At what point did scientists become Atheists?

[Spoonist]

@Zed
Oups again, sorry for the late reply. *hangs head in shame*
Got wrapped up in other more interesting threads and then forgot all about this one and not until that post by Zinegata got the topic to the top again did I remember.
*looks at shoelaces and mumbles petty excuses*

Going through the thread again to refresh my mind I note that you seem to misunderstand me from post one. For clarity I'll repeat that you continuosly argue as if I didn't put in those disclaimers and caveats that I did and pointed out that I did.
This makes for a confusing argument from both sides.

I don't think you've actually provided sufficient evidence for the public perception of a connection between atheism and science starting to appear during the Enlightenment.

It would be strange if I did.
1) Again you have misrepresented my view there quite a bit; there is a huge difference between atheism and "the meme of the anti-religiousness of science starts". Since I've pointed that out to you before it is obvious that you continue to do it on purpose. Which is just annoying.
2) However I don't think I provided any evidence at all so you are quite right on that statement. Now it would be very strange if I had provided any hard evidence since such sentiments hardly leave an explicit paper trail. Instead it's something I've picked up from 'History of ideas'. So what I could do is provide an argument for that being the case. But with your style so far I don't know if I should bother. Instead I'll just point to the fact that it is during this time that the religious/clergy try to counter the findings of the enlightenment either by writing or by sponsoring books to counter what they perceive is an anti-religious movement. Top that of with mobs of people attacking different authors. Something which I think would be self evident that it translates into sermons and thus into the public mind.
It should also be self evident that the enlightenment rests heavily on the reformation and division of the catholic church. It's not a coincidence that non-catholic countries are much more represented during the enlightenment than vice versa.

But for the sake of productivity let us reverse this argument, if you feel that the meme of the anti-religiousness of science doesn't start there, then by all means please tell us when you think it starts? Hopefully with an argument why you think your claim is better than mine. Because otherwise this will just be a naha, yoho, naha, yoho, discussion.

The Enlightenment was a time during which rationality was paramount - the ideal was for a rational science as well as a rational religion, and these two were deeply intertwined during this period.

I'd argue that such a view belongs to the renaissance. That the reformation held that view and furthered it by going to the biblical sources. I do not think that such a concept should be placed as distinctive for the enlightenment.

I've really no interest in a discussion on Catholics oppressing other faiths - it's done to death, and it isn't relevant to the initial post.

Huh? What does the OP have to do with anything? You asserted that "the middle ages wasn't as bad as you make them sound". When I then proceed to show why I think that the middle ages was just as bad as "I think" (which due to its subjectivity is a really strange topic to dispute) then you say you don't want to talk about it? WTF?
This is both dishonest and counter productive.
So what else of your arguments should we scratch? All of them? Only the ones you can be bothered to back up? Only the ones I don't disagree with?

Let's see if we can find some common ground here instead of such descent into kindergarten sand throwing,
do you agree that within human progress and quality of life;
the enlightenment > the renaissance > middle ages ?

do you agree that for progress and technological progress;
the enlightenment > the renaissance > middle ages ?

do you agree that for freedom of thought and freedom of religion;
the enlightenment > the renaissance > middle ages ?

do you agree that for censorship of thought and the repression of new ideas;
the middle ages > the renaissance > the enlightenment

If so I think that we have no argument really and we should move on. If you disagree on any of the above I'd very much like to continue the argument regardless of what you think have been done to death.

(wherever you got the idea that the inquisition predates natural philosophy by several centuries, I don't know - but it's very, very wrong.)

Could be...
*goes to check*
Ah, seems you are right. I was mistakenly refering to what I thought was a name for the doctrine of induction/empericism. Didn't think about the old meaning of physics=natural philosophy.
Maybe 'natural science' is more in line with what I was trying to convey. Sorry for the confusion.

I pointed out the fact that the Enlightenment wasn't really a better time to live in, because you seemed adamant about describing medieval and early modern times as excessively horrible.

For whom? Where? I disagree with your use of 'excessively horrible' but I probably agree with the sentiment. Because to me the middle ages was pretty bad place to live in compared to the enlightenment.
If we are talking europe and common folks. If you are talking about something different please correct me.

It is popular to present science and religion as opposed forces; the truth is far more nuanced.

Completely agreed in a historical context. Especially european middle ages. Disagree to some extent in a present context.

I'd also point out that scientific advances didn't always happen in spite of Church oppression. Copernicus' heliocentrical theory was a side-product of his research into calendar reform - calendar reform which was necessary in order to establish the correct date of Easter every year. Galileo had cardinals for patrons. Jesuit colleges were, for a long time, among the most advanced mathematicians in Europe, seeking to excel in science in order to ensure greater prestige for their faith - up to the point of public experiments.

As I said above its in context that it is damning. What could have been achieved without the oppression of the catholic/orthodox churches?
Compare the progress of christian nations science vs muslim nations. Compare the number of books kept by the muslim caliphates and the christian kingdoms, its pretty sad.
It doesn't help that the christian kingdoms kept banishing and burning books throughout their history. During some middle age eras more books were banished than was published. That is pretty bad.

As a final note concerning antisemitism: you should read up on the distinction between (medieval) anti-Judaism and (modern) anti-semitism. While the two are certainly linked, they differ significantly. Antisemitism grew far more influential during the Enlightenment, focusing increasingly on the physical and psychological characteristics of Jews. Whereas anti-Judaism was largely founded in religious grounds (e.g. "they killed Christ", "they defiled the sacrament"), antisemitism is secular (e.g. "they are greedy parasites"). Antisemitism per se had existed before the Enlightenment (most notably Ferdinand and Isabella's banishment of the conversos), but it was less influential.

Since this came up as a note regarding the middle ages being more savage than the enlightenment, why would the distinction matter? Shouldn't it be decided by greatest human suffering? Which was clearly during the middle ages. I think that most would agree that being tortured and burnt at the stake is worse than expelled by an order of magnitude. Or that mass slaughter is worse than confiscation of land and property.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_antisemitism
Your point becomes even weaker since the change starts before the enlightenment, ie during the renaissance and the reformation. See Luther etc.

The only way you could say that the persecution was worse by then would be to include the east as cossacks etc which had nothing to do with the distinction you mention.

[Zed]

1) Again you have misrepresented my view there quite a bit; there is a huge difference between atheism and "the meme of the anti-religiousness of science starts". Since I've pointed that out to you before it is obvious that you continue to do it on purpose. Which is just annoying.

I specifically talk about a public perception of a connection between science and atheism. I believe that "the meme of the anti-religiousness of science" is an even stronger way of stating the same thing. If it isn't, please clarify what the difference is, and how my description of it is overstating the issue.

But with your style so far I don't know if I should bother. Instead I'll just point to the fact that it is during this time that the religious/clergy try to counter the findings of the enlightenment either by writing or by sponsoring books to counter what they perceive is an anti-religious movement. Top that of with mobs of people attacking different authors. Something which I think would be self evident that it translates into sermons and thus into the public mind.
It should also be self evident that the enlightenment rests heavily on the reformation and division of the catholic church. It's not a coincidence that non-catholic countries are much more represented during the enlightenment than vice versa.

It's very difficult to associate Enlightenment thinkers with Catholic or non-Catholic countries, considering the vast influence of French philosophers - and considering the fact that the French Enlightenment tended to be more radical than the English Enlightenment. I'll fully grant that the Enlightenment was a time in which criticism of established churches became common, and that it was widely recognized that Enlightenment intellectuals opposed various established religions.

But for the sake of productivity let us reverse this argument, if you feel that the meme of the anti-religiousness of science doesn't start there, then by all means please tell us when you think it starts? Hopefully with an argument why you think your claim is better than mine. Because otherwise this will just be a naha, yoho, naha, yoho, discussion.

The influence of natural theology on natural philosophy greatly diminished in the wake of Darwin's Origin of Species, which absolutely demolished the Great Chain of Being cosmology that had been dominant up until that time. During these times, the influence of religion was certainly diminished, and opposition to religious elements in science grew. I'm not certain when science acquired an anti-religious reputation as a whole - in fact, I don't think it has one right now. Biology has an anti-religious reputation.

The Enlightenment was a time during which rationality was paramount - the ideal was for a rational science as well as a rational religion, and these two were deeply intertwined during this period.

I'd argue that such a view belongs to the renaissance. That the reformation held that view and furthered it by going to the biblical sources. I do not think that such a concept should be placed as distinctive for the enlightenment.

The Renaissance is a period of greater religious extremism than before, mostly due to the Reformation. Note that the Spanish Inquisition was not established in the Middle Ages, but during the Renaissance. That's not to say that the ideals of rationality hadn't been present in humanist intellectuals earlier, but they blossomed truly during the Enlightenment.

Let's see if we can find some common ground here instead of such descent into kindergarten sand throwing,
do you agree that within human progress and quality of life;
the enlightenment > the renaissance > middle ages ?

do you agree that for progress and technological progress;
the enlightenment > the renaissance > middle ages ?

do you agree that for freedom of thought and freedom of religion;
the enlightenment > the renaissance > middle ages ?

do you agree that for censorship of thought and the repression of new ideas;
the middle ages > the renaissance > the enlightenment

I don't think it's possible to simplify these issues. Each of those periods lasted several centuries and were spread across a great many localities. Do you genuinely think that those times and localities had uniform conditions? How do you even measure some of those elements, such as technological progress? Concerning quality of life - about which classes in which country are you talking, etc? I might be roughly inclined to say that there was less censorship of thought during the Middle Ages than there was during the Renaissance with its witchhunts and its enforcement of orthodoxy, but even that is generalization.

For whom? Where? I disagree with your use of 'excessively horrible' but I probably agree with the sentiment. Because to me the middle ages was pretty bad place to live in compared to the enlightenment.

If we are talking europe and common folks. If you are talking about something different please correct me.

Those first two are the important questions, and I don't know whether I have any answers. I think the interests of academics in the Middle Ages were different from the interests of academics during the Enlightenment. I know that my interests would lie closer to those of academics during the Enlightenment, but had I been raised in a different culture, things might've been different. I doubt that being a professor of law at the University of Paris was a bad deal. Now, if we're talking about 'common folks', it's still not clear whether you mean the educated middle classes, or the vast majority of rural peasants. I rather doubt that peasants in the French countryside experienced a greatly different quality of life during the Middle Ages than they did during the Enlightenment.

Compare the progress of christian nations science vs muslim nations. Compare the number of books kept by the muslim caliphates and the christian kingdoms, its pretty sad.

It doesn't help that the christian kingdoms kept banishing and burning books throughout their history. During some middle age eras more books were banished than was published. That is pretty bad.

It's rather easy to say this, considering the fact that publishing is tightly related to the existence of a printing press, which was only invented in the 15th century... at the very end of the Middle Ages. Now, it's true that there was a considerable amount of Muslim scholarship until (I'm going from memory here) the tenth century, when that philosophical activity largely ceased again, only to flare up occassionally in the writings of people like Averroes. I'm not going to dispute that the Islamic world was more productive until roughly the tenth century. However, I don't think this means that we should ignore the advancements in logic, philosophy and mechanics found in European nations.

Since this came up as a note regarding the middle ages being more savage than the enlightenment, why would the distinction matter? Shouldn't it be decided by greatest human suffering? Which was clearly during the middle ages. I think that most would agree that being tortured and burnt at the stake is worse than expelled by an order of magnitude. Or that mass slaughter is worse than confiscation of land and property.

I'd argue that the Holocaust is worse than all that, but I'm not planning to make this thread solely about the relations between the Holocaust and the Enlightenment. Because I do mention it, I'll just roughly sketch their connections:
During the Enlightenment, Jews were increasingly seen as inferior people due to their innate nature, rather than due to their religion. The Enlightenment was a period during which people increasingly came to believe in progress and social engineering. One of the results of these progressive ideals were the eugenics movement, another result of these progressive ideals was social darwinism. Eugenics and social darwinism were important elements in the National Socialist programme and as such at the basis of the mass murder of millions of Jews.

Don't misunderstand this argument, though. Simply because the Holocaust was a eugenicist programme doesn't mean that eugenics is always bad, and simply because the Holocaust isn't conceivable without the Enlightenment doesn't mean that the Enlightenment is a bad thing.

[Spoonist]

...I don't think you've actually provided sufficient evidence for the public perception of a connection between atheism and science starting to appear during the Enlightenment...
*snip added for context*
...I believe that "the meme of the anti-religiousness of science" is an even stronger way of stating the same thing. If it isn't, please clarify what the difference is...

Being anti-religious does not rule out being deistic or agnostic. Instead its aimed at organized religion and/or religious claims. For instance the idea of a seperation of state & religion relies on the state being anti-religious while still allowing religious freedom for its citizens.
When it comes to science being perceived as anti-religious it derives from lots of factors but examples would be:
1) Dismissing the need for opus dei in all theories, replacing it with experiments and evidence. God does not have to be a part of any given explanation, nor does god become an explanation in its own right.
2) Using logic based philosophy on religious dogma to try its worth. (ex can an omnipotent/omniscient god really be considered good?)
3) Questioning the divinely derived trueisms of the day like dei gratia
So even while most of those philosophers/etc considered themselves to be believers and christians, their views and arguments where considered anti-religious. Some have even been labeled atheist post humously for their views (which I think is wrong).

But for the sake of productivity let us reverse this argument, if you feel that the meme of the anti-religiousness of science doesn't start there, then by all means please tell us when you think it starts? Hopefully with an argument why you think your claim is better than mine. Because otherwise this will just be a naha, yoho, naha, yoho, discussion.

The influence of natural theology on natural philosophy greatly diminished in the wake of Darwin's Origin of Species, which absolutely demolished the Great Chain of Being cosmology that had been dominant up until that time. During these times, the influence of religion was certainly diminished, and opposition to religious elements in science grew. I'm not certain when science acquired an anti-religious reputation as a whole - in fact, I don't think it has one right now. Biology has an anti-religious reputation.

A counter argument to Darwin as a point of origin is that Darwin himself took the meme into account. He delayed the publishing of his findings fearing what the anti-religious would use his work for plus he feared . So in Darwins age the meme already exists.

I find it strange that you believe that science does not have an anti-religious reputation right now. Just looking at christians and muslims they definately think that is true.
Do you think that a meme would have to be accepted by a supermajority to be valid? If so that is not the case.

The Renaissance is a period of greater religious extremism than before, mostly due to the Reformation. Note that the Spanish Inquisition was not established in the Middle Ages, but during the Renaissance.

How do you then define extremism? In words or in actions? In my world someone like Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus would be pretty extremist.

Don't understand why you mention the spanish inquisition when Ad abolendam was decreed in 1184. Which is clearly within the middle ages. But the burning of heretics and heathens is earlier than that.

Let's see if we can find some common ground...

I don't think it's possible to simplify these issues. Each of those periods lasted several centuries and were spread across a great many localities. Do you genuinely think that those times and localities had uniform conditions?

Wait a minute here. In my first post on this topic I said "What is worth noting is that in earlier centuries such a view could have got you tortured or killed." to which you respond "The Middle Ages and the Renaissance weren't as horrible as you make them sound." which is what starts this whole mess. But now its suddenly "impossible to simplify these issues". I'm sorry that is again dishonest. Either you can simplify this stuff and thus you can accuse me of making a millenia look bad, or you can't. Because if we are not talking about simplification then my statement was entirely true regardless of whether you think I make it sound horrible or not.

Also your attempt at insult vs "Do you genuinely think that those times and localities had uniform conditions?" is stupid when I in the next paragraph adress exactly that type of questions with the whom/where/common man line of reasoning. If you are going to continue this I expect you to read the whole post before replying when the answer to your attempt at retort is in the same fucking post.

I might be roughly inclined to say that there was less censorship of thought during the Middle Ages than there was during the Renaissance with its witchhunts and its enforcement of orthodoxy, but even that is generalization.

Then please give examples of what you are talking about because I can't place it. The gothic empire? The franks? Pre-christian scandinavia? Are you talking about the early middle ages ie 5th-10th cen within the already christianized world or what? Because after the 11th cen you get mass persecution of heretics (and heathens). But even then you must disregard what the early christians did vs other religions.
Just to make a point I'll point out that most renaissance witchtrials was small scale while lots of middle age crusades against heretics was large scale.

What you could be thinking of would be what the europeans did in the americas, in which case you should have mentioned such a special condition because again you are shifting the context. In this case to colonialism.

For whom? Where? I disagree with your use of 'excessively horrible' but I probably agree with the sentiment. Because to me the middle ages was pretty bad place to live in compared to the enlightenment.

If we are talking europe and common folks. If you are talking about something different please correct me.

Those first two are the important questions, and I don't know whether I have any answers.

Here I couldn't agree more. =)

Now, if we're talking about 'common folks', it's still not clear whether you mean the educated middle classes, or the vast majority of rural peasants. I rather doubt that peasants in the French countryside experienced a greatly different quality of life during the Middle Ages than they did during the Enlightenment.

If you think the middle class was 'common folks' during the middle ages then I've overestimated your education vastly, but I'm going to chalk that up to rhetorics because you have painted yourself into a corner.

Then are you really saying that an average french peasant in the middle ages had it roughly the same as one in the enlightenment?

Lets start with the availability of agricultural tools, types of produce, meat and work animals, agrarian reforms, etc. As evidenced by the bones we dig up the malnutrition isn't compareable. Then the bubonic plague, the black death and the poor sanitation and water supplies that helped spread stuff like typhoid and dysenteria. Even though by the enlightenment sanitation wasn't up to modern or even victorian standard it still surpassed that of post-roman europe by magnitudes. Yes, even for the country folks.

The most obvious example would be that the common folks had it so good that they not only rebelled due to a lack of the good stuff but actually won the french revolution, that alone speaks volumes to how far they had come from their middle age counter parts.

Compare the progress of christian nations science vs muslim nations. Compare the number of books kept by the muslim caliphates and the christian kingdoms, its pretty sad.

It doesn't help that the christian kingdoms kept banishing and burning books throughout their history. During some middle age eras more books were banished than was published. That is pretty bad.

It's rather easy to say this, considering the fact that publishing is tightly related to the existence of a printing press, which was only invented in the 15th century... at the very end of the Middle Ages.

Fuck that noise. Again a dishonest attempt at character assination. How could you possibly think that printing presses could have anything to do with a comparison of muslim and christian nations during the middle ages. Its obviuos that neither had printing presses so your attempted nitpick fails spectacularly. Yet the muslim nations outproduced and outpublished their christian counterparts. Heck parts of the renaissance is thought to be an indirect result from conquering such a legacy from the muslim caliphates/emirates in spain.

Now, it's true that there was a considerable amount of Muslim scholarship until (I'm going from memory here) the tenth century, when that philosophical activity largely ceased again, only to flare up occassionally in the writings of people like Averroes. I'm not going to dispute that the Islamic world was more productive until roughly the tenth century.

Your memory fails you or what is more likely your christian apologetic education fails you. Ibn_al-Haytham and Averroes wasn't the end of muslim scholarship.
The islamic golden age lasted until 13th cen. But that was not the end, maybe the ottoman empire rings a bell? Check out the system of palace schools and compare that to what europe got at the time...
Its not until the renaissance that western europe can hope to rival the ottomans in the sciences.

However, I don't think this means that we should ignore the advancements in logic, philosophy and mechanics found in European nations.

Its especially in the advancement of logic philosophy and physics that they were better.

Since this came up as a note regarding the middle ages being more savage than the enlightenment, why would the distinction matter? Shouldn't it be decided by greatest human suffering? Which was clearly during the middle ages. I think that most would agree that being tortured and burnt at the stake is worse than expelled by an order of magnitude. Or that mass slaughter is worse than confiscation of land and property.

I'd argue that the Holocaust is worse than all that, but I'm not planning to make this thread solely about the relations between the Holocaust and the Enlightenment. Because I do mention it, I'll just roughly sketch their connections:
During the Enlightenment, Jews were increasingly seen as inferior people due to their innate nature, rather than due to their religion. The Enlightenment was a period during which people increasingly came to believe in progress and social engineering. One of the results of these progressive ideals were the eugenics movement, another result of these progressive ideals was social darwinism. Eugenics and social darwinism were important elements in the National Socialist programme and as such at the basis of the mass murder of millions of Jews.

Don't misunderstand this argument, though. Simply because the Holocaust was a eugenicist programme doesn't mean that eugenics is always bad, and simply because the Holocaust isn't conceivable without the Enlightenment doesn't mean that the Enlightenment is a bad thing.

Another irrelevant tangent, this time I'll just ignore it. When comparing the middle ages with the enlightenment you can't bring in stuff like the holocaust. By your inane line of reasoning I could claim computers, vaccines and anti-biotics as a direct result of the enlightenment.
Why don't you stick to the subject instead of trying to run away on all of these tangents?

[Zed]

Being anti-religious does not rule out being deistic or agnostic. Instead its aimed at organized religion and/or religious claims. For instance the idea of a seperation of state & religion relies on the state being anti-religious while still allowing religious freedom for its citizens.

I think this is the core of the confusion, here. Being anti-religious most definitely rules out deism, because deism is specifically a religious belief. I think that you mean "irreligious" when you're talking about "anti-religious". A separation of Church and State does not require anti-religious sentiment on the part of the state: it merely requires the State to be irreligious.

1) Dismissing the need for opus dei in all theories, replacing it with experiments and evidence. God does not have to be a part of any given explanation, nor does god become an explanation in its own right.

It took a long time before God was fully eliminated from natural science, and empiricism developed long before that happened. The scholastics and Jesuits were already rather big on experimentation, even though these are generally caricatured as book-obsessed people who had no connection to the real world. Aristotle was an empiricist, after all - although it must be admitted that for many, though certainly not all, this empiricism was mainly theoretical.

It's important to recall that the development of natural science was not a development in which God was progressively removed. Aristotelianism didn't need God to do a great deal of things at all - he was needed to create the Universe, and he occassionally intervened to do a bunch of miracles, but all in all, God didn't have a great role in the natural philosophy of his day. Enter Isaac Newton, whose theory requires God to continuously hold the solar system together, because without divine intervention, the system would collapse. God was eventually eliminated from the sciences, but it took a long time, and until after Darwin, you really can't say this has occurred. That's not to say that there weren't attempts before Darwin, but they weren't sufficiently convincing (and that's even considering the fact that the argument from design had been philosophically refuted during the Enlightenment), and natural theology remained influential.

2) Using logic based philosophy on religious dogma to try its worth. (ex can an omnipotent/omniscient god really be considered good?)
3) Questioning the divinely derived trueisms of the day like dei gratia
So even while most of those philosophers/etc considered themselves to be believers and christians, their views and arguments where considered anti-religious. Some have even been labeled atheist post humously for their views (which I think is wrong).

While I grant that these two developments are important, these aren't generally seen as elements of natural science. I'd link those to other philosophical developments, but I'd be careful before I connect them to the development of natural science.

A counter argument to Darwin as a point of origin is that Darwin himself took the meme into account. He delayed the publishing of his findings fearing what the anti-religious would use his work for plus he feared . So in Darwins age the meme already exists.

I'd be interested in what precisely Darwin wrote, preferably both in the form of a quote in context and a reference, but if you have some elaboration, I'll be happy already.

I find it strange that you believe that science does not have an anti-religious reputation right now. Just looking at christians and muslims they definately think that is true.
Do you think that a meme would have to be accepted by a supermajority to be valid? If so that is not the case.

I really don't have the impression, no. Perhaps this is related to me living in Europe, where scientific developments are generally accepted by both the religious and the non-religious. Perhaps it's also related to me living in a country where the predominant religion is Catholicism, considering the fact that the Church is generally rather eager to go along with scientific developments, and the fact that the Church runs two of the best universities in the country, and several of the best universities in the world. One might have a different perception in America.

How do you then define extremism? In words or in actions? In my world someone like Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus would be pretty extremist.

Don't understand why you mention the spanish inquisition when Ad abolendam was decreed in 1184. Which is clearly within the middle ages. But the burning of heretics and heathens is earlier than that.

I mention the Inquisition because it was instituted in the Spain and its territories in 1480, well into the Renaissance. I also mention this period because this was the period in which the Malleus Maleficarum was written and used, and when the conversos were banished from Spain and Portugal, and when the Jesuits were created as 'soldiers of God', sworn to be loyal only to the Pope. The Renaissance was a time during which religious orthodoxy was reinforced far more strictly than the Middle Ages. And yet they mainly enforced religious orthodoxy, and didn't infringe upon natural philosophy all too often.

In my first post on this topic I said "What is worth noting is that in earlier centuries such a view could have got you tortured or killed." to which you respond "The Middle Ages and the Renaissance weren't as horrible as you make them sound." which is what starts this whole mess. But now its suddenly "impossible to simplify these issues".

I didn't specifically address that statement; certainly, explicit invocations of atheism could get you killed (or exiled from one's community, such as Spinoza), but I objected to claims of imprisonment for questioning religious beliefs. I may have read what you said too broadly, but I'm tired of reading a narrative – which is very, very popular, hence why I may have read it in what you said – that says the Church oppressed science.

Also your attempt at insult vs "Do you genuinely think that those times and localities had uniform conditions?" is stupid when I in the next paragraph adress exactly that type of questions with the whom/where/common man line of reasoning.

The questions are irrelevant when one takes in mind that those conditions can't be uniform, though. Mind you, I didn't attempt to insult you. It's a rhetorical question, no more than that.


If you are going to continue this I expect you to read the whole post before replying when the answer to your attempt at retort is in the same fucking post.

I might be roughly inclined to say that there was less censorship of thought during the Middle Ages than there was during the Renaissance with its witchhunts and its enforcement of orthodoxy, but even that is generalization.

Then please give examples of what you are talking about because I can't place it. The gothic empire? The franks? Pre-christian scandinavia? Are you talking about the early middle ages ie 5th-10th cen within the already christianized world or what? Because after the 11th cen you get mass persecution of heretics (and heathens). But even then you must disregard what the early christians did vs other religions.
Just to make a point I'll point out that most renaissance witchtrials was small scale while lots of middle age crusades against heretics was large scale.[/QUOTE]
If you're talking about the Albingensian Crusade, I'd personally argue that oppressing different philosophical schools is a different thing from acting against a cult that believes you represent an embodiment of evil.

Even though by the enlightenment sanitation wasn't up to modern or even victorian standard it still surpassed that of post-roman europe by magnitudes. Yes, even for the country folks.

I didn't know that.

The most obvious example would be that the common folks had it so good that they not only rebelled due to a lack of the good stuff but actually won the french revolution, that alone speaks volumes to how far they had come from their middle age counter parts.

I'm skeptical about this. I'd like to see some evidence in its favor, because to my knowledge, revolutions generally occur after the middle classes manage to rally the lower classes into action. This is out of my field, however.

Compare the progress of christian nations science vs muslim nations. Compare the number of books kept by the muslim caliphates and the christian kingdoms, its pretty sad.

It doesn't help that the christian kingdoms kept banishing and burning books throughout their history. During some middle age eras more books were banished than was published. That is pretty bad.

It's rather easy to say this, considering the fact that publishing is tightly related to the existence of a printing press, which was only invented in the 15th century... at the very end of the Middle Ages.

Fuck that noise. Again a dishonest attempt at character assination. How could you possibly think that printing presses could have anything to do with a comparison of muslim and christian nations during the middle ages. Its obviuos that neither had printing presses so your attempted nitpick fails spectacularly. Yet the muslim nations outproduced and outpublished their christian counterparts. Heck parts of the renaissance is thought to be an indirect result from conquering such a legacy from the muslim caliphates/emirates in spain.

Character assassination? Am I accusing you of murder or any other horrible thing? Could you please calm down a bit? I made a quip about how it's rather difficult to have a publishing industry when publishing doesn't exist without a printing press. I didn't dispute the virtues of Islamic scholarship.

Now, it's true that there was a considerable amount of Muslim scholarship until (I'm going from memory here) the tenth century, when that philosophical activity largely ceased again, only to flare up occassionally in the writings of people like Averroes. I'm not going to dispute that the Islamic world was more productive until roughly the tenth century.

Your memory fails you or what is more likely your christian apologetic education fails you. Ibn_al-Haytham and Averroes wasn't the end of muslim scholarship.
The islamic golden age lasted until 13th cen.[/QUOTE]
My Christian apologetic education? Don't make me laugh.

I admit, though, I was wrong: I meant the eleventh century. From H. Floris Cohen's How Modern Science Came Into the World: Four Civilizations, One 17th Century Breakthrough (p. 64): “Even if we leave out of the picture those men whose chief occupation was translation, between c. 815 and c. 1050, a dense constellation of luminaries manifested themselves. The names of al-Battani, al-Biruni, al-Farabi, Ibn al-Haytham, Ibn Sina, al-Khwarizmi, al-Kindi, al-Razi, Thabit ibn Qurra stand out in every account of the period. No such across-the-board outburst of concentrated creativity was to repeat itself in Islamic lands. [Cohen's emphasis, not mine] The three greatest, Ibn Sina, al-Biruni, and Ibn al-Haytham, all died in the mid-11th century. And then, just as in Greece some 1200 years earlier, momentum was lost and a steep downturn set in. As with Greece, I consider the question of why momentum was lost at all to be a nonquestion in view of this being the standard phenomenon in the premodern world.”

But that was not the end, maybe the ottoman empire rings a bell? Check out the system of palace schools and compare that to what europe got at the time...
Its not until the renaissance that western europe can hope to rival the ottomans in the sciences.

Ottoman Empire: established in 1299.
Renaissance: 14th century.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, but I'll grant that the natural sciences were given a great deal of room to work with under the Ottoman's again. I'll cite Cohen again, though (p. 68): “Successive sultans helped sustain a tradition of patronizing nature-knowledge that remained essentially unbroken until almost the end of the 19th century. (...) This was an environment in which 'foreign' learning could once again be pursued with self-assurance and sophistication, and yet, the excitement and vigor with which more than half a millennium earlier it had all started were gone for good. [Cohen's emphasis] Ongoing examination of dust-covered manuscripts may of course disclose unexpected finds, but so far the picture seems to be of a certain ossification, in the sense of a tradition turned inward on itself, of comments heaped upon comments in a fashion similar to the aftermath in the Greco-Roman world. There was no apparent desire even to inspect the manuscripts filled with Greek learning that in Byzantium had been preserved and copied over almost a millennium. The impact that these texts made upon their release occurred hundreds of miles away, in Italy, not on the spot in Istanbul. Instead, scholars in the Ottoman Empire maintained continuity with another glorious past – the one they acknowledged as their own. There was a readiness to examine the products of the Golden Age of nature-knowledge in Islam all over again and a capacity to come up with fresh thoughs on this or that point of running scholarly debate. But such fresh thoughts, even if highly promising in retrospect, remained encapsulated inside an unchanging framework and were not subject to questioning, let alone to replacement.”

Another irrelevant tangent, this time I'll just ignore it. When comparing the middle ages with the enlightenment you can't bring in stuff like the holocaust. By your inane line of reasoning I could claim computers, vaccines and anti-biotics as a direct result of the enlightenment.
Why don't you stick to the subject instead of trying to run away on all of these tangents?

You wanted to compare on the basis of the greatest human suffering. It'd be rather strange not to take the long term consequences into consideration.

[Alyrium Denryle]

The influence of natural theology on natural philosophy greatly diminished in the wake of Darwin's Origin of Species, which absolutely demolished the Great Chain of Being cosmology that had been dominant up until that time. During these times, the influence of religion was certainly diminished, and opposition to religious elements in science grew. I'm not certain when science acquired an anti-religious reputation as a whole - in fact, I don't think it has one right now. Biology has an anti-religious reputation.

I would like to jump in with this statement. Most of it is in fact correct. Until Darwin, most scientists were theists and in europe christian. While they may have opposed the doctrines of most established religions--specifically how they tried to suppress information--they still almost universally (with a few notable exceptions like LaPlace) viewed science (or as they called it Natural Philosophy) as a way of finding the order of Gods Plan in nature. Even the ones who were not religiously inclined did this because they did not have a satisfactory explanation for the origin of life. Being a Materialist was derided, as Darwin sardonically (almost titillatingly, as if delighting in the scandal of it) scribbles in his own notes "Oh I am such a Materialist!"

Post Darwin, this changed. No longer needing God to explain life and humanity, many scientists rejected theism (or at least Christianity. The Jews had always had a strong intellectual tradition, and post-Kant when they literally and figuratively escaped the Ghettos, many of them rejected a God, or at least the idea of a God who interferes in the world in any way shape or form. During this Post Darwin and Kant, but prior to WW2 period, the jewish reform movement to a large extent considered the period of progress during this period to be the Messiah... but I digress. The point is, jewish scientists remained jewish because even back in the 12th century the jews did not take the Tanakh as a literal history, but rather as a mythic history that defined their culture and most of it was allegory and metaphor even if inspired by God). You have to remember, in this early period while the last true Polymath was either Goethe or Von Humboldt, it was still possible to be well educated in all of the sciences--even if you did not branch out into philosophy and literature. Scientists were also not a specialized professional class. That started to gain more steam in the early 1900s. In the 1850s most scientists had day jobs--mostly as medical doctors or some other genteel profession--or were simply independently wealthy. The exception to this of course were people like LaPlace, and museum curators.

As a result, the atheist population of scientists skyrocketed, however I think the real tipping point came with the writings of Karl Popper. With the takeover of falsification from verification in scientific work starting in the 1930s, and the subsequent Modern Synthesis of Evolution by Natural Selection, and Population Genetics, the nail went in the coffin. Prior to this, a scientist would find it rather easy to rationalize religious beliefs and science, because said scientist could verify their beliefs--thus reducing cognitive dissonance. With falsification, you cannot do that. You are forced to compartmentalize your thinking and that is much harder. A scientist either has to do mental gymnastics to relieve the dissonance caused by the two modes of thinking, ignore the problem and let it...build... Or they can reject one or the other. This creates a self-selection bias among scientists, making it more likely that people not prone to supernatural thinking become scientists than the opposite. It enters a positive feedback loop, and oh look... 93% of the US National Academy of Science is comprised of non-theists and the rest (more are less) are Jewish.