Christianity: A Cause of Modern Science

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20CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY'S LINEAR TIME CONCEPT OF TIME VERSUSPAGAN ETERNAL CYCLESBecause it would involve repeating exactly or almost exactly the events of theBible's history, Christians fundamentally could never accept the idea of eternalcycles. To a Christian, the thought of his savior God dying horribly on a stakerepeatedly again and again is too horrible to contemplate: ". . . because this Hedid once for all when He offered up Himself" (Heb. 7:27). Hence, even whensome Christians influenced by pagan thought accepted by idea of eternalcycles, who include the rather unorthodox Catholic church father Origen (185?-254? A.D.) and even St. Thomas Aquinas, the concept was accepted in a highlymitigated, attenuated form that greatly lessened its ill effects. Origen and St.Thomas both still believed in an absolute starting point (creation), and endingpoint (judgment). They still believed free will existed, which mean the passivityand sense of hopelessness induced by the treadmill of meaningless alterationsof catastrophes and golden ages in ages past and to come was largelyremoved. Some early Christian theologians, such as Jerome (c. 374-419 A.D.,translator of the Latin Vulgate Bible) and Hippoclytus, condemned eternalcycles totally. St. Augustine, the greatest of the Catholic Church fathers (354-430 A.D.), was more equivocal, but was willing to forcefully condemn the moreliteral forms of eternal cycles, and still believed in creation and judgment. Hedenied reincarnation as well. This allowed him to maintain a basically linearconcept of time with the two end points between God beginning everything andjudging everyone. Bishop Tempier's condemnations in 1277 helped put a limiton the acceptance of such anti-scientific doctrines through an attack on eternalcycles in proposition 92, and against the eternal existence of the universe (abelief necessarily tied to the former) in propositions 83-91. Thesecondemnations helped keep many philosophers/theologians in Christendomfrom totally capitulating to Aristotelian thought, as had happened with Islamicculture with Avicenna Averroes, and the mutazilites. Oresme (1323?-1382), adirect forerunner of Galileo in developing physics freed from Aristotelianconceptions, condemned belief in such cycles. Hence, the Christian belief increation and judgment kept Christendom off "the treadmill of the Yugas" (Jaki's
21phrase), killing a sense of passivity caused by helpless hopelessness, bypromoting a linear conception of time that made its precise quantification andcause-effect relations to be more easily conceived.Astrology, that prime example of an answer-giving a priori pseudo-science, raninto repeated condemnations by church fathers and theologians in the West. St.Augustine, as noted above, blasted it in the Confessions. Hippolytus hit it hardin The Refutations of All Heresies. While the early medieval Church foughtastrology very successfully, the increasing interest in science due to therecovery of the Greek classics, made interest in astrology surge as well.Correspondingly, a condemnation of astrology figured in proposition 105 ofTempier's list. Oresme told the king of France, his patron, in a booklet to ignoreastrology. Isadore of Spain in the early medieval church attacked it also. RogerBacon (c. 1220-1292), famous for his predictions of future human inventions,agreed with astrology to some degree, but still rejected its control overindividuals' destinies as opposed to that of nations. Astrology did have somemajor influence in Christendom, but as even Bacon's case shows, there werelimits to the acceptance of this pseudo-science that allowed science toeventually develop independently of it.CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY VERSUS THE DIVINITY OF THE HEAVENSThe divinity of the heavens, normally closely allied to the organismic view of thenatural world, was gradually eliminated by the medievals. The mesmerizingpower of Aristotle (384-322 b.c.), who propounded such views in On theHeavens, was felt in Europe too, which was why this process took so long.Jerome denied the heavens were alive, but St. Augustine remained in ananguished uncertainty. St. Thomas entertained the notion, but only to a limiteddegree. Even Kepler, the discoverer of elliptical orbits of the planets, stillbelieved intelligences controlled the movements of the heavens. However, dueto an already developed concept of natural law there were natural limits onaccepting this idea. "The overwhelming majority of European thinkers acceptedthe reality of the order of nature [unlike the Hindus], and most considered natureto be a self-sufficient creation of God, containing all the powers necessary for its
Page 5 and 6: 5natural laws, and without the phil
Page 8 and 9: 8Another metaphysical delusion the
Page 10: 10In short, both belief in eternal
Page 13: 13characteristics with which it had
Page 22 and 23: 22operation without God's direct in
Page 24 and 25: 24Galileo, Hooke, Kepler, Torricell
Page 26 and 27: 26(1483-1546) had anti-rationalisti
Page 28 and 29: 28"monkey trial" where the agnostic

Christianity: A Cause of Modern Science

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