Do Catholics Believe God Follows Laws

[StrawberryJam]

Cite all primary sources of information please.

 

[sidbrown]

**Science consists of an organized effort to explain natural phenomena. **
Why did this effort take root in Europe and nowhere else? Because Christianity depicted God as a rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being, and the universe as his personal creation. The natural world was thus understood to have a rational, lawful, stable structure, awaiting (indeed, inviting) human comprehension.

Although China was quite civilized during many centuries when Europeans were still rude savages, the Chinese failed to develop actual science. Marxist Joseph Needham, the Oxford historian of science who devoted most of his career and many volumes to the history of Chinese technology….concluded that the failure of the Chinese to develop science was due to their religion, to the inability of Chinese intellectuals to believe in the laws of nature because ‘ the conception of a divine celestial lawgiver imposing ordinances on non-human Nature never developed.’ ”

“It was not that there was no order in Nature for the Chinese, but rather that it was not an order ordained by a rational personal being, and hence there was no conviction that rational personal beings would be able to spell out in their lesser earthly languages the divine code of laws which he had decreed aforetime. The Taoists, indeed, would have scorned such an idea as being too naïve for the subtlety and complexity of the universe as they intuited it.” (Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, 1954-84. 6 vols. Cambridge Univ Press, p 581).

“As conceived by Chinese philosophers, the universe simply is and always was. There is no reason to suppose that it functions according to rational laws or that it could be comprehended in physical rather than mystical terms. Consequently, through the millennia Chinese intellectuals pursued ‘enlightenment’, not explanations.

“Why didn’t Chinese scholars want to do science? Because, as Whitehead, Needham, and many others have recognised, it didn’t occur to the Chinese that science was possible….Western science was born of the enthusiastic conviction that the human intellect can penetrate nature’s secrets.” The Victory of Reason, Stark, Random House, 2005, p16-17].

The Greeks came closest but also failed to develop modern science – like all other cultures, hampered by the belief that the universe and its motions were eternal, with neither a beginning nor and end. Once the Catholic idea of creation *ex nihilo *became widely accepted intellectuals were keen to develop explanations based on natural causation. (Cf. David C Lindbergh, The Beginnings of Western Science, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1992, p 200).

Even in the patristic period of saints such as Augustine, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Jerome, and John Damascene their writings show the idea of rejecting any suggestion that the celestial bodies were alive or had intelligences in their own right, or were able to operate without some kind of spiritual mover. (Thomas E Woods, How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, 2005, p 93).

This is vicious anti-Chinese propaganda promoted by Eurocentrists. The fact is that China and the Chinese people have been leaders in scientific technology and theory. This is borne out by the studies in astronomy, as I have p;ointed out above and the development of acupuncture to cure certain diseases as has been verified by the world health organisation. Further is the study of the effect of natural herbs on the overall health of the human body and protection from disease. And of course, there is the fact that China had the first flying machines, the first printing press, the first compass, the development of the shaw clock, the abacus, the systematic develpment of a school of logic in 400 BC, all of which was done without the knowledge of Catholic doctrine.

 

[sidbrown]

**Science consists of an organized effort to explain natural phenomena. **
Why did this effort take root in Europe and nowhere else? Because Christianity depicted God as a rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being, and the universe as his personal creation. The natural world was thus understood to have a rational, lawful, stable structure, awaiting (indeed, inviting) human comprehension.

Although China was quite civilized during many centuries when Europeans were still rude savages, the Chinese failed to develop actual science. Marxist Joseph Needham, the Oxford historian of science who devoted most of his career and many volumes to the history of Chinese technology….concluded that the failure of the Chinese to develop science was due to their religion, to the inability of Chinese intellectuals to believe in the laws of nature because ‘ the conception of a divine celestial lawgiver imposing ordinances on non-human Nature never developed.’ ”

“It was not that there was no order in Nature for the Chinese, but rather that it was not an order ordained by a rational personal being, and hence there was no conviction that rational personal beings would be able to spell out in their lesser earthly languages the divine code of laws which he had decreed aforetime. The Taoists, indeed, would have scorned such an idea as being too naïve for the subtlety and complexity of the universe as they intuited it.” (Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, 1954-84. 6 vols. Cambridge Univ Press, p 581).

“As conceived by Chinese philosophers, the universe simply is and always was. There is no reason to suppose that it functions according to rational laws or that it could be comprehended in physical rather than mystical terms. Consequently, through the millennia Chinese intellectuals pursued ‘enlightenment’, not explanations.

“Why didn’t Chinese scholars want to do science? Because, as Whitehead, Needham, and many others have recognised, it didn’t occur to the Chinese that science was possible….Western science was born of the enthusiastic conviction that the human intellect can penetrate nature’s secrets.” The Victory of Reason, Stark, Random House, 2005, p16-17].

The Greeks came closest but also failed to develop modern science – like all other cultures, hampered by the belief that the universe and its motions were eternal, with neither a beginning nor and end. Once the Catholic idea of creation *ex nihilo *became widely accepted intellectuals were keen to develop explanations based on natural causation. (Cf. David C Lindbergh, The Beginnings of Western Science, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1992, p 200).

Even in the patristic period of saints such as Augustine, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Jerome, and John Damascene their writings show the idea of rejecting any suggestion that the celestial bodies were alive or had intelligences in their own right, or were able to operate without some kind of spiritual mover. (Thomas E Woods, How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, 2005, p 93).

I notice that nothing is said here about why Jews far surpass any other religious group today in the fields of science and mathematics. These Eurocentrists would have you believe that Catholic doctrine is responsible for scientific achievement, but notice that they don’t explain why there are so few Catholics who are Nobel prize winners as compared to the number of Jews who are.

 

[didymus]

I notice that nothing is said here about why Jews far surpass any other religious group today in the fields of science and mathematics. These Eurocentrists would have you believe that Catholic doctrine is responsible for scientific achievement, but notice that they don’t explain why there are so few Catholics who are Nobel prize winners as compared to the number of Jews who are.

Hey, the Yankees have won the most World Series but that doesn’t mean they invented baseball.

It was the Church’s belief that God could be understood thru reason, plus integrating the Western Aristotelian heritage that led to science arising in Europe.

A few words from Thomas Aquinas:

The suppositions that these astronomers have invented need not necessarily be true; for perhaps the phenomena of the stars are explicable on some other plan not yet discovered by men.

The theory of eccentrics and epicycles is considered as established, because thereby the sensible appearances of the heavenly movements can be explained; not, however, as if this proof were sufficient, forasmuch as some other theory might explain them.

Sciences are differentiated according to the various means through which knowledge is obtained. For the astronomer and the physicist both may prove the same conclusion—that the earth, for instance, is round: the astronomer by means of mathematics (i.e., abstracting from matter), but the physicist by means of matter itself.

 

[sidbrown]

Hey, the Yankees have won the most World Series but that doesn’t mean they invented baseball.

It was the Church’s belief that God could be understood thru reason, plus integrating the Western Aristotelian heritage that led to science arising in Europe.

A few words from Thomas Aquinas:

And why are there so few Catholics winning the Noble prizes in science as compared to the Jews ?

 

[Abu]

Sidbrown
This is vicious anti-Chinese propaganda promoted by Eurocentrists

.

Such a bigoted and myopic prejudice against reason and God as a rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being, and the universe as his personal creation, and railing against doctrine, faith and reason, is akin to another sidbrown unfortunate error – the feeling that God can change, which is against the solemn teaching of the first Vatican Council (1870).

We are dealing with the **light of reason **and the use of **sound logic **within a refined awareness of the concept of reality, which, being the special medium of every true science is implicit in empirical science. This involves organised efforts to explain nature, subject to modifications and corrections through systematic observations – theory and research.

Other cultures were steeped in their conception of the universe as a huge organism dominated by a pantheon of deities and destined to go through endless cycles of birth, death, and rebirth which made the development of science impossible as they saw the divine as immanent in created things which had minds and wills of their own. Thus constant natural laws were foreign and this idea virtually precluded thought of regular fixed patterns of behaviour. With the divine only in Christ and the Holy Trinity that transcended the world, pantheism was avoided and Catholics and other Christians could view the universe as a realm of order and predictability.

Babylonian cosmogony distinguished itself in watching the heavens, gathering astronomical data, and developing the rudiments of algebra, but perceived the natural order as so uncertain that only an annual ceremony of expiation could prevent total cosmic disorder. (Paul Haffner, Creation and Scientific Creativity, Christendom Press, 1991, p 35).
(See How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Thomas E Woods Jr., Regnery Publishing, 2005, p 76-78).

daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/C/Chinese_astronomy.html
The Chinese perceived Heaven to be round. It had nine levels; each of which was separated by a gate and guarded by a particular animal. The highest level, the Palace of Purple Tenuity, was where the Emperor of Heaven lived in the constellation we call Ursa Major. At the center of Heaven was the North Pole and the polar star. The celestial pole was a critical characteristic of Chinese cosmology. To the Chinese, the center was the most important geographical point because it was the closest to Heaven. They believed that the heart of civilization lay at the center of the earth, and as the land spread out, the lands and its inhabitants became more savage.

ldolphin.org/bumbulis/#anchor5338561
It’s no wonder that Yu-Lan Fung, a Chinese scholar in the early 20th century, wrote the following in The International Journal of Ethics:
“China has no science, because according to her own standard of value she does not need any…China has not discovered the scientific method, because Chinese started from mind, and from one’s own mind.”

The Chinese were also very resistant to views that did not line up with their organismic, cycling universe. For example, Juan Yuan praised Chinese thinkers for not falling prey to the lure of Western methods: “Our ancients sought phenomena and ignored theoretical explanation. Since the arrival of the Europeans, the question has always been concerning explanations, circular orbits, mean movements, eclipses, and squares. The foreigners think the earth revolves about a fixed sun…but the theory of Tycho has been modified many times during the last century and I believe it will be again…Therefore, I do not see upon what the Europeans base their arguments…and really it does not seem to me the least inconvenient to ignore the western theoretical explanations and simply to consider the facts.”

While Fr Stanley Jaki also acknowledges that other cultures made impressive technological contributions, no formal and sustained scientific inquiry emerged from this work. Their problem was conceptual frameworks that hindered the development of science – their lack of belief in a transcendent Creator who endowed His creation with consistent physical laws. That concept of a rational orderly universe eluded entire civilizations yet it was indispensable for the progress of science.

Traditional Jews place their “fundamental emphasis on law and regulation of community life.” The Jewish idea of history stresses not progress but only procession: “That we think of progress at all shows the extent of the influence of Christianity on us.” (John Macmurray, The Clue to History, Student Christian Movement Press, 1938, p 113).

Buridan, Oresme, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Bacon, Newton, all developed empirical science from Catholic theology.

 

[sidbrown]

.

Such a bigoted and myopic prejudice against reason and God as a rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being, and the universe as his personal creation, and railing against doctrine, faith and reason, is akin to another sidbrown unfortunate error – the feeling that God can change, which is against the solemn teaching of the first Vatican Council (1870).

We are dealing with the **light of reason **and the use of **sound logic **within a refined awareness of the concept of reality, which, being the special medium of every true science is implicit in empirical science. This involves organised efforts to explain nature, subject to modifications and corrections through systematic observations – theory and research.

Other cultures were steeped in their conception of the universe as a huge organism dominated by a pantheon of deities and destined to go through endless cycles of birth, death, and rebirth which made the development of science impossible as they saw the divine as immanent in created things which had minds and wills of their own. Thus constant natural laws were foreign and this idea virtually precluded thought of regular fixed patterns of behaviour. With the divine only in Christ and the Holy Trinity that transcended the world, pantheism was avoided and Catholics and other Christians could view the universe as a realm of order and predictability.

Babylonian cosmogony distinguished itself in watching the heavens, gathering astronomical data, and developing the rudiments of algebra, but perceived the natural order as so uncertain that only an annual ceremony of expiation could prevent total cosmic disorder. (Paul Haffner, Creation and Scientific Creativity, Christendom Press, 1991, p 35).
(See How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Thomas E Woods Jr., Regnery Publishing, 2005, p 76-78).

daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/C/Chinese_astronomy.html
The Chinese perceived Heaven to be round. It had nine levels; each of which was separated by a gate and guarded by a particular animal. The highest level, the Palace of Purple Tenuity, was where the Emperor of Heaven lived in the constellation we call Ursa Major. At the center of Heaven was the North Pole and the polar star. The celestial pole was a critical characteristic of Chinese cosmology. To the Chinese, the center was the most important geographical point because it was the closest to Heaven. They believed that the heart of civilization lay at the center of the earth, and as the land spread out, the lands and its inhabitants became more savage.

ldolphin.org/bumbulis/#anchor5338561
It’s no wonder that Yu-Lan Fung, a Chinese scholar in the early 20th century, wrote the following in The International Journal of Ethics:
“China has no science, because according to her own standard of value she does not need any…China has not discovered the scientific method, because Chinese started from mind, and from one’s own mind.”

The Chinese were also very resistant to views that did not line up with their organismic, cycling universe. For example, Juan Yuan praised Chinese thinkers for not falling prey to the lure of Western methods: “Our ancients sought phenomena and ignored theoretical explanation. Since the arrival of the Europeans, the question has always been concerning explanations, circular orbits, mean movements, eclipses, and squares. The foreigners think the earth revolves about a fixed sun…but the theory of Tycho has been modified many times during the last century and I believe it will be again…Therefore, I do not see upon what the Europeans base their arguments…and really it does not seem to me the least inconvenient to ignore the western theoretical explanations and simply to consider the facts.”

While Fr Stanley Jaki also acknowledges that other cultures made impressive technological contributions, no formal and sustained scientific inquiry emerged from this work. Their problem was conceptual frameworks that hindered the development of science – their lack of belief in a transcendent Creator who endowed His creation with consistent physical laws. That concept of a rational orderly universe eluded entire civilizations yet it was indispensable for the progress of science.

Traditional Jews place their “fundamental emphasis on law and regulation of community life.” The Jewish idea of history stresses not progress but only procession: “That we think of progress at all shows the extent of the influence of Christianity on us.” (John Macmurray, The Clue to History, Student Christian Movement Press, 1938, p 113).

Buridan, Oresme, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Bacon, Newton, all developed empirical science from Catholic theology.

“Such a bigoted and myopic prejudice against reason …”
This is name calling and an ad hominem agument intended to inflame and not discuss the issue at hand.
Still no answer as to why Jews excel in the sciences and far surpass Catholics when it comes to winning the Noble Prize. If Catholic doctrine is responsible for science, why do Jews surpass Catholics in scientific achievement? Or do you deny this?
Still no answer as to the effectiveness of acupuncture as attested to by the World Health Organisation. And let’s remember, every western drug you take has some unwanted and possibly harmful side effect. This is why many people today are returning to consider natural therapies and treatments. But that’s funny, acupuncture doesn’t have the side effects that the western drugs have.
No response as to the leadership of China in the area of printing, development of the compass, shadow clocks and the development of a school of logic.
Only a vicious ad hominem argument. It is clear that China has been in the forefront of scientific and technological development as far back as 2500 years ago. ,

 

[Abu]

sidbrown
You label the facts as “vicious anti-Chinese propaganda promoted by Eurocentrists” – and then have the arrogance to feign that such bigotry and prejudice is not inflammatory as the result of having no answer to the case against scientific initiation by the Catholic Church.
Since you are so uninformed as to wonder: “How was this [God’s laws of cause and effect have been discovered in science] initiated only through the Catholic Church? Other religions have taught similar”, and then pontificated that: “This is nonsense. China had a highly developed science and technology way before Europe” you have been able only to repeat the falsehood being quite unable to equate acknowledged technological progress with the innumerable facts showing their inability to develop empirical science based on organised efforts to explain nature, subject to modifications and corrections through systematic observations – theory and research, when Catholicism had initiated this.

Their failure was because, as numerous works have substantiated (by Westerners and Chinese), their conceptual frameworks hindered the development of science – their lack of belief in a transcendent Creator who endowed His creation with consistent physical laws, in turn because the conception of a divine celestial lawgiver imposing ordinances on non-human Nature never developed.

defendingthebride.com/pp/sc3/
FATHER THOMAS D. WILLIAMS, LC *National Catholic Register *(April 6-12, 2008)].
One of the most common objections to religious belief today is its supposed incompatibility with scientific knowledge.
“History shows that the natural sciences grew out of Christian culture. As the sociologist Rodney Stark has so convincingly shown (See especially For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery), science was “still-born” in the great civilizations of the ancient world, except in Christian civilization.

“Why is it that empirical science and the scientific method did not develop in China (with its sophisticated society), in India (with its philosophical schools), in Arabia (with its advanced mathematics), in Japan (with its dedicated craftsmen and technologies), or even in ancient Greece or Rome?
“The answer is fairly straightforward. Science flourished in societies where a Christian mindset understood nature to be ordered, the work of an intelligent Creator. Science grew where people assumed that the natural world is intelligible and bears the handwriting of its author.
“Far from being an obstacle to science, Christian soil was the necessary humus where science took root.
“J.L. Heilbron of the University of California-Berkeley has written:
The Roman Catholic Church gave more financial aid and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and, probably, all other, institutions.

“What can be said of astronomy can be said equally of medicine, physics, mathematics and chemistry.”

All of these scholars, from the time of his fantasy, are claimed by sidbrown to be wrong and only sidbrown conjures a mirage which he equates to truth.

 

[sidbrown]

sidbrown
You label the facts as “vicious anti-Chinese propaganda promoted by Eurocentrists” – and then have the arrogance to feign that such bigotry and prejudice is not inflammatory as the result of having no answer to the case against scientific initiation by the Catholic Church.
Since you are so uninformed as to wonder: “How was this [God’s laws of cause and effect have been discovered in science] initiated only through the Catholic Church? Other religions have taught similar”, and then pontificated that: “This is nonsense. China had a highly developed science and technology way before Europe” you have been able only to repeat the falsehood being quite unable to equate acknowledged technological progress with the innumerable facts showing their inability to develop empirical science based on organised efforts to explain nature, subject to modifications and corrections through systematic observations – theory and research, when Catholicism had initiated this.

Their failure was because, as numerous works have substantiated (by Westerners and Chinese), their conceptual frameworks hindered the development of science – their lack of belief in a transcendent Creator who endowed His creation with consistent physical laws, in turn because the conception of a divine celestial lawgiver imposing ordinances on non-human Nature never developed.

defendingthebride.com/pp/sc3/
FATHER THOMAS D. WILLIAMS, LC *National Catholic Register *(April 6-12, 2008)].
One of the most common objections to religious belief today is its supposed incompatibility with scientific knowledge.
“History shows that the natural sciences grew out of Christian culture. As the sociologist Rodney Stark has so convincingly shown (See especially For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery), science was “still-born” in the great civilizations of the ancient world, except in Christian civilization.

“Why is it that empirical science and the scientific method did not develop in China (with its sophisticated society), in India (with its philosophical schools), in Arabia (with its advanced mathematics), in Japan (with its dedicated craftsmen and technologies), or even in ancient Greece or Rome?
“The answer is fairly straightforward. Science flourished in societies where a Christian mindset understood nature to be ordered, the work of an intelligent Creator. Science grew where people assumed that the natural world is intelligible and bears the handwriting of its author.
“Far from being an obstacle to science, Christian soil was the necessary humus where science took root.
“J.L. Heilbron of the University of California-Berkeley has written:
The Roman Catholic Church gave more financial aid and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and, probably, all other, institutions.

“What can be said of astronomy can be said equally of medicine, physics, mathematics and chemistry.”

All of these scholars, from the time of his fantasy, are claimed by sidbrown to be wrong and only sidbrown conjures a mirage which he equates to truth.

We are living in the world today and if we are going to look at who contributed what to science, and how science is developing, then it is appropriate to look at the situation today. Christians today number about 2.1 billion people or about 31% of the world population. And Catholics number about 17% of the worlds population. And there are about 13 million Jews in the world today or about 0.2% of the world population. So there are about 85 times more Catholics than Jews in the world today. And yet let us take a look at the number of Jewish scientists who have attained the Nobel prize. At least 146 Jews have been awarded the Nobel prize in scientific areas such as biomedical, chemistry, economics, and physics, accounting for more than 25% of all the recipients in the world. Let’s see: 0.2% of the world population are Jews, but more than 25% of the Nobel prizes in science go to Jews. How many Catholics have been awarded the Nobel Prize in these areas of biomedical, chemistry, economics, and physics? Who are they? I know five: Erwin Schrodinger, Guglielmo Marconi, Alexis Carrel, John Eccles, and Joseph Murray. The last three are in the medical area.
So as far as the influence of Catholic doctrine on scientific achievement goes, I don’t see where these figures bear that out. Quite to the contrary, the statistics appear to show that Judaism has had a greater influence on scientific achievement today than has Catholicism. Still, we have no explanation for this phenomenon. And we have heard nothing (except inflammatory and vicious ad hominen rhetoric) concerning the fact that logic was developed and studied in China 1500 years before the scholastic school in the west. And nothing about the harmful and unwanted effects of western medicine, while the Chinese medical practices, which emphasize working with the natural mechanisms of the body, do not have these harmful side effects since the Chinese methodology is holistic in nature.

 

[Abu]

sidbrown’s totally skewed thinking is quite irrelevant to the fact that due to Her theology Christ’s Church alone initiated the development of empirical science due to Her knowledge of an intelligent personal God – attested to by all knowledgeable scholars.

The development of empirical science has proceeded from that vital infusion of reason – with the light of reason and the use of sound logic within a refined awareness of the concept of reality, which, being the special medium of every true science is implicit in empirical science – formal and sustained scientific inquiry emerged.

That concept of a rational orderly universe eluded entire civilizations yet it was indispensable for the progress of science.

 

[sidbrown]

sidbrown’s totally skewed thinking is quite irrelevant to the fact that due to Her theology Christ’s Church alone initiated the development of empirical science due to Her knowledge of an intelligent personal God – attested to by all knowledgeable scholars.

The development of empirical science has proceeded from that vital infusion of reason – with the light of reason and the use of sound logic within a refined awareness of the concept of reality, which, being the special medium of every true science is implicit in empirical science – formal and sustained scientific inquiry emerged.

That concept of a rational orderly universe eluded entire civilizations yet it was indispensable for the progress of science.

Scientific inquiry and empirical investigation of the natural world began in antiquity in China and in Greece. We can see that by reading Aristotle, Theophrastus and Pliny the Elder. These investgations had nothing at all to do with Catholic doctrine. And it was not Catholc doctrine that had any influence on Ibn al-Haytham, or Abu Rayhan Biruni. Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham (Bengali: আবু আলী আল-হাসান ইবনে আল-হাসান ইবনে আল-হাতেম) (Arabic: ابو علي، الحسن بن الحسن بن الهيثم, Afghani: ابن هیثم, (965 in Basra - c. 1039 in Cairo) was a scientist who contributed significantly in a variety of fields, including the nature of light and the laws of geometric optics, image formation and visual perception, as well as to physics, mathematics, anatomy, astronomy, engineering, medicine, ophthalmology, philosophy, psychology, and to science in general with his early application of the scientific method. And of course, the great scientist Abū Rayḥān Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Bīrūnī was a scientist and physicist, an anthropologist and comparative sociologist, an astronomer, astrologer, and chemist, an encyclopedist and historian, a geographer and traveler, a geodesist and geologist, a mathematician, a pharmacist and psychologist, an Islamic philosopher and theologian, and an scholar and teacher.
George Sarton, the father of the history of science, described Biruni as “one of the very greatest scientists of Islam, and, all considered, one of the greatest of all times.”
And both of these great scientists were Muslim.
And we know that science is developing even today. Why are there so few Catholic winners of the Nobel Prize in science today and so many Jewish scholars relative to the percentage of each group in the world population today?

 

[Abu]

For all who participated in empirical science, the question then is: in what faith did the scientist believe? It is the formal and sustained scientific inquiry which demonstrates the fact that Christ’s Catholic Church in Her philosophy and theology enabled this revolution. 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.” (Thomas E Woods, How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, 2005, p 79). How different to the reason and order of the personal God of Catholicism.

An important development was the condemnation by the Bishop of Paris, in 1277, of 219 propositions that the professors at the University of Paris were forbidden to teach of Aristotelian concepts adopted by the Latin Averroists (after Averroes, famous Muslim commentator on Aristotle) that were irreconcilable with the Catholic understanding of God and the world.
Richard Dales, in 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,” around since antiquity, and this prompted new approaches – “this condemnation catalyzed new approaches to this central question of the behaviour of the heavenly bodies.” (Woods, op.cit., p 90-93).

There is no getting away from the fact that as Father Thomas D. Williams, LC, in National Catholic Register, April 6-12, 2008, affirmed: “The answer is fairly straightforward. Science flourished in societies where a Christian mindset understood nature to be ordered, the work of an intelligent Creator. Science grew where people assumed that the natural world is intelligible and bears the handwriting of its author." Further, “The insistence on the uniqueness and value of each person, by virtue of the immortal soul, were nowhere to be found in the ancient world.” (Woods, op.cit., p 203).

 

[sidbrown]

There is no getting away from the fact that as Father Thomas D. Williams, LC, in National Catholic Register, April 6-12, 2008, affirmed: “The answer is fairly straightforward. Science flourished in societies where a Christian mindset understood nature to be ordered, the work of an intelligent Creator. Science grew where people assumed that the natural world is intelligible and bears the handwriting of its author." Further, “The insistence on the uniqueness and value of each person, by virtue of the immortal soul, were nowhere to be found in the ancient world.” (Woods, op.cit., p 203).

In today’s society, scientists who have achieved outstanding results are rewarded by the Noble Prize in Science. It is clear from the number of Nobel prizes awarded to Jews, that that Science is flourishing in non-Christian culture, such as the Jewish culture of today.

 

[sidbrown]

For all who participated in empirical science, the question then is: in what faith did the scientist believe? ).

The following Muslim scientists in the field of astronomy believed in Islam:
Astronomers and Astrophysicists
Khalid ibn Yazid (Calid)
Jafar al-Sadiq
Yaqūb ibn Tāriq
Ibrahim al-Fazari
Muhammad al-Fazari
Naubakht
Al-Khwarizmi, also a mathematician
Ja’far ibn Muhammad Abu Ma’shar al-Balkhi (Albumasar)
Al-Farghani
Banū Mūsā (Ben Mousa)
Ja’far Muhammad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir
Ahmad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir
Al-Hasan ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir
Maryam al-Asturlabi
Al-Majriti
Muhammad ibn Jābir al-Harrānī al-Battānī (Albatenius)
Al-Farabi (Abunaser)
Abd Al-Rahman Al Sufi
Abu Sa’id Gorgani
Kushyar ibn Labban
Abū Ja’far al-Khāzin
Al-Mahani
Al-Marwazi
Al-Nayrizi
Al-Saghani
Al-Farghani
Abu Nasr Mansur
Abū Sahl al-Qūhī (Kuhi)
Abu-Mahmud al-Khujandi
Abū al-Wafā’ al-Būzjānī
Ibn Yunus
Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen)
Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī
Avicenna
Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Zarqālī (Arzachel)
Omar Khayyám
Al-Khazini
Ibn Bajjah (Avempace)
Ibn Tufail (Abubacer)
Nur Ed-Din Al Betrugi (Alpetragius)
Averroes
Al-Jazari
Sharaf al-Dīn al-Tūsī
Anvari
Mo’ayyeduddin Urdi
Nasir al-Din Tusi
Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi
Ibn al-Shatir
Shams al-Dīn al-Samarqandī
Jamshīd al-Kāshī
Ulugh Beg, also a mathematician
Taqi al-Din Muhammad ibn Ma’ruf, Ottoman astronomer
Ahmad Nahavandi
Haly Abenragel
Abolfadl Harawi
Kerim Kerimov, a founder of Soviet space program, a lead architect behind first human spaceflight (Vostok 1), and the lead architect of the first space stations (Salyut and Mir)[1][2]
Farouk El-Baz, a NASA scientist involved in the first Moon landings with the Apollo program[3]
Abdul Kalam
Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud
Muhammed Faris
Abdul Ahad Mohmand
Talgat Musabayev
Anousheh Ansari
Amir Ansari
Sultana Nurun Nahar, specialist in atomic astrophysics and spectroscopy

 

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For all who participated in empirical science, the question then is: in what faith did the scientist believe? ).

The following Msulim scinetists in the field of chemistry believed in Islam:
Khalid ibn Yazid (Calid)
Jafar al-Sadiq
Jābir ibn Hayyān (Geber), father of chemistry[4][5][6]
Abbas Ibn Firnas (Armen Firman)
Al-Kindi (Alkindus)
Al-Majriti
Ibn Miskawayh
Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī
Avicenna
Al-Khazini
Nasir al-Din Tusi
Ibn Khaldun
Sake Dean Mahomet
Salimuzzaman Siddiqui
Al-Khwārizmī, Father of Al-Gabra, (Mathematics)
Ahmed H. Zewail, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1999[7]
Mostafa El-Sayed

 

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For all who participated in empirical science, the question then is: in what faith did the scientist believe?.

The following Muslim scientists in the field of Economics and social science, believed in Islam:
Abu Hanifa an-Nu‘man (699-767), economist
Abu Yusuf (731-798), economist
Ishaq bin Ali al-Rahwi (854–931), economist
Al-Farabi (Alpharabius) (873–950), economist
Al-Saghani (d. 990), one of the earliest historians of science[8]
Shams al-Mo’ali Abol-hasan Ghaboos ibn Wushmgir (Qabus) (d. 1012), economist
Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī (973-1048), considered the “first anthropologist”[9] and father of Indology[10]
Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (980–1037), economist
Ibn Miskawayh (b. 1030), economist
Al-Ghazali (Algazel) (1058–1111), economist
Al-Mawardi (1075–1158), economist
Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī (Tusi) (1201–1274), economist
Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288), sociologist
Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328), economist
Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406), forerunner of social sciences[11] such as demography,[12] cultural history,[13] historiography,[14] philosophy of history,[15] sociology[12][15] and economics[16][17]
Al-Maqrizi (1364–1442), economist
Akhtar Hameed Khan, Pakistani social scientist; pioneer of microcredit
Mahbub ul Haq, Pakistani economist; developer of Human Development Index and founder of Human Development Report[18][19]

 

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For all who participated in empirical science, the question then is: in what faith did the scientist believe? ).

The following Muslim scientists in the field of geography and earth science believed in Islam:
Al-Masudi, the “Herodotus of the Arabs”, and pioneer of historical geography[20]
Al-Kindi, pioneer of environmental science[21]
Qusta ibn Luqa
Ibn Al-Jazzar
Al-Tamimi
Al-Masihi
Ali ibn Ridwan
Muhammad al-Idrisi, also a cartographer
Ahmad ibn Fadlan
Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī, father of geodesy,[9][12] considered the first geologist and “first anthropologist”[9]
Avicenna
Ibn Jumay
Abd-el-latif
Averroes
Ibn al-Nafis
Ibn al-Quff
Ibn Battuta
Ibn Khaldun
Piri Reis
Evliya Çelebi
Zaghloul El-Naggar
Abdullahi Anshur Jimale

 

[sidbrown]

For all who participated in empirical science, the question then is: in what faith did the scientist believe? ).

The following Muslim mathematicians believed in Islam:
Al-Hajjāj ibn Yūsuf ibn Matar
Khalid ibn Yazid (Calid)
Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī (Algorismi) - father of algebra[22] and algorithms[23]
‘Abd al-Hamīd ibn Turk
Abū al-Hasan ibn Alī al-Qalasādī (1412–1482), pioneer of symbolic algebra[24]
Abū Kāmil Shujā ibn Aslam
Al-Abbās ibn Said al-Jawharī
Al-Kindi (Alkindus)
Banū Mūsā (Ben Mousa)
Ja’far Muhammad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir
Al-Hasan ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir
Al-Mahani
Ahmed ibn Yusuf
Al-Majriti
Muhammad ibn Jābir al-Harrānī al-Battānī (Albatenius)
Al-Farabi (Abunaser)
Al-Khalili
Al-Nayrizi
Abū Ja’far al-Khāzin
Brethren of Purity
Abu’l-Hasan al-Uqlidisi
Al-Saghani
Abū Sahl al-Qūhī
Abu-Mahmud al-Khujandi
Abū al-Wafā’ al-Būzjānī
Ibn Sahl
Al-Sijzi
Ibn Yunus
Abu Nasr Mansur
Kushyar ibn Labban
Al-Karaji
Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen/Alhazen)
Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī
Ibn Tahir al-Baghdadi
Al-Nasawi
Al-Jayyani
Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Zarqālī (Arzachel)
Al-Mu’taman ibn Hud
Omar Khayyám
Al-Khazini
Ibn Bajjah (Avempace)
Al-Ghazali (Algazel)
Al-Marrakushi
Al-Samawal
Averroes
Avicenna
Hunayn ibn Ishaq
Ibn al-Banna’
Ibn al-Shatir
Ja’far ibn Muhammad Abu Ma’shar al-Balkhi (Albumasar)
Jamshīd al-Kāshī
Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī
Muḥyi al-Dīn al-Maghribī
Maryam Mirzakhani
Mo’ayyeduddin Urdi
Muhammad Baqir Yazdi
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, 13th century Persian mathematician and philosopher
Qāḍī Zāda al-Rūmī
Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi
Shams al-Dīn al-Samarqandī
Sharaf al-Dīn al-Tūsī
Taqi al-Din Muhammad ibn Ma’ruf
Ulugh Beg
Lotfi Asker Zadeh, Iranian computer scientist; founder of Fuzzy Mathematics and fuzzy set theory[25][26]
Cumrun Vafa
Jeffrey Lang Professor at the University of Kansas converted to Islam from atheism

 

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For all who participated in empirical science, the question then is: in what faith did the scientist believe?).

The following scientists in the area of Biology, neuroscience and psychology believed in Islam:
Ibn Sirin (654–728), author of work on dreams and dream interpretation[27]
Al-Kindi (Alkindus), pioneer of psychotherapy and music therapy[28]
Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari, pioneer of psychiatry, clinical psychiatry and clinical psychology[29]
Ahmed ibn Sahl al-Balkhi, pioneer of mental health,[30] medical psychology, cognitive psychology, cognitive therapy, psychophysiology and psychosomatic medicine[31]
Najab ud-din Muhammad, pioneer of mental disorder classification[32]
Al-Farabi (Alpharabius), pioneer of social psychology and consciousness studies[33]
Ali ibn Abbas al-Majusi (Haly Abbas), pioneer of neuroanatomy, neurobiology and neurophysiology[33]
Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (Abulcasis), pioneer of neurosurgery[34]
Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), founder of experimental psychology, psychophysics, phenomenology and visual perception[35]
Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī, pioneer of reaction time[36]
Avicenna (Ibn Sina), pioneer of physiological psychology,[32] neuropsychiatry,[37] thought experiment, self-awareness and self-consciousness[38]
Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar), pioneer of neurology and neuropharmacology[34]
Averroes, pioneer of Parkinson’s disease[34]
Ibn Tufail, pioneer of tabula rasa and nature versus nurture[39]
Teepu Siddique, neurologist and pioneer in neurogenetics and ALS research.
Pardis Sabeti

 

[sidbrown]

For all who participated in empirical science, the question then is: in what faith did the scientist believe? ).

The following Muslim scientists in the field of physics and engineering beleived in Islam:
Jafar al-Sadiq, 8th century
Banū Mūsā (Ben Mousa), 9th century
Ja’far Muhammad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir
Ahmad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir
Al-Hasan ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir
Abbas Ibn Firnas (Armen Firman), 9th century
Al-Saghani, 10th century
Abū Sahl al-Qūhī (Kuhi), 10th century
Ibn Sahl, 10th century
Ibn Yunus, 10th century
Al-Karaji, 10th century
Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen), 11th century Iraqi scientist, father of optics,[63] pioneer of scientific method[64] and experimental physics,[65] considered the “first scientist”[66]
Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī, 11th century, pioneer of experimental mechanics[67]
Avicenna, 11th century
Al-Khazini, 12th century
Ibn Bajjah (Avempace), 12th century
Hibat Allah Abu’l-Barakat al-Baghdaadi (Nathanel), 12th century
Averroes, 12th century Andalusian mathematician, philosopher and medical expert
Al-Jazari, 13th century civil engineer, father of robotics,[6] father of modern engineering[68]
Nasir al-Din Tusi, 13th century
Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi, 13th century
Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī, 13th century
Hasan al-Rammah, 13th century
Ibn al-Shatir, 14th century
Taqi al-Din Muhammad ibn Ma’ruf, 16th century
Hezarfen Ahmet Celebi, 17th century
Lagari Hasan Çelebi, 17th century
Sake Dean Mahomet, 18th century
Tipu Sultan, 18th century Indian mechanician
Fazlur Khan, 20th century Bangladeshi mechanician
Mahmoud Hessaby, 20th century Iranian physicist
Ali Javan, 20th century Iranian physicist
Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie, 20th century Indonesian aerospace engineer and president
Abdul Kalam, Indian aeronautical engineer and nuclear scientist
Abdus Salam, Pakistani Theoretical Physicists and a Nobel Prize winner(1979).
Mehran Kardar, Iranian theoretical physicist
Cumrun Vafa, Iranian mathematical physicist
Nima Arkani-Hamed, American-born Iranian physicist
Abdel Nasser Tawfik, Egyptian-born German Particle Physisist
Munir Nayfeh Palestinian-American Particle Physicist
Riazuddin, Pakistani theoretical physicist
Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistani nuclear scientist
Munir Ahmad Khan, Pakistani nuclear engineer
Pervez Hoodbhoy, Pakistani nuclear physicist
Ali Musharafa, Egyptian nuclear physicist
Sameera Moussa, Egyptian nuclear physicist
Ateeq ur Rahman,Indiaian Engineering
and there are more…