Christianity And The History Of Science

MetaChristianity

“Science History & Christianity” isn’t merely Science History & Christianity, but, rather, it is Scientific Realism and the Christian Metaphysic and History and therein all lines must pass through either (A) Brute Fact / Reductio or else (B) Necessary/Self-Explanatory. Trajectory and Accumulation are not problematic in the category we call [Knowledge] simply because Discovery and the pains of Privation (Fragmentation) and Temporal Becoming are, first, predicted and, second, not sufficient for the End/Terminus. Calculus piggybacks off of Multiplication/Division which in turn piggybacks off of Addition/Subtraction, which in turns Piggybacks off of Perception and Conceptual Ceilings, which in turn…. And so on, and so on.

NOTE: The Header/Image is in part borrowed from https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/uploaded/ch134s.pdf which is included a few paragraphs down along with other items from The Christian History Institute. Additionally the PDF is here as well at https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/christian-history-how-the-church-fostered-science-and-technology-post-pdf-copy.pdf

Science & Christianity therein moves from Pre-Christian Mysticism’s Unintelligibility because The God’s Play & The People Pay, as per from the Brut Fact, the Unintelligible, and to Karma’s Animism, and to Reality as Intelligible via God as Good & Christ as Incarnate, then back into Aristotle again, and to Kalam & Islam, and to William of Conches, and to Anselm, and to the Condemnations of 1277, and to denser/thicker swaths of Reciprocity amid Sight secondary to denser/thicker Travel, and to Universities, and to the fact that [Calculus] Piggybacks off of [Addition & Subtraction] is a feature which in fact affirms BOTH any such Calculus AND any such Addition/Subtraction, and, still ever in motion, to a narrative of The Genesis of Science, to the Culmination and Convergence across what became the Christian Middle Ages, to a Scientific Revolution. But wait. What about NOW?

NOW we find through Non-Theism various swaths of Modernity Falling out of Intelligibility and into an Abyss of Unintelligibility via Non-Theism’s only Option of all things Brute-Fact and, so, having traveled “Full Circle” from where Mankind started and back again into the Chaos that is the God’s Play & the People Pay as, once again, Man returns to Mysticism’s Absurdity-As-The-Only-Option vis-à-vis All-Things-Brute and thereby Mankind ((…well…Non-Theism…)) completes the Full-Circle back into the Chaos of All-Is-Illusion — into Non-Theism’s metaphysical terminus of Cosmic Indifference amid the Irreducibly Mindless wherein all “layers” are *necessarily* void of the fundamental nature of “I-AM” as The-Self is in fact terminally illusory as the inverse would just be, by definition, Theism.

The Philosophy of Science Cannot Evade The Philosophy of Mind:

In fact “science” just is a “thing” which takes place vis-à-vis Mind. This *is* a narrative of epistemology and conceptual ceilings and the collective consciousness of humanity. The [Scientific Realism] which replaced [The Gods Played & The People Paid] did so for specific/historical reasons as Calculus piggybacked off of Multiplication//Division which in turn piggybacked off of Addition//Subtraction, and so on. Modernity’s Christian retains the metaphysical requisites for said Scientific Realism and Ultimate Intelligibility even as Modernity’s Non-Theism/Atheism races to return again into Reality as, finally, Brute Fact & the Self as, finally, Illusory and, therein, once again traveling full-circle back into Yesteryear’s Reality as ultimately Unintelligible – for in fact the Gods Play and the People Pay ((…given Non-Theism…)). So much for science. Whereas, as before, so still again, Scientific Realism flourishes in the Christianized Mindset. WHY does Science flourish in said mindset? Well that is briefly described in upcoming links, but for now, a few more layers to add.

Epistemology = Mind. The ToE (Theory of Everything) which “…brings into harmony the greatest number of ascertained facts and disposes of the greatest number of difficulties with the least amount of strain…” is the T.O.E. which carries the highest degree of plausibility. Therein the following:

NOTE: The Hyperlinks in this post are formatted Blue but they are NOT formatted (yet) to open in a new tab, therefore, in order to not lose your page here one should “right-click” on the hyperlinks and select “open in new tab” for easier back-and-forth navigation.

So, that said:

Consciousness, Emergence, Intentionality, Searle, Reason Atop The Irrational, And Naturalism’s Egregious Deficiency https://metachristianity.com/consciousness-emergence-intentionality-searle-reason-atop-the-irrational/

From the Christian History Institute:

NOTE: The following hyperlinks are NOT (yet) formated to open in a new tab, and so it is easier to “right click” the hyperlink and select “open in new tab” in order to avoid exiting this page:

Continuing with Christianity, History, and the Philosophy of Science:

Have You Bought Into The Copernican Myth https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2016/01/have-you-bought-into-the-copernican-myth/
Flat Earth vs. Aquinas vs. Dante vs. Galileo vs. Scripture vs. Science https://metachristianity.com/flat-earth-vs-aquinas-dante-galileo-scripture-science
Putting Nature On The Rack http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/03/putting-nature-on-rack.html
Review of Steven Pinker’s “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress” by E. Feser, which he calls EN-DARKEN-MENT, at https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/endarkenment-later/
Omnibus Of Fallacies by Edward Feser, a review of “Faith versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible” (Jerry Coyne) https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/02/omnibus-of-fallacies
Fallacies Physicists Fall For, by E. Feser, at https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2018/07/fallacies-physicists-fall-for.html
“Science and Theology: Where the Consonance Really Lies” by David Bentley Hart https://metachristianity.com/science-and-theology-where-the-consonance-really-lies-by-david-bentley-hart/
Genesis, Quantum Worlds, Allegory, Metaphor, Divine Communique, Transposition, And The Heavy-Meta-Bible https://metachristianity.com/genesis-quantum-worlds-allegory-metaphor-divine-communique-transposition/

A Few Items On The (so-called) Dark Ages:

“There Were No Dark Ages” borrowed from John Dickson: “Studying grammar, logic, rhetoric, mathematics, music, and astronomy in 8th-9th century Europe was considered an act of devotion to the all-wise God. It was learning about the “wisdom” the Creator had imprinted upon the world. For Alcuin and his circle (AD 790s), and the many schools they established, this involved knowing not just the Bible and the Church Fathers (Augustine, Gregory the Great, Jerome, and Ambrose), but also all of the ancient Greek and Roman (classical) authors they could get their hands on. From Alcuin’s own catalogues, his letters, and the surviving manuscripts of this period, we know this included Plato, Aristotle, Galen, Pliny the Elder, Cicero, Seneca, Virgil, Livy, Ovid, and at least 50 other pagan writers. The breadth of learning is remarkable. I have a PhD in Ancient History from a well-resourced state university, and I confess that I have not read all of the authors these masters of Charlemagne’s court absorbed. And I certainly cannot quote them… Alcuin routinely does in his poems and letters–from memory! The story of a “dark ages”, when the Church suppressed secular knowledge, is a perverse myth invented in the Enlightenment, and is only sustained today because no one reads about the birth of schools in Europe in the 700s…”

Six Reasons the Dark Ages Weren’t So Dark: https://www.history.com/news/6-reasons-the-dark-ages-werent-so-dark
“The Dark Ages” – Popery, Periodisation And Pejoratives” at History For Atheists (by Atheist Tim O’Neill) at https://historyforatheists.com/2016/11/the-dark-ages-popery-periodisation-and-pejoratives/
The Dark Age Myth: An Atheist Reviews James Hannam’s “God’s Philosophers: How The Medieval World Laid The Foundations of Modern Science”. Amazon is at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004S6UW1E/ and the aforementioned review is at https://strangenotions.com/gods-philosophers/ “One of the…. hazards of being an atheist and secular humanist who hangs around on discussion boards is to encounter a staggering level of historical illiteracy.”

How The Enlightenment Ideology Obscured Our Historiographical Imagination: https://theneomedievalist.blogspot.com/2021/01/how-enlightenment-ideology-obscured.html with the following:

“I’m a graduate in Medieval Studies, and when I try to explain some myths about it, people look at me as if I was insane. The Enlightenment propaganda is so strong, that telling the truth about Medieval era sounds like a crazy right-wing conspiracy theory. And this is a serious problem. Many school textbooks, media, etc. promote most of these myths, which are inherently biased and dangerous, because they distort the truth. The Enlightenment historiography is still the most successful propaganda ever made; it refused to die, because the [anti-Christian] sentiment which these thinkers had promoted seems to be popular ever since. Demonizing the Other is the best way to begin a fight, because it gives you the feeling of the moral superiority. In our case, this has been done by distorting and misinterpreting historical facts, and inventing myths and false villains and heroes. This genius propaganda has affected and influenced most of us, therefore it’s not surprising how our imagination has been constructed. For example, when we think or talk about [the] historical horrors, the vast majority will think of the those ‘dark’ Middle Ages. Ironically, we rarely realize that the most morbid and inhumane crimes were committed during the Enlightenment and Modern era. Concentration camps, gulag, genocides, eugenics, racism, reign of terror, totalitarianism, etc. The aforementioned catastrophes are a result of the ideology which promoted the cult of progress, reason and science, which ended becoming the cult of irrationality, regress and crimes. But of course, rarely will we hear that being denounced, because we still live in that era, where one of the most criminal and bloody act of history [the French Revolution] is presented as ‘glorious’ and ‘good’. The Enlightenment way of thinking may have ‘freed’ people from believing in religion or God, but at the very moment when this philosophy rose, ideologies were born. So, today, many don’t believe in religion because they consider it dogmatic, but unconsciously and even dogmatically believe and follow ideologies as Enlightenment.” — Albert Bikaj

Another Look At The God’s Play And The People Pay:

Recall earlier the description of Non-Theism’s painful returning again into the abyss of All Things Brute, of Reality as Unintelligible. Another lens by which to see that is that of Retorsion, but, before the upcoming quote/excerpt (Retorsion), perhaps see the following:

Logic Itself Is Being Itself Contra The Fallacy of Presuppositionalism https://metachristianity.com/logic-itself-is-being-itself-contra-the-fallacy-of-presuppositionalism/ regarding the notion of Reductio Ad Deum and Reductio Ad Absurdum. Here’s E. Feser from https://strangenotions.com/ama-dr-feser-answers/ discussing his book Proofs of God and the concept of Retorsion:

Begin Excerpts:

“…More importantly, we can defend them by the method of retorsion, which involves showing that one cannot deny them on pain of self-contradiction or incoherence. This method is sometimes misunderstood. Some people think it merely involves showing that we can’t help *thinking* a certain way, but where this leaves it open that this way of thinking might nevertheless not correspond to reality. In other words, they think that retorsion arguments are essentially about human *psychology*. That is not at all the case. Rightly understood, such arguments are a species of *reduction* *ad* *absurdum* argument. They involve defending a claim by showing that the denial of the claim entails a contradiction, and thus cannot as a matter of objective fact (and not merely as a contingent matter of human psychology) be correct… …The word “proof” has, historically, been used in different senses. Naturally, I don’t mean that the arguments are proofs in exactly the same sense in which a mathematical proof is a “proof.” They are mostly not *a* *priori* arguments, for one thing. But I used the word deliberately, and I certainly claim a high degree of certainty for the claim that God exists. For example, I would claim that it is as certain that God exists as it is that the world external to our minds is real and not an illusion foisted upon us by a Cartesian demon or the Matrix. How can I say that? Well, the point of the book to show this. The arguments are “proofs” in that, first of all, the conclusion is claimed to follow *deductively* from the premises. They are not mere probabilistic inferences, arguments to the best explanation, or “God of the gaps” arguments. (I hate “God of the gaps” arguments.) The claim is that the arguments show, not merely that God is the most likely explanation of the facts asserted in the premises of the arguments, but rather that God is the only possible explanation in principle of those facts. Second, the premises are knowable with certainty. The premises include both empirical premises (for example, the premise that change occurs) and philosophical premises (for example, the premise that everything has an explanation or is intelligible). The premises in turn can be defended in various ways that show them to be beyond reasonable doubt. For example, some of them can be defended via retorsion arguments (which, again, are a species of reductio ad absurdum argument). That is to say, such arguments try to show that anyone who denies such-and-such a claim is implicitly contradicting himself. So in arguments of the sort I am defending, the conclusion is claimed to follow necessarily from the premises, and the premises are claimed to be knowable beyond any reasonable doubt. That sort of argument fits one traditional use of the word “proof.”

Naturally, I am aware that some people will nevertheless challenge the arguments or remain doubtful about one or more of them. But that’s true of every single argument one could give for any conclusion, even mathematical proofs. A determined and clever enough skeptic will always be able to come up with *some* grounds for doubt, even if the grounds are bizarre or far-fetched. That doesn’t mean that the grounds are, all things considered, going to be reasonable ones. Anyway, my calling something a “proof” doesn’t entail that I think every reader, even every fair-minded reader, is immediately going to be convinced. What it is meant to indicate is the nature of the connection between the facts described in the premises and the fact described in the conclusion. It is a *metaphysical* claim, not a *sociological* claim. Too many people mix these things up. They think that as long as a significant number of people are likely not to agree with some argument, you can’t call it a “proof.” That just misunderstands the way the term is being used…”

End Excerpts (…from https://strangenotions.com/ama-dr-feser-answers/ …)

Knowledge, Discovery, Privation, and Temporal Becoming:

Recall from earlier the observation that “Science & Christianity” isn’t Science & Christianity — it’s Scientific Realism and the Christian Metaphysic and History and therein all lines must pass through either (A) Brute Fact / Reductio or else (B) Necessary/Self-Explanatory. Trajectory and Accumulation are not problematic in the category we call [Knowledge] simply because Discovery and the pains of Privation (Fragmentation) and Temporal Becoming are, first, predicted and, second, not sufficient for the End/Terminus. Calculus piggybacks off of Multiplication/Division which in turn piggybacks off of Addition/Subtraction, which in turns Piggybacks off of Perception and Conceptual Ceilings, which in turn…. And so on. Therein:

Context of Discovery vs. Context of Justification: https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/05/context-isnt-everything.html
Objective, Subjective, Third Person, First Person: https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/09/objective-and-subjective.html

A Consolidation Of A Discussion In A Comment Section:

The title of one of T. Gilson’s essays at https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/ is “FAITH VS. FACT? NO, JERRY COYNE’S THEOLOGY VS. WHATEVER”. As all threads/comment boxes do, that thread eventually began to morph into another sub-topic, which was this: That science flourished in Western culture in a way it did nowhere else is without question…. but why…?

The goal of this section is to consolidate a few of that thread’s comments for reference regarding that question, which comes up often. However, before doing that, the following paraphrase (with a bit of levity to make a point) of a D.B. Hart quote to demonstrate what is too often the Non-Theist’s pure assertion, as per the following:

“The Christian needs to know that our (Non-Theists) defense of “rationalistic” values require the denial of the existence of reason, but that’s okay, because we assert it’s okay. The causally closed paradigm which maps to Physics has to be enough for us, and so it will have to do for you too. Why? No reason. No good ones anyway. You should also know, dear Christian, that our own intellectual consistency obliges us to believe that reason is parasitic upon purely irrational physical events, and that it may well be the case that our nonexistent consciousness is only deluded in intentionally believing that there is such a thing as intentional belief. Once again, we assert that that’s all okay. We don’t argue it. We just assert it. Despite physics. Besides, what you the Christian have mistaken for your rational convictions and ideas are actually only a colony of diverse “memes” that have established themselves in the ecologies of your cerebral cortices given that you are not, as we are, mystically immune to the causally closed paradigm which maps to Physics. Now, if you were a Non-Theist like us, you too would be mystically and inexplicably immune to the causally closed paradigm which maps to Physics. That is the mystical autohypnosis that just is the “why” of our “…you should believe our assertions…”, but don’t ask too many questions please. Just believe. Like we do.” End Paraphrase.

So, then, several of the comments from https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/ are consolidated regarding the little sub-narratives within that discussion/comment-section on the question of “….science flourished in the Christianized mindset….but why…?”

NOTE: The Hyperlinks in this post are NOT formatted Blue (yet) and they are NOT formatted to open in a new tab (yet), therefore, in order to not lose your page here one should “right-click” on the hyperlinks and select “open in new tab” for easier back-and-forth navigation.

A1. https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/#comment-115673
A2. https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/#comment-115485
A3. https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/#comment-115745
A4. https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/#comment-115751
A5. https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/#comment-115786
A6. http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2018/07/fallacies-physicists-fall-for.html
A7. http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-natural.html

B1. https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/#comment-115715
B2. https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/#comment-115496
B3. https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/#comment-115516
B4. https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/#comment-115754

C1 https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/#comment-115737
C2 https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/#comment-115738

D1 https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/#comment-115757
D2 https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/#comment-115762
D3 https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/#comment-115783
D4 https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/#comment-115787

E1 https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/#comment-115810
E2 https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/#comment-115812
E3 https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/#comment-115947
E4 https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/#comment-116015
E5 https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/06/faith-vs-fact-jerry-coynes-theology-vs-whatever/#comment-116019

Segue: Define Faith https://metachristianity.com/define-faith/