We should remember that when the ancient Greek philosophers were reintroduced to the West and started causing trouble in the colleges, many other societies burned those types of works under the theory that all knowledge was already known by their religion and thus any new ideas or questions must therefore be heretical. While those societies stopped advancing, in the West, Thomas Aquinas argued that the ancient Greeks and the new science should be allowed. His argument was that since God refused to define himself, how can we arbitrarily abandon useful intellectual tools that might aid in our developing understanding of God. ---------------- If you think about it, Aquinass argument is getting quite close to the scientific method of always keeping an open mind. In science truths are always carefully framed within speculative theories because science always wants to be open-minded enough to be able to embrace any better idea that better explains the facts. ----------------- For example, Newton tried to explain away the discrepancies between his so called laws of gravity and the observed data by saying that every so often God has to reset his watch. Einsteins theories have showed how Newton was mistaken. ----------------- Today on the other hand, people are often all to ready to say that they have the whole truth and all others are wrong. This kind of rigid, inflexible type of thinking can be found both in science and in religion --------------- That type of rigid, dogmatic thinking leads to superstition and the end of practical science. For example when the Soviets thought genetics was NAZI propaganda and had all their genetic scientists purged, they lost the ability of developing good types of winter wheat and thus became dependent on West agriculture
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 18:22:06 +0000
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