This topic came from “Cargo Cults” in this same group. I am going to posit that religion impeded science and scientific inquiry, especially in the Dark Ages. Of course, they also TRY to do so more recently, and we can go into that later. (Later, Aran!) Let’s first discuss religion and science generally and move on to more specifics as we go…

Some of this will make me sound mean, but I’m only paraphrasing from mine and other atheists thoughts. (then again, I am mean, I’m a big blue meany!)

Many christians attempt to salvage their religion’s problem with science by claiming that Christianity established modern science and medicine. They claim that there would be no modern science, medical knowledge or hospitals without Christianity. They mention scientists such as Newton, Kepler, Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, Boyle, Haller, Vesalius, among others, who all believed in a Christian god. Also, these folks report that the church continues to finance and encourage experimental science, as if it has always been that way. (e.g. the famous Vatican Observatory, or Trinity College in Cambridge) Therefore, from these examples, Christianity established modern science. (Oh, I see, all they have to do is say so, and I should believe it?)
NOT! These arguments fail to convince due to the following fallacies:

appealing to ignorance (failure to understand the history of the church and how it barred scientific thought, and in many cases, still does.)

confuses correlation with causation (just because a scientist accepts religion does not mean that his science derives from it)

non sequiturs (it doesn’t follow that just because a few scientists believed in god that science resulted from it)

jump on the bandwagon (appealing to a popular notion that Christianity began modern science)

confirmation bias (list all of the Christian scientists, but exclude their rejection of dogmas that conflicted with that science)

Just because some Christians did scientific work or the church may have funded scientific research has nothing to do with the founding of or the advancement of science. The historical record shows that science progressed in spite of Christianity, not because of it.

How did poor science make it against the might of the church? Why did the church destroy all of the great libraries on earth after the Council of Nicea? It took them nearly ninety more years to establish the Dark Ages, but they did it, all by themselves, condemning all (except themselves, doncha know) to eleven centuries of pure hell. These tales and more to come in our next chapters…

OK, don’t be a sendin’ me to Wikipedia. The first thing they mention is NOMA, the biggest crock of shit ever posited. Are you mad? I’m not even reading the rest of it. If you believe what Wikipedia has to say on a subject, there is no hope for you. I’m moving this discussion to a new topic “Religion and Science”
Edit: I went back to it, temporarily. They are demanding more information, verification and editing. How can you trust such a place!? Wikipedia is not trustworthy as a source of good and true information.
Re-edit: Is the 19th century, 20th century and the late 20th century now part of the Dark Ages? I am talking about the period before the “Enlightenment”, when people (and scientists)began to question religious authority. Approx. 325 AD to 1450 AD or thereabout. How nice that they were able to accomodate science RECENTLY. And the Middle Ages are only part of the Dark Ages. And just because Christian scholars acknowledged the earth’s sphericity doesn’t mean that the church itself did. I’ll continue in the new

I’m not too familiar with NOMA, but it sounds like what I and others have been saying all along that science and religion consider two different questions. Science is only and can only be concerned with the physical and observable. Religion is interested in truth that isn’t physical and observable. If that’s a problem for you, I’d like to know why.

Many wikipedia articles are better than you seem to think. Those that are discussed, reviewed, and have sources cited and linked can be verified. It’s a good starting place, because the sources at least lead you elsewhere more quickly and accurately than search engines or other online encyclopedias. The section I was quoting had no requests for further detail or verification. It had cited its sources already.

As for the 19th and 20th centuries, if you read the post, it only refers to the recent centuries to explain the perception of a science/religion conflict that became an exaggerated fallacy, exactly what we’re discussing here. In light of scholarship in the past several decades, it’s actually you who refers to the still popular and erroneous notion that religion has inhibited science.

I do not think scientists who happen to be religious is evidence of the case, but their discussions supporting and reconciling their science and religion does provide some of that evidence. Clergy who were scientists (and who were not persecuted, but rather encouraged) certainly indicate religious support for the sciences.

What evidence do you have that the Church destroyed libraries? Yes, they had banned book lists (those that delved into the realm of faith and promulgated heresies), but the Church, particularly the monasteries, were the great preservers of knowledge in Western Europe, at times when the collapse of politics and societies, the rise of disparate warring barbarian tribes, the destruction wrought by continual viking raids, etc. provided few other areas where learning would be preserved. The Eastern Church, still maintaining an intact (if diminishing) Eastern Roman Empire, was able to do much better at this preservation until its fall to mongol-offshoots and muslim tribes. Where do you think all that Greek learning was preserved and came from? Muslims obtained it through conquest of Eastern Roman territories.

I have to finish a couple of assignments, but I will get to the specific examples I talk about, that very early on the Church created and funded universities, promoted scientific thought and discovery, and provided the foundation for the explosion of science in the Western World. One thing to ask yourself is why did science advance vastly farther in the West than anywhere else in the world? The Persians and Egyptians had great institutions of learning. The Chinese and Indians did as well. So also the Japanese and groups in Africa and South America. What’s the crucial difference? A focus on truth, material as well as spiritual (the former being the more important for science); the philosophical underpinnings of a Greco-Roman Church and its support. Even the Eastern Church did not advance as far, because they placed more emphasis on the spiritual; this cultural difference with the West was one of the reasons for the Great Schism. The Eastern Orthodox took paths to enlightenment more spiritually. They complained that the Western Church placed too much emphasis on rationality and logic and study; the Eastern Orthodox believed God was better understood through mystical communion, and feared that the West was putting its scholarly studies of God and His creation ahead of that communion. Though I may not be paraphrasing these things perfectly, these were actual discussions from the time before Augustine of Hippo (who with Thomas Aquinas, later, was very friendly to scientific thought himself) up until this day.

I’m also interested in your opinion of the Middle Ages as “pure hell,” how it was so much worse than what came before, and how the Church was supposedly the cause of it. Current historical consensus that I’m reading, the great majority of which comes from secular scholarship, is busy even banishing the term “Dark Ages.” It was, after all, a propagandistic creation of the Enlightenment Protestants and secularists seeking to demonize the Church in any way; where we also get common misperceptions of the Inquisition, Church treatment of Bibles and education, the Spanish Armada, etc. Historians recognize this; it was never a term created by consensus of historians as a valid term, anyway. They recognize that during this period monks were independently developing systems of trade, new technologies and farming techniques that Europe hadn’t experienced before, an unprecedented spread of Aristotelian thought, even new political theories and organizations of government.

So I agree, lets focus on the actual, historical facts here. If you can show that I’m wrong about these things, well, I’m listening. I will present summaries and point out common knowledge and present arguments (as I just have), and I’ll list stuff from historians and their primary source research when I have the time, because that stuff is irrefutable.

You know something? I could go on here, but it’s not worth it. You will never be convinced of anything that I have to say. You will just blame everything I say on the protestants and secularists (such as myself) like you just did! Do you think that it is possible that those people had something worthwhile to say about the church that had controlled their lives for the previous eleven centuries? Obviously not! Well, I stand with them. So, I guess we are absolutely and positively wrong about absolutely everything. Good enough for you? I stand corrected. The Church did everything to advance science as much as they possibly could, always always catering to the scientific viewpoint, encouraging it, funding it, whipping scientists into an veritable frenzy of invention. Galileo was just acquitted of heresy by JPII in 1993, and the current pope says oops, JPII shouldn’t a done that. So, you guys got it down, you completely know what you are doing, I really see that now. I am so convinced! What I actually can see is that it is completely useless to go on in this forum and i will probably delete it. Thanks anyway, but I no longer see any reason to waste my time here… Oh, one thing, call it what you like, Middle Ages, Dark Ages, who the fuck cares? It was pure hell to live then unless you were royalty or a priest, monk or nun (and they didn’t have it so great, either). Would you like to be zapped back to 900 AD and see how much you would have liked it? Perhaps the 1300s during the great plague, which was a punishment from god, you know. I doubt if you would like it very much, no wikipedia then.

Now, I really shouldn’t go off on you, but you deserve it. Do you believe everything you read because some supposedly brilliant person wrote it, with impeccable footnotes and resources and such? I don’t believe everything I read. I have a healthy sense of doubt. I couldn’t live without it and I know bullshit when I see it. I don’t think that you do, so it is a lost cause to try to convince you of anything that you haven’t already decided, NO MATTER WHAT YOU JUST SAID ABOVE. I have figured that out. My opinion may be subject to change, but it stands for now. My comments about intractibility still apply. I am intractible, but you seem even more so than I am.

You know, there’s something else, NOTHING is irrefutable, NOTHING! All writing has bias, all writing is refutable. Writers want you to agree with their viewpoint, especially scholars. One school of thought, another school of thought on the same subject. Argue argue argue, snipe snipe snipe. Since we were not present for historical events, we have to rely on historical references, which may or may not be correct. History has been written and re-written. Isabella sent Columbus off on his voyages, but is there a record of their conversations about it? Do the manifests of his ships survive? (actually, they probably do…!) his logs, maybe? If the logs still exist, was he telling the truth? Who knows? History is subjective, just like any other writings. As I said, you can’t believe everything you read. Take a little grain of salt into every library, you will need it…

Since the writings that we were going to talk about are subjective, we are going to reach our own opinions about them and then we are still going to disagree. So, I feel it is best to disagree here and now. No matter what examples I come up with, you are not going to change your mind. Same here. Because, we reach OPINIONS based upon what we read, our opinions are going to differ. I read secular literature and research that tells me that the church impeded scientific inquiry. My opinion is that this is true. You read other literature that says the opposite. You feel this is true. I don’t see any way to convince you of my opinion, so, guess what, You’re right!

See ya around the boards…

Calm down, Koo, it’s just a discussion.

I never said the Church hasn’t been guilty of terrible things, or has always freely and unrestrictedly promoted science. There were restrictions, more harsh at some times than others, there were grave mistakes made. What I’m arguing, based on what I know of the historical record (developed from primary sources), is that the Church was much more supportive of science then you characterize it to be. I also argue that if religion were as oppressive as you suggest, and its philosophical underpinnings counter-productive to science, that science would never have been so vastly more successful in the West than anywhere else in the world. I’ve yet to hear another explanation as to how that happened, short of foul ideas about inherent racial supremacy.

I’d also like to know how medieval times were so much worse than times previous. Of course hardly anyone living today would compare medieval life to modern luxury favorably. That’s not an argument that life during that thousand years was somehow significantly worse than life in earlier ages, and certainly doesn’t posit why or how it was worse.

There is one form of information that is irrefutable—primary sources represent data about what was said or recorded at the time. The accuracy of the original records or the opinions of those writing at the time may be questionable if they are contradicted by other primary source data, but they are still illustrative of what was known or discussed at the time. Since a large part of this topic involves what the Church thought of science, the opinions contained in the writings and official Church documents about science serve to illustrate those points. The advancements of the times, records of payments and titles of property or commissions to do something all represent other data about what actually happened.

These are facts. Interpretations of them in light of other available facts, yes, are subject to refutation. How do you think science advances? How do you think historical study advances? The facts unearthed and discussions about them can change commonly-conceived notions, especially any notions that were promoted in the public mind by convenient political propaganda. Witness early Holocaust denial, or at least the fact that the extent of the Holocaust was not known by many and thus considered initially by some to have been just a typical, concentration camp tragedy of war. Facts came out, opinions changed. If elements of the Arab world gain access to and actually consider the historical facts of the Holocaust, then political propaganda teaching them to deny it will gradually fade.

You have several times had this reaction of throwing up your hands. I can’t do much about it, Koo, other than say that I’d like to talk about FACTS and consider and discuss logical interpretations of them. If you don’t want to discuss the facts represented by primary sources, then obviously there is little that we can discuss—really no one can discuss anything fruitfully if they are unwilling to consider facts.

OK, OK, Aran, I have to continue working right now so only have a moment. I’ll come back late tonight as usual… Love and smoochies, Ken

No problem. I’m in my last two weeks of my master’s program, so my time is going to be pretty shot for a little while, too. Hence why I haven’t been able to pull my sources.

Cool, you’ve been busy, too. I will be around further this weekend.

Aran, I know I owe you a reply, have been crazy busy with work and other bulls**t. Keep me posted about that master’s program. Love, Ken

Interesting topic, Koo. Let me first say that science and religion don’t need to be so far apart. They are, of course, but there’s no need. Ancient philosophies have a pretty dandy correlation with modern science- the problem, of course, is that ancient philosophies (what I think of as “true” religion) have certainly been corrupted. Can’t argue w/ that, even as a “believer.”
But, religion didn’t really “impede” science; not really. It tried, of course, but science just sort of kept cruising along in the background, from a basis in the ancient philosophies- look at the Royal Society, Freemasonry, and the Rosicrucian movement. Truth simply can’t be killed by religious oppression- you won’t like this, but G-d simply doesn’t allow it. Even if His supposed “Church” is the one doing the oppressing.

kookookachoo wrote:

Many christians attempt to salvage their religion’s problem with science by claiming that Christianity established modern science and medicine. They claim that there would be no modern science, medical knowledge or hospitals without Christianity. They mention scientists such as Newton, Kepler, Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, Boyle, Haller, Vesalius, among others, who all believed in a Christian god.

AH- HAH! They’re right, for the wrong reasons. Let’s take two, Newton and Galileo. Newton…alchemist. No, really. Documented.
Galileo? C’mon- we all know what the Church did to him.
Christians, both of them, and Christians (although hardly mainstream, in the fundy view) did contribute largely to science. But they were Christians who thought outside of the Church’s box, and paid for it. Funny that the fundies forget that.

I take issue with some of your characterizations, Satolkin, because my point from history is that the Church sponsored and promoted scientific thought and study, from the Eastern Church’s continued Greek scholarship to the foundation of universities and most of the scientific disciplines by churchmen and their peers and students in the middle ages.

I disagree with your generalization of a “box” attempting to stifle science.

Sorry, Aran, but the Church truly did try to oppress scientific thought- to deny that is to ignore history. While the Church may have founded universities, they were dogmatized- the truly brilliant Christian scholars of the time spoke in terms that kept them out of trouble with their benefactors.

However, the point that our atheist friends here is missing is that without religious oppression, scientific thought wouldn’t have flourished. Not to get all esoteric/ occultic on ya, but oppression fosters knowledge. It’s conflict that gives birth to a Redeemer. So to speak.

I’m on vacation now and have little time still, but did you check out any of the things I referenced earlier in this discussion (either here on in the other thread)?

The secular historical sources that I am familiar with-and in the past several years I’ve been delving with interest into history-disagree with your assertion. What I’d like to discuss is the modern historical scholarship and what it has found to be fact. What I have discovered and here asserted is that the “common knowledge” that so many seem to draw on about the Church and science is based on propaganda and misinformation that historians in the past 5-10 decades, particularly the past two, have debunked through more impartial scholarship and better access to primary sources.

I’m near to having the free time I need to document my sources and demonstrate that (no offense) this idea that the Church was anti-science and suppressed it is an outdated concept that is in contradiction to the facts, that it ignores actual history.

I’d love to see your evidence, Aran, and will give it a fair read.
Understand, however, I’m going to take some convincing. My Order was founded largely as a response to Church oppression, and it was founded by learned, G-d believing men who were sickened by what they saw at the time.

Revisiting this old thread on science and religion. I have reviewed some of my sources, and have found it exceedingly difficult to summarize all of the vast amount of evidence that I have encountered by many reputable, mainstream, and well-accepted sources that the Conflict Thesis that religion, particularly the Catholic Church, impeded science is a popular myth. To demonstrate this and show that in fact the opposite is true, religion and particularly the Catholic Church supported and promoted science, I will attempt one method of summary, that of citing numerous sources and giving some quotes.

Let me first establish the point that I will thereafter support: the idea of the Conflict Thesis, that of continual conflict of science and religion, particularly as pertains the Catholic Church, is simply false and has been completely discredited by scholars.

The popular myth of the Conflict Thesis rests primarily on the agenda-laden propaganda of two 19th century Americans: John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White.

Draper wrote A History of the Conflict between Religion and Science; this preacher’s book was very popular because it was really primarily a “long vitriolic anti-Catholic diatribe” that appealed to the anti-Catholicism and anti-immigrant racism of early Protestant Americans. It blamed the Catholic Church for “everything bad in Western history, including preventing the ‘proper’ expansion of the human population.” (These quotes come from Dr. Lawrence M. Principe in course Science and Religion for the Teaching Company, one of the Great Courses).

White wrote his The Warfare of Science: A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom often quoting Draper and other psued-sources. He was the first president of Cornell University and wrote to promote these ideas in defense of Cornell, which was being criticized for being the first non-religiously-affiliated university in America. It, like Draper’s work, rely on false arguments of collectivism, lack of critical judgment of sources, argument by ridicule and assertion, selective quoting out of context, and false sources. These two popularized the FALSE idea that the people of the middles ages thought the earth to be flat and that the sphericity of the earth was opposed by the Church, as well as the fallacy that the church condemned all science as devilry and forbade human dissection. (These assertions and much of the wording come straight from Dr. Principe as well).

The Wikipedia article on the Conflict Thesis has these notable quotes:
“In 1908, the physician and historian of medicine, James Joseph Walsh, published – as a direct answer to White’s Warfare – The Popes and Science; the History of the Papal Relations to Science During the Middle Ages and Down to Our Own Time⁹ in which he strongly criticized White’s view as antihistorical:
“the story of the supposed opposition of the Church and the Popes and the ecclesiastical authorities to science in any of its branches, is founded entirely on mistaken notions. Most of it is quite imaginary. Much of it is due to the exaggeration of the significance of the Galileo incident. Only those who know nothing about the history of medicine and of science continue to harbor it. That Dr. White’s book, contradicted as it is so directly by all serious histories of medicine and of science, should have been read by so many thousands in this country, and should have been taken seriously by educated men, physicians, teachers, and even professors of science who want to know the history of their own sciences, only shows how easily even supposedly educated men may be led to follow their prejudices rather than their mental faculties, and emphasizes the fact that the tradition that there is no good that can possibly come out of the Nazareth of the times before the reformation, still dominates the intellects of many educated people who think that they are far from prejudice and have minds perfectly open to conviction”¹⁰”

And, from Stephen Jay Gould:
Stephen Jay Gould writes: “White’s and Draper’s accounts of the actual interaction between science and religion in Western history do not differ greatly. Both tell a tale of bright progress continually sparked by science. And both develop and utilize the same myths to support their narrative”.[11]

Also:
Regarding the model in itself, subsequent historical research indicates that religion has a much more complex and close relationship with science than the conflict thesis acknowledges. As is expressed by Gary Ferngren in his historical volume Science & Religion:
While some historians had always regarded the Draper-White thesis as oversimplifying and distorting a complex relationship, in the late twentieth century it underwent a more systematic reevaluation. The result is the growing recognition among historians of science that the relationship of religion and science has been much more positive than is sometimes thought. Although popular images of controversy continue to exemplify the supposed hostility of Christianity to new scientific theories, studies have shown that Christianity has often nurtured and encouraged scientific endeavour, while at other times the two have co-existed without either tension or attempts at harmonization. If Galileo and the Scopes trial come to mind as examples of conflict, they were the exceptions rather than the rule.[13]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_thesis

Now, for more historians that similarly assert that the Conflict Thesis is nonsense and that “no reputable scholar” of today (in Principe’s words, among others) holds to it:

See the Teaching Company Great Courses http://www.teach12.com/teach12.asp?ai=16281
(taught by carefully selected leading doctors and professors who are the best representatives of modern scholarship):
Science and Religion, Lawrence M Principe
Reason and Faith: Philosophy in the Middle Ages, Thomas Williams (note he, among others on this site, gets into destroying the whole myth of the Dark Ages)
Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How they Know It, Steven L. Goldman
History of Science, Antiquity to 1700, Lawrence M Principe
Foundations of Western Civilization, Thomas F. X. Noble
Early Middle Ages, Phillip Dalleader
Medieval Europe: Crisis and Renewal, Teofilio F. Ruiz

http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.asp…

Also look into Thomas F. Madden’s many works (books and audiobooks) about the Crusades and the Middle Ages, how he draws upon primary sources and refers to modern historians in their work detailing the beneficial effect of the Church upon civilization, as well as giving a balanced, historical view to the Crusades and the Inquisition.

Add now the How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, which relies upon the work of many modern historians and quotes them as such with passages similar to:

By the eighteenth century, the Jesuits
“had contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes and microscopes, to scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics and electricity. They observed, in some cases before anyone else, the colored bands on Jupiter’s surface, the Andromeda nebula and Saturn’s rings. They theorized about the circulation of the blood (independently of Harvey), the theoretical possibility of flight, the way the moon effected the tides, and the wave-like nature of light. Star maps of the southern hemisphere, symbolic logic, flood-control measures on the Po and Adige rivers, introducing plus and minus signs into Italian mathematics – all were typical Jesuit achievements, and scientists as influential as Fermat, Huygens, Leibniz and Newton were not alone in counting Jesuits among their most prized correspondents [Jonathan Wright, The Jesuits, 2004, p. 189].”

“To say that the Church played a positive role in the development of science has now become absolutely mainstream, even if this new consensus has not yet managed to trickle down to the general public. In fact, Stanley Jaki, over the course of an extraordinary scholarly career, has developed a compelling argument that in fact it was important aspects of the Christian worldview that accounted for why it was in the West that science enjoyed the success it did as a self-sustaining enterprise. Non-Christian cultures did not possess the same philosophical tools, and in fact were burdened by conceptual frameworks that hindered the development of science. Jaki extends this thesis to seven great cultures: Arabic, Babylonian, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, Hindu, and Maya. In these cultures, Jaki explains, science suffered a “stillbirth.” My book gives ample attention to Jaki’s work.”

In The Beginnings of Western Science (1992), David Lindberg writes:

It must be emphatically stated that within this educational system the medieval master had a great deal of freedom. The stereotype of the Middle Ages pictures the professor as spineless and subservient, a slavish follower of Aristotle and the Church fathers (exactly how one could be a slavish follower of both, the stereotype does not explain), fearful of departing one iota from the demands of authority. There were broad theological limits, of course, but within those limits the medieval master had remarkable freedom of thought and expression; there was almost no doctrine, philosophical or theological, that was not submitted to minute scrutiny and criticism by scholars in the medieval university.

“[S]cholars of the later Middle Ages,” concludes Lindberg, “created a broad intellectual tradition, in the absence of which subsequent progress in natural philosophy would have been inconceivable.”

Historian of science Edward Grant concurs with this judgment:

What made it possible for Western civilization to develop science and the social sciences in a way that no other civilization had ever done before? The answer, I am convinced, lies in a pervasive and deep-seated spirit of inquiry that was a natural consequence of the emphasis on reason that began in the Middle Ages. With the exception of revealed truths, reason was enthroned in medieval universities as the ultimate arbiter for most intellectual arguments and controversies. It was quite natural for scholars immersed in a university environment to employ reason to probe into subject areas that had not been explored before, as well as to discuss possibilities that had not previously been seriously entertained.

The creation of the university, the commitment to reason and rational argument, and the overall spirit of inquiry that characterized medieval intellectual life amounted to “a gift from the Latin Middle Ages to the modern world…though it is a gift that may never be acknowledged. Perhaps it will always retain the status it has had for the past four centuries as the best-kept secret of Western civilization.”

http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods40.html

Here’s the Wikipedia list of sources:
1. ^ Quotation: “The conflict thesis, at least in its simple form, is now widely perceived as a wholly inadequate intellectual framework within which to construct a sensible and realistic historiography of Western science.” (p. 7), from the essay by Colin A. Russell “The Conflict Thesis” in Gary Ferngren (editor). Science & Religion: A Historical Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8018-7038-0”.
2. ^ Quotation: “In the late Victorian period it was common to write about the “warfare between science and religion” and to presume that the two bodies of culture must always have been in conflict. However, it is a very long time since these attitudes have been held by historians of science.” (p. 195)Shapin, S. (1996). The Scientific Revolution. University of Chicago Press Chicago, Ill.
3. ^ Quotation: “In its traditional forms, the [conflict] thesis has been largely discredited.” (p. 42) Brooke, J.H. (1991). Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives.. Cambridge University Press.
4. ^ Quotation: ”...while [John] Brooke’s view [of a complexity thesis rather than historical conflict thesis] has gained widespread acceptance among professional historians of science, the traditional view remains strong elsewhere, not least in the popular mind.” (p. x) from Gary Ferngren (editor). Science & Religion: A Historical Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8018-7038-0.
5. ^ Wilson, David B. The Historiography of Science and Religion in Ferngren, Gary B. (2002). Science & Religion: A Historical Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-7038-0. p. 21, 23
6. ^ Alexander, D (2001), Rebuilding the Matrix, Lion Publishing, ISBN 0-7459-5116-3 (pg. 217)
7. ^ John William Draper, History of the Conflict Religion, D. Appleton and Co. (1881)
8. ^ David C. Lindberg, Ronald L. Numbers, God & Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science, University of California Press (April 29, 1986)
9. ^ Fordam University Press, 1908, Kessinger Publishing, reprinted 2003.ISBN 0-7661-3646-9 Reviews: 1
10. ^ James Joseph Walsh, The Popes and Science; the History of the Papal Relations to Science During the Middle Ages and Down to Our Own Time, Fordam University Press, New York 1908, p.19
11. ^ Gould, S.J. (1996). “The late birth of a flat earth”. Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History. New York: Crown: 38–52.
12. ^ (p. 15) Colin A. Russell: The Conflict of Science and Religion in Encyclopedia of the History of Science and Religion, New York 2000
13. ^ Gary Ferngren (editor). Science & Religion: A Historical Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8018-7038-0. (Introduction, p. ix)
14. ^ On Kepler, see: Barker, Peter and Bernard R. Goldstein. “Theological Foundations of Kepler’s Astronomy”. Osiris, Volume 16: Science in Theistic Contexts. University of Chicago Press, 2001, pp 88–113. On energy physics, see: Smith, Crosbie. The Science of Energy: A Cultural History of Energy Physics in Victorian Britain. London: The Athlone PRess, 1998.
15. ^ See, for example, the chapters on “Geology and Paleontology” (by Nicolaas A. Rupke), “Natural History” (by Peter M. Hess), and “Charles Darwin” (by James Moore) in Gary Ferngren (ed.), Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction.
16. ^ On the Galileo affair, see: Blackwell, Richard J., “Galileo Galilei” inScience and Religion: A Historical Introduction. On the Scopes trial, see: Larson, Edward J. Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Battle over Science and Religion. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997.

Barbour, Ian G. When Science Meets Religion. HarperSanFrancisco, 2000.
Brooke, John H., Margaret Osler, and Jitse M. van der Meer, (editors). “Science in Theistic Contexts: Cognitive Dimensions,” Osiris, 2nd ser., vol. 16(2001), ISBN 0-226-07565-6.
Ferngren, Gary (editor). Science & Religion: A Historical Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8018-7038-0
Lindberg, David C. and Ronald L. Numbers, eds., God & Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science. University of California Press, 1986.
Lindberg and Numbers, “Beyond War and Peace: A Reappraisal of the Encounter between Christianity and Science,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 39 (1987):140-49. (Can be found online here
Merton, Robert K. Science, Technology, and Society in Seventeenth Century England. Osiris 4(1938): 360-632. Reprinted New York: Harper & Row, 1970. (Advances the thesis that Puritanism contributed to the rise of science.)
Westfall, Richard S. Science and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England. New Haven: Yale Univ. Pr. 1958. Reprinted Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Pr., 1973. ISBN 0-472-06190-9

And some more:
Lindberg and Numbers’ “God & Nature”
Brooke’s “Science & Religion”

I would really rather not have to pour through all of these sources and list the names of the many, many well-respected historians, professors, scientists and so forth who recognize the truth. Can I just leave it at this to demonstrate that the Conflict Thesis is dead, and if you’re interested in truth and what actually happened in history, you’ll abandon it as anti-Catholic bigotry and unfounded stupidity?

hmmm, should I say something about…...naaahhh :)))

Arandur wrote:

I would really rather not have to pour through all of these sources and list the names of the many, many well-respected historians, professors, scientists and so forth who recognize the truth. Can I just leave it at this to demonstrate that the Conflict Thesis is dead, and if you’re interested in truth and what actually happened in history, you’ll abandon it as anti-Catholic bigotry and unfounded stupidity?

(Welcome back, Kookoo…) Aran, I’m pretty sure i told you not to bother with this somewhere up there somewhere…lol Guess you were goaded into it by Satol (!) I’m pretty much happy with your admission that the church impeded scientific inquiry at one time or another, who cares when… You sure are worried about anti-catholic bigotry, sheesh! You don’t have to worry about me on that score, I’m an equal opportunity bigot. Remember what the church says about us homos, hate the sin, love the sinner… I’m just that way, hate the religion(s), love the religious. One of my boyfriends is a devout muslim. We don’t really discuss religion, excepting some discussion of religious history. I’m not too knowledgeable about islam, but now know a little more than i did before. Of course, that knowledge makes it seem even sillier than I thought before…lol He is a member of our site, too.

I’ve been off the site quite a bit until recently. I will be around more, promise. I’m sorry that I abandoned this topic. I have many constraints on my time and would never have been able to do what you did here. So, I thank you kindly for doing it. When I must do detailed research like that (remember I’m in the engineering field, so my research basically involves mechanical/mathematical subjects), I am very well paid for it. It’s my job to do work like that, so doing it in other fields reminds me too much of work…lol. While I have read your entire post, I will follow the links later and check out the “Cliff Notes” on the authors that you have mentioned. I’ll try to get back to you more coherently at a later date. Love, Kookoo

Satolkin wrote:
>I’d love to see your evidence, Aran, and will give it a fair read.
>Understand, however, I’m going to take some convincing. My Order was founded largely as a response to Church oppression, and it was founded by learned, G-d believing men who were sickened by what they saw at the time.

Satol,

Thanks for picking up the gauntlet. You are very gallant! (And I’ll bet no one’s called you THAT in a long time, or maybe ever!!!)

Love, Kookoo

LdsGal202 wrote:
>hmmm, should I say something about…...naaahhh :)))

Hi Gal!

Nice to see you here, I think I know what you mean…

Love, Kookoo

Thanks for checking in, Koo. While we’re making distinctions, I hope you (and others) understood that the derision I expressed was for the big lie of the Conflict Thesis, not for anyone understandably accepting this popularized notion before learning otherwise.

And it’s not that I’m all that worried about anti-Catholic bigotry; it’s not like it’s anything new. What is more irritating to me is when big lies get culturally accepted and deceive millions—like global warming, some of the cancer scares and others that we’ve discussed here.

hmmm, should I say something about……naaahhh :)))
Hi Gal!
Nice to see you here, I think I know what you mean…

I don’t, so maybe you should…? :)

LdsGal202 wrote:
>hmmm, should I say something about…...naaahhh :)))

Well, Gal, another reply to your same post! Aran wants you to explain, and i may not be as smart as i thought. Thanks, honey!
Love, Kookoo

haha, well I was seeing if maybe I should jump into this one but nah, its too much stuff to read and I’m feeling lazy quite frankly.lol! xD