Where would we be...

There is a modern perception that there has been a huge clash been science and religion for the last 2,000 years. Modern fundamentalist objections to evolution and skepticism regarding climate change fuels this perception. But the fact is, western Europe was a culturally backward place when the Roman’s marched north and west, and when the western part of the empire fell apart, it took western Europe several centuries to get their act together. The Roman empire became officially Christian before its collapse, and they did spread the religion throughout the area, but it wasn’t Christianity that cooled progress in the west. In fact, monasteries were the primary centers of learning. They copied and preserved books, and not just Bibles. Christian theologians were intensely interested in Greek philosophy, which is the foundation of modern Western science. The monasteries gave rise to modern universities, which were created by the Catholic Church. They didn’t just study theology at these universities, and eventually departments called “natural philosophy” were established. Natural philosophy is the precursor to modern science.

The same thing is true in Muslim countries. The same centers of learning where theology was studied and discussed where also places where one could study philosophy. That gave rise to advances in astronomy, mathematics and optics. Where would our science be without mathematics? And the Muslim study of optics helped inspire artistic advances during the European Renaissance. Europeans went on crusades in an attempt to capture the Holy Land, but they returned with Muslim ideas and learning.

Nietzsche was a severe critic of religion. He thought religion, and Christianity in particular, were dishonest and underhanded expressions of the will to power. But Nietzsche also believed humans were driven by a will to truth, and he understood that Christians were responsible for advances in science. In Nietzsche’s estimation, Christian will to truth undermined Christian will to power directly in the form of biblical criticism. First lower biblical criticism, which was concerned with the quality of translations, and then higher biblical criticism of the 19^th century, which was concerned with inconsistencies, and literary analysis that suggested maybe Paul didn’t actually write all of those letters, maybe some verses were added later, and apparently much of the Old Testament had been heavily edited numerous times and woven together from various original sources over a period of centuries.

In science fiction stories, time travelers are often warned not to change anything because even the slightest alteration could result in a massive change in the course of history. Some seem to think that if not for religion, we’d all be science minded rationalists living in a highly advanced civilization free of all strife. But would we?