Evidences: Is There Anything Good About Christianity, After All?

The question of evidences for Christianity has come up often lately in comments here. I've been meaning to write about it for some time; now it's time to buckle down to it. One of the more provocative demands for evidence came from "Seldonster," who said,

"Many more people have been killed, tortured, and raped by religious zealots---the Inquisition, Jim Jones, Witch Hunts, suicide bombers, pedophile priests---than by scientific zealots.  "In fact, name one single tangible positive contribution that religion has made to society. One single discovery about the world that came from religion. There are none."
. . . .

"There is no evidence for the supernatural."

. . . .

"The only evidence we have is that people who believe old stories can sometimes end up doing major evil."

This comment raises an evidential question that could be re-phrased as, "If religion is so great, why doesn't it work any better?" I have to begin with two disclaimers:

1. I will not attempt to defend "religion" here. Christianity is a unique belief system, and I will deal with it as such without concerning myself with the record of other religions.

2. "People who believe old stories can sometimes end up doing major evil." Yes, even including some who are Christians or call themselves such. That's undisputed. If some people who are not fully following Christ's teachings live unattractive lives, though, that's hardly evidence against Christ. The major evidential question, and the one asked by Seldonster, is not what have individuals done, but has Christianity had a positive impact on the whole?

Yesterday Douglas Groothuis, on his Culture Watch blog, reviewed Christianity on Trial: Arguments against Anti-Religious Bigotry, by journalists Vincent Carroll and David Shiflett. According to Groothuis's review,

"Christianity was foundational to the major social structures in the West. The book presents a strong case that Christian ideals are behind many beneficial aspects of contemporary culture, including an appreciation of science and education, equality before the law, universal suffrage, the structure of American government, and much more."

According to National Review Online, Booklist wrote about this book:

"The standard trashing of Christianity is false, as Carroll and Shiflett demonstrate by putting specific events, such as the Crusades, and practices, such as slavery, in historical and cross-cultural perspective. They don't deny genuine wrongdoing by Christians and churches but balance the wrongs with the much larger record of right doing by Christians and churches. They back their presentation almost exclusively with the findings of secular scholars."

Massnews.com wrote in its piece on the same book,

"The fundamental revelation that Christianity brought to the world was the idea of the moral equality of all individuals.

"The authors challenge the view that the rise of the Christian Church was the beginning of a 'dark age' of backwardness and superstition, between the golden age of the pagan classical world and the modern Enlightenment of progress and science. In fact, 'the Middle Ages were the incubator for some of our most cherished modern values and institutions, and the origins of those values and institutions may often be found in an earlier age of the church.'"

*****

"Though Saint Paul is widely derided for advising wives to be submissive to their husbands, what was really new in his teaching was 'his repeated emphasis on the obligation of husbands to wives.' Paul’s was the first affirmation of sexual equality in the Bible and in all of human history."

*****

"Perhaps the greatest historical canard is that Christianity justified and defended slavery, when in fact the Christian West was the first society in the history of the world to attack and abolish slavery."

*****

"Chinese and Arab civilizations may have been more technologically advanced than medieval Europe, but innovation reached a dead end in the East while it continued in the West.

“'The Middle Ages formed one long training of the intellect of Western Europe in the sense of order,' philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote, attributing the triumph of Western science to 'the medieval insistence on the rationality of God.'”

*****

"War is as universal as slavery, and it is only Christian societies that have tried to reform or to abolish it."

And finally, the review at LewRockwell.com says,

"The prevailing belief among smug non-Christians, a belief that Western history is the history of brave 'free-thinkers' working against the tyranny of Christianity, is little more than self-satisfaction based on historical ignorance."

I have the book on reserve at the library, with plans to read it soon. I'm taking a bit of a risk, relying on others' views on something I haven't read, but the topic is very timely in relation to recent comment dialogue; and my reading time is a bit reduced as I'm in the middle of a project screening in our back porch, so I'm going ahead with the risk. I have no concern that the basic facts told in these quotes stand on shaky ground.

What intrigues me, and what I hope the book addresses, is how the prevailing view of Christianity's impact on history has shifted in the past generation or so, in spite of these sorts of things:

- The importance of Christianity as the basis for scientific thought has been well documented, not in just this book but many places (though I can just hear now the howls from those who find that suggestion outrageous, largely because of misinformation surrounding the Scopes monkey trial).

- The status of women in Christian cultures is far higher than in most of the world. In India, suttee--the cultural requirement for widows to immolate themselves on their husband's funeral pyre--was ended by the efforts of Christian missionaries. Foot-binding was a self-mutilating practice of Chinese women--to be more attractive to men--until the influence of the Christian West brought it to an end. (I don't need to write of the low place women have in Islam.)

- The true story of the abolition of slavery is also primarily a story of Christian effort.

I reiterate, some who called themselves Christians have not lived up to the ideal. But to answer Seldonster's question, has any good come out of religion? Christianity has been determinative in the founding of modern science, in women's rights, and the ending of slavery. We haven't even mentioned the founding of hospitals and schools in America and the third world, or discovering the treatment for Hansen's disease (leprosy); in fact there's an awful lot we haven't mentioned yet. But for a start, this seems like a pretty good record to me.

Posted: Fri - August 12, 2005 at 03:44 PM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

Evidences: Is There Anything Good About Christianity, After All?

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson