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Book Review - Science Was Born Of Chrisitanity

Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2017 12:08 pm
by stahrwe
My publishing business -The Habitation of Chimham Publishing, published an apologetics book several years ago. The book is called, Science Was Born Of Christianity amazon.com/Science-Born-Christianity-St ... ristianity SWBOC

The book was recently reviewed byThe National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly - Summer 2017. I have attached a copy of said review as a pdf file.

While members of BookTalk will certainly find portions of the review debatable, there are many salient points in it which atheists would do well to consider. Of particular significance is the repeated point that ancient* cultural beliefs in a cyclical nature of the universe prevented the development of science.

*This belief in the cyclical nature of the universe continues to this day in some quarters, especially among adherents to The Great Year. I point out here that while SWBOC is a work of apologetics written by a Christian, the idea of the harmful influence of The Great Year is not limited to Christian tomes. Indeed, Paul Feyerabend also ascribes harm to the concept of a cyclical universe.

Aother main concept is that science benefited from a rational creator and, by extension, rational creations. The rational creation concept extends to Christians, though atheists would have us believe otherwise.

I encourage members of BT to read the review, if for no other reason than to inform yourselves of the arguments inthe book. The review isn't long. Oh, and I would also encourage BT members to read SWBOC, it also isn't long.

Re: Book Review - Science Was Born Of Chrisitanity

Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2017 10:55 pm
by LanDroid
Good luck with the book!

BookTalk discussed this work April - June 2014.
science-was-born-of-christianity-the-te ... -f223.html

Re: Book Review - Science Was Born Of Chrisitanity

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2017 12:55 pm
by stahrwe
LanDroid,

Thank you.

It is Chimham's best seller. We have sold about a thousand copies since it was published.

Re: Book Review - Science Was Born Of Chrisitanity

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2017 11:13 pm
by DWill
I recall this review and SWBOC as well. I remember thinking, and maybe commenting here, that it was the sweeping claim that caused me problems. On the face of the matter, since the Greeks did pioneer in science, it cannot be true that Christianity created science. Much after the Greeks, but before Christendom had accomplished a lot, Islam had its run with science. So for the sake of accuracy, Jaki should have scaled back his claim, something along the lines of "It took a Christian environment to really get science humming along ." Historians have acknowledged that, despite the outsized attention given to the Church's resistance to Copernicus and Galileo, Christianity was no enemy of the growth of science. But the prevailing religion of Europe was only one of the historical factors driving change at the time, so I think Jaki is still overextending. Historians don't go in for single-factor theories to explain complex developments.

Another thought I had was that Jaki was off-base in defining science narrowly as measurement or quantification. This focus would seem to leave no room for theory, which clearly would impoverish scientific endeavor. Whether we like it or not, the facts science produces might impinge on our range of beliefs, and cause us to adjust accordingly. The most obvious illustration is our revision of how we viewed our relationship to other animals once Darwin produced his massive data on the origin of species.

Re: Book Review - Science Was Born Of Chrisitanity

Posted: Sun Dec 03, 2017 12:17 am
by Robert Tulip
stahrwe wrote:belief in the cyclical nature of the universe continues to this day in some quarters, especially among adherents to The Great Year. I point out here that while SWBOC is a work of apologetics written by a Christian, the idea of the harmful influence of The Great Year is not limited to Christian tomes.
The Great Year is the scientific observation that the equinoxes precess around the ecliptic every ~25,771 years. The main "harm" caused by the influence of the Great Year is to the fundamentalist Christian delusion that the universe is 6000 years old.

The Great Year is a purely scientific fact, a cyclic pattern of terrestrial time that influences life on our planet in fundamental ways as the main driver of glacier cycles.