Hi meekerdb I completely disagree. Regardless of the Church, which is a human activity, the Bible provided western man with a completely new, revolutionary view of existence that has become the basis for science.
The Bible, as far as I know, is the only sacred scripture that is choronological, time-based, as well as historical. So time was real, as well as events. They could be examined, at least in part, rationally. And the world was good, if imperfect, not evil hence not worth studying, as in gnosticism and platonism. And God said for us to celebrate it, to make the most of it; "The Heavens are telling the glory of God." It even contains a semi-realistic account of creation and the origins of man and morality that is spiritually meaningful, if not completely scientific. There are whole books discussing this more scholarly and in more detail. ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: meekerdb Receiver: everything-list Time: 2013-01-24, 11:44:16 Subject: Re: Martin Luther on Rationality On 1/24/2013 8:33 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote: This is exactly what happened to Islam in the 1300s. After the fundamentalists took over, rationality was dispensed with, and centuries of scientific progress were deemed sufficient for Islam for all time. And so it seems that Islam went from world leadership in science to where it is today. Fortunately the same did not happen to the Christians. But based on John's comments, I wonder why not. But it did happen.? The Greeks already knew the Earth was a sphere, how far away and how big the Sun was.? They had a speculative idea of biological evolution.? They had the concept of atoms and how all matter might be constructed from just a few basic components in different combinations.? Aristotle was an empiricist.? If it had not been for the early Church's emphasis on faith, dogma, and rationalism, science would be centuries more advanced. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
