[April 22, 2001]

G’day all.

“nathan” <> writes:

>That’s one (historically proven incorrect) view..

I take issue with your use of the words “historically proven” (no historian would ever use those words), but I’ll let that sit for now.

I think you misunderstood one important point in the review. I’ll copy it here:

Setting Christianity against its historical Greek and Roman backdrop and against pagan cultures worldwide, […]

You can’t judge a culture or philosophy except by comparison to the time and place where it existed. In particular, you simply can’t judge them by modern standards. You can only call a culture or philosophy “bad” if they were bad by the standards of the time (that is, if there was no reason why they shouldn’t have known better).

So in looking at the things that you list below, occasionally I’ve asked how their behaviour compare with other cultures of the time, and if any other contemporary philosophy, had they been in the same situation, would have acted any “better” by modern standards. For example, you talk about equality of women. To show that, at some point in the past, some culture treated women “badly”, you would have to show that there is some earlier culture or contemporary culture which they would have come in contact with who would have treated them “better”.

I should also point out that if you look at any philosophy or culture that has been around for longer than about a hundred years (well, let’s just say longer than its founder’s lifetime), you will not find a clean sheet. I’d like to discuss the topic of why at some later date, but for now we’ll just note that you have to weigh the positives against the negatives. Yeah, the church disagreed with Darwin. How does that weigh against the invention of the University? It’s hard to say.

Anyway, on with the list:

>Or perhaps you could look at how christianity held back science and

>medicine:

>-women burnt at the stake for practicing certain remedies on the sick (they

>must have been witches!)

Some details would be helpful here.

>-the insistence that many scientific developments were evil (remember the

>catholic church only recently apologised for persecuting a godless

scientist >who had the crazy idea that the world was in fact round

Did you mean Galileo? If so, the only correct part of your assertion is that the Roman Catholic church only reversed the finding of the Inquisition recently. The rest is almost all wrong.

First, Galileo lived a century after Columbus. The shape of the Earth was well and truly settled by this time. The controversy was over heliocentrism (a theory not incidentally invented by Copernicus, who worked for the Roman Catholic church including a career as administrator of the diocese of Frauenberg), not the shape of the world.

Lastly, Galileo was never really persecuted in any sense of the word that you probably mean. He was never treated badly, never tortured, and while he did spend the last years of his life under house arrest, twenty-two days of that were spent in an apartment of an official of the Inquisition and the rest were spent in houses of friends.

Of interest is the fact that when Galileo visited Rome eight years after the infamous judgement by the Inquisition, Pope Urban VIII, who had opposed his earlier condemnation when he was just a Cardinal, gave him an endowment to carry on his scientific work. He did not, however, annul the former judgement. (It would probably have been politically unwise to do so.) That happened recently, as you noted.

>-who could forget the argument against Darwin who thought that there was a

>process called “evolution” and that we didn’t all just come from adam and

>eve

Since you’re asserting that Christianity somehow “held back” science, it would be useful if you would let us know exactly how long you believe evolution was prevented from being accepted by the scientific community by the actions or words of churches.

>-some schools in the US are being forced to teach creationism as fact

>instead of the scientific version of events.

The problem there is that school boards in the US are elected rather than being appointed based on educational expertise, and as we found out last year, in the US, anyone can get elected. Only in America.

>-the ban on contraception and other forms of brith control and family

>planning has perhaps had the most devestating affect on the planet (I mean:

>don’t we have enough people on the Earth?)

I do agree with you that the Roman Catholic church’s ban on contraception is wrong. It may help to know that no other churches support it, and most Roman Catholics, at least in the West, simply ignore it.

Having said that, it’s incorrect to assume that merely supporting the use of birth control would have any appreciable effect on population growth. The one thing that would have the greatest effect is the education of women, and I mean general education. This is one area that churches, including the Roman Catholic church, are doing an excellent job worldwide.

>-humane treatment of all people? except if they have a differing belief,

>different sexuality or perhaps simply don’t buy all the rubbish in the

bible

Let’s look at sexuality, and I’ll assume you’re speaking historically.

No era before this one has treated homosexuality in any way that, if we compare them with today, we would consider “well”. To pick one example, the pre-Christian Celts would bury homosexual people alive.

Besides, would things have been different had anyone else been in charge?

>-equality for women? hello? as far as I can tell the single most awful

force >against women has been due to the male oriented belief structure taught by

>christianity

What do _you_ mean by “equality”? When a modern reader like myself looks at that, I think of universal suffrage, equal pay for equal work and so on. These are all very modern ideas, and _started_ in the western world, those most influenced by Christianity.

Would things have been different had anyone else been in charge?

>-Highest achievements of modern civilisation? perhaps the greatest wars..

>but I don’t think it can claim to be responsible for anything else major.

Can you name one war which was caused by Christianity?

To count, it has to be a war that was genuinely over religion, otherwise it would have happened regardless of who was in charge. Wars which were really about something else but whose perpetrators used religion as propaganda to stir up the masses don’t count.

I await your response.

Cheers, Andrew Bromage