Christianity & Science

"Western culture" roots in the intersection of Greek philosophy and the Judeo-Christian faith.

Christianity assimilated Greek philosophy, or Greek rationality, to develop a theology based on Greek ideas and language (a necessity of the time).

The Christian God became the guarantor of rationality. Almost inevitably, then, the Greek notion of rationality crept into the Christian idea of God. In other words, the God of the philosophers merged with the God of worship.

Thus science and Christian theology both root in Greek rationality. This helps explain why science developed so readily under the Christian umbrella. Indeed, none of the father's of science were scientific materialists. But there is a tension between science and Christianity because the basic claims of Christianity transcend the scientific method. The Christian regards the rationality of the world (something Einstein marveled at) as God's Logos in the world.

There is a lot to say, but one point strikes me as particularly interesting. We have to fast forward quite a bit. What I have in mind is this: The medieval scholastics contributed to the development of the scientific method -- in fact, they strongly dictated some key assumptions of science. For instance, questions over the omnipotence of God led to the scientific idea of "laws of nature." Questions about what God can or cannot do naturally lead to questions about the structure of the world.