Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion

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Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion Page 52

by John W. Loftus


  49. See Richard Carrier, "Hitler's Table Talk: Troubling Finds," German

  Studies Review 26, no. 3 (2003): 561-76.

  50. For a history of the Hitler Diaries, see Charles Hamilton, The Hitler

  Diaries: Fakes That Fooled the World (Louisville: University Press of Kentucky,

  1991) and Robert Harris, Selling Hitler (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986).

  51. SteigmannGall, The Holy Reich, pp. 243-60.

  52. Carrier, "Hitler's Table Talk," p. 573.

  53. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, p. 113.

  54. Ibid., p. 114.

  55. D'Souza, What:r So Great, p. 218.

  56. Ibid., p. 327 n. 12.

  57. Hermann Rauschning, ed., Hider Speaks: A Series of Conversations with

  Adolf Hitler on His Real Aims (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1939; Reprint:

  Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2007), p. 63. On the unreliability of this source, see

  SteigmannGall, The Holy Reich, pp. 28-29.

  58. H. R. TrevorRoper, ed., Hitler:r Table Talk, 1941-1944: His Private

  Conversations (London: Phoenix Press, 2000), p. 59.

  59. TrevorRoper, ed., Hitler's Table Talk, p. 61.

  60. Carrier, "Hitler's Table Talk," pp. 566-72 (all four statements appear in the

  entry dated the afternoon of 27 February 1942, in the original German).

  61. TrevorRoper, ed., Hitler:r Table Talk, p. 76. Hitler routinely equated

  "Bolshevism" and "Judaism." He also believed Jesus was an Aryan whose true

  message was corrupted by the Jewish Paul (Carrier, "Hitler's Table Talk," p.

  572).

  62. See further, Peter A. Dykema and Heiko Oberman, eds., Anticlericalism in

  Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 1993), which also

  discusses various conflicts between Protestants and Catholics.

  63. Diego von Bergen, the German ambassador to the Vatican, specifically

  reported that the Pope feared that "a `third' faith is being organized and

  encouraged" in addition to Catholicism and Evangelical faiths (Documents on

  German Foreign Policy, series D, vol. 1, p. 988). This shows that the Vatican saw

  Nazi religion as a competing faith, and not as "atheism," a term it sometimes

  applied to competing faiths, as well.

  64. D'Souza, What's So Great, p. 219; Richard Weikart, From Darwin to

  Hitler. Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (New York:

  Palgrave, 2004).

  65. For my critiques of Weikart, see "Avalos contra Weikart: Part I: General

  Problems with Dr. Weikart's Methods," at http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot

  .com 200805/avalos-contra-weikart-part-i-general.html; and "Avalon Contra

  Weikart: Part II: Weikart's Seven Darwinian Aspects of Nazism," at http://

  debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com200806/avalos-contra-weikart-part-ii-

  weikarts.html. See also Sander Gliboff, H. G. Bromm, Ernst Haeckel, and the

  Origins of German Darwinism: A Study in Translation and Transformation

  (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008).

  66. Denise O'Leary, "Post-Details: Expelling the Outrage: Hitler and

  Darwinism," at http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/2200804/15/ expelling-the -

  outrage-hitler-and-darwin (accessed July 3, 2009).

  67. "Guidelines from Die Bucherei," 2:6, 1935, p. 279, at http://www.library

  .arizona.edu/exhibits/burnedbooks/documents.htm.

  68. Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler, p. 9.

  69. Richard Weikart, "Review of Annette Wittkau-Horgby, Materiali.rmus:

  Enstehung and Wirkung in den Wissen.rchaften des 19. Jahrhunderts (Gottingen:

  Vande-hoek and Ruprecht, 1998)," German Studies Review 24, no. 3 (October

  2001): 610.

  70. Richard Weikart, "Review of Richard SteigmannGall's The Holy Reich:

  Nazi Conceptions of Christianity," German Studies Review 27, no. 1 (February

  2004): 175.

  71. See Mein Kampf, p. 312: "keeping his blood pure" / German (p. 342):

  Reinhaltung seines Blutes.

  72. See further, Linda Martz, "Pure Blood Statutes in Sixteenth-Century

  Toledo: Implementation as Opposed to Adoption," Sefarad 61, no. 1 (1994): 91-

  94; Albert Sicroff, Los estatutos de limpieza de sangre.: Controversial entre los

  siglos xvy xvii (Madrid: Taurus, 1985); Henry Kamen, The Spanish

  Inquisition.A Historical Revision (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997),

  especially pp. 242-54; Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain (New Haven, CT: Yale

  University Press, 1997), pp. 33-34.

  73. Max Reichler, Jewish Eugenics and Other Essays (New York: Bloch,

  1916), pp. 7-8.

  74. Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 249.

  75. Ibid., p. 286.

  76. Weikart, From Darwin to Hider, p. 186.

  77. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex,

  2nd ed. (New York: D. Appleton, 1909 [1874]), p. 187 (in context: pp. 185-96).

  See also Patrick Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of

  Primitive Races 1800-1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003).

  78. George Fitzhugh, "Sociology for the South or the Failure of Free Society,"

  in Antebellum Writings of George Fitzhugh and Hinton Rowan Helper on

  Slavery, ed. Harvey Wish (New York: Capricorn Books, 1960 [reprint of 1854

  edition]), p. 61.

  79. Robert Knox, The Races of Men (Philadelphia, PA: Lea & Blanchard,

  1850), pp. 38-39.

  80. John Campbell, "Negro-Mania," in E. N. Elliott, Cotton Is King and

  ProSlavery Arguments: Comprising the Writings of Hammond, Harper Christy,

  Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartwright, on This Important Subject

  (Augusta, GA: Pritchard, Abbott and Loomis, 1860), p. 520.

  As a new generation of historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science has

  proven, biblical religion was not the enemy of science but rather the intellectual

  matrix that made it possible in the first place. Without the key insights that

  Christianity found celebrated in the Bible and spread throughout Europe, science

  would never have happened.... The evidence is incontrovertible: It was the

  rational theology of both the Catholic Middle Ages and the Protestant

  Reformation-inspired by the explicit and implicit truths revealed in the Jewish

  Bible-that led to the discoveries of modern science.1

  Belief in the rationality of God not only led to the inductive method but also led

  to the conclusion that the universe is governed rationally by discoverable laws.

  This assumption is vitally important to scientific research because in a pagan or

  polytheistic world, which saw its gods often engaged in jealous, irrational

  behavior in a world that was nonrational, any systematic investigation of such a

  world would seem futile. Only in Christian thought, which posits "the existence

  of a single God, the Creator and Governor of the universe, [one that] functions in

  an orderly and normally predictable manner," is it possible for science to exist

  and operate.2

  hese two quotes succinctly describe a new delusion creeping around

  the halls of conservative academia: the belief that Christianity not only caused

  modern science, but was necessary for modern science even to exist. As the

  story now goes, not only has Christianity never been at odds with science and

  never impeded it in any way, but it was actually the savior of science, the only

  worldview that could ever make science poss
ible. And that's why the Scientific

  Revolution only ever sparked in one place: a thoroughly Christian society.

  This is not only false in every conceivable detail but so egregiously false that

  anyone with even the slightest academic competence and responsibility should

  have known it was false. Which means its advocates, all of whom claim to be

  scholars, must either be embarrassingly incompetent, perversely dishonest, or

  wildly deluded. That so many scholars would be so incompetent seems

  improbable. That they are all lying, even more so. Of course, we've all seen the

  conservative political tactic of repeating a lie so often, in so many places, with

  such confidence, and from so many sources, that everyone begins to believe it.

  This may be one such lie. Or these scholars may really be this mind-bogglingly

  incompetent. But I'm inclined to doubt it. Delusion seems a more likely

  explanation for how so many can repeat a claim so demonstrably false without

  ever being corrected by their peers.

  An obvious objection to this delusional claim is that it violates one of the most

  basic principles of causality: when the cause is in place, its effect is seen.

  Christianity fully dominated the whole of the Western world from the fifth to the

  fifteenth century, and yet in all those thousand years there was no Scientific

  Revolution. A cause that fails to have its predicted effect despite being

  continually in action for a thousand years is usually considered refuted, not

  confirmed. Excuses will be made, claims of impediments, but no Scientific

  Revolution occurred in the Eastern half of the Christian world either, which had

  none of the West's excuses. The East was not overrun by barbarians and

  remained prosperous and developed for five centuries. Such excuses are usually

  denied anyway-the new trend is to insist even the Western Middle Ages were

  shot through with an unrivaled spirit of innovation and economic and intellectual

  vigor. But even if you reject that and accept the West was held back, why did the

  Scientific Revolution still never happen in the Byzantine Empire, despite being

  just as Christian, and in every respect more successful? Those caught by this

  question usually solve it by denigrating the Byzantines as somehow the "wrong

  kind" of Christians.3 But once you start down that road, the notion that

  Christianity is the solution goes out the window. Now you need a special kind of

  Christianity, which is evidently not an inevitable outcome of the original

  Christian Gospel. Either way, the fact remains, whether East or West, once

  Christians dominated the culture, no Scientific Revolution ensued. It took over a

  thousand more years.

  So, right from the start, something is amiss. Maybe you can work your way

  around that conundrum. But some claims associated with this new delusion are

  just too obviously false. Dinesh D'Souza declares with unquestioning confidence

  that of all ancient religions "only" Christianity "was from the beginning based on

  reason" and consequently "there are no theologians" in the history of any other

  religion.4 Yet surely even an attentive high-school student knows the pagan

  Greeks invented reason, in the very sense he means, developing the formal

  sciences of logic, philosophy, mathematics, and rhetoric. And any attentive

  reader of the Bible knows Christianity was from the beginning based on

  scripture, inspiration, and revelation, not "reason."5 To see what a religion

  actually based on reason looks like, just look at the formal theologies of the

  GrecoRoman philosophers. Yes, the pagans invented theology, too .6

  But facts aren't the only thing getting in the way of the idea that science

  needed Christianity. Paucity of logic is another.

  COMMON FALLACIES

  Most arguments for this conclusion rest on a number of common fallacies. That

  no effort is made to detect or avoid them is another sign of delusion.

  The whole notion begins with a simple correlation fallacy: just because

  modern science only arose in a Western Christian culture, it does not follow that

  a Western Christian culture caused it (or even more absurdly, that such a culture

  was the only one that could). This is as fallacious as assuming that because the

  inventors of formal geometry were polytheists, therefore polytheism caused the

  invention of formal geometry, or even more absurdly, that only polytheists could

  invent it. Neither is plausible. It's simply an accident of history when formal

  geometry was invented, at which time the dominant religion just happened to be

  polytheism. In most respects the same is true of Christianity and the Scientific

  Revolution.

  Never taken into account, for example, is that in the early second millennium

  any motive, to be respectable in such a strict and paranoid cultural matrix, had to

  be framed in terms agreeable to Christianity-indeed as fulfilling Christianity, if at

  all possible. For anything that even had a whiff of being unchristian was

  condemned and its advocates punished-socially to be sure, sometimes physically.

  This was not a time when you could enjoy the liberty of being a heretic or an

  atheist, much less a pagan or infidel, without facing repercussions that could put

  an end to your career, your freedom, or even your life. Such an atmosphere

  compelled everyone to find inventive ways to sell any new ideas as perfectly

  Christian, even biblical, regardless of their actual motives or inspiration. Hence

  finding in that period Christian or biblical arguments for embracing new ideas

  does not confirm Christianity or the Bible was the cause of those ideas, rather

  than just the marketing strategy required to sell them at the time.

  Another fallacy is the conflation of necessary, sufficient, and contributing

  causes. A good case can be made that scientific thinking was actually a

  byproduct of early pagan theology.? But even if so, no one would conclude from

  this that paganism was required. I could point to many aspects of pagan religion

  that contributed to the rise of science (its increasing commitment to religious and

  intellectual freedom, its reliance on evidence and reason over scriptural and

  institutional authority, its devotional interest in nature and the stars), but it

  doesn't follow that only paganism can have these attributes. It's not even certain

  they're all required. GrecoRoman paganism could have been a sufficient or just a

  contributing cause of ancient science, but it was hardly a necessary one; and it

  may have provided values that helped science develop, which science could still

  have developed without, or that other worldviews could have encouraged just as

  well. So, too, Christianity.

  Finally, all too frequently advocates of this new delusion repeatedly confuse

  reason (as the use of logic to achieve consistency) with scientific reasoning

  (testing the predictions of your claims against the evidence, using a method that

  aggressively searches and controls for empirical errors and fallacies, and

  collecting and documenting actual facts about the world by observing and

  confirming them). Or they confuse "science," as scientific methods, research,

  and progress, with "science," as the transmission and use of past science in

  pro
fessional practice (as by doctors, astronomers, and engineers) with no

  significant effort to improve it (beyond armchair revision or the refining of

  measurements). Very often evidence of one will be touted as evidence of the

  other. But that's a fallacy of equivocation. Sci-ence2 can persist without science,

  and in fact clearly did in medieval Christianity, just as reason could be praised

  and pursued while scientific reasoning is hardly to be seen, as was also clearly

  the case through much of the Middle Ages.

  HISTORICAL FANTASIES

  Perhaps a well-constructed argument could avoid those fallacies. But then you'd

  have to get the facts straight. And no one does. The notion that science needed

  Christianity had many progenitors, but its fully delusional form appears to

  originate with a devout Catholic physicist, Father Stanley Jaki.s It has since

  filtered into the conservative Christian mindset, and is often represented as the

  new consensus in the history of science (even though it isn't).9 Rodney Stark is

  probably its best representative. He summarizes Jaki's arguments more

  succinctly and intelligibly than Jaki himself, and unlike most, Stark at least

  attempts to cite his sources. So I'll examine his version of the argument.10 Stark

  has been criticized already.11 But not yet by an expert in ancient science and

  Christianity.

  HISTORICAL FANTASYNUMBER i. "No REAL SCIENCE INANTIQUITY"

  Rodney Stark is an excellent sociologist but a lousy historian. He has no formal

  training in history as a profession, or in ancient history in particular. Actually,

  none of the advocates of this theory do. But we needn't cite a lack of credentials.

  Stark's incompetence is decisively exposed in a single sentence: "Greek learning

  stagnated of its own inner logic. After Plato and Aristotle, very little happened

  beyond some extensions of geometry"12 That Princeton University would

  publish a book with that sentence in it is one of the most appalling things I've

  ever encountered in my career (and it might be no accident that Stark had to

  publish his next book with Random House).

  The truth is that the Greeks and Romans achieved tremendous and continual

  advances in science and mathematics after Aristotle. Aristotle's generation

  marked only the beginning of the history of ancient sciencealmost every

  amazing thing they discovered came after him. And they discovered a lot.13 So

  in a single sentence Stark has erased the entire history of ancient science. Yet his

  entire argument rests on that sentence. Had he done what any scholar is

  obligated to do, and actually checked the current histories of ancient science, he

  would know this key premise, and hence the entire argument founded on it, is

  rubbish. Already by Aristotle's time, in the mid-forth century BCE, there were

  many important scientists, from Hippocrates and Eudoxus to Callistratus,

  Archytas, and Aristoxenus, none of whom Stark shows any awareness of. But

  after that, up to the end of the second century CE, I can ascertain the names of

  over a hundred published scientists, almost all of whose work was not preserved

  by medieval Christians.14 Stark shows no awareness of any of them, either-not

  even the ones whose work was preserved.

  Here's just a sample ...

  Aristotle performed numerous dissection and vivisection experiments in

  animal anatomy and physiology and composed the most scientific range of

  zoological works then known. Immediately afterward, his successor

  Theophrastus extended this work to botany and plant physiology, and also

  produced the first known scientific works in pyrology, mineralogy, and other

  fields. His successor, Strato of Lampsacus, extended their experimental method

  to machines and physics, by which time many of Aristotle's physical theories

 

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