Dear George,

<<I wrote ‘Christians’ to indicate that not only modern science as such, but also the incentive to use reason and experimentation to try to understand the physical world, is of Western, in fact Christian, provenience.>>

Undoubtedly this incentive is of Western provenience.
Undoubtedly most of the West is Christian.

But what makes you deduce that of all things Western, it is the Christianity which brought about the use of reason and experimentation to try to understand the physical world?

Your quote only explains that Christian theology does not obstruct science, namely because: "that the world is not divine and that nature is marked, through and through, by intelligibility.", but these are only necessary conditions, rather than sufficient conditions to compel a culture to go out and research the physical world. Hinduism for example also accepts those two suppositions, but Hindus were not inspired to go about researching the physical world.

I tend to believe that empirical physical science was developed by other cultural factors, probably originating as early as the Greek culture along with its worship of physical beauty.

Dear Yuyutsu,

I thought it rather obvious that contemporary science and the ensuing technological achievements are of Western - where Christianity for many centuries was the dominant paradigm, of course originating in the interaction of Judaism and Hellenic rationalism with Islam sometimes acting as a catalyst - provenience. Buddhist, Hindu, etc contributions to our understanding of the world (understood as not reducible to the physical) are invaluable, but did not in the past directly contribute to the gradually evolving line of theories and technologies that e.g. allow us to communicate this way over the internet.

Exactly, because Christianity rejected ”worship of physical beauty”, it was able to lead to its investigation rather than worship: that was the gist of the quote I gave.

My quote does not explain anything, only points to this uniqueness of the West in this respect as compared with other civilisations while they were evolving independently of the West then dominated by Christianity (and the ensuing Enlightenment, modern science and technology).

Dear George,

<<Exactly, because Christianity rejected ”worship of physical beauty”, it was able to lead to its investigation rather than worship: that was the gist of the quote I gave.>>

Exactly, but being able to lead an investigation does not imply that one would actually want to invest their time and effort into it. The East in general simply considered it a waste of time to look into the physical world, as well as a potential door to temptations, while the unique clash between Judaism and Hellenism is what probably brought the latter to re-channel its (now forbidden) worship of beauty into studying and investigating it.

With respect, Yuyutsu, that is simply not remotely true. The East has lead the West in producing knowledge about the physical world for most of history, despite being frequently beaten back to primitivism by invasions of relatively uncivilised and aggressive neighbours. Decadence is a problem that besets any sufficiently advanced society - our own not being exempted from that.

That applies to China, Laos/Cambodia, India, several parts of the Middle East, some parts of Africa; the list goes on.

It's only in the last few hundred years that a Western scientific tradition has emerged, driven by the expansion of the population and the opening of enormously expanded resources through the access to a whole new world that was home to peoples who had no tradition of metal use and hence had not exploited it.

The cultural changes that have accompanied that and facilitated it were driven by the same forces and to some large extent by the same relatively small group of thinkers.

Even today, the East is showing us all how things should be done. China and India, Korea, Malaysia/Singapore, Vietnam are the modern wonders of the industrial/scientific age. There's not a lot of navel gazing going on, but a hell of a lot of hard thinking and harder work.

Thanks, Rowan. A nice article. A point well made.

Sells, once again, I cannot see consistency in what you're saying. There is a flow of ideas within the revelation in Scripture making it a consistent whole. We aren't free to pick and choose which parts it are truly gospel.

When Rowan points to the evidence of the Creator, he's hardly being unfaithful to the Scripture. The New Testament writers did the same.

You say, "God is not the creator of a thing." No, he's the Creator of everything. To quote St John (as did you), "God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him."

He is the creator of everything that we perceive through the natural sciences and in every other manner. He is also the creator of all things new and all things to come; (to again quote St John,) “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. When Jesus said “this temple,” he meant his own body.

Rowan is by no means relying on 'natural theology' or being unfaithful to Scripture by pointing others to their Creator.