Science and Theology News has this item about a new book by Baylor Prof Rodney Stark:
It's one of history's most important questions: Why did Europe and North America embrace democracy and thrive economically while nations elsewhere suffered oppression and stagnation?
According to leading U.S. sociologist Rodney Stark, many scholars purposely overlook the obvious answer: It was the spread of Christianity that made possible political and economic freedoms, modern science and resulting Western advancement.
Such is the Baylor University professor's contention in The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism and Western Success, one of the more provocative of recent books whose vigorous prose reflects the author's one-time employment as a newspaper reporter.
Although Western intellectuals downplay theology, Stark said he sees Christian beliefs as the key. He said the basis for the West's rise was "an extraordinary faith in reason'' resulting from Christianity, which "alone embraced reason and logic as the primary guide to religious truth.'' Faith in humanity's reasoning capacity, in turn, stimulated scientific theory-making, democratic theory and individual freedoms. Capitalism applied this to economics, producing an explosion of wealth, he said.
Stark rejects the century-old scenario of Max Weber that Protestantism under-girded capitalism. He said that the main elements were invented by Catholic monks and lay Italians centuries before the Reformation.
But Stark ignores the impact of the Jews' biblical view of the world that was later adopted by Christians. He also impugns Islam, arguing that a major segment of Muslim thought "condemns all efforts to formulate natural laws as blasphemy in that they deny Allah's freedom to act. Thus, Islam did not fully embrace the notion that the universe ran along on fundamental principles laid down by God at the creation.''
It seems to be a consensus view among scholars that the ancient Christian convictions that the world is a created entity, that it was brought into being by a rational God, and that man is to be a steward of the earth, led to the beliefs that it is not blasphemous to study the world, that the world is not capricious and will thus reveal its secrets to rational inquiry, and that it is here for our use. These ideas in turn led to the development of Western science, technology, and progress in improving the quality of human life.
Christianity has not been without its shortcomings, of course, but on balance it has been a wonderful blessing to humanity.
