Christianity across denominations (though mostly Protestant evangelicals) is responsible for why the majority of the American public does not believe in evolutionary science today. Martin Luther, citing Joshua 10:13, refused to believe in a Heliocentric solar system. Millions of Americans today, thanks to groups like Answers in Genesis, adhere to Young Earth creationism and reject the findings of astronomical science. Even apologists who try to harmonize religion and science and take a, so called, “Old Earth” creationist stance frequently fight hard to keep the gaps of science in the dark: they oppose theories about natural abiogenesis, natural cosmological origin, and anything else that might close the gaps and eliminate the need for a god.
The list above is short and I could go much further. However, the evidence is clear to any informed person who has studied scientific trends since the Renaissance: many Christians, relying on the Bible as their guide for the universe, have been enemies of modern science for centuries. The cause is quite simple: when someone adheres to a set of scriptures as inerrant, they must oppose, deny, or seek to harmonize any evidence that contradicts it. (Note: this does not imply that all Christians are inerrantists, nor that all accept literal interpretations of Genesis, etc.)
Before scripture-based monotheistic religions covered the Western World, the Hellenistic and Roman world had largely enjoyed secular science. This is not to say there was no religion; there were thousands of religions. But polytheistic religions in antiquity were ritual-based, traditional, and did not rely on canonical scriptures. The Greeks who wished to learn about the natural world did not turn to their religion or to any sacred texts. Instead, men like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle cultivated natural philosophy as the means for learning about the world around them. They allowed their conclusions to go wherever the evidence might lead them and religious dogma seldom stood in the way. They did not have a Bible to give them their answers: they had their senses, their reason, and their philosophical discourse as their toolset to find the answers. These men, and the many philosophical schools that followed them, were Pagan polytheists, but Paganism was not responsible for the birth of science in antiquity. Instead, science flourished in the Pagan Greek world because polytheism seldom stood in the way of it.
Nevertheless, a growing slogan has emerged in apologetics, which attempts to describe the discovery of modern science a Christian achievement:
“Belief in the rationality of God not only led to the inductive method but also led to the conclusion that the universe is governed rationally be discoverable laws. This assumption is vitally important to research because in a pagan or polytheistic world, which saw its gods often engaged in jealous, irrational behavior in a world that was nonrational, any systematic investigation would seem futile.”
-Alvin Schmidt, “Science: Its Christian Connections” (pg. 221)
Specialist in ancient science, Richard Carrier, had only this to say at such a patently false statement:
“This is not only false in every conceivable detail but so egregiously false that anyone with even the slightest academic competence and responsibility should have known it was false. Which means it’s advocates, all of whom claim to be scholars, must either be embarrassingly incompetent, perversely dishonest, or wildly deluded.”
-The Christian Delusion (pg. 400-1)
I highly recommend that anyone who has heard this slogan read Carrier’s articles “Christianity Wasn’t Responsible For Modern Science” in The Christian Delusion. Carrier goes into great detail discussing how this supposed cause of modern science was in place for a thousand years, yet no science flourished during the Christian Middle Ages, how the scientists who did allude to the Bible during the Renaissance only did so in order that their findings would not receive church discrimination, and how science flourished during Pagan antiquity to levels that should amaze us. The only reason we have the benefits of modern science today is in spite of Christianity, thanks to the Enlightenment and the rise of Secularism.
I also write this blog because I find one of the premises in this slogan to be so flawed that it needs to be addressed: apologists are often so imbued with a religio-centric worldview that they actually believe that the Pagan Greeks would have based their interest in science on their religion, as if one’s religion is their primary motivation for studying the natural world. Schmidt, for example, when stating that Paganism “saw its gods often engaged in jealous, irrational behavior in a world that was nonrational” confuses polytheistic religion with its myths and literature (does he really think Ovid’s Metamorphoses is religious scripture?). Let’s grant Schmidt’s unwarranted premise that Pagan religion was nonrational; that would never impede science from flourishing in Pagan antiquity.
Religion can only stand in the way of science when there are dogmatic doctrines that make claims about the natural world. In a religion that is traditional or ritual-based, one can approach the natural sciences without having as many a priori dictates on their discoveries. Pagan polytheism was never responsible for ancient science; however, it was more compatible with it.
The science and philosophy that thrived in the Pagan Greek world was so successful that early Christians had to borrow from Plato and Aristotle to construct their theologies. The 
Judeo-Christian god and its scriptures were never based on “induction,” as Schmidt imagines, but on revelation, (unfulfilled) prophecy, supernatural visions, and religious authority. The Pagans had their oracles, their astrologers, and their augers, but their philosophers and their scientists could operate more freely from them. The Middle Ages saw philosophy be chained to religion, in the form of theology, and since then it has taken centuries to fully break it free.
Despite the lack of demonstrable results, the supposed reasons that Schmidt believed Christianity would encourage science is because it allegedly teaches that the universe is rationally governed by discoverable laws. But if a god existed he could merely teach them to us. In fact, Genesis did seek to provide religious revelation about the formation of the world and the cosmos; it was just demonstrably and wildly wrong.
In a naturalist universe, nature does us no favors. We have to use our senses, conduct experimentation, and find the answers. This is why it took hundreds of thousands of years for humans to even discover rudimentary agriculture. Could you imagine a god who supposedly gives us knowledge allowing the earth to live in barbaric ignorance for that long? But there is no need for a deity for there to be a rational universe and discoverable laws. All there needs to be is patterns in nature, observable to us, and methods for testing the world around us. This whole process requires no religion and is entirely secular.
Ultimately, science only needs one thing to flourish: curiosity. If religion does not stand in the way of curiosity, then it is merely irrelevant. If its dogma opposes the potential for new discoveries, then it is anti-scientific. Pagan polytheism was more compatible with science, while many Christians have been historic and present adversaries to science. Nevertheless, it is Secularism and a healthy curiosity of nature that has been the champion of science in all periods.
-Matthew Ferguson
More falsehoods and polemics from Christian apologist David Marshall:
Several months back I wrote a blog post that both compiled and refuted a number of false statements that Christian apologist David Marshall was making about me and my blog, one of which was the notion that I am a Christ mythicist, even though I have overtly stated on the blog that I am not a mythicist. Marshall likewise stated that I had “not yet really read the gospels in a serious way,” when I have taken multiple graduate seminars studying the New Testament and Christian origins.
For a discussion of Marshall’s academic background, and the fact that Marshall has little academic training pertaining to Biblical Studies, I recommend a blog post by Biblical Studies scholar Hector Avalos, titled “Why David Marshall Is Not a Biblical Scholar.”
After his polemical attack on my blog several months ago, Marshall received a large amount of negative criticism, including one commenter who remarked:
From this reaction, I am glad to see that, despite Marshall’s attempts to spread false statements about me, people are still seeing through his tricks, and catching him on his overt dishonesty.
In an attempt to slander me, yet again, however, David Marshall wrote a post yesterday, titled “History of Science trips up Matthew Ferguson.” In the post, Marshall responds to an old blog post that I wrote 2 ½ years ago, a post so old that it actually belonged to my old blog server, before I moved to WordPress.
In his response, Marshall attempts to catch me in some “sloppy” quotations of the article “Christianity Wasn’t Responsible For Modern Science” by ancient historian Richard Carrier in The Christian Delusion. Carrier’s research in ancient history focuses on ancient science, in particular, making Carrier, unlike David Marshall, an expert on the subject.
Let’s take a look at Marshall’s accusations, since all of them can be addressed by simply reading Carrier’s article and my (short and old) blog post summarizing it:
1. Marshall accuses me of misquoting a statement by Carrier, in response to Alvin Schmidt, by claiming that Carrier was not responding to Schmidt directly:
Let’s take a look at what Carrier says, in context. Here is what is written at the beginning of the article by Carrier that I quoted. The article begins (pp. 393-394) with two quotations, the second of which I quoted a selection from (highlighted in bold):
Now, let’s take a look at what I quoted from Carrier, in context:
What was the antecedent of Carrier’s “this”? Marshall only quotes:
And yet Marshall leaves out the crucial introduction to the same paragraph that links it to the earlier two quotes, one of which I quoted from Schmidt:
So the antecedent of Carrier’s “this” clearly referred to the two quotes that Carrier had quoted at the beginning of the article. To call this a “sloppy” misquotation, I think, is quite a stretch, and Marshall is merely straining to find some trivial error to attack me on, even though Carrier is clearly responding to Schmidt in the selection that I quoted.
2. Marshall also states:
And yet Schmidt clearly states in the quote:
And the title of Schmidt’s chapter is “Science: Its Christian Connections” in Under the Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilization. Marshall leaves out all of this context.
3. Marshall also claims that I actually contradict the conclusion of Carrier’s article. This is also false. Here is what Marshall quotes from my blog post. I have bolded the selection that Marshall quotes, but also included the crucial details that Marshall leaves out:
Marshall leaves out the fact that I pointed out how Schmidt is defining Pagan religion in terms of its *mythology*. However, actual Pagan *theology* was far more complex. I not only discuss these nuances in my review of Zaidman and Pantel’s “Religion in the Ancient Greek City”, as well as my essay “Missing Religious Ontologies in Ancient Polytheism,” but likewise Carrier explains how Schmidt is mischaracterizing Pagan theology.
Here is what Marshall quotes from Carrier:
And, indeed, this contradicts Schmidt’s claim that the Paganism “saw its gods often engaged in jealous, irrational behavior in a world that was nonrational,” when Pagans such as Galen and Ptolemy did not see it that way. This corresponds to what I stated about how the features of Pagan *mythology* should not be confused with Pagan *theology*.
Marshall also sarcastically states:
And yet, a fuller reading of Carrier’s article (pg. 403) reveals the fact that many Pagans did not turn to religion or theology, but rather to inherent nature, to provide a basis for their scientific study:
And so, when I stated:
Carrier, indeed, listed many other Pagans who did not base their scientific inquiries on their theology — such as Strato, Erasistratus, Epicurus, or Asclepiades. In other words, Pagan theology was not a necessary groundwork for many Pagans to explore science, just as I stated in this blog post, titled “Neither Paganism Nor Christianity Was Responsible for Science.”
Marshall concludes his polemic with the following condescension:
I encourage anyone who is interested in learning more about Marshall’s dishonest tactics, and his amatuer apologetics, to read John Loftus’ “When Will Apologist David Marshall Learn He’s Out of His League? Never?,” which also includes links to other blog posts that document Marshall’s dishonesty, and his trolling of other blogs over the last several years.
Ah, it also looks like Nick Peters, whom I had a telephone debate with a couple years back, is also making a number of statements on Marshall’s post that do not align with the content of my blog. Nick states in a comment:
Let’s looks at what I have written about Aquinas’ notion of divine simplicity:
Clearly I am addressing the Thomists on this point, despite whatever Nick likes to claim about “atheists online.” I have also written more about Summa Theologica here.
Marshall says Christianity provided the “intellectual matrix” for science. That is the dependency thesis. And there are light and heavy dependency theses, as well as non-dependency theses. Read up Marshall, read up… Here are some resources and quotations, including some from theistic and even Christian scholars, that Marshall apparently missed.
http://edward-t-babinski.blogspot.com/2015/07/how-and-why-did-scientific-revolution.html