Science, faith, and theists

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

You might want to remind him that the world's finest universities were nearly all started by Christians, and as Christian colleges of prayer and study. Colleges were usually started by monks (frequently Benedicitnes Wink), who had preserved knowledge through the 'dark ages'. And they didn't just preserve Christian thought; for example they preserved the writings of the Greek philosophers and poets, and collected and preserved the writings of Islamic mathematicians.

True as far as it goes, but this is hardly the whole story. Christian monks preserved the knowledge that was in accord (or at least not in conflict) with Christian teaching, and that knowledge only, and they didn't always do even that - there's a reason that translating the Bible into English got poor old Tyndale burnt alive.

Throughout its history, the Roman church has been merciless in its persecution of heretics and heretical thought (slowed in recent years ONLY by the growth of secularism, I might add). There's no doubt whatsoever that the monks preserved a lot that would otherwise have been lost, but to hold these intellectual bigots up as some sort of champions of free inquiry and investigative thinking simply beggars belief.

You seem a perfectly nice fella, Michael, but don't ever forget that you're only a very few generations removed from being a book-burner yourself.

Boru