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From: pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: New Physics Curriculum
Message-ID: <D5yLJK.ALG@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCC Public Access
References: <3ki5nd$m6g@nntp.Stanford.EDU> <D5t7CH.Gu4@intruder.daytonoh.attgis.com>
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 19:16:32 GMT
Lines: 54
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:28443 comp.ai.philosophy:26253

In article <D5t7CH.Gu4@intruder.daytonoh.attgis.com>,
David E. Weldon, Ph.D.  <David.E.Weldon@DaytonOH.ATTGIS.COM> wrote:
:
>2.  Except for the modern era, the greatest scientists in western culture were
>Christians.  Furthermore, they drew all of their hypotheses about the physical

Just an observation: except for modern era, the western culture was exclusively
Christian, so how any scientists (greatest and not so great) in this culture 
could be anything but Christians??
BTW, can you tell us what you consider "modern era"? At least +- 100 years?

>universe from their understanding of God andHis relationship to His creation. 

Can you explicate this in case of Copernicus? 
Wasn't it the "understanding of God andHis relationship to His creation"
that kept the Church stuck to Ptolemy's model (of Greek origin in itself)?
For instance, if my recollections are right, a fragment of the biblical story 
of Joshua was used to support Ptolemy's model (Josh 10:12,13).

>Without the Judeo-Christian tradition, science as we know it would not exist. 
>All other religions, including the Greek rationalists, view the world as
>chaotic and capricious; Only Judeo-Christian doctrine viewed God's creation as
>good, therefore orderly and lawful, and therefore capable of being studied.

You mean Babylonians, Egyptians, Chinese, Greeks etc. did not study the world?
How about their ability to foretell eclipses of the Sun? Would this be possible
with the world being chaotic and capricious?

>Finally, these scientists used the Bible as the major source of their
>hypotheses and theories.  

Is that so? I have thought that these scientists, even though being Christians,
used Greek writings (some of the Arabic too) as the major starting point.
As far as I know it was the translations of Greek texts, found after Moors
were chased away from Spain, that gave a major boost to the western science.
Is there, for instance, anything about planets in the Bible?

>So even if everything in the Bible is fiction, our
>understanding of our world in large part is determined by its worldview.
>
In early middle ages Arabic science was far more advanced than the western one.
That it did not progress was more likely due to the stagnation of Arabic 
culture and political power, possibly do to social reasons than to its
shortcomings. 
If you said that blossoming of western _culture_ and _economy_ was due to
values inherent in Christianity, I might agree with you. 
However, I think you are mistaken claiming that the western _science_ comes in 
large part from the worldview contained in the Bible.

-- 
Andrzej Pindor                        The foolish reject what they see and 
University of Toronto                 not what they think; the wise reject
Instructional and Research Computing  what they think and not what they see.
pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca                           Huang Po
