asaris

Well, I want to address the whole "Christianity is good/bad for people" argument. Briefly. I tend to think that on the whole, Christianity has been more beneficial overall than harmful. But this is an article of faith. Christianity, Christians, and Christian theocracies have together had such a large effect on human history, and it's so hard to distinguish between the effect each of these three has had. So any argument about the overall effect of Christianity is going to be long and complex; it's certainly not possible here, and I doubt it's possible anywhere. But I do want to address a couple of Will's specific claims.

Wait, you're citing Plato for the idea that all change motion and time is not an illusion? While it's true that the division of the world into the Cave and the World of Forms is overly simplistic, I'm hard put to believe that it's that far off.

That's a distinctly modern point of view. In the worldview of the ancients, science had no justification. There was simply no reason to do what we know of as science. Aristotle came closest, but he's still obviously quite a long ways away. Charles Taylor has some excellent essays in Philosophical Arguments on this.


What about the Christians that condemned the inquisition? Or those that criticized slavery? It's impossible to deny that, especially with respect to the second, Christians played a leading role in eradicating a particular evil. And it's also impossible to deny that Christians played a leading role in perpetuating these and other evils. This is why I say that you simply can't just say that Christianity has been on the whole a negative influence or a positive influence.

That's not really fair, though I do admire you combining two old canards into a single paragraph. Rome was never the center of philosophy -- as Arendt notes, there was only one Roman who was truly a philosopher, and that was Augustine. Even if you include some of the Stoics like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, there's no one of the rank of Plato or Aristotle or even Descartes. And the heyday of Rome had long passed by the time when Rome fell. There's no reason to believe that Christianity was responsible for Rome's fall -- it was rotting for at least 100 years before its fall, and almost certainly more. Don't forget, Rome was a Tyranny for 400 years before its fall, not the golden land you so nostagicly portray. And the so-called Dark Ages were not the Hobbesian wasteland you want either; the only reason people portray them this way is the mythology of "The Eternal City".

I know you're going to claim that I've just proved your point, that Christianity is not "good for mankind". I'm not going to deny that. But I hope I've convinced you that the other point you're fond of making, that Christianity is "bad for mankind" is equally unverifiable. But let me continue the point I was making above.

Okay, so how does a belief in the existence in the supernatural breach our understand of science? You say that religion assumes as fact the supernatural, while science continually develops. First, you misunderstand religion. While we do have certain tenets we're committed to, like the resurrection, most of us would also say that as time goes on, our understanding of God deepens, so that practices that were once seen as okay are now understood to not be the best way of expressing our devotion to God. (C.S. Lewis has an interesting take on this idea in That Hideous Strength.)

Second, you have an overly idealized notion of science. Science doesn't develop because people become convinced of new views. Science develops because the people who had the old views die off. (I think it's Kuhn who has a good discussion of this. Maybe it's Popper.) Third, even assuming you were correct about religion being either unchanging or significantly more resistant to change than science, that doesn't entail any effect of religion on science. You assert it does, you even promise a long list, but you don't give any reason for thinking this is the case. If I'm just not understanding you, perhaps you could give your argument in logical form? I'm dense enough that I sometimes need help like that. (But please, spare me empirical evidence of a general claim. Even if you could compile an arbitrarily long list, it wouldn't prove your point.)

WHAT!?!?! You mean to say that, because if Christianity were a minority, it would be discriminated against in a way we don't even treat Scientologists, it's not true? That's just insulting.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche