RE: Has anyone discovered a successful way to make religious people atheist?
April 12, 2016 at 10:04 am
(April 9, 2016 at 3:40 am)Mudhammam Wrote: The solution is more science, and more importantly, more philosophy. What sparked the scientific revolution? The Renaissance. What brought about the Renaissance? The humanist movement.No one can deny the role of humanism in Western civilization, but it would be a mistake to entirely set aside the contribution of Christian theology (informed by the pagan classics of course) played in the scientific revolution. For example, why didn't the pagan classics inspire Arab civilization in the same way? Many believe this was because the Mohammedan concept of God was so fully transcendent that it could not be intelligible. In contrast to this, the concept of God developed by the Doctors and Church Fathers was the Rational Author of an intelligible Natural order. Prior to the Scholastics, most cultures saw nature as either capricious or illusory. So it was not always the case, as it is now, that people take for granted the idea of an intelligible natural order. That idea grew out of Christian culture. The very earliest of Western scientists were not incidentally Christian; but rather profoundly influenced by the idea that science could reveal the Divine Mind.