George

What I am saying is that Christendom was not a necessary precondition. Classical Greece, however, does seem to have provided the conditions necessary for the development of science.

The coincidence of political turmoil in Europe, theological mismanagement from Rome and the intellectual 'intrusion' of Greek and Islamic ideas produced circumstances which favoured the development of science. It might have been any religion, not just Christendom, but it needed to be 'destabilised' in some way to trigger dissent and a certain amount of apostasy.

Christendom provided the circumstances but was not itself a necessary precondition for scientific advancement. Sadly Christendom also was not a positive contributor to the condition of being human in those days. Science has certainly prompted some major rethinking of what it means to be human even if the scientific method itself does not lend itself to formative reevaluation of our existential circumstances.

I think the time is coming when we will be able to revisit Nicaea, Chalcedon and so on and reform faith to its very foundations. I, for one, look forward to that time.

" think the time is coming when we will be able to revisit Nicaea." - waterboy

Coincidence. Over recent days, I have been thinking "if" I beleived Jesus was divine in some way, I would put Nicaean Christianity aside and using today's knowledge of the period, "revisit" Nicaea, reworking the data in a dispassionate manner.

Christianity has been like the IBM Mainframe Operating System, MVS. IBM kept the ageing MVS for decades, because many high-end clients invested billions iin software running their core system. Yet, ultimately they did change it.

In a sense, many of those whom call themselves Christians are not. They are usually good people, with little in common with Christianity. By way of anology, Jesus-ists would no longer need to pretend to be advocates of a heathly diet, while working for KFC and ignoring the fact the "F" stands for Fried.

Dan

Sorry I did not reply sooner.

I think science disproves young-earth seven-day creationism – the evidence from astronomy, physics, geology, biology etc is consistent and overwhelming. And even if “big bang” theory turns out to be wrong or revised, it is inconceivable that science will discover that life, the universe and everything were created in a week.

Unlike, say, the fossil evidence of evolution, we have no direct evidence for or against specific events the bible describes in the life of Jesus. Perhaps that tells us something.

I think Jayb’s response to you on this is correct – to our modern worldview miracles are pretty much defined as those things that science describes as impossible.

This is different from the worldview of the 1st century, when understanding of the line between natural and supernatural was utterly different. For example, what we now understand as mental illness was then understood as demon possession, so it was reasonable to explain the cure of such illnesses as successful exorcisms. For a modern person to assert that Jesus walked on water is to make claims about the possibility of suspending the laws of nature that are fundamentally at odds with what we know of how the world can and does work.

You say “Science text books are in constant need of revision and update. The Bible has no such shortcoming.” If you study the bible’s history, you’ll discover it’s the product of extensive revision, refinement and updating over hundreds of years. Different books have different authors, were written at different times and have quite different perspectives. It is a product of a human process of learning and discovery, editing and ultimately canonisation that gave us the bible in its final, official form several hundred years after Jesus’ death.

And even if the bible’s final form has no need of revision, surely our understanding of it does. Each generation, culture and individual appropriates and interprets the bible in different ways, building on (and sometimes rejecting) the insights they inherit. If we did not, perhaps we still would advocate burning witches and stoning disobedient children.

Dan,

Thank you for your interest in my take on Expelled, and yes, I have seen it.

My first impression of the documentary was that it was sloppy. Ben Stein didn’t even bother to define evolution and the constant shots of Jews in Nazi Germany were deliberately inserted to disgust those naïve enough to think that Nazism has anything to evolution (Hitler also accepted gravity, by the way).

Stein is even dishonest enough to do a bit of quote mining from Darwin’s book “Descent of Man” - to make it appear as though Darwin was advocating eugenics - by cutting short of reading the next passage that puts what Darwin was saying into context:

“The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature.”

Stein’s deceiving quote, and the debunking of his claims on eugenics can be found at http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/the-truth/hitler-eugenics.

The interviews with the supposedly expelled people twisted the truth to the point where one could easily brand them a flat-out lie.

For example, Richard Sternberg was an unpaid Associate at the Smithsonian, not an employee, and had given notice of his resignation as editor six months before the Meyer incident. Afterwards, his unpaid position at the Smithsonian was extended. Sternberg was never even disciplined for serious violations of Smithsonian policy.
http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/the-truth/sternberg

Information on the other scientists who were “expelled” can be found at the following addresses...

Guillermo Gonzalez: http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/the-truth/gonzalez
Caroline Crocker: http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/the-truth/crocker
Robert Marks: http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/the-truth/marks
Pamela Winnick: http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/the-truth/winnick
Michael Egnor: http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/the-truth/egnor

If you want more detailed information on these incidences, or on anything else claimed in Expelled, then you can contact the National Center for Science Education at expelled@ncseweb.org. The facts behind the false and misleading claims in Expelled can be found in detail at http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/the-truth.

Continued...

...Continued

The interviews with people such as Richard Dawkins and PZ Meyers were cleverly edited to appear as though their opinions were silly, or that their beliefs were entirely different to what they really are.

What I found ironic though, was that PZ Meyers was expelled from the special premiere of a movie that was about being expelled, even though he was in the movie and thanked in the credits!

In Expelled, Stein made it appear as though any criticism of evolution is swiftly silenced in an almost dictatorial fashion. This claim is thoroughly debunked at http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/the-truth/challenging. The webpage even mentions some scientists who went against the popular belief of the day and finally had their theories recognised because they put in the work provided the evidence and proved their hypothesis to be right. And all while following the Scientific Method - something no Creationist, even to this day, has ever done.

The following extract is the conclusion in the webpage linked directly above:

“There is no reason why intelligent design proponents cannot follow in the footsteps of these distinguished scientists who overcame sometimes considerable opposition, sometimes for a very long time, before their scientific views prevailed. Unlike ID advocates, these researchers didn’t skip past the research phase to try to influence the public before they had scientific support. None of them formed groups to lobby school boards to teach their views in the public schools; they just buckled down and did the work. None of them drafted model legislation or penned op-eds in newspapers and magazines decrying the supposed persecution they suffered at the hands of The Establishment; they just buckled down and did the work. None of them hired former Nixon speechwriters or game-show hosts to compare their opponents to Hitler; they just buckled down and did the work."

(End extract)

All Creationists have to do, Dan, is come up with some evidence. That’s it. And after all these years, they have absolutely nothing. Not a shred. Not even enough to raise a single eyebrow about teensiest little aspect of evolution without omitting crucial data from their claims.

waterboy (and Oliver),
>>... Christendom was not a necessary precondition. Classical Greece, however, does seem to have provided the conditions necessary for the development of science.<<

I am afraid we are moving in circles. I wrote: “Whether or not (Greek philosophers and the influence of Islam) were more important than the “Christian way of thinking“ itself, that they were injected into, is a matter of ‘taste’ or preconceived preferences“, and you are just confirming that.

Anyhow, there can be more than one “necessary preconditions” for the development of anything, including science. Which one was more necessary is - let me repeat - a matter of your perspective. Namely (in distinction to problems in science), you cannot experiment by creating another historical development (in a laboratory) replacing this or that “precondition” - e.g. by injecting Greek philosophy into another culture unrelated to Christianity and Judaism - to see how necessary it was. So I still prefer to think of our civilisation as having evolved from a (totalitarian) Christendom, rather than “Greekdom“ or what, and I think many historians will see it this way. However, I agree that that is not a verifiable fact .

>>I think the time is coming when we will be able to revisit Nicaea, Chalcedon and so on and reform faith to its very foundations.<<
Again, I agree but only to a point. There are many people who would like our understanding of physics to return to the times before Einstein, QM, to the Kantian idea of a priori given time and space. I can sympathise with that, but that is possible only to a point: only in relativiley trivial, everyday situations can you get away with the Newtonian and Kantian ways of seeing (physical) reality.

Perhaps in a similar sense, we mustn’t forget Nicaea, Chalcedon (medieval theology, etc) since we benefit from insights they brought us, (if that is what you mean by revisiting), however I do not think one can ignore developments in our thinking, including science, philosophy and theology - Catholic or not - that occurred since (if by revisiting you meant returning).