How Christianity Invented Science



Last week I shared four fundamental, biblical values that are essential to the formation of Western culture. First, the sanctity of life, second, the infinite worth and value of women, third the revolution in sexual morality, and fourth, human rights. Today I want to share four more Christian values that built Western culture and changed the whole world.

Fifth, Western culture is committed to the well-being of the poor, the needy, the disabled, the prisoner, and all other suffering groups. This is another uniquely biblical value and is found in no other culture other than those influenced by Christianity. In Dominion Tom Holland speaks at length of the opposition to this concept from people like the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the Nazis, and other social Darwinists. They all argue that helping the weak drains strength from the rest of us. Of course, Jesus Christ said the opposite and His view has dominated—and still dominates—Western culture.

Sixth, the created order is separate from God. Or to put it differently, nature and God are not the same thing, or nature does not contain God. He sits outside it. Genesis 1:1 is the verse in the Bible that made science possible because from its beginning the Bible separates nature and God and without that theological assumption science is not possible. When the scientist looks at the natural world he sees one that operates on consistent, orderly laws. It is not inhabited by some capricious deity that keeps changing the rules. A legitimate scientific discovery is true now and has been true from the beginning. It is true in Bismark, North Dakota and Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Seventh, consistent with the previous point we have an orderly universe because it is created and governed by God. In 1925 the world’s greatest philosopher was Alfred North Whitehead. He told an audience at Harvard that Christian theology was essential for the rise of science in the West. “The greatest contribution of medievalism to the formation of the scientific movement [was] the inexpugnable belief…in the rationality of God.” This led to a belief in the rationality or orderliness of nature. Whitehead goes on to say, “every detail [of the universe] was supervised and ordered: the search into nature could only result in the vindication of the faith in rationality.”

The Scientific Revolution occurred only once. It occurred within Christian culture. 100% of the men who put it forward were Christians. 100% That is not a coincidence. It was built on a foundation of Christian doctrinal assumptions.

Eighth, science was made possible by the biblical doctrine of dominion found in Genesis 1:26. Man was to have dominion over nature and use it for his own benefit. When I was a college student I read one of the most famous environmental essays of all time. It was written by a UC, Berkely professor named Lynn White and was entitled, “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis.” White argued that we were in the process of destroying the earth. Even then I realized this was nonsense—and still is. What fascinated me was that White argued that the scientific and technological revolutions arose because of Christian culture. He blamed Christians for it; I gave Christians credit for it. Every material blessing he and I and everyone else enjoyed was due to the influence of the Bible and Christian culture on the technological development of the West. He was grieving over this and I was rejoicing over it. But make no mistake, he and I both agreed that Christianity was the cause of it.

The four ideas above and the four I gave in my last video are exclusive to the Judeo-Christian heritage. Without the Bible we wouldn’t even know these ideas much less believe them. They were originally revealed to the Jews then taken by Christianity and spread throughout the world. These doctrines have blessed the world more than any other beliefs. 

There are eight more values that have been championed by Western, Christian culture, and are in agreement with but not necessarily exclusive to Scripture. I will deal with those in future videos.

I want to give praise to our God for revealing these truths to us. The Psalmist is so right: More to be desired are they than gold,
    even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey
    and drippings of the honeycomb.

More: Rodney Stark, Victory of Reason, see especially location 406 in chapter one for Stark’s discussion of Whitehead.

This is what the world is like without the spread of Christianity: https://europeanconservative.com/articles/essay/civilization-is-from-the-jews/