Do not fear, my dear readership. Although I am sorry for neglecting this noble cause as of late, my mind has been detained by various pressing matters. If fortuna aidds me, I shall be back with an abundance of new thoughts soon. Until then, may i present you with my comment on a blog published on that abominable Guardian website that riles me so much. The original post was here, and represented a generic modern attack on religious institutions which the author clearly failed to understand:
technorati tags:A.C., Grayling, Science, church, History, Guardian, comment, is, free
"Professor Grayling, it saddens me to see a man as evidently eloquent and educated as yourself resorting to such desperate and base argumentation. You appeal to us to tell you what "Christianity qua a body of doctrine and belief" has done for science, but surely you should know that the question itself is in fact false. The doctrines of a religion are utterly powerless - they are merely words on a page. The only powers these doctrines have is to influence people to act. Naturally, if you ignore the work of the people who are influenced by those doctrines and the work of the institutions they go on to create, it is inevitable that the answer to your question will be that the doctrines have produced nothing of note - after all, the same could be said for science. If you ignore the work of all scientists and scientific institutions, what great advances has the concept of experimental science (as advocated by 13th century English monk Roger Bacon) made on its own? Very little. In terms of creating progress, both religious and scientific doctrines have to be translated into actions before they can deliver results. Quite frankly, I'm shocked that I have to point out something so elementary to a professor of Philosophy.
Following on from this, I fear that your of knowledge of history is possibly both deficient and too heavily influenced by works of modern-centric popular history. The thing people in general seem to forget when discussing history is that, until they were made known, the Church was as ignorant as the next man of its scientifc errors. Thus, for centuries, religion and science were able to live hapily hand in hand. Let us not forget, after all, that science needs to develop to a certain level before it can challenge the authority of the clergy. The Medieval Church had no problem promoting science as the word of medieval science often corroborated their views. Indeed, even when individuals came into conflict with the Church, it was not always for the reasons popular history would have us believe. Roger Bacon, for example, fell foul not because of his unorthodox scientific experimentation, but because of internal church politics (he was too closely allied with the extreme spiritual faction of the Franciscans.) The same can also be said for Galileo, whose downfall was chiefly linked to his characterisation of the Pope in the figure of 'Simplicus' rather than to his ideas of heliocintricity (ideas the Pope had asked him to write down). Such distortions and ugly characatures of the past are common these days, and I myself try to combat them with my own personal blog (http://www.everythingsgonewrong.blogspot.com). If you wish to have more profound thoughts on this subject, I strongly reccomend you consult witho historians who specialise in the periods in question. However, next time, i would also advise you to ponder the historical background of the institution in which you work before attacking the Church's contribution to science and learning."