If you think you know these things, you need to read this 2003 book by Rodney Stark For the Glory of God – How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery. These are notes I took from this book of his. He passed in 2022.
This perhaps could be your opening salvo on your know-it-all friend, child, spouse who thinks Christianity is THE evil:
“So, then, let us finally be done with the claim that religion is all about ritual. Gods are the fundamental feature of religions. This holds even for Godless religions, their lack of Gods explaining the inability of such faiths to attract substantial followings. Moreover, it was not the ‘wisdom of the East’ that gave rise to science, not did Zen meditation turn people’s hearts against slavery. By the same token, science was not the work of Western secularists of even deists; it was entirely the work of devout believers in an active, conscious, creator God. And it was faith in the goodness of this same God and in the mission of Jesus that led other devout Christians to end slavery, first in medieval Europe and then again in the New World” (376).
Then when he/she gets round, as they surely will, to the conflict between religion and science or Christianity and reason, or the suppression of real science by Christian fanatics, you can respond with these:
“…it is instructive that China, Islam, and ancient Greece and Rome had a highly developed alchemy. But only in Europe did alchemy develop into chemistry. By the same token, many societies developed elaborate systems of astrology, but only in Europe did astrology lead to astronomy” (127).
“It was the Nazi Party, not the German Evangelical Church, that tried to eradicate ‘Jewish’ physics, and it was the Communist Party, not the Russian Orthodox Church, that destroyed ‘bourgeois’ genetics and left many other fields of Soviet science in disarray. No one has been prompted by these examples to propose an inherent incompatibility between politics and science” (128).
50 plus years before Copernicus was born, Nicholas of Cusa said that whether a man is on earth, sun, or star his position will always seem the motionless center while all else is in motion (138).
Science – supposed conflict with religion
Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918), founder and first president of Cornell University was the author of the single most influential book ever written on the supposed conflict between science and theology: A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 volumes).
“Trouble is that almost every word of White’s account of the Columbus story is a lie. Every educated person of the time, including Roman Catholic prelates, knew the earth was round. The Venerable Bede (ca. 673-723) taught the world was round, as did….” Bishop Virgilius of Salzburg (720-784), Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274). Sphere was the title of the medieval textbook on astronomy that was most popular. The scholars in Spain who challenged Columbus didn’t think the world was flat and so Columbus would sail off it, but that he didn’t understand how large the earth as and was counting on too short a voyage.
During the first 15 centuries of Christianity “’nearly, unanimous scholarly opinion pronounced the earth spherical, and by the 15th century all doubt had disappeared.’” Edward Grant in a massive study of medieval cosmology said that “in none of the Scholastic writings was there any mention of a flat earth except for a few asides to refute perceptions of flatness.” Andrew Dickson White’s book remains influential. Modern historians dismiss it as a polemic. White admitted he wrote it to get even with Christians who were critical of his plans for Cornell. White had many other bogus accounts about Christians and science that we were never told about. “The reason we didn’t know the truth concerning these matters is that the claim of an inevitable and bitter warfare between religion and science has, for more than three centuries, been the primary polemical device used in the atheist attack on faith. From Thomas Hobbes through Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins, false claims about religion and science have been used as weapons in the battle to ‘free’ the human mind from the ‘fetters of faith’” (122-3).
Copernicus – Didn’t start “Scientific Revolution”
In 1985 book I. Bernard Cohen: “’In short, the idea that a Copernican revolution in science occurred goes counter to the evidence…and is an invention of later historians’” (139).
Science – Debt to Christianity
“To sum up: the rise of science was not an extension of classical learning. It was the natural outgrowth of Christian doctrine: Nature exists because it was created by God. To love and honor God, one must fully appreciate the wonders of His handwork” (157). And so Christians were dedicated to study it.
Scientific Stars 1543-1680 majority were Christians
Table 2.1: “The most important finding in Table 2.1 is that those who made the ‘Scientific Revolution’ included an unusually large number of devout Christians – more than 60 percent qualified as devout and only two, Edmund Halley and Paracelsus, qualified as skeptics” (163).
For all the current Confessional Lutheran pastors who are content to ignore evolutionary theory, even though when surveyed in circa 2017 the majority of college students who said they were Christians when they arrived at college cited evolution for their reason for falling away, this next part is for you:
Evolution – Origin of Species produced conundrum
As one of Europe’s leading paleontologists, Francois Jules Pictet, remarked in his 1860 review of The Origin: ‘We are presented with a theory which on the one hand seems to be impossible because it is inconsistent with observed facts and on the other hand appears to be the best explanation [available]’” (181).
Evolution – makes miraculous assumptions
“The odds of creating even the simplest organism at random are even more remote – Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe calculated the odds as 1 in 1040,000 (consider that all the atoms in the known universe are estimated to number no more than 10 80), In this sense, then, Darwinian theory does rest on the truly miraculous assumptions” (184).
Evolution – tall tales about
An anecdote about the debate between atheist Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce appears in every major Darwin biography. Wilberforce is said to have asked Huxley if it was through his grandfather or grandmother he claimed descent from a monkey? Huxley is said to have arose and said that he wasn’t ashamed to have a monkey for an ancestor, but would be ashamed to be connected to a man who used his great gifts to obscure the truth. This never happened. The only “firsthand” report written by a nonscholar is in a popular magazine 38 years after the alleged event. “No other account of these meetings, and there were many written at the time, mentioned” it and many thought the bishop had the better of it and most considered it a draw (187-8).
Evolution – not even a theory let alone fact
“Julian Huxley and many other Darwinian ideologues claim that, unlike the theories of physics, chemistry, or even sociology, evolution is ‘fact,’ not theory. This is philosophical nonsense. All scientific theories remain subject to the possibility of future disconfirmation. Indeed, when the great philosopher of science Karl Popper [1962] suggested that the standard version of evolution even falls short of being a scientific theory, being instead an untestable tautology, he was subjected to public condemnation and much personal abuse” (191).
Evolution – not all are anti-God
“A [1997] survey of biologists who are so distinguished as to be listed in the American Men and Women of Science found that 45% acknowledged that the process of evolution is guided by God” (192). This is interesting, but please note that theistic evolution is still a forfeiting of Biblical revelation, orthodox Christianity in general, and Confessional Lutheranism in particular.
Evolution – colleges havens of unbelief
Table 2.2 shows that the Social Sciences, Economics, Political Science, Sociology, Psychology, and Anthropology “are substantially less religious than those in what must be regarded as the more mature scientific fields.” …And “those enrolling in the social sciences are less religious than the general population before entering college and graduate school.” Finally above all other social sciences psychology and anthropology “stand as towers of unbelief” among the other social sciences: “These two fields are true outliers” (194-5), i.e. they are far more irreligious than the norm.
Until you’ve mixed it up with a millennial or had your ears boxed by a Gen Z on the evils of the witch-hunts that “You are responsible for”, you have no idea what real self-righteousness looks like or how high of a soapbox someone can get on. If you have, then please read this:
Witch Trails – truth about and Inquisition
Conventional dating of the witchcraft era is from 1450 to 1750. Many of the more severe episodes were between 1550 and 1650. But during the entire 3 centuries, in all of Europe it is unlikely that more than 100,000 people died as “witches”. The best estimate by scholars sifting through records is that about 60,000 – men and women – were executed as such. That’s about 2 victims per 10,000 population. Even if we assume the real number was twice as high, the total would still be a tiny fraction of the what has been claimed. …The overall conviction rate of witches on trial was bout 50-55%. That was a low rate for convictions in those days. “Contrary to its notorious reputation, the consensus among respectable historians is that the Inquisition was initiated in Spain to replace mob actions with judicial process and restraint, with the result that , as Brian Levack pointed out, during ‘the largest witch-hunt in Spanish history’ more than nineteen hundred persons were accused, but most were never charged, and ‘only eleven individuals were condemned.’ …”Here, too, it was the ecclesiastical courts that were most reluctant to use torture and eventually took the lead in prohibiting its use” (203-5).
Feminism – no the witch the trials were not about women
“Based on computations covering the entire era of witch-hunting, about a third of all the victims were men” (212). “accused, men were more likely than women to receive severe sentences, including execution” (213). “In addition, a very high percentage of women charged with witchcraft were accused by other women, not men – influential or otherwise” (213). “The gender difference arose not because of deviant behavior but precisely because the conventional female role bore responsibility for family health”(212-3).
Witchcraft – Luther
Author doesn’t cite Luther directly but says that when Protestants took the Reformation into new areas “they often took witch-hunting with them, or intensified the previous level, fully in keeping with Martin Luther’s remark ‘I should willingly light their stakes myself’” (250). I include this in the interest of full disclosure. This agrees with what I have read in another Luther biography, but witch burning has never been part of any Lutheran Confession of Faith.
Witchcraft – Inquisition and lies about it 1tth century
Alonso de Salazar y Frias was sent in 1610 by the Inquisition to Logrono to investigate unauthorized burning of six witches. After more than a year investigating he said, “’I have not found the slightest evidence from which to infer that a single act of witchcraft has actually occurred.’ He went on to suggest that efforts should be made to prevent public discussion and agitation concerning the topic; the preaching of sermons about witchcraft should especially be avoided, because he had discovered ‘that there were neither witches nor bewitched until they were talked and written about’” (260).
Atheism – the charge that science saves us from magic, demons
“Finally, it is all well and good to note that the rise of science offered natural explanations for phenomena once credited to active spirits…But,…it is unfortunate ‘liberal’ nonsense to propose that an end to witch hunting was accomplished by ‘the triumph of mechanistic cosmology in late seventeenth-century Europe,’ or that ‘mechanical philosophy represented a serious threat to current religious belief’ and hence discredited ‘miracles, the efficacy of prayer, the operation of Divine Providence and even the existence of God.’ Witchcraft beliefs and persecutions did not succumb to the arrival of an age of science and reason. No! Just as their [Christian] predecessors had deduced satanism as the mechanism behind non-Church magic, it was deeply committed and well-trained [Christian] Scholastics, responding to the evidence of their senses, who stripped it of its evidential basis” (285-6).
If you survived the holier-than-thou whuppping you so richly deserve, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Wait till your Gen-Z, Millennial, or now Gen-Alpha haul out the slavery issue. Just go ahead and bare your back, and prepare for the whipping your kind deserve. In my experience, it will be white kids not black kids whose indignation and repugnance at “people like you” will be at its most intense.
Slavery – denounced by Pope 1537
“’Indians and all other peoples…should not be deprived of their liberty or their possessions…and are not to be reduced to slavery, and whatever happens to the contrary is to be considered null and void. – Pope Paul III (June 2, 1537)’” (291).
Slavery – Christians ended it
“Finally, the abolition of New World slavery was initiated and achieved by Christian activists. …First the excesses of political correctness have all but erased awareness that slavery was once nearly universal to all societies able to afford it, and that only in the West did significant moral opposition ever arise and lead to abolition. Unfortunately, the typical discussion of slavery especially in textbooks, gives the impression that it was a peculiarly European and especially American vice, and no notice is taken of the extent of slavery in times past, or the substantial amount of slavery that continues in many parts of the non-Christian world” (291).
Slavery – were laws in US against killing slaves
“Southern courts and legislatures did enact laws against killing slaves. In 1791, North Carolina defined killing a slave as ‘murder’ and subject to pertinent statutes against that crime; in 1816, Georgia held that killing or maiming a slave was the full equivalent of killing or maiming a white person” (320).
Slavery – Pope’s Bulls against it “lost” to history
Pope Paul III’s bull (1537) against slavery and similar ones( 1462, 1537, 1639, 1741, 1815, and 1839) by other popes were “lost” from the historical record unit very recently, late 1990s. This “was due to the extreme Protestant biases of historians against Catholicism and maybe they were scornful of the pope’s assumption that slavery was caused by Satan” (250).
Slavery – Inquisition denounced it
“Eventually, the Congregation of the Holy Office (the Roman Inquisition) even took up the matter. On March 20, 1686, it ruled in the form of questions and answers: ‘It is asked: Whether it is permitted to capture by force and deceit Blacks and other natives who have harmed no one? Answer: no.’…The problem wasn’t that the Church failed to condemn slavery; it was that few heard and most of them did not listen” (332).
Slavery – New World Protestants didn’t denounce
“Thus it must be noted that the introduction of slavery into the New World did not prompt any leading Dutch or English Protestants to denounce it.” [He must mean at that time because William Wilberforce and John Wesley certainly later denounced slavery.] (334).
Slavery – denouncing it never arises in non-Christian nations
“…indigenous abolition movements have yet to appear in non-Christian nations” (339).
Slavery – first abolition tract in America 1700
“On June 19, 1700, Samuel Sewall (1652-1730) published The Selling of Joseph, the first abolitionist tract written in America.” He was a devout Puritan (339).
Slavery – Christians led the way in denouncing in 19th century
Through the entire abolitionists’ movement it “was staffed by devout Christian activists, the majority of them clergy.” John A. Auping collected the data on all the 149 local agents for the American Anti-Slavery Society when it expanded the most 1834-40. 52% of travelling agents were ordained ministers and 75% of the local agents were (342, 343).
Slavery – Monotheism and Christian Culture necessary
Stark doesn’t claim that monotheism or Christian culture were a sufficient basis for concluding slavery was sin, but it was a necessary basis: “…only those religious thinkers working within the Christian tradition were able to reach antislavery conclusions (with the exceptions of the two Jewish sects)” (345).
Slavery – Stark blames 20th century revisionists views
Charles Beard, 1927, distained the religious motives of abolitionists even as he blamed religious influences for sustaining slavery in the South (346).
Slavery – blaming on Christianity is recent
Abolitionists “knew that theirs was a religious movement, and so did several generations of historians. But during the latter half of the twentieth century, many historians decided they knew better.” He cites David Brion Davis, 1966, as a good example. This change was rooted “mainly in their antagonism toward religion in general, and the Roman Catholic Church in particular” (347).
Slavery – it was the Enlightenment that accepted it
Enlightenment figures fully accepted slavery. Thomas Hobbes, John Locke “’openly sanctioned human bondage’” Locke even invested in the Atlantic slave trade. Voltaire wrote comments against Christians profiting from slavery “but he supported the slave trade and believed in the inferiority of Africans.” Comte de Mirabeau and Edmund Burke accepted slavery. …There were Enlightenment figures who opposed slavery “But most accepted slavery as a normal part of the human situation” (359-360).
A last word of warning. Don’t expect to win or even convince. Millennials, Gen Z’s, and Gen-A’s are experts at referring to the internet in an authoritative yet vague way. They will say something like, “Oh Rodney Stark was discredited 15 years ago.” Game, set, match, discussion over.
But the goal here is not to win but make them think. They will know the aphorism that it’s the winners not the losers who write history. Well, whose been winning since circa 1969? It isn’t Christians.
