TheAtheist
But this does not necessitate that your Church actively embraced/encouraged the findings of natural science or philosophy.…The Condemnations of 1210, 1270, 1277 also put a “cap” on the natural philosophy of Aristotle simply because its speculations (and the extensions made Averroes/Ibn Rushd) were disturbing to established doctrine (the fact that 1277’s condemnation even extended to Thomas Aquinas’ work is rather astounding in my opinion)…. in order to protect its dogma, Aristotle’s work was condemned….(the fact that 1277’s condemnation even extended to Thomas Aquinas’ work is rather astounding in my opinion).
Factually, the Church to which I belong is Christ’s Church. And, BTW, Her dogma and defined doctrine are infallible – it is Aristotle’s erroneous assumptions which have been cast aside.
[See: *How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Dr Thomas E Woods, Regnery, 2005, Chapter Five]:
Now, while the Pope was less than enthusiastic with the condemnation of the Bishop of Paris (1277) [Richard Dales, *The Intellectual Life of Western Europe in the Middle Ages, 1980], Pierre Duhem, A.C. Crombie and Edward Grant have argued that the condemnations forced thinkers to break out of the intellectual confinement of Aristotelian presuppositions, from the restrictions of Aristotelian science and to adopt new thinking to the physical world.
Aristotle had denied the possibility of a vacuum, and the condemnations “seem definitely to have promoted a freer and more imaginative way of doing science.” (Dales,
The De-Animation of the Heavens in the Middle Ages, p 550).
Another condemned Aristotelian proposition was that “the motions of the motion of the sky result from an intellectual soul,” which prompted new approaches to the central question of the behaviour of the heavenly bodies.
The denigration of the Church’s role in the development of science had been prevalent until the early twentieth century when historian Pierre Duhem underlined the Church’s crucial role and more and more historians have recognised this fact. (
How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Thomas E Woods Jr., Regnery Publishing, 2005, p 75).
Another Catholic development – the university – played a pivotal role in the rise of modern science, as did several priests.
As for the Arabs, while their translations of ancient Greek classics led to their dissemination in the Western world in the twelfth century, a profound development for Western intellectual history, contributions of Muslim scientists “typically occurred in spite of Islam rather than because of it. Orthodox Islamic scholars absolutely rejected any conception of the universe that involved consistent physical laws, because the absolute autonomy of Allah could not be restricted by natural laws. Apparent natural laws were nothing more than mere habits, so to speak, of Allah, and might be discontinued at any time.” (Woods, op. cit., p 79)
The twin pillars of Faith and Reason (
Fides et Ratio, John Paul II) will always result in the best science – directed to the discovery of God’s laws and based on His natural moral law as to ends and means – with which Christ’s Church alone is fully equipped by Him to guide.
For further information, a highly acclaimed recent work is
What’s So Great About Christianity, by Dinesh D’Souza, Regnery, 2007. He cites numerous world-class scientists who reject naturalism and materialism and are theists or Christians.
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