I strongly agree with Charles Colson's words in the article

From:

http://www.pfm.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section...tentDisplay.cfm

excerpted below.

I think these issues can easily take volumes to discuss adequately. But Colson does his usual good brief overview.

There has been a period of Islam representing better cultural achievements than the surrounding cultures. I don't know what the comparisons would turn out to be year by year. But my sense off the top of my head is that Islam has been a poor comparison to the surrounding cultures a lot more than it has been a shining example of cultural excellence and advancement.

I think one of the reasons for that is the brutality that seems to go so often and so chronically with the history and beliefs.

The exceptions to that tendency have been wonderful. Arabic numbers are a lot easier to write than Chinese numbers. Good math and architecture are beauties to behold.

But brutality is ugly and horrid. All the more so when driven by greed, arrogance, power mongering hiding under a veneer of religious bias and rationalization.

The same is true for any philosophical rationalization when distorted to such extents--including Christianity. But Christianity gets bashed and trashed hereon a LOT. This is a brief effort at the other side of the coin.

----------------------------------------------------

The Victory of Reason
Christianity and the West

February 22, 2006

{There are links at the above link to listen via 3 media}

At the heart of the furor over Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad are the different values and ideals of two civilizations: one shaped by Christianity, the other by Islam.

--snip--

--snip--

The book is called The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success by Rodney Stark, who is not a Christian believer.

In fact, Stark set out to refute German sociologist Max Weber’s famous thesis that attributed the rise of capitalism to the Reformation.

Instead of refuting it, however, he wound up doing just the opposite, writing about how Christianity’s emphasis on reason led to the rise of Europe. By “reason,” Stark means “logical thought” that doesn’t “jump to conclusions.” According to Stark, the “the early church fathers were very clear” about following in the “tradition” of Plato and Aristotle. And this emphasis on reason reached its zenith in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.

The belief that reason “was the supreme gift from God” encouraged inquiry not only into matters of faith but the natural world, as well. Whereas other religions viewed creation as a “mystery” beyond explanation, Christianity expected to find “immutable laws at work.”

St. Augustine, who is often caricatured as the enemy of science and progress, wrote about the “wonderful . . . advances human industry has made.”

--snip--

That’s why, you see, “it was during the so-called Dark Ages,” and not the Renaissance, “that European technology and science overtook and surpassed the rest of the world.” Contrary to what you were taught, the worst “conflicts” between Christianity and science took place after the “Age of Faith.”

Equally misunderstood is the relationship between Christianity and Western freedom. It was Christianity, Stark writes, that taught the West that “the state must respect private property and not intrude on the freedom of its citizens to pursue virtue.”

Our ideas about democracy and equality stem as well from the central teaching of Christianity. The link between the belief that we are all equal “in the eyes of God and in the world to come” and “all men are created equal” should be obvious.

It should be, but it isn’t, at least not to many commentators and academics. In their minds, the West succeeded despite its Christian past. Myths about the “Dark Ages” and other religious dystopias attempt to put as much distance between us and our Christian past as possible.

But, as Stark notes, many non-Westerners know better: For them, Western civilization and Christianity are “inseparably linked.” He notes that Christianity “is becoming globalized far more rapidly than is democracy, capitalism, or modernity,” which leads him to a breathtaking conclusion: “It is quite plausible that Christianity remains an essential element in the globalization of modernity.”

--snip--

-----------------------------------------------------------

REFS:

The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success
by Rodney Stark
ISBN:1400062284

at Powell's Books:

http://www.powells.com/biblio?PID=24626&cg...isbn=1400062284

-------------------

How Christianity (and Capitalism) Led to Science
By RODNEY STARK

at:

http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=t...968m19qmf4w3g5y

--------------------

Q&A WITH RODNEY STARK

Faith and reason

Was Christianity the engine of Western progress?

By Peter Dizikes | December 25, 2005

at:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/art..._reason?mode=PF

SCIENCE, CAPITALISM, and democracy are all enormously complicated areas of human activity, but sociologist Rodney Stark claims there is a simple explanation for them: Christianity. ''The Christian image of God is that of a rational being who believes in human progress," writes Stark in his latest book, ''The Victory of Reason" (Random House), an unapologetic brief for Christianity's positive influence in history.

----------------------

We’ve Been Lied To
Christianity and the Rise of Science

BreakPoint with Charles Colson

December 4, 2003

at:

http://www.pfm.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section...ContentID=11108

----------------------

July 22, 2002
No. 020722
Decline and Ascendance
Christendom and Islam

Among the reasons given for his jihad against the West, Osama bin Laden cited something he called "the tragedy of Andalusia."

He was referring to the re-conquest of Southern Spain in 1492. For nearly seven centuries, Moorish Spain embodied the Islamic world's cultural superiority over Europe. While much of medieval Europe lived in squalor, Muslim Cordoba boasted street lighting, hundreds of public baths, and at least seventy libraries.

And Islamic greatness at the .....


http://www.pfmonline.net/transcripts.taf?_...D3021AF43FC7540

--------------------------

CREDITING JESUS FOR ALL OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION.
The Reason for Everything
by Alan Wolfe
Post date 01.18.06 | Issue date 01.16.06

"Had the followers of Jesus remained an obscure Jewish sect," concludes Rodney Stark in his new book, "most of you would not have learned to read and the rest of you would be reading from hand-copied scrolls." I had always known that Jesus Christ was a pretty important person, but I had not quite realized that were it not for him, there would be no one to buy Rodney Stark's books....

at:

https://ssl.tnr.com/p/docsub.mhtml?i=20060116&s=wolfe011606

----------------------------

very interesting post ASLAN's, as always.

Much appreciate your kind words.

But I'm very curious what your fine mind found most interesting.

Any surprises to what you already knew?

I had not realized that Spain was quite such a contrast at one time vis a vis Islam and Christianity with Christianity on the bottom. I had some awareness but hadn't seen it as quite so stark, I guess.

But then, the opposite has been a lot so for many more years, it seems to me.

I found the entire thing to ge pretty interesting. someone who sticks up for christianity but can be critical of it at the same time is nice.

Thanks.

Some measure of objectivity is essential. Especially in areas of religion, culture, war, . . . life . . . death . . . and very especially in the midst of inreasing chaos.

My problem with the above is it forgets the role Christianity has had in repressing science, technology and democracy. In fact in many countries, the Catholic Church was the primary agent used by government to keep the masses under control, especially in feudal empires. There is also a problem when one tries to conceive how it is Christianity which is supposed to be anti-materialistic, has been used to legitimize the pursuit of materialism and the ownership of private property. If anything original Christianity was communal and collective and socialist in nature...I do believe Christianity challenged people to share and give as Jesus was preaching basic precepts of Judaism that frowned upon aquiring and controlling more then one could use for himself/herself and family. Christianity and science have always had a love hate relationship.

Given the hostilities to Christianity hereon, I never feel compelled to make the points such feelings are always faithful to make.

It's interesting that I'm personally more of a communally living soul. But I'm also a fairly fierce capitalist. There is a Scripture about--I think it's in the Millenium . . . every man having his own vineyard.

I also don't have a problem with folks getting a portion of the benefit they extend to millions of people--as in entertainment etc.

But at some point, instead of a law, I'd love to see a law of values and of the heart--perhaps of socialization--that beyond a certain level of wealth--if the wealth was not generously shared, then the wealthy person would be isolated socially . . . utterly.

I certainly think that wealth must be used constructively or taxed ruthlessly.

Tricky competing values.