The graph above was posted at the tail end of a lengthy rant on NoBeliefs.com, in which the author rips apart the assertion that Christians were responsible for the birth of science. I don’t have a dog in that particular fight, but I’m often saddened when inflexible dogma of any sort gets in the way of open-mindedness. Too often, in my experience, the inflexible dogma is religious in nature.
My point of view is that science and religion operate in separate spheres — science, which is based upon rigorous examination of the physical world, can never hope to prove or disprove the existence of God, a being whose existence, by definition, must transcend the physical world and be supernatural.
For it’s own part, religion does itself no favours when it attempts to explain the mysteries of the physical world through faith.
I suppose that, as explorers of the moral and spiritual world, there is a place for religious practitioners in modern society. Similarly, scientists and science fiction authors can be good friends. But nobody turns to Isaac Asimov for the actual nuts and bolts of spacecraft design. Similarly, priests, pastors, imams — even shamans — can make excellent counsellors or moral philosophers. But I don’t think they should be directing scientific inquiry.
There is a wide range of religious belief among the readers of this blog, I know, and I’d interested in some discussion about the overlapping role of religion and science. The graph and link above are deliberately inflammatory, but I hope none of that will spill over here. Personally, I don’t like the way the Dark Ages are attributed to “Christianity” as if that faith is monolithic. I would prefer the term “Christian Totalitarianism” — and emphasis on the totalitarianism as the problem.
(I saw this graph on my friend Mike’s Facebook page, but I did some research of my own to track down the original author.)
Grant Hamilton
5 Responses to “Where would science be, if belief and dogma hadn’t gotten in the way?”
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“Similarly, priests, pastors, imams — even shamans — can make excellent counsellors or moral philosophers.”
?
A moralist does not a moral philosopher make. Moral philosophy requires a commitment to reason, which priests, imams, shamans, and others of their ilk, by definition, lack.
Well, I’m not saying they all *do* make excellent moral philosophers, but I do think they can.
Perhaps, I’m guilty of using “philosopher” in too much of a layperson sense. Would “moral thinker” be better?
I don’t think so, no. To think is to reason. Faith is the obstinate abdication of one’s responsibility to reason, a wilful embrace of ignorance dressed up in Sunday clothes to resemble a virtue.
“Moralist” captures it best — a moralist is one who make moral proclamations and judgments, frequently directed toward others. Moralists may reason, but it isn’t a necessary condition. So I’d say the moralist umbrella covers both moral philosophers and faith leaders.
That graph annoys me for a couple of reasons.
1) “Scientific Advancement” is a pretty vague concept for a y-axis; the fact that said axis is unnumbered makes it seem arbitrary to me. Using an arbitrary graph in support of science feels wrong somehow.
2) It ignores the contributions that Muslim nations made to the progress of science. Consider words like “algorithm” and “algebra”, and star names like Altair, Rigel, and Fomalhaut — all words that came to us from Arabic.
The author of the rant addresses some of your concerns:
Note about the graph: No doubt some will argue about the starting and ending dates of the various periods and yes, the Eqyptian, Greek and Roman periods overlap, but the intent of the graph aims to show an approximate relationship through time. The scale of scientific advancements show no numbers because we have no numbers to go by. The graph shows a relative scale of scientific advancement compared to other periods. Historians, for example, would agree that the Romans in the first few centuries CE had more knowlege about nature (science) than the Greeks of 400 BCE, and that the Age of Enlightenment built on the scientifc discoveries made during the Renaissance. Feel free to adjust the scale to your liking, but regarless of how you adjust the graph, it will do little to change the fact that scientific knowlenge (or the loss of it) fell dramatically during the Christian Dark Ages.
I agree that the graph is fuzzy, but as a general conversation-sparker, it gets the point across.