Science knowldege religion bible

[rossum]

PS In case you didn’t realize it, empirical data are interpreted by men and re-affirmed by men (called scientists). Not only that, these interpretations change every decade. If you’re going to throw the whole man-made artificial religion thing at us, realize that your lovely and infallible science changes every decade. At least ours hasn’t changed for 2,000 years.

Note: I’m not deprecating science. I enjoy reading it myself. But it shouldn’t be uplifted into some sort of false idol.

The Bible is also interpreted by fallible men, and some of them have interpreted it wrongly. The Church has changed its attitude on married priests, slavery, the treatment of heretics and usury in the last 2,000 years to name but four.

Science is based on known facts and since the known facts change science also changes: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” - John Maynard Keynes.

rossum

 

[edwest2]

Changeable facts? Yes, of course. Let’s build a society based on Fact Set 1. What? We were wrong? OK everyone, let’s go with Fact Set 2.

The Church teaches that Sacred Scripture is the Word of God. The Holy Spirit was directly involved in its assembly.

The concept of Change has become an idol. A thing sought for and even revered. “The only constant is change.”? Not true. A stable society is required.

And the information superhighway has turned into the opinion superhighway for the most part. The answer is the answer. 2 + 2 = 4. But wait, shouldn’t there be another answer? Can’t we change the answer? No.

God bless,
Ed

 

[awatkins69]

The Bible is also interpreted by fallible men, and some of them have interpreted it wrongly. The Church has changed its attitude on married priests, slavery, the treatment of heretics and usury in the last 2,000 years to name but four.

Science is based on known facts and since the known facts change science also changes: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” - John Maynard Keynes.

rossum

Well, that they interpreted it wrongly is a matter of your private opinion. Whereas it seems appropriate to those who find a divine revelation necessary, that a good God would give some way in which they could interpret said revelation without error. All thing you listed are matters of discipline. 1. The Church never said there is anything wrong with married priests. They still exist in the Eastern Catholic Churches. 2. Slavery is not inherently wrong, though it’s far better and more Christian to not have it. Thus the Church outlawed it. 3. Treatment of heretics was left to the secular laws. The Inquisition simply identified whether one was a heretic, and allowed the secular authorities to give punishment. 4. Usury is tolerated as an evil in the same way the Church dealt with prostitution.

Firstly, Keynes was an economist. His data were subject to change all the time, because that’s the nature of economies. They change. Laws of physics don’t. Just the theories. Facts do not change. The whole point of scientific discovery is to come upon an explanation which is in conformity with an objective truth about the phenomena we experience. It presupposes that there *is *some truth. That there are facts that don’t change.

 

[rossum]

Well, that they interpreted it wrongly is a matter of your private opinion.

I think that most people would agree that Aquinas, Luther and Calvin cannot all be correct and yet all were theologians interpreting the Bible.

Slavery is not inherently wrong

Did you read that before you posted it? Remind me of that next time I feel as if I want to convert to Christianity.

Firstly, Keynes was an economist. His data were subject to change all the time, because that’s the nature of economies. They change. Laws of physics don’t. Just the theories. Facts do not change.

Individual facts do not change. The body of facts does change. Lord Kelvin calculated the age of the earth at 20 million years using all the facts he had available. Adding in the newly discovered fact of radioactivity he had to change his calculations. All of science works with a changing body of facts. That is why Newton’s theory of gravity was replaced by Einstein’s General Relativity which will in turn be replaced by a theory of Quantum Gravity.

rossum

 

[awatkins69]

I think that most people would agree that Aquinas, Luther and Calvin cannot all be correct and yet all were theologians interpreting the Bible.

Aquinas interpreted within the confines of Church teaching that has lasted 2,000 years. Luther and Calvin did not.

Did you read that before you posted it? Remind me of that next time I feel as if I want to convert to Christianity.

I’m not trying to convert you. That’s the decision of your free will and grace. Read Aristotle’s “Politics”. Either way, the Church generally did not approve slavery. Type in “slavery” in papalencyclicals.net and all you’re going to find are condemnations. The destruction of slavery was in fact due to Christian civilization. Read “The Servile State”. Or even wikipedia’s article on the Catholic Church and slavery.

Individual facts do not change. The body of facts does change. Lord Kelvin calculated the age of the earth at 20 million years using all the facts he had available. Adding in the newly discovered fact of radioactivity he had to change his calculations. All of science works with a changing body of facts. That is why Newton’s theory of gravity was replaced by Einstein’s General Relativity which will in turn be replaced by a theory of Quantum Gravity.

That’s my point. And yet the poster I was speaking to spoke of science as some sort of infallible code of God. It is a code of God in some sense, but not some Pythagorean way that this person makes it out to be.

 

[Abu]

Good posts awatkins69

Rossum
The Bible is also interpreted by fallible men, and some of them have interpreted it wrongly. The Church has changed its attitude on married priests, slavery, the treatment of heretics and usury in the last 2,000 years to name but four.

Incorrect. It’s alarming but typical that so many don’t know of what they speak. I shall add a few further truths.

The Catholic Church gave us the Bible by infallibly declaring which writings are the inspired Word of God. Self-interpretation has no guarantee of truth.

1. The celibate priesthood is from Christ and an Apostolic norm which exists for all bishops, and for all Latin Rite priests except for those already married and converting from a separated ecclesial community who may be accepted into the priesthood after formation.
2. “There existed, of course, the practice of various types of slavery before the 15th century. However, it was not until the 15th century, and with growing frequency from the 16th to the 19th centuries, that racial slavery as we know it became a major problem. It is this form of servitude that is called to mind when we think today of the institution of slavery, and is the type which was to prevail in parts of the New World for over four centuries. The very existence of these many papal teachings during this particular period of history is a strong indication that from the viewpoint of the Magisterium, there must have developed a moral problem of a different sort than any previously encountered.

“On January 13, 1435, Eugene IV issued from Florence the bull Sicut Dudum. Sent to Bishop Ferdinand, located at Rubicon on the island of Lanzarote, this bull condemned the enslavement of the black natives of the newly colonized Canary Islands off the coast of Africa.”
From J. Budziszewski, “Preface” from The Line Through the Heart: Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction (Downer’s Grove, IL: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2009).
3) Deuteronomy 23:20: “You may charge interest to a foreigner,” indicating that interest-taking is not presented as inherently evil or sinful. The larger ethical issue of the morality of interest-taking is not addressed in the Old Testament. Rather, interest was viewed only as a problem of social justice. The problem of commutative justice, i.e., of equivalence of value in an exchange of present for future goods, remained quite untouched (Thomas F. Divine, S.J., Interest, 10).
With developing free enterprise, the Church defined what is meant by usury. Session X of the Fifth Lateran Council (1515) gave its exact meaning: “For that is the real meaning of usury: when, from its use, a thing which produces nothing is applied to the acquiring of gain and profit without any work, any expense or any risk.”
Consequently, loaning money did involve loss of profit to the lender and further risk of loss from delay in returning the money loaned, justifying interest that is just and justifiable.

 

[Abu]

It’s not strange that greylorn has been quite unable to back up his rot about the Church teaching a “flat earth” idea, but how strange that this “atheist” now fails to acknowledge his gross error but as a reaction ridicules the facts and those who produce the facts. How shallow.

That he can appreciate the Catholic Dr Michael Behe, the author of *Darwin’s Black Box *who makes an overwhelming case against Darwin on the biochemical level while detailing his facts of irreducible complexity, may be doubtful, but does leave open the possibility of progress.

Yet he piles absurdity upon absurdity –“the physical universe, has been left to the interpretation of atheists…. He gave only a few of us the quality of mind capable of doing this.” Yes, it is the arrogance of self-deception.

Readers will have noticed that according to a survey of members of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, conducted by the Pew Research Center in May and June this year [2009], a majority of scientists (51%) say they believe in God or a higher power, while 41% say they do not. (post #10), plus the fact that Catholic theology was essential for the rise of science in the West, while stifled elsewhere.

 

[buffalo]

When the pagans thought the world chaotic and not worth studying, Catholics knew the world to be intelligible and worthy of study because they knew an intelligent God created it all.

 

[greylorn]

PS In case you didn’t realize it, empirical data are interpreted by men and re-affirmed by men (called scientists). Not only that, these interpretations change every decade. If you’re going to throw the whole man-made artificial religion thing at us, realize that your lovely and infallible science changes every decade. At least ours hasn’t changed for 2,000 years.

Then you even have a half-baked concept of the history of Christianity and of the Church.

Thought is a living thing. Perhaps the “change or die” rule applies to it as well as to biological species. It definitely applies to the human mind.

Perhaps a difference between our perspectives comes from the fact that you study religion and read science. I study both.

There is a lot of material on all subjects, too much for one mind to absorb in a lifetime. Neither of us can be a thorough student of all subjects that interest us. We must specialize, not simply in whatever we need to know to make a buck, but within the range of our outside interests.

I specialize in those aspects of science and religion which are deeply interrelated, and which affect all aspects of human thought. So far as I’m concerned, arcane proofs for the existence of God are irrelevant. Not a one, including Aquinas, tackles the relevant aspect of this question, which is, what are the properties of the God whose existence is being proven.

It is easy enough, for example, to make a good case that the universe and life are created. If the case is made for a creator, the question then remains, what are the properties of this creator and why would he generate a universe?

It is also trivial to prove that the omniscient, omnipotent God of Christianity cannot exist.

This leaves the interesting possibility that there actually is a creator of the universe, Who has been incompetently defined by men.

Perhaps it is time to climb off your 2000 year old toadstool and do some serious thinking, before the powerful and evil force of atheism overwhelms this nation, and thus the planet.

 

[greylorn]

It’s not strange that greylorn has been quite unable to back up his rot about the Church teaching a “flat earth” idea, but how strange that this “atheist” now fails to acknowledge his gross error but as a reaction ridicules the facts and those who produce the facts. How shallow.

That he can appreciate the Catholic Dr Michael Behe, the author of *Darwin’s Black Box *who makes an overwhelming case against Darwin on the biochemical level while detailing his facts of irreducible complexity, may be doubtful, but does leave open the possibility of progress.

Yet he piles absurdity upon absurdity –“the physical universe, has been left to the interpretation of atheists…. He gave only a few of us the quality of mind capable of doing this.” Yes, it is the arrogance of self-deception.

Readers will have noticed that according to a survey of members of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, conducted by the Pew Research Center in May and June this year [2009], a majority of scientists (51%) say they believe in God or a higher power, while 41% say they do not. (post #10), plus the fact that Catholic theology was essential for the rise of science in the West, while stifled elsewhere.

I have only the time to deal with one of your largely incorrect assertions, the last.

The Christian Church, not the Catholic Church, was helpful to the development of scientific thought by not getting in the way of it, and not threatening those who studied and wrote about it with institutionalized torture (The Inquisition), as the Catholic Church did in Galileo’s case. You might also want to research Giordano Bruno, the brilliant Catholic monk who was burned at the stake for promoting a theory of evolution, among other ideas which are now common scientific knowledge today.

The great physicists of the 19th century were often Christians, seldom Catholic. They nonetheless remained mindful of the need to be very careful of ideas which might impinge upon religious beliefs. For example, many physicists besides myself have interpreted James Maxwell’s discussion of what came to be called, “Maxwell’s Daemon,” as a description of a property that would be required by the Creator.

You are very good at belittling those who disagree with you, Abu, but except for the possession of a closed and limited mind, untempered by significant understanding, you seem poorly qualified to do so. Your crude and repetitive insults indicate an absence of imagination.

 

[awatkins69]

Then you even have a half-baked concept of the history of Christianity and of the Church.

Thought is a living thing. Perhaps the “change or die” rule applies to it as well as to biological species. It definitely applies to the human mind.

Perhaps a difference between our perspectives comes from the fact that you study religion and read science. I study both.

There is a lot of material on all subjects, too much for one mind to absorb in a lifetime. Neither of us can be a thorough student of all subjects that interest us. We must specialize, not simply in whatever we need to know to make a buck, but within the range of our outside interests.

I specialize in those aspects of science and religion which are deeply interrelated, and which affect all aspects of human thought. So far as I’m concerned, arcane proofs for the existence of God are irrelevant. **Not a one, including Aquinas, tackles the relevant aspect of this question, which is, what are the properties of the God whose existence is being proven. **

It is easy enough, for example, to make a good case that the universe and life are created. If the case is made for a creator, the question then remains, what are the properties of this creator and why would he generate a universe?

It is also trivial to prove that the omniscient, omnipotent God of Christianity cannot exist.

This leaves the interesting possibility that there actually is a creator of the universe, Who has been incompetently defined by men.

Perhaps it is time to climb off your 2000 year old toadstool and do some serious thinking, before the powerful and evil force of atheism overwhelms this nation, and thus the planet.

To start off, it seems pretty certain you do *not *study philosophy. You might be right in general that I read science, but I have studied biology in particular, since it is my favorite science.

Basically the only substantial statement I have to reply to is the one in bold. Your ignorance of philosophy is conspicuous. For one so enlightened as your modern self, you have almost no knowledge of even the basic propositions of the most important philosophers to the most important questions of existence. You obviously have not even taken a cursory glance at Saint Thomas’ works. How about before making blunders like that at least look up the name on Wikipedia? In the Summa Theologica there are approximately 500 pages dedicated to abstracting the attributes of God based on the conclusions of the Quinque Viae. You can read it all right here on the internet: newadvent.org/summa/1.htm

Perhaps it is time for you to get over your errors, and start doing some seriously serious thinking, like Sts. Thomas or Bonaventure.

PS Please, I hope you understand that I’m not trying to be mean or anything. Text does not convey tone very well. But you must understand that you’re pontificating on something you don’t seem to have much knowledge of.

 

[awatkins69]

I have only the time to deal with one of your largely incorrect assertions, the last.

The Christian Church, not the Catholic Church, was helpful to the development of scientific thought by not getting in the way of it, and not threatening those who studied and wrote about it with institutionalized torture (The Inquisition), as the Catholic Church did in Galileo’s case. You might also want to research Giordano Bruno, the brilliant Catholic monk who was burned at the stake for promoting a theory of evolution, among other ideas which are now common scientific knowledge today.

The great physicists of the 19th century were often Christians, seldom Catholic. They nonetheless remained mindful of the need to be very careful of ideas which might impinge upon religious beliefs. For example, many physicists besides myself have interpreted James Maxwell’s discussion of what came to be called, “Maxwell’s Daemon,” as a description of a property that would be required by the Creator.

You are very good at belittling those who disagree with you, Abu, but except for the possession of a closed and limited mind, untempered by significant understanding, you seem poorly qualified to do so. Your crude and repetitive insults indicate an absence of imagination.

Errors, errors, errors my friend.

Paragraph 1: Firstly, the Catholic Church is the only Church that traces its history back to the start of Christianity while adhering to the same beliefs of the early Christians. Secondly, the Church had a positive influence on science, not just neutral. Christian scientists were extremely important in development of the scientific method. Try looking up Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, and Descartes for starters. Thirdly, for the famous Galileo case, Galileo got in trouble for presenting heliocentrism as more than just a hypothesis, as absolute truth. Father Nicolaus Copernicus had no problems at all, and even dedicated his “De Revolutionibus” to the Holy Father. Fourthly, this myth of Giordano Bruno being denounced for his science is absurd. Giordano Bruno was condemned as a heretic by the Holy Office for these errors:
* Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic Faith and speaking against it and its ministers.
* Holding erroneous opinions about the Trinity, about Christ’s divinity and Incarnation.
* Holding erroneous opinions about Christ.
* Holding erroneous opinions about Transubstantiation and Mass.
* Claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity.
* Believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes.
* Dealing in magics and divination.
* Denying the Virginity of Mary.

Paragraph 2: Come on man. There are so many Catholic scientists it’s not funny. Here you go:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_Catholic_scientist-clerics
More here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Roman_Catholic_scientist-clerics
Your Big Bang theory was conceptualized by the Monsignor Georges Lemaitre. Not to mention the number of Jesuit modern physics professors.
Paragraph 3: I’d be careful. It seems you’re the one who has the closed mind. You like to perpetuate this false dichotomy myth.

 

[Abu]

greylorn
The Christian Church, not the Catholic Church, was helpful to the development of scientific thought by not getting in the way of it, and not threatening those who studied and wrote about it with institutionalized torture (The Inquisition), as the Catholic Church did in Galileo’s case.

Face Reality
All you can do is to complain – you are not being insulted, your errors are being laid bare. What an enormous capacity you have for error, and now you come back spewing more error by claiming that the Catholic Church threatened with torture those who studied and wrote about scientific thought including Galileo!

1. “The rise of science was not an extension of classical learning. It was the natural outgrowth of Christian doctrine: nature exists because it was created by God. In order to love and honor God, it is necessary to fully appreciate his handiwork. Because God is perfect, his handiwork functions in accord with immutable principles. By the full use of our God-given powers of reason and observation, it ought to be possible to discover these principles.

“These were the crucial ideas that explain why science arose in Christian Europe and nowhere else.” The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark, Random House, 2005, p 22-23].

1. Alfred North Whitehead, F.R.S., knew that Catholic theology was essential for the rise of science in the West, while stifled elsewhere. He explained: “The greatest contribution of medievalism to the scientific movement [was] the inexpugnable belief that …there is a secret, a secret which can be unveiled. How has this conviction been so vividly implanted in the European mind?..It must come from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher. Every detail was supervised and ordered: the search into nature could only result in the vindication of the faith in rationality.” [E.L. Jones, 1987; in Stark, op.cit., p 15].

See *Catholicism and Science *by Rodney Stark (from Catalyst 9/2004) at:
catholicleague.org/research/catholicism_and_science.htm

1. Galileo was wrong in his interpretation of the Bible. He was wrong in his physics. He was not tortured, nor threatened with torture. From Ockham through Copernicus, the development of the heliocentric model of the solar system was the product of the universities – that most Catholic innovation. From the start, the medieval Christian university was a place created and run by scholars devoted entirely to knowledge. Buridan, Oresme, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Bacon, Newton, all developed empirical science from Catholic theology. The system of Copernicus was never denounced.

 

[rossum]

From Ockham through Copernicus, the development of the heliocentric model of the solar system was the product of the universities – that most Catholic innovation.

Please learn some history. There were universities in China and the Islamic world before there were universities in Europe. Al-Azhar in Cairo was founded in 970 CE. Nanjing University in China was founded in 258 CE.

rossum

 

[awatkins69]

The type of university system we know today was almost solely influenced by the medieval university. Properly speaking, the Nanjing University only became a comprehensive learning center in 475, 50 years after the University of Constantinople. I’m not doubting that the Chinese civilization was extremely advanced. But Western universities, by far the main type in the world, come from the Catholic Church quite plain and simple. Certainly the university system as a whole did.

 

[inocente]

I remember reading years ago that Science came about because of Religious people who studied God’s world.

I never know whether to believe Wikipedia, but a quick summary of its entry on the history of science is:

The earliest natural science dates from Sumer (3500 BC) and ancient Greece (700 BC). The earliest mathematics dates from India (3000 BC). Some of these folk were presumably religious.

Western science dates from the 12th century, and was spurred by the translation of Greek, Arabic, Indian and Chinese works. These then influenced people such as Duns Scotus and Bacon.

How do we show from History, Bible, religious philosphy or whatever that knowledge of natural revelation is worth knowing and is profitable?

Compare the results of going to a witch doctor with visiting a scientifically trained doctor.

 

[buffalo]

Then you even have a half-baked concept of the history of Christianity and of the Church.

Thought is a living thing. Perhaps the “change or die” rule applies to it as well as to biological species. It definitely applies to the human mind.

Perhaps a difference between our perspectives comes from the fact that you study religion and read science. I study both.

There is a lot of material on all subjects, too much for one mind to absorb in a lifetime. Neither of us can be a thorough student of all subjects that interest us. We must specialize, not simply in whatever we need to know to make a buck, but within the range of our outside interests.

I specialize in those aspects of science and religion which are deeply interrelated, and which affect all aspects of human thought. So far as I’m concerned, arcane proofs for the existence of God are irrelevant. Not a one, including Aquinas, tackles the relevant aspect of this question, which is, what are the properties of the God whose existence is being proven.

It is easy enough, for example, to make a good case that the universe and life are created. If the case is made for a creator, the question then remains, what are the properties of this creator and why would he generate a universe?

It is also trivial to prove that the omniscient, omnipotent God of Christianity cannot exist.

This leaves the interesting possibility that there actually is a creator of the universe, Who has been incompetently defined by men.

Perhaps it is time to climb off your 2000 year old toadstool and do some serious thinking, before the powerful and evil force of atheism overwhelms this nation, and thus the planet.

Which one do you disagree with?

1. 
   *]The Attributes of God in General
   *] The Divine Attributes are really identical among themselves and with the Divine Essence. (De fide.) The Attributes of the Divine Being
   *] God is absolutely perfect. (De fide.)
   *] God is actually infinite in every perfection. (De fide.)
   *] God is absolutely simple. (De fide.)
   *] There is only One God. (De fide.)
   *] The One God is, in the ontological sense, The True God. (De fide.)
   *] God possesses an infinite power of cognition. (De fide.)
   *] God is absolute Veracity. (De fide.)
   *] God is absolutely faithful. (De fide.)
   *] God is absolute ontological Goodness in Himself and in relation to others. (De fide.)
   *] God is absolute Moral Goodness or Holiness. (De fide.) D 1782.
   *] God is absolute Benignity. (De fide.) D1782.
   *] God is absolute Beauty. D1782.
   *] God is absolutely immutable. (De fide.)
   *] God is eternal. (De fide.)
   *] God is immense or absolutely immeasurable. (De fide.)
   *] God is everywhere present in created space. (De fide.) The Attributes of the Divine Life
   *] God’s knowledge is infinite. (De fide.)
   *] God’s knowledge is purely and simply actual.
   *] God’s knowledge is subsistent
   *] God’s knowledge is comprehensive
   *] God’s knowledge is independent of extra-divine things
   *] The primary and formal object of the Divine Cognition is God Himself. (Scientia contemplationis)
   *] God knows all that is merely possible by the knowledge of simple intelligence (scientia simplicis intelligentiae). (De fide.)
   *] God knows all real things in the past, the present and the future (Scientia visionis). (De fide.)
   *] By knowledge of vision (scientia visionis) God also foresees the free acts of the rational creatures with infallible certainty. (De fide.)
   *] God also knows the conditioned future free actions with infallible certainty (Scientia futuribilium). (Sent. communis.)
   *] God’s Divine will is infinite. (De fide.)
   *] God loves Himself of necessity, but loves and wills the creation of extra-Divine things, on the other hand, with freedom. (De fide.)
   *] God is almighty. (De fide.)
   *] God is the Lord of the heavens and of the earth. (De fide.) D 1782.
   *] God is infinitely just. (De fide.)
   *] God is infinitely merciful. (De fide.)

 

[Moonstruck888]

I specialize in those aspects of science and religion which are deeply interrelated, and which affect all aspects of human thought.

Satements like this leave me with the unpleasant feeling that you must have studied at Patriot Bible University alongside convicted fraudster Kent Hovind.

 

[JohnDamian]

Satements like this leave me with the unpleasant feeling that you must have studied at Patriot Bible University alongside convicted fraudster Kent Hovind.

Now now; that’s hardly charitable - after all didn’t Roger Bacon “specialize in those aspects of science and religion which are deeply interrelated”, and he was the one who formulated the method of “Observe; Analyze and Repeat”… I hardly think you would impugn him for that; and unless you know what (and if) greylorn specifically does that you might think is wrong then to leap to such conclusions is a tad premature.

 

[Abu]

Good post on universities awatkins 69

rossum
Please learn some history. There were universities in China and the Islamic world before there were universities in Europe. Al-Azhar in Cairo was founded in 970 CE. Nanjing University in China was founded in 258 CE.

History requires study and appraisal, and the Catholic universities were built on faith and reason. We have seen why science arose in Christian Europe and nowhere else – because of the doctrine of the Catholic Church. (Post #33).

inocente
Western science dates from the 12th century, and was spurred by the translation of Greek, Arabic, Indian and Chinese works. These then influenced people such as Duns Scotus and Bacon.

Fr Stanley Jaki stresses that we do not see the flowering of formal and sustained scientific inquiry emerging from the other cultures’ sometimes impressive technology. (How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Thomas E Woods, Regnery 2005, p 77).

“The earlier technical innovations of Greco-Roman times, of Islam, of imperial China, let alone those of pre-historic times, do not constitute science and are better described as lore, skills, wisdom, techniques, crafts, technologies, engineering, learning, or simply knowledge.” (For the Glory of God, Rodney Stark, Princeton University Press, 2003, p 125).

Catholicism and Science by Rodney Stark (from Catalyst 9/2004):
“It is the consensus among contemporary historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science that real science arose only once: in Europe. It is instructive that China, Islam, India, ancient Greece, and Rome all had a highly developed alchemy. But only in Europe did alchemy develop into chemistry. By the same token, many societies developed elaborate systems of astrology, but only in Europe did astrology lead to astronomy. And these transformations took place at a time when folklore has it that a fanatical Christianity was imposing a general ignorance on Europe—the so-called Dark Ages."