h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Is either Christianity or Islam inherently more open to science and technology, or are they inherently the same.

I'd say that they are about the same; it's just that Islamic nations today are generally more conservative than Christian nations today (except the US).

When the First Crusade invaded, they went to war against an Islamic culture that was doing algebra, reading the works of the Classical Greek philosophers, and building architectural marvels. Their opponents were a bunch of illiterate barbarians who remained unconvinced that bathing was a good idea.

Christianity and Islam are both a conglomeration of contradictory ideas, and anyone can find the bits in either that suit their tastes/goals. It just depends on what bits are currently in fashion.

And now I'm going to pretend you didn't say America is more conservative than even the most liberal of Islamic nations like the United Arab Emirates.

Two possible considerations spring to mind.

Firstly, Islam is theologically more "minimalist" than Christianity. This possibly gave it a bigger "logical space" within which to enquire into the nature of the material world.

More importantly however the geographical position of Islam in its heyday between the worlds of Greek culture on the one hand, and Persian and Indian culture on the other, meant that it simply had more inputs than the western Christian culture of the time.

Noggin

Both Islam and Christianity have expressed opposition to science and advancement before. Fundamentalist movements in both religions and extremely hostile to science because it has done such damage to the "core" beliefs of both religions.

The reason the West is generally more "open" than the Islamic world is exactly because we have rejected religion in favour of science and philosophy. One of the most poisonous examples of the abuse of language recently is the tendency (usually among rightwing commentators) to describe the West as "Judeo-Christian" in it's thinking and the East as "Islamic". The West is not "Judeo-Christian" but "Post-Enlightenment" (Oh and you can bet your bottom dollar that the "Judeo" bit is a very very recent addition for political rather than historical reasons ). Our attitudes are a direct result of sidelining the Christian religion, rather than because of it.

In the Middle Ages the Islamic world was relatively secular, tolerant and highly scientific in it's outlook. The move from an enlightened society to an "Islamic" one was, apparently, the result of the Mullahs increasing their power and reducing that of the Sultans. In the Christian world, the opposite happened in roughly the same period. The Islamic world is not somehow "incapable" of enlightenment because of it's religion and the West is not "enlightened" because of ours.

And in any case Judeo-Islamic makes as much sense as Judeo-Christian.

As Zagreb suggests, despite the conflicts between religions the real *ideological* divide is between secular and religious, not one religion and another.

Noggin

"And in any case Judeo-Islamic makes as much sense as Judeo-Christian"

"Islamic-Christian" would actually makes the most sense. Christians and Muslims worship the same God, believe that that God has sent prophets and holy men to "instruct" mankind and share a great deal in common, not least a belief in heaven and hell. In fact, the reason that these two religions are so dominant in the world is probably because they spread themselves through the notion of an intimidating, threatening God who *demands* adherence whilst other religions are more "take it or leave it". Jews, as far as I know, do not believe in hell and do not believe that the Messiah has yet been sent (they reject Christ as Messiah and are still awaiting his arrival in Jerusalem. In fact the gate in Jerusalem through which the Jews believe the Messiah will pass (and through which Jesus, knowing this, pointedly rode) was actually bricked-up by a rather nasty Muslim ruler of the city and had a Muslim graveyard placed in it's path in order to "thwart" this prophecy. Of course, we can assume that religious Jews believe both these barriers will one day be removed...)

I'm not sure how accurate it is to consider for instance the Almohads and the Ottomans as a continuous Islamic world. Or can we even consider the advanced, up and coming Turks nibbling at the edges of Byzantium to be the same as the decaying sprawl being propped up by European powers?

There seem to be some very fundamental shifts in between the scientific golden age of Islam and today.

Scientific knowledge and religious knowledge serve different purposes: the former seeks to describe the world as it is, dispassionately and objectively (please, Pattern-chaser, if you're reading this hold your fire for now - I said it *seeks* to be objective ); while religious knowledge is essentially a kind of cultural glue that aims to bind people together and ensure that, within a society, a majority of members share similar values.

For most (reasonable) people, there is no particular conflict between science and their religious beliefs. People are basically pragmatic, I think: they are only too happy to assimilate within their belief system anything which looks useful, as long as it doesn't contradict their basic values - they will follow whatever seems to work, whatever makes their lives a little easier. Fundamentalists who oppose any knowledge that comes from outside their own narrow world-view, are always likely to be in the minority in any religion or society where people can see the practical benefits of taking a more open-ended attitude.

I would be willing to bet that a sociological study of the subject would find a close link between fundamentalism and poverty - the latter being a good predictor of the former. Hostility to science and technology in Islamic societies has more to do with politics and social problems than with religion, in my view.


Lear

What a pleasant surprise to see an intelligent discussion of religions with no raving and ranting (so far).

May I offer that the word 'technology' has not actually appeared but I get the feeling that it is being implied as a synonym for 'science' in much the same way as 'religion' is wrongfully understood to be a 'philosophy'.


That would make a good IQ test question:

Technology is to Science as
Rleigion is to .........?

Or should it be the other way around?
It's no wonder people get them confused.


~jwf~

>> What a pleasant surprise to see an intelligent discussion of religions with no raving and ranting (so far). <<

I'll second that. All interesting stuff. Lets hope a certain individual doesn't appear. If he does may I suggest he is totally ignored.

It is true that Islam had the edge on learning and technology in the early middle ages. It was the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258 that changed all that. Fortunately, copies of all the important documents had been made by the Greeks. Consequently the centre of learning moved from the East to the West. I don't think Islam has ever recovered from that onslaught.

Donald

Why is the conversation limited to only two of the faiths that follow the god of Abraham? (although I admit the omitted faith has only one nation that follows it).

And as to post 1, I always thought the USA unlike the UK was atheistic with clear separation of faith & state.

"And as to post 1, I always thought the USA unlike the UK was atheistic with clear separation of faith & state."

That doesn't make it atheistic, it makes it constitutionally secular and ensures that religious belief is down to the individual citizen and not imposed or encouraged by the state. Atheistic states (of which there have been few - usually Communist states) tend to persecute religious belief, sometimes in the same ludicrous and barbaric way that religious totalitarians persecute non-believers or those whose faith differs from that of the state.

show me where in the US constitution it says the state has a faith of any sort, I'll stick with atheistic until proven otherwise.

"show me where in the US constitution it says the state has a faith of any sort, I'll stick with atheistic until proven otherwise."

It doesn't but that does *not* make it atheistic, it makes it secular. It means that citizens are free to choose and practice their own faith, without the state encouraging, or giving preferential treatment to, any particular faith. An atheistic constitution would include atheistic beliefs in it's laws, which the US constitution (as far as I know) does not. Also, the United States does not promote atheism or persecute citizens who are not atheists.

"One nation under GOD..."

Which meant, and continues to imply, the god of Abraham, father of the big 3 religions. There are other references to this same god in the Constitution of most US states and all are 'unmindful' of those citizens who might have other gods, or a religion that eschews any singular and particular deity or perhaps embraces multiple deities, including all the pantheistic or pagan belief systems. Even nighthooverism or the Church of Justin the Self-Promoting would be excluded by definition under the law.

~jwf~

Blatherskite (I think) pointed out that the reference to God in the "pledge of allegiance" was added in the 1950s (probably down to the insidious influence of the McCarthyists) and has no basis in America's 18th century Constitution. As far as I know, the Pledge has no legal constitutional basis anyway.

"It doesn't but that does *not* make it atheistic, it makes it secular."
NO atheistic,
secular implies of a faith but lay (at least to me)
as far as I'm concerned faith should be a personal choice & something the State has naff to do with, the state should be atheistic (i.e. of no faith) and that is how I understand to constitution of the USA to have been drawn up.

I freely admit I'm no expert on the constitution of the USA so erm... prove be wrong if you can.

NB: to save any confusion unless I clearly indicate otherwise in any post when I use the word “state” I am referring to a “nation state”.

Atheist does not mean "no religion", it means "does not believe in God". Secular means "not attached to any specific religion", therefore the US constitution is secular, *not* atheistic.

I differ with you interpretation of Secular, to me it implies of a specific faith but in a lay capacity.
yes Atheist does means “does not believe in God” which implies of no religion. I for one says God/Gods/Religion/etc has naff all to do with the running of the State and that the State should be atheistical, what it's citizens are is of course up to them.

From the Declaration of Independence:

"..to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them ...
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..."

I must admit that I was under the impression there was more than just those references to the "Creator" and to "Natures God". These expressions do have a squirmy non-committal and indefinite identity in our contemporary terms, but it is clear, from history and a knowledge of the authours, just Who they were talking about.

The choice of these words was at best a compromise to assuage the many disparate and even radical religious groups that had sought freedom from persecution in the new world. Perhaps it also includes an acknowledgment that the authours were aware of the belief systems of both the aboriginal and African slave populations.

The authours knew that these people had some 'primitive' knowledge of that 'same god' in a 'primitive' way and were prepared to accomodate them until they could be fully assimilated. Remember that at the time (1776) there was the beginnings of a 'naturalist' and 'romantic' movement that was sowing the seeds of liberal humanism. But the language and style of the day was still in the Age of Reason.


~jwf~