Yes, more of Stark's history of the West

Yep, more here from Rodney Stark's important book How the West Won. I don't apologize for the lengthy summary of its key points because we live at a time when Christianity and its impact upon the West has been denigrated. We are told the West is nothing special and Christianity has caused misery throughout the world. The truth is far different as I've been trying to show from his book. So, here we go again.

Stark discusses the fact that Christianity became the basis for science. He has explored this in other books he has written, but I can summarize it briefly here. He says science arose only in Christian Europe because only medieval Europeans believed  that science was possible and desirable. And the basis of their belief was their image of God and his creation. It was the medieval world that insisted on the rationality of God. Every detail was supervised and ordered; the search of nature could only result in the vindication of faith in rationality. Furthermore, because God had given humans the power of reason, it ought to be possible for people to discover the rules established by God.

Stark contrasts  this view with other religions. Most religions outside the Judeo-Christian tradition do not posit a creation at all. The universe is said to be eternal without a creator. From this view, the universe is a supreme mystery, inconsistent, unpredictable, and arbitrary. For people holding this latter view, the only paths to wisdom are meditation or inspiration. Islam teaches that Allah set his creation in motion but often intrudes in the world and changes things as it pleases him--he's arbitrary. So, many influential Muslim scholars through the centuries have held that efforts to formulate natural laws are blasphemy because that would deny Allah's freedom to act. But Christians believe nature is a book meant to be read. Europeans believed in God as the intelligent designer of a rational universe, so they were encouraged to pursue the secrets of creation.