Until the advent of materialism and 19th c. dogma, Western Civilisation was superior to anything Islam had developed. Islam has not aided in the development of the modern world; in fact civilisation has only been created in spite of Islam. Proof of this resides in the 'modern' world and the unending political-economic and spiritual poverty of Muslim states and regions. Squatting on richer civilisations is not 'progress'. Islam is pagan, totalitarian, and irrational.
It is refreshing, indeed mandatory, to read common sense and real perspectives from the past. Out of the dark and gloom of the modern era of 'scientism' [abiogensis, plant food causes climate, panspermia, life on dead rocks, algae became Achmed etc.]; and into the light of learning. In a culture which praises transgendered bathrooms and applauds a bronze age moon cult as enlightened, it is difficult to understand where civilization came from and why it formed. There is no 'evolution' of civilization to use the modern world's unscientific obsession. Civilization, as with life, art or any material substance, is designed, built, constructed and managed. It can be torn down, just as easily as it can be created.
Adams makes important notes on Christianity's seminal impact on Western Civilization, a metaphysics unlike any which had preceded it in the pagan world:
"Christianity taught also the equality of all men in the sight of God. It taught this not merely as an abstract idea. Stoicism had done that. But in the early Christianity, at least, it put the idea into practice so far as it was possible to do so. The master was held to treat his slave as a brother. They both stood on the same footing within the church, and its offices and dignities were open to both alike. ...instances are not uncommon of men from the lowest classes rising to positions in the church of the highest rank. The teaching of the church always kept before men the idea of the equality in moral rights and in final destiny of all men. That it was the chiefly effective force in establishing practical equality, so far as it has been established, can hardly be asserted."
Equality of men, leads to the equality of rights, freedom of speech and due process, between all men, and over time, women. The universal ethics of Christianity, demanded a universal creed in which all men had to be treated equally, fairly and justly.
"Christianity also taught, as a necessary result of the Christian conception of the relation between God and man, that religion has a direct practical mission as an ethical teacher and help. This was a new and most important step in advance. The ancient national religions had made no ethical demand of the worshipper. The character attributed to the gods could not be helpful to any man. The pagan priest had never looked upon himself as a teacher of morals, or conceived of any reformatory mission for his religion. The Greek or Roman in need of ethical aid and comfort sought the philosopher and not the priest. This whole condition of things Christianity revolutionized. The pure ideal of character which it held aloft in its conception of God, its clear assertion of the necessity and the possibility of such a character for every man which it made in the gospel narrative, created an intimate bond between religion and ethics unknown before. The religious life which Christianity aimed to create in the individual must of necessity express itself in right conduct. This was its true fruit, its external test, and to perfect this the energy of the new religion was especially directed."
Even when acting badly, and Christians have a long history of that, as does most any man or woman today; the ideal does not perish. The character of faith should imbue all action. God is not unknowable or untouchable. He is a part of each person and of the world around us.
...[the] fatherhood of God, typified and proclaimed in an extremely effective form in the sonship of Christ, man’s elder brother, brought man near to God and gave him a new point of view for all the future. Love became the great religious force of the new age. In the practical working of Christianity this idea did not remain a mere idea. It was transformed into a positive force in history through the keen conception which the individual Christian had of the immediate personal relationship between himself and God, by virtue of which the power of the Almighty would come to his aid in his endeavor to make himself like God. In other words, Christianity not merely taught that this relationship was an ideal possibility, but it made men believe it as a fact, so that they actually lived with a sense of the divine power in them."
Animated by equality, opportunity, joy, morality, a strong character, always trying to stay ahead and deny the baser impulses and true demerits we all possess including free will and our poor choices [sin]; Christianity galvanized and demanded action. Help to the poor, the needy; protection of the old, young, infirm and innocent. A conscious desire to do good and to be active in this life, to try to live a good, not a crude life and to participate in society in order to effect good works for the next life if grace grants us that. A commitment to life, family, beauty, reality and proper conduct. We all far short. But those attributes are what created the modern world. Christianity created that culture.
“...the presence of the Christian church enhanced, rather than damaged, the development of the natural sciences.”
The quote above is entirely accurate. In 'Galileo goes to Jail and Other Myths...', there is a good and detailed record of why this statement is true. There is no doubt that an objective observer, not one immersed in the apocrypha of the poorly named 'Enlightenment', or the post modern claptrap of cultural Marxist relativity, including the nonsense that Moslems invented everything [including fire, at least twice]; recognizes the veracity of the claim. This is not to say that only Western European traditions formed science; or that only Western European efforts are worthy of the name science. The very definition of science is in dispute, it is not metaphysics and hand-waving [evolution, globaloneywarming]; nor is it operational and technological innovation [manufacturing processes, design improvements, new technologies]. But it is entirely correct to say that modern science was formed only in Catholic Western Europe.
Naturalism or naturalist 'science', was long debated by Christians. As this book relates, going back to the 2nd century AD, Christian philosophers, well versed in Aristotle and Plato, were arguing over pagan theories about nature, the cosmos, and observed phenomena. Every educated person knew that the earth was a sphere, that unlike Aristotle's belief it moved, and that there was a cosmological rotation of planets in certain orbits. No one however, either pagan or Christian, knew why. Christians attempted to find out:
“[detailed study of naturalism from] Justin Martyr (d. ca. 165) to Saint Augustine (354-430) and beyond, Christian scholars allied themselves with Greek philosophical traditions deemed congenial to Christian thought.”
The Greek philosophers were not blindly accepted as 'experts' by Christians. Unlike Moslems, the Christians threw a healthy and heavy skepticism into pagan claims and beliefs. Today of course, the very term 'scientist' means one has to fall to the knees and scream in adulation. Not so with real science and philosophy. Justin Martyr was a Jewish convert, murdered by the Romans for his beliefs [how very tolerant]. In particular he was killed by the Romans for daring to assert that reason and faith are bound together, and that Christianity espousing this belief was no threat to the Roman state, and in fact would aid man in understanding nature:
“In the first part of the First Apology, Justin defends his fellow Christians against the charges of atheism and hostility to the Roman state. He then goes on to express the core of his Christian philosophy: the highest aspiration of both Christianity and Platonic philosophy is a transcendent and unchangeable God; consequently, an intellectual articulation of the Christian faith would demonstrate its harmony with reason. Such a convergence is rooted in the relationship between human reason and the divine mind, both identified by the same term, logos (Greek: “intellect,” “word”), which enables man to understand basic truths regarding the world, time, creation, freedom, the human soul’s affinity with the divine spirit, and the recognition of good and evil.”
In the name of tolerance the pagans killed the man who wrote the above.
In 'Galileo goes to jail and other Myths', there is a nice passage about Tertullian, another Christian who married reason with faith, in the 2nd century AD:
“Tertullian presented, and to a very significant degree he built it out of materials and by the use of methods drawn from the Greco-Roman philosophical tradition. He argued, for example, that the precise regularity of the orbital motions of the celestial bodies (a clear reference to the findings of Greek astronomers) bespeaks a "governing power" that rules over them; and if they are ruled over, they surely cannot be gods. He also introduced the "enlightened view of Plato" in support of the claim that the universe must have had a beginning and therefore cannot itself partake of divinity; and in this and other works he "triumphantly parades" his learning (as one of his biographers puts it) by naming a long list of other ancient authorities.
Tertullian and many other Christian writers [some of whom were called Montanists, largely orthodox and ascetic]; had no issues with pagan philosophy and its relevance. Basil of Caesarea (ca. 330-379), carried on some of Tertullian's ideas, and had similar attitudes toward the classical sciences. He sharply attacked philosophers and astronomers who "have wilfully and voluntarily blinded themselves to knowledge of the truth."
“But while attacking the errors of Greek science and philosophy-and what he did not find erroneous, he generally judged useless-Basil also revealed a solid mastery of their contents. He argued against Aristotle's fifth element, the quintessence; he recounted the Stoic theory of cyclic cosmological conflagration and regeneration; he applauded those who employ the laws of geometry to refute the possibility of multiple worlds (a clear endorsement of Aristotle's argument for the uniqueness of the cosmos); he derided the Pythagorean notion of music of the planetary spheres; and he proclaimed the vanity of mathematical astronomy...”
Who can possibly argue with the above ? It is common sense and correct. Today sci-fi parading as science vomits out theology about pregnant black holes, dark matter and multi-verses. Maybe these non-scientists can revisit Basil, laws of geometry and even Aristotle.
What the early Christians knew, and what we have forgotten in our age of the cult of science; is that science itself is a metaphysical enterprise. Whatever your world view is, will shape your so-called science. Augustine in the late 4th century knew this. His very influential view, was that the knowledge about our world is not a legitimate end in itself, but a means to other ends. In other words, your philosophy imbues your reason. In this vein the classical sciences must accept a subordinate position as the handmaiden of theology and religion. This philosophy is still used today but in the reverse. The metaphysics of 'science', now controls other 'faiths'.
“Augustine's handmaiden science was defended explicitly and at great length, for example, by Roger Bacon in the thirteenth century, whose defense of useful knowledge contributed to his notoriety as one of the founders of experimental science.
Augustine and others like him applied Greco-Roman natural science with a vengeance to biblical interpretation. The sciences are not to be loved, but to be used. This attitude toward scientific knowledge was to flourish throughout the Middle Ages and well into the modern period. Were it not for this outlook, medieval Europeans would surely have had less scientific knowledge, not more.”
This is very true. Without the handmaiden concept, “medieval Europeans would surely have had less scientific knowledge, not more.” When your world is random chaos, when you believe you are evolved algae, when you scream that there is no meaning, no reason to live, and that all is without purpose, your world view and your society do not develop reason, nor science, but a cult of social chaos, relativity, lamentation and death. There is no reason to the current post-modern dogma and cult of 'science', which is anything but scientific.
‘Science’ whatever that might mean, cannot explain innate morality or good deeds. Our entire legal system and cultural determination of morality, what is right, what is wrong, what can and cannot be done was entirely shaped and formed by the Church. The bedrock of our civilisation and morality is the Christian claim that all life is sacred, and every person uniquely created in the image of God. Further, every person has a mind and soul, and the soul lives on after death. Therefore, what you do in this life does matter.
Catholics waged a social war against suicide, poverty, slavery, infanticide, polygamy, bigamy, sexual perversion, gladiatorial contests, and the pagan abandonment of the weak and sick. All ancient civilisations neglected the dispossessed and marginalised. Children were sacrificed to Baal and various other ‘gods’. Women were reduced in the main to sex slaves or baby production units (see Islam). The widower was often stoned to death for being a burden to the village. The leper and sick ignored or isolated until they died. Such was ‘classical civilisation’ so lauded by atheists and Christophobes.
Seneca, the 1rst century BC philosopher killed by Nero commented, “We drown children who at birth are weakly and abnormal.” How civilised. Today of course we murder millions of babies every year under the banner of ‘abortion’, far more than the pagan Romans, Greeks, Celts, Britons, Saxons, and other paganisms destroyed. Yet we call ourselves ‘modern’, living in the age of ‘science’. We are barbarians who have forgotten the Church’s ethos and morality.
In the City of God, Saint Augustine rightly dismisses the rationale to allow and even encourage suicide: “..greatness of spirit is not the right term to apply to one who has killed himself because he has lacked the strength to endure hardships…the stupid opinion of the mob; we rightly ascribe greatness to spirit that has the strength to endure a life of misery…” Today we murder old people calling it ‘mercy killing’ or ‘euthanasia’. We are now murdering people who are poor, depressed or suffering from various mental afflictions. We are no better than the pre-civilised pagan societies who dispensed with the weak and wounded en-masse.
Christ told his followers that they would be persecuted. He asked them if they would have the strength of character and mind to suffer through such persecution. He did not tell them to run or hide. He adjured them to stand and to eventually be murdered for their faith. Through this suffering they would come closer to God. Indeed, a common theme in Catholic history is that suffering and pain are essential to understand divine truth.
Even on war, the Church advocated a ‘just war’ only policy, first enunciated in detail by Saint Augustine. There must be a defensive and moral aspect to war. War can only be justified as a response to an aggressor who imposes suffering and injustice. Revenge, expansion, the lust for slaves or gold, and material exploitation are all condemned by the Church as immoral acts which can never justify war. Saint Thomas Acquinas wrote: “In order for a war to be just…a just cause is required, namely those who attacked, should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault…the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil…”
Spanish scholastics in the 16th century expounded on Acquinas’ viewpoint, establishing nascent international law and demanding that the enslavement, destruction and land appropriation of the Ameri-Indians by nominally Christian men, be declared illegal and stopped.
Only in Church doctrine do we find strictures against sexuality immorality. In the early Church women were predominate because of the Church’s belief that adultery, so widespread in the ancient world, was a sin which had to be applied equally for men as well as women. The abuse of women in the ancient world is hard to underestimate and comprehend. It was the Church who supported the equal rights of women, and it was the Church who declared that marriage was a contract that could not be broken, and that infidelity within a marriage was not to be tolerated. This benefitted women. Our own ‘modern’ views of women and their ‘rights’ are based on Church doctrine. Where in world history outside of Christendom do we find women running abbey’s, farms, hospitals, convents, colleges, and orphanages?