A reader informs me that there is no Christendom, and that it is an enemy of science
A reader makes several outlandish claims, to which I am obligated to reply:
“There is no such thing as a christendom…”
This is the area of the world nowadays called Europe, and includes the Anglosphere and the Hispanosphere, that is, those places culturally informed by the European civilization. You are in the same position as a man who says there is no such thing as “The New World.” Arguably the term is in disuse, but calling the same area “The West” is less precise.
“… and up to today some major branches actually fight science. It has always been so: religion fights, denies.”
With all due respect, this is not my reading of history. Newton was a highly religious man, and Copernicus was a member of holy orders.
Neither is this my reading of theology. As best I can tell, it is not science that the Church denies, it is the inhuman creeds that attempt to use science as an excuse to treat men like cattle. Christians oppose killing babies in the womb or experimenting on human subjects for the same reason humane secular humanists oppose it: love of man is not ‘unscientific’.
Christianity postulates a rational creator who created a rational creation, and made humans with minds so equipped as to understand it. A metaphysic that postulates mere materialism as an explanation of the universe cannot explain why the logic in men’s minds and the logic of physics just so happen to coincide.
“Eventually claims may appear that certain scientific insights/knowledge is based on religion. All the sudden. You are doing the same thing, but ask a moslimwhere science comes from. He might give you another answer. Same thing.”
Your sentence structure here is not clear enough for me to puzzle out your meaning. I think you are arguing against a straw-man unrelated to my comment.
Read Roger Bacon if you want to find out the historical roots of science. Christianity is more Aristotelian than you are making it out to be: I mean no offense, but it sounds like you have been listening to propaganda on the topic.
“Religion brought equal grotesque and cruel things as Nazism and communism did. Nazism was even based on interpretations of biblical passages. Besides that, quite nasty opinions about things did not only live in Nazi Germany and/or the USSR, but were common in many societies. Including handling certain matters in certain ways. Think about how Arboriginals were treated, what used to happened to people with mental illnesses, how gay people were prosecuted, what roles women in society were supposed to have, apartheid and so on.”
Again, your sentence structure defeats your purpose: I cannot make out your meaning. Nazism is not logically possible without a theory of the superman, the next step of human evolution, which in turn cannot be imagined without a theory of Darwinism.
If Darwinism is correct (and I myself see no reason to suppose it false) it inevitably follows that some breeds within a species are less suited to survival by natural selection than other breeds. Not all breeds can be equal in Darwin’s eyes, for if they are all equally fit to survive, there is no evolution. Only a mystic like me, who thinks all men are stamped with the image of God, and are equal, not in their minds and bodies, (for clearly some men are stronger and smarter than others), but equal in their souls, equal in their moral character, can believe in the equality of man without contradicting himself.
The Nazis drew out a perfectly natural, and perfectly perverse, implication of the humanist-Darwinian world view.
As for the Stalinists, they called their system “scientific socialism.” They and their partisans said the same dismissive things about religion you say now. Science was the banner they marched under, the golden cow they worshiped. For details, see Lysenko.
As for the claim that “Religion brought equal grotesque and cruel things…” this is simply contradicted by the facts. I am not even going to argue the point. Google the word ‘Democide’. Look it up.
I will get you started: the Spanish Inquisition has been accused of as many as 350,000 deaths, but more conservative estimates place it at around 2000. Communism: over 100,000,000 men, women, and children, not to mention the near 30,000,000 of its subjects that died in its often aggressive wars and the rebellions it provoked. These are not only ‘not equal’ they are not even within the same order of magnitude.
“Insights and freedom are based on many philosophies and faiths.”
I respectfully disagree. Find me a quote from any Hindu or Chinese writing in favor of human political freedom. Name the faith, other than Christianity, which speaks of the merit of the individual, and links the concept to the concept of liberty. Name another religion informed by Hellenic ideas of isonomia, or equal justice. Back your assertion.
“Religion is based on blind faith…”
Is this comment based on some experiment you performed? Where is your evidence? Or is it an article of faith of some dogma of your own?
My religious convictions are based on my reasoning and my experiences. Your comment is meaningless: faith is merely another word for loyalty. I have faith in my God for the same reason that I have loyalty to my wife–she loves me, and I have no logical reason to doubt her, and it would be dishonorable and weakminded to entertain doubts about her.