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Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

I'll go further. Oppenheimer and Whitehead (neither Christian) have stated, in their respective histories of science, that the Judeo-Christian world view was absolutely necessary for the start of real science, that it could not have originated in a society with a different worldview.

Why? Because the Christian view was that God was a reasonable God, and He made the universe. And because He also gave us reason when He made us, we should be able to understand the universe by reason. All these men, from Newton down to Faraday, looked at the universe and expected to be able to find out how it worked, because of their religion.

Their religion didn't lead them to a non-scientific worldview. Their religion led them to create the scientific worldview.

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A huge surprise to the ancient Greeks, who outlined the concept of reason centuries before Christianity appeared, and invented a fair amount of math and the foundations of empiricism while they were at it.

In fact Christianity halted scientific progress in the West for around a millennium. Before the Renaissance rediscovered Greek philosophy, the Christian world operated on hierarchy, rhetoric, scholasticism, and violence.

They did. But they never developed it into science in the modern sense.

They had a universe in which the gods did random things for random reasons. That didn't lead them to expect a rational basis for the construction of the whole universe, and so they never investigated in the way that early modern science did.

The ancient Greeks had the opportunity to invent the steam engine, but didn't. They had the beginnings of steam power, but slaves were cheaper.

common misconception:

https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus...

> As we’ll see, the Roman Empire was never close to an industrial revolution – a great many of the preconditions were missing – but the idea that it might have been on the cusp of being something like a modern economy did once have its day in the scholarship

I was talking about the Greeks, not the Romans, entirely different civilisation(s) the Romans conquered. Look up "aeolipile" or "Hero's Engine". The ancient Greek steam powered device. Not sure why I'm voted down for stating historical fact. The Greeks had the beginning of steam power but never took it to the levels of the industrial revolution. If we look at ancient China too, they had a number of brilliant inventions but did not always follow through on them either.

from the article I linked: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus...

> Early tinkering with the idea of using heat to create steam to power rotary motion – the core function of a steam-engine – go all the way back to Vitruvius (c. 80 BC -15 AD) and Heron of Alexandria (c. 10-70 AD). With the benefit of hindsight we can see they were tinkering with an importance principle but the devices they actually produced – the aeolipile – had no practical use – it’s fearsomely fuel inefficient, produces little power and has to be refilled with water (that then has to be heated again from room temperature to enable operation).

> Apart from the use of steam pressure, the aeolipile shares very little in common with practical steam engine designs and the need to continually refill and heat the water reservoir would have limited its utility in any case.

"the aeolipile – had no practical use"

It could have easily been improved as later models were. It would require large amounts of fuel and water... Which the UK did centuries later I suppose. But one would not expect good fuel efficiency in early prototypes.

Reddit would be that way. > In fact Christianity halted scientific progress in the West for around a millennium. Before the Renaissance rediscovered Greek philosophy, the Christian world operated on hierarchy, rhetoric, scholasticism, and violence. I'm surprised anyone is still repeating such a laughable myth. Almost everything from classical antiquity would've been lost if not for Christians copying texts. > Before the Renaissance rediscovered Greek philosophy, the Christian world operated on hierarchy, rhetoric, scholasticism, and violence. Do you know what scholasticism means?

All of those things predate Christianity.

Well maybe not scholasticism.

That's an interesting take. Many years ago, I was chatting with a coworker who had emigrated from China; we got into topics like these, and something he said stuck with me all these years. He basically lamented that Chinese civilization is so deeply driven by Confucius thought, and expressed envy at the Western world's Christian underpinnings saying that it was better at driving people to search for "the truth."

Christianity is built upon “believe and do not doubt”. Sorry, I think your Chinese friend was a bit starry-eyed about Christianity…

Fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding) is almost literally a millennium old at this point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fides_quaerens_intellectum (and much older if you take it back to Saint John's response to the resurrection John 20:8-9)

What you wrote is quite obscure.

Much more popular is "believe and do not doubt".

Also: Jesus' response to Apostle Thomas after his resurrection from the dead is recited during every Easter mass: "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

Yes, on the surface the religion is the textbook antithesis of free thought. And yet I think my friend was getting at something deeper I can't quite pin down easily. Maybe it was just a lucky combination of aristocrat philosophers justifying their pursuits? Then there was the Enlightenment thing...

On the surface the religion is the antithesis of free thought? Where does persecution of scientists during the Medieval Age belong to? Is it below the surface? Above the surface?

Enlightenment runs contrary to Christian Dogma - Enlightenment advocates for the separation of Church and State.

Sorry pal, but Christianity is firmly against free thought....

Jesus says, "I am the way and the truth and the life". And to Thomas He says _first_ (two verses earlier), "Put in thy finger hither, and see my hands; and bring hither thy hand, and put it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing".

And to add another famous example: Galileo Galilei 500 years ago was persecuted by the Christian Church because he (Galileo) defended helio-centrism. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair

Sorry pal, but Christian Church is firmly in the "believe and do not doubt" camp.

https://www.vaticanobservatory.org/resources/galileo/histori...

You are one of today's lucky 10K!

That's the short version. The LONG version is https://bedejournal.blogspot.com/2009/03/galileo-affair-1-pr...

> that the Judeo-Christian world view was absolutely necessary for the start of real science

That's ridiculous.

> Because the Christian view was that God was a reasonable God, and He made the universe. And because He also gave us reason when He made us, we should be able to understand the universe by reason. All these men, from Newton down to Faraday, looked at the universe and expected to be able to find out how it worked, because of their religion.

That may be true, but that doesn't suggest that people who were secular could not have been curious about how the universe worked. Sure, that's a neat path for the religious to decide to embark on a scientific journey, but I expect if there was no religion at all, that scientific journey would have started earlier, and progressed faster. History is littered with scientists unable to publish their work (through threat of pain and death) because it conflicted with church doctrine.

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