Replies

There is no need for ad hominem attacks, insults and rudeness, my friend.
I understood you perfectly. Unfortunately I can’t say the same about you understanding me.

It’s perfectly obvious that you were not talking about ancient Chinese, but contemporary Chinese atheist scientists. The clue is in the fact that you said so (do you remember “atheist Chinese scientists in 2013”?). Why you chose Chinese rather than atheist scientists of other nationalities I don’t know. It didn’t confuse me, but it obviously confused you.

You said: “If atheist Chinese scientists in 2013 can come up with valid, peer-reviewed scientific papers today, then science isn’t dependent on Christianity.”

We are talking about Christianity being necessary for the birth of science, not for doing science. Don’t you understand the difference?

Because one thing - as I’ve explained, but obviously it needs repeating because it didn’t sink in the first time - is to create the concept of laws of nature in an ordered universe, which is the necessary foundation for scientific work, and another is to use and apply this concept once others have created it.

Your Chinese atheist scientist friends would not have been more capable of developing science *before it was created* than any other non-Christians of the time of Galileo.

Only Christians were capable of inventing this concept, for the reasons explained in my article. I haven’t got time to rewrite everything for you, perhaps you should read it more carefully.

If you really are interested in the subject and not just in polemicize, I also advise you to read some good text of philosophy of science, so that not just one of us knows what she’s talking about. Start with Popper or Kuhn.

That you’re not familiar with the history and philosophy of science you reveal yourself when you say that you’ve never heard a “more bombastic etc”, because what I wrote is just a tenet of mainstream epistemological research.

Your last few sentences about academia bring home even more forcefully your extensive unfamiliarity with the subjects we are treating because, as I said, many academics and scholars hold these views (have you even read my article, I wonder?)

The fire example is totally irrelevant.

Your entire article is a polemic piece devoid of factual, water-tight supporting arguments, it's a shame I even have to break this down for you.

Here are two examples:

British biochemist and science historian Joseph Needham (1900-1995), who devoted most of his career to the history of Chinese technology, reports that in the 18th century the Chinese rejected the idea of a universe governed by simple laws capable of being investigated by man - idea brought to them by Western Jesuit missionaries. Chinese culture, according to Needham, was not receptive to such concepts. He concluded that the obstacle to science in China was its non-Christian religion, because that prevented the development of the conception of a heavenly, divine legislator imposing laws on non-human nature. The Chinese believed that the natural order was not established by a rational individual being.

Firstly, the "simple laws" concept of the "laws" governing the universe is itself an approximation. Classical mechanics gets ripped new ones all over when the scales go into the Angstrom levels and beyond. Add quantum effects to that and you have a lot of "spooky action at a distance" type mysteries that confounded the likes of Einstein.

This in no way diminishes the immense value of Greek culture and its great impact on Christian theology and European intellectual life. However, as historian of religions Rodney Stark observed, the birth of science was not the continuation of classical knowledge but the natural consequence of Christian doctrine: nature exists because it was created by God and, to love Him and honour Him, it is necessary to have a profound appreciation of the wonders of His actions.

The underlined portion of your article above is not in conflict with Islamic theology. It's not "unique" either, any other religion could argue on the same basis. There are parts of the world that has been (and some, to this day) Christian a lot longer than Europe has been Christian. Their contribution to science is practically absent. Why?

So, by logical deduction, it would seem true that Greek concepts of investigation and logic were more important to Western science than Christianity itself.

The fire example is totally relevant. It's an extension of the same "logic" you've used in your thesis. Without fire, there would be no science. There is a firm antecedent-precedent order requirement here for the development of science.