
Nevertheless, in your objection against my distinction, you necessarily deny that a religion can have any structural existence independent of personal sentiment.
It’s very clear, however, that religions do exist apart from personal sentiment. The beliefs, declarations, etc., etc., are all bodies of text that have existence independent of any person. These texts all allow the belief sets of various religions to be compared without reference to anyone’s sentiments.
The information represented by those bodies of text are actualized into society and history by the interpretative activities of the religious authorities and believers. This actualization produces the institutional existence and historical trajectory of every given religion.
My posts consistently referred to this independent existence. You insist on revising them in terms of an irrelevance of personal sentiment.
There’s no intellectually coherent connection between what I wrote and your interpretation of it. How you suppose any logical or semantic connection exists is anyone’s guess.
Implicit in your interpretation, is that, e.g., Catholicism has no independent structure apart from an arbitrary someone’s subjective sentiment about Catholicism. But then, how can anyone internalize a subjective sentiment about Catholicism, unless Catholicism has some sort of perceptible existence outside the subject? The same is true of any given religion.
The very basis of your thinking is self-contradictory.
You wrote, “That is exactly where you display incompetence; not so much in any of your individual arguments, but exactly there.”
So, for you, it is incompetent to distinguish between the structure and content of a religion, and the variable and personal religious sentiments of arbitrary individuals. And yet, every single prelate who argues religious orthodoxy against the mistaken beliefs of coreligionists, makes exactly the same distinction.
You wrote, “I have tried to explain that to you several times, but you refuse to listen.”
It’s not that I refuse to listen, Gard. It’s that you’re making no sense. There is no rational reason to accept your impossible premises.
You make the argument that, “ Christianity (and Islam, … [contributed] to the development of science, [because] the people who actually did the science [said so] in countless books, private letters, treatises and any written document we may have at our disposal.”
This purported testimony seems to be your proof positive. Is that about right? Suppose we grant the documentation, then. . .
The basis of Christianity is that Christ existed in history, saved humans from sin, and is both god and son of god. The basis of Islam is that Muhammad existed in history, is the final and best prophet of god, and is pretty much infallible. Judaism, the original variety, says that Abraham existed in history, made a contract with god, and that all Abraham’s descendants are beneficiaries and obligates to that contract. (None of the historical claims are verifiable on the available evidence.)
So, ignoring the ancient Greek accomplishments, you’d have it that the personal sentiments arising from belief in one or another of those claims were a sine-qua-non for science. Or maybe that belief in the creator-god posited by all of those religions induced sentiments about order and continuity that gave people the courage and inspiration to do science.
Of course, the notion of order came from the observations of order. This must be true, because there are no observable properties of god that imply order, or anything else. Believers must then have referred those observations back to god. That is, the observed order was sentimentally assigned to be a derivative property of god, after the fact of observation. Assigned, because there are no observable or knowable properties of god. Absence of knowledge means it could not be objectively known that god produced order.
So, the informational route was necessarily, from observed order — then to god — and then back to created order.
We are left with noticing that the early scientists must have been making empirical observations first, i.e, doing something like science, then noted the existence of order, and then assigned the order to god. Only after that, could they sentimentalize the whole thing into a rhapsody of inspiration by god-produced order. To construct that rhapsody of inspiration, they’d have had to forget that the observations of order preceded the assignment of order to god’s creative benignity.
Let’s notice that the assignment of a property to a construct about which nothing can be known, i.e., god, is irretrievably irrational.
The conclusion of the lawyer, that personal memory and testimony is very often untrustworthy with respect to the factual sequence of events, also here, is reasonably assigned to historical sentimental rhapsodies about god’s inspiration to science.
The extensive written testimonials may exist, Gard, but your causal thesis lacks merit.
*Sigh*. I am not trying to separate the “structural existence independent of personal sentiment” of a religion from the same “personal sentiment”, I am trying to account for both and keeping them intact as a whole. You are the one desperately trying to separate the two. Until you get this, there is no point in continuing this discussion.
I replied and objected to the following ridiculous statement, and I quote it here in full for one last time:
“For those who think Christianity had anything whatever to do with the origin or success of science in Europe: Andrew D. White’s A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom , should forever disabuse you of such ideas. Science recovered in Europe — recovered not originated, because it originated during the Greek Enlightenment — despite, not because of, Christianity. The same is true of Islamic societies; such science as was there existed despite, not because of, Islam.
The war of religion against science isn’t a ‘Marxist myth.’ It’s a fact of history.”
I have tried to explain why that is a simplistic, reductionist, incompetent view, bordering on bigotry. It is needlessly categorical in the absurd and revealing a lack of understanding of the processes behind the dynamics of history.
Summary:
Your theories are (at their best) important for one side of the discussion of the history of science and religion, but you present them as if they were representing the single truth or at least by far the most important aspect. That is what I heavily object to. You are drastically over-simplyfying a dynamic process and choosing to disregard aspects of a problem that don’t suit your argument (a common practice in climatology as well as it evidently is in the study of history).
Gard, you wrote (following your mannered “*sigh*”), “I am not trying to separate the “structural existence independent of personal sentiment” of a religion from the same “personal sentiment”, I am trying to account for both and keeping them intact as a whole. You are the one desperately trying to separate the two. Until you get this, there is no point in continuing this discussion.”
And yet, following my very first post which pointed out that Christianity had nothing to do with the origin or success of science in Europe, your immediate response was that, “The list of devout, deeply religious scientists from the last two thousand years can be made pretty extensive. … there is still a myriad of scientists to choose from who considered themselves devout Christians. They would rather claim divine inspiration…,” etc., etc.
I spoke to Christianity as the religion, you answered with personal sentiment, as though they were identical. You leveraged this supposed identity to propose that personal religious sentiment contradicted the point that Christianity, as such, opposed science. This has been your argument throughout.
As evidence of this, you ended your initial post with, “Christianity is not only the church, but also the personal relationship to God of all the people who call themselves Christian.”
“Personal relationship to god” is a sentimental regard that any religious believer can have with their deity of choice. Such a fantasy is not unique to Christianity. It could just as well describe the internal sentiment of believers toward their god in any ancient mystery religion. Given the universality of that sentiment, there is no reason to think that Christianity can at all be equated with, or specified by, the existence of those same feelings among Christians.
Further the “personal relationship to god” sentiment didn’t stop with early scientists. It was present in the inquisitors, the witch-burners, the torturers, and every pettifogging dogmatic cleric who could each and all reference their “personal relationship to god” to justify and sacralize their oppression and murder of believers and non-believers, both.
A sentiment that is not unique to Christianity, nor unique to religious scientists, cannot be used to specify Christianity, nor used as a uniquely causal agent of inspiration toward science.
The failure of your entire argument is co-extensive with the universality of human sentiments. You offer a standard of the Christian apologetics that attempts to remove the verdict of history: that religious absolutism produced oppression and tyranny.
The contested claim of absolute truth is the only unique property that distinguishes Christianity, Judaism, and Islam from other religions. Absolutism is the property responsible for their unique history of oppression and murder. Intellectual stultification is the goal of absolutism’s imposed religious peace.
Absolutism is intrinsically and necessarily hostile toward science and its novelties. Hostility toward the novel intellect is obvious and manifest in the history of absolutist Christianity and Islam, wherever they had control. Judaism is saved only because it has never attained state-level police power.
Pat Frank,
I suggest your “war of religion against science” idea is better expressed in non-military terms. I suggest instead of military terms, it can be better expressed in terms such as the fundamental eternal intellectual argument between the tribal shamans and the independent individual achievers.
John
Good enough, John. 🙂
Fantastic— and, as always, well-written with crystal clear logic and facts.
The hypocrisy of the misguided religious zealots and the limousine crowd is beyond the pale.
I’m afraid that the global warming that the certain churches are feeling is the result of their ever closer approach to hell.
“By declaring war on coal, people who purport to represent the Church of England are committing a terrible crime against the world’s poorest people.”
————
C of E, like warmunists and malthusians in general, want to outsource death to the 3rd world.
Probably a lot of these religious leaders–half, maybe–have been pressured to “say something” by green-activists in their congregations. It was similar factional pressure that, I presume, nudged scientific societies into lining up behind IGPOCC.
I think Sir Christopher is on a collision course with his holy father here with his message that “Coal saves”
Science demonstrates the many advantages of coal, which is primarily under attack because traditionally the coal-owners were the big donors to the Republican Party in the United States – and some still are. It is not the business of the Pope to make pronouncements on scientific questions: nor do I expect him to be silly enough to do so. The Marxists in charge of the two Pontifical Academies are pressing him to say daft and anti-scientific things about the climate, but the Curia are resisting – and there are one or two indications that the Pope is resisting too.
Expect a more balanced statement on the climate question from the Holy See than from most mere secular governments.
You’re going to be better connected than me on that but that’s been my ‘gut feel’ too.
Why is it that the POVs expressed on this forum are have zero effect on:
1) University Science Education and Research
2) Secondary School Science Education
3) The Positions of The World’s Science Academies, all of which conclude AGW
4) The Positions of the World’s Scientific Professional Societies, all of which confirm the same
5) The findings of Peer Reviewed science journal papers
6) The authors — none from WUWT
6) The exhortations of Religious Leaders
7) The positions of nearly all World Leaders
Has WUWT has formed its own closed religious monastery, with no influence over Education, Science, Religion, Policy, or Government?
The truth is often unfashionable. It is all too easy to drift along with fashion: I could make large amounts if only I switched sides and told lies for profit.
Warrenlb, a serial blubber and bedwetter, is also – as usual – careless with his facts. Several of us here have had papers published in the reviewed journals and in academic books.
Nor should Warrenlb assume that we have no influence. Despite a funding disparity put at 5000:1 against us, we are winning the debate among the public and are gradually shaming the scientific community, one by one, into realizing they are putting the integrity and reputation of science itself at risk by taking a one-sided and increasingly insane viewpoint.
I advise several governments on climate, and many of them are far less amenable to the extremist nonsense of the official position than the media would like to make out. Same goes for scientific academies, who are by no means unanimous on the question, though the Party Line is that they are unanimous, because all the Party Line has left is the now-collapsing notion of a scientific “consensus” that does not, in fact, exist.
@Monckton
And just where are ‘you winning’?
1) NO University courses in ‘Monckton Science’. ALL consistent with AGW.
2) Secondary school science does not reflect your anti-AGW ‘opinions’.
3) NO Science Academy anywhere in the world disputing AGW.
4) NO Scientific Professional Society disputing AGW.
5) NO Peer reviewed papers from an ISI listed Science Journal rejecting AGW
6) No Monckton University Science Education, peer-reviewed science journal publications, nor record of Climate Research.
7) Essentially all religious and world leaders accepting AGW and most advocating action.
8) Nor has the H of L reconsidered your membership claim
Warrenlb continues to be serially inaccurate, and to be obsessed with the notion that scientific questions are settled by “consensus”. They are not. They are settled by observation, then by measurement, then by thought, then by the application of pre-existing theory to the results so as to refine the old theory or develop a new one. Consensus plays no part whatsoever in this process.
And contrary to WarrenLB’s assertion that there are no university courses in “Monckton science”, I have had numerous approaches over the years from both undergraduate and postgraduate students writing theses on climate skepticism, often from a sympathetic standpoint.
There are also numerous reviewed papers in ISI-listed journals that dispute the true-believers’ position on global warming. The Chinese Science Bulletin is one such: read our paper of January 2015 there at scibull.com. Dick Lindzen, Pat Michaels, Ross McKitrick Mike McIntyre, Fred Singer and many, many others have published skeptical papers in the reviewed journals. Saying that it is not so does not make it not so.
Warren, most of your points are demonstrably factually inaccurate. Many peer-reviewed papers express POVs similar to those expressed on WUWT. In fact, a number of people who post here have published peer-reviewed papers (Lindzen, Soon, Curry, Michaels, McIntyre, Mckittrsick, and others, as well as dozens of climate scientists in papers which trying to explain the “pause” acknowledge this phenomenon, which was highlighted by many posts on WUWT years before most climate scientists were finally unable to DENY the data). Effects on University Science Education and Research are also easy to identify. Interestingly they include attacks trying (with complete scientific incompetence) to link appropriate scientific skepticism with psychological disorders (see Lewandowsky and colleagues), when, in fact, skepticism about CAGW is based on scientific evidence, not psychopathology. I will risk a predication that WUWT will someday be quite favorably regarded when historians and philosophers of science objectively analyze the climate science in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Not all the world’s academies or scientific societies support CAGW. Some take no official position, and if you did a legitimate poll among non-climate related societies that use methods similar to those of climate science (e.g., modeling) such as epidemiology, you would find that they have a low opinion of climate science and of the evidence in support of CAGW. World leaders have positions based on politics; science plays little role in the decision-making of most of them. Religious leaders are by no means united in their positions on CAGW or the best response to the minor warming that has been observed since about 1980 (but not in the most recent 18 years or so). When they realize that plans to reduce CO2 emissions that involve substantial increases in energy prices and the fact that cheap energy saves lives by the thousands or millions in the developing world, I suspect they will more carefully weigh the uncertainty of climate predictions and the failure of many, many predictions in the past 20 years or so against increased numbers of premature deaths among the poorest of the poor. It is possible that AGW will cause adverse effects and that humans will have to adapt or to decrease CO2 emissions over the next century. However, real, quantifiable current adverse effects (not based on unvalidated climate models) are minimal, if they exist at all, and crop yields as well as overall plant coverage have increased as CO2 has increased. WUWT was one of the first web sites on which questioning the “consensus” based on scientific inconsistencies in the CAGW narrative was not only allowed but encouraged. Finally, Warren, your point that WUWT has no influence is just a little suspicious, when one considers that WUWT has many times the number of readers compared to any other climate blog, and many of the them (such as myself) are scientists, engineers, and computational geeks in other fields of research and are not following WUWT due to conspiracy theories or political affiliation.
@Stephen Fisher Pruett
“Many peer-reviewed papers express POVs similar to those expressed on WUWT. ”
False. Less than 1%. Go here for one of the many counts of peer reviewed journal papers concluding AGW: http://www.jamespowell.org/Piecharts/styled/index.html
“Not all the world’s academies or scientific societies support CAGW.”
False. Not one of the science academies, or scientific professional societies disputes AGW (the term ‘CAGW’ isn’t used in science). All academies maintain an official published position concluding AGW.
The rest of your post seems to be opinion: “I expect” or “they will realize”, etc. So far there’s little evidence that your wishes are intruding on reality.
Warrenlb continues to be obsessed by consensus. However, science is the process by which the consensus is repeatedly proven to be in error. There was once a consensus that the Earth was flat. The consensus was flat wrong. There was once a consensus that cholesterol is bad for you. Now that consensus has been abandoned, like the consensus that salt is bad for you. There was once a consensus – near-unanimous, and persisting for 300 years – that Newtonian celestial mechanics were all that needed to be said on the matter. Then a single third-class patent clerk, in a single non-peer-reviewed paper, disproved that consensus too. Likewise, the evidence of little or no warming since the IPCC’s first ASSessment report in 1990 shows the latest fashionable but misguided consensus to have been wrong. Get over it.
What does that have to do with AGW or my post…?
What will they replace the paraffin-based candles with?
Beeswax.
I guess I better start a hive soonest MoB ( I wonder how many hives it takes to light up Parliament? one ?)
Instead oh “how many hives” I meant to say how many candles would it take to light up Parliament? One?
In answer to Asybot, Guy Fawkes found that all that was necessary was a match and some decayed corn-powder. No need for candles at all to light up Parliament.
Not a very important issue. Most Australians only pay attention to religious leaders when they are trying to deny their child abuse.
I became an irreverent Protestant and stopped going to church because the Christian churches in the USA lost their way and stopped focusing on their real mission. Instead, they got caught up in the fad (flavor) of the month.
Do you really think that the Church of England – or any other church – cares about the poor? They mouth platitudes but in reality they really do not care at all. Often because they have not got the intellect to see the dystopia their simplistic approach would lead to,
You are exactly right.
Thanks George for demonstrating that no amount of letters after a person’s name is any guarantee of any sense coming out of that person’s mind.
Although I am willing to be persuaded by this polemic, there is one respect in which it is misleading, or at least invites me to mislead myself. The author writes:
“Time for some facts about coal. The gerontologist and evolutionary biologist Caleb Finch tells us that since the early 1800s life expectancy in Europe has doubled. The single greatest factor in the longevity revolution has been coal.”
This paragraph is followed by several more that claim to explain the connection between coal and life expectancy. Knowing something about history, I find these claims to be about as plausible as the claim that the Syrian revolution was caused by global warming.
When I read the paragraph cited above, the doubling of life expectancy is clearly attributed to Caleb Finch, a very distinguished scientist. Is the explanation that follows also Caleb Finch’s, or is it the babbling of a radio host? A quick look at Caleb Finch’s cv shows him to be a pure scientist who has never dabbled in social science, so I would guess the latter. But the modern extension of life expectancies is well established, so why mention Caleb Finch at all? I suspect, only to give the author’s own speculations a veneer of scientific authority. And I find that annoying.
To be fair to Christian religious leaders, their position is intellectually consistent. If you believe that God made the world some thousands of years ago and that it was ‘good’ and that it only became bad when man sinned then it makes sense to believe that any change from normal (it is a common human failing to judge normal by ones own experiences) is ‘bad’ and must be the result of man because man is the only part of creation that is bad. That the world is warmer today than it was when many of the current crop of religious leaders were teenagers (the ’70’s) is all the evidence that they need.
What I have difficulty understanding is why people who would laugh creationists to scorn believe and behave like creationists. Nature is not good. If it were up to nature we would all die before 40. Civilization is not bad. It allows many more of us to live longer healthier lives. There was no ideal time in the past that has been ruined by man. If there is ever going to be an ideal time on earth it will be a result of man looking to the future not to the past.
Even in the Garden of Eden story Man was put in a garden not a jungle. It is implied that the ‘natural’ state of the world is not as good as the state of the world that is cultivated for man’s benefit. Environmentalists often try to garner the support of creationists by using the ‘take care of the garden’ argument. Taking care of the garden means something very different from what environmentalists pretend it means. To an environmentalist a dam is bad because it is not natural. To a gardener a dam is just a way of putting a lake in a place where a lake may be useful, good or bad is determined by utility. To an environmentalist anything more than 260-290 ppm of CO2 is bad because it is not natural. To a gardener CO2 is just another gas, good or bad is determined by utility.
“To an environmentalist anything more than 260-290 ppm of CO2 is bad because it is not natural. To a gardener CO2 is just another gas, good or bad is determined by utility.”
To a scientist, CO2 is just another gas, good or bad is determined by its effects on humans which includes the inexorable warming of the planet, with its eventual harmful effects to our grandchildren and theirs.
As usual, Warrenlb is long on recitations of the climate-Communist party line, and short on data. Since we are part of nature too, our releasing back to the atmosphere some of the CO2 that was formerly there is a natural act and is not reprehensible in itself. It would only be reprehensible if it were to cause harm: but the modest warming – at a current underlying ocean warming rate of just 0.23 Celsius per century equivalent – is far more likely to be net-beneficial than net-harmful.
To be fair to Christian religious leaders, their position is intellectually consistent. If you believe that God made the world some thousands of years ago and that it was ‘good’ and that it only became bad when man sinned then it makes sense to believe that any change from normal (it is a common human failing to judge normal by ones own experiences) is ‘bad’ and must be the result of man because man is the only part of creation that is bad. That the world is warmer today than it was when many of the current crop of religious leaders were teenagers (the ’70’s) is all the evidence that they need.
What I have difficulty understanding is why people who would laugh creationists to scorn believe and behave like creationists. Nature is not good. If it were up to nature we would all die before 40. Civilization is not bad. It allows many more of us to live longer healthier lives. There was no ideal time in the past that has been ruined by man. If there is ever going to be an ideal time on earth it will be a result of man looking to the future not to the past.
Even in the Garden of Eden story Man was put in a garden not a jungle. It is implied that the ‘natural’ state of the world is not as good as the state of the world that is cultivated for man’s benefit. Environmentalists often try to garner the support of creationists by using the ‘take care of the garden’ argument. Taking care of the garden means something very different from what environmentalists pretend it means. To an environmentalist a dam is bad because it is not natural. To a gardener a dam is just a way of putting a lake in a place where a lake may be useful, good or bad is determined by utility. To an environmentalist anything more than 260-290 ppm of CO2 is bad because it is not natural. To a gardener CO2 is just another gas, good or bad is determined by utility.
When politics and religion unite to drive an agenda using ‘science’, one can be certain that the ‘science’ has been corrupted in order to fit nicely with that political-religious agenda. Fortunately, people in the western world are well educated and are free thinking. And they can determine a con when they see one. And catastrophic man-made global warming is seen as just that – a baseless con.
Not by enough people, not even close. The end of the scam is not nigh, though it is closer than the end of the world.
Only three terrible genocides in the 20th century? I demand a recount.