The Scientific Revolution
Why did the scientific revolution occur where and when it did? Why did it occur in late midieval and renaissance Europe? Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards provides the answers to these questions in The Priveleged Planet.
While we are often told that religious beliefs tend to hinder scientific inquiry, many recent historians instead have argued that science grew out of a theistic milieu and that a number of theological beliefs were essential to the rise of science in Western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries. Human beings in every culture could observe the natural world around them. Only one culture had the philosophical and theological pre-conditions that gave birth to modern science. The Judeo-Christian tradition, quite contrary to modern stereotype, helped correct and transform the Greek tradition when the two worldviews began to interact in the Middle Ages.
The authors go on to enumerate several reasons why the scientific revolution occured within a Christian context:
1. The Christian notion that time is linear and is fundamental to the physical universe, rather than an illusion. Cosmic history does not go in circles.
2. The Biblical distinction between Creator and creation. In contrast to the Greeks, matter was considered to be good. Nature was to be respected, not worshiped as a God. Thus, nature could be subjected to experimentation and investigation.
3. The Christian belief that God was free in creating the world. Nature is contingent. It may not have existed or might have existed with different properties than it has. This view results in a feeling that nature’s properties must be discovered rather than deduced from principles of logic or mathematics.
4. The Christian belief that God is good and rational, in contrast to the pagan beliefs that the gods are fickle, irrational, or even malicious. This results in seeing the cosmos as orderly and lawful in its structure and behavior. Nature does not behave capriciously, but orderly.
5. The Christian belief that there is one God and that mankind is made in His image led to the expectation that nature has a sort of unity and is accessible to the human mind.
The irrational belief that Intelligent Design will destroy science is ludicrous. Although ID does not attempt to identify the designer, it is not incorrect to do so outside of science. Religion and science are not at war. Basic, rational, Christian beliefs cradled modern science in its infancy and nurtured it as it grew.