Christianity's Ten Greatest Sins Against Science

Too many different Christian views to blame the whole of Christianity. Some are pro-evolution, some anti-evolution, some pro-stem cell some anti. The big lie at the heart of Vox's question is that there is some unified Christian view on anything.

I would consider Vox Day's World Nut Delay article: "The case against science" and then list Vox's "sins" against science.

I blogged on Vox's article (and so did PZ Myers).

I think Thomas Paine pointed this one out. (in The Age of Reason)

You start by bullying children into believing ridiculous and self-contradictory things, and once they have mastered that skill you can rely on them to be feeble thinkers ever after.

PZ has a great list in response to this post. It can be found here.

Don't forget all that Terry Shiavo bizniz (#19).

...has to rank way up there. If the dire predictions from the majority of climatologists are even halfway realized, then the very future of humanity will be greatly affected. To deny it leads to inaction, including inaction towards preparation, which may be more important at this stage than cutting our emissions.

I suppose when the breadbasket of America dries up and we have a new dust bowl, they'll claim it was God punishing the homosexual and secular agendas! (and then we'll get the war cry to invade Canada, to where the fertile zones moved) ;)

1) Substitution of "faith healing" for actual medicine like that of Benny Hinn.
2) Denial of global warming like that done by Jerry Falwell.
3) Denial of human evolution despite transitional fossils. I'm thinking specifically of a christian group in Africa that wants these bones moved to the back of the museum affiliated with the Leakey's. I don't have the reference.
4) Denial of the fossil record like Ken Ham and his museum in Kentucky. Dinosaurs lived at the same time as man...
5) Claims of a soul although no evidence.
6) Existence of sin although no evidence.
7) --Deleted--
8) Claims of possession although we now know its mental illness.
9) Encouragement to abandon safe sex practices although condom use is beneficial like in Africa.
10) Persecution of other religions although science shows they're equally ineffective.
11) Claims of miraculous healings although no evidence supporting it.
12) Claims about the age of the earth, specifically radiometric dating.
13) Stem cell research.
14) Crisis pregnancy center misinformation.
15) Claims made of abstinence only.
16) Working against the HPV vaccine.
17) Claims of the need for blood sacrifices.
18) Genetics such as claims that Man was specially created and doesn't share a common ancestor with the chimpanzee.

This may be one of those nonsense questions like what does blue taste like. Science in its relatively modern form hasn't been around very long so the history of science and christianity together isn't very long. Maybe not enough time to build up a specific case history. Also it's not clear if he wants specific events like that of Galileo or general doctrines that oppose the conclusions of science.

I also suspect he's going to pull a "no true Scotsman" argument. You site Benny Hinn and we find that's not what he means by a christian. Deny global warming? Those christians that deny it are a minority and therefore its not a big deal, etc.

Everyone should take a look at the Denialism blog at scienceblogs.com to see how many of the Denialist's deck of cards apply to Vox's question. Although the deck of cards is geared toward consumer protection, some of the tactics used will apply here including the fake science group with fake experts,etc. I'm talking about the Discovery Institute here.

The deck of cards PDF can be found at:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=962462#PaperDownload

I personally think he should ask about the sins of christianity against humanity and then it really opens up the field!

I'm sure that for someone in chemistry the specific worst sins would be much different than for someone in biology or physics. For someone in physics I'm sure the trial of Galileo would be one of the biggest sins, for me though it's like "who cares?". The sin you mentioned, getting people to ignore reality, is a good one, but if that's religion's greatest sin than converting O2 to CO2 is humanity's.

So, speaking for myself the biggest sins are as follows:

Demonizing what isn't understood: You wouldn't believe how hard it is to convince some people that snakes, wolves, and a bunch of other commonly demonized animals are really mostly harmless* unless you do something to scare them.

Thinking human life is sacred: it isn't, get over yourselves. Yes, as a human I do have a vested interest in protecting humans in general. I just try to keep it in perspective. Note that both this sin and the above play into the fear of such things as stem cell research.

Encouraging people to think the world is their garden and they can take whatever they like: No, the world doesn't work that way. It's not a system where you can take as much as you want, give nothing back, and realistically expect this to occur indefinitely.

*Yes, I'll admit wolves will attack domestic animals. Personally I considder this a small price to pay for a healthy ecosystem. Also, "fences" people. Wolves are superb hunters but they're also ground-bound. If you don't like the wolves attacking your cows fence the bovines in.

How often do you hear of someone claiming a Miracle, or thanking God, after some sort of technological wonder cures them, saves their lives, or solves a formerly unsolvable problem?

They thank their imaginary superbeing when they should be thanking the countless men and women who labored to educate themselves to the point they could discover, invent, and create the science that allowed the wonderful thing to take place (often in the face of religious opposition).

That's a "sin" that happens daily.

These days, it's compounded every election cycle when they then vote against funding further scientific research.

I don't think there's much doubt what someone means when they ask "What are Christianity's ten greatest sins against science?"

That aside, you took my answer. Religion short-circuits rationality, which is the lifeblood of science. (No, Brent, it's not literally the lifeblood because "Science" is not an organism and therefore does not have blood... ;-))

-T

P.S. A more specific "sin"? Christianity's ongoing war against evolutionary theory. There are a lot of great foundational scientific theories that give one insight into the world around us, but none that grant us such power to understand both life at large and our own biological beings.

This is the last line in Vox's "case against science"

Man has survived millennia of religious faith, but if the prophets of over-population and global warming are correct, he may not survive a mere two centuries of science.

Here is a Top 30 list.

1.) Galileo's trial. Heliocentrism was also attacked by Luther, Calvin, and Melanchthon).
2.) Demonization of mathematics during the Dark Ages as Pythagorean occult numerology.
3.) Persecution of alchemists during the Middle Ages/Early Modern Era. This retarded the science of chemistry for hundreds of years in Western Europe.
4.) Execution of Michael Servetus.
5.) Over a hundred years of opposition to the theory of evolution. Scopes Trial.
6.) Destruction of libraries and the burning of books all across the Roman Empire by fanatical monks during the fourth and fifth centuries (annihilation of most of the accumulated knowledge of Antiquity).
7.) Banning the works of Descartes (which formulated an early version of the scientific method).
8.) Condemnation and imprisonment of Roger Bacon for heresy, an early Medieval empiricist, for the crime of sorcery.
9.) Condemnation of Francis Bacon by the Catholic Church.
10.) Destruction of thousands of Islamic manuscripts by Cardinal Ximenes in massive bonfires after the conquest of Grenada.
11.) Execution of Giordano Bruno.
12.) Execution of Lucilio Vanini.
13.) Murder of Hypatia.
14.) The theological faculty at the University of Paris forcing Buffon to recant his theories about the age of the earth. Nineteen centuries of Flood Geology and Young Earth Creationism.
15.) St. Paul's rants against the "wisdom of the wise" in Corinthians and the centuries of anti-intellectualism it inspired.
16.) Justinian's closing of Plato's Academy in Athens.
17.) The ecclessiastical monopoly upon lay education which lasted for centuries. This diverted countless talented minds down the worthless rat hole of theology.
18.) The vicious attacks upon rationality by Martin Luther (i.e., "reason is the whore of the devil.")
19.) Hostility to modern medicine by superstitious Christian sects like Jehovah's Witnesses.
20.) The ban placed on several of Kepler's works by the Catholic Church.
21.) Condemnation of the Monophysite John Philiponus (an early critic of Aristotle's physics, and a precursor of Galileo) and the destruction of his writings in the seventh century.
22.) Condemnation of 1277 (an attempt by conservative theologians to subvert Aristotelian natural philosophy at the University of Paris).
23.) Condemnation of Peter Abelard for heresy.
24.) Torture of Tomas Campanella.
25.) Subordination of natural philosophy to theology in Medieval universities prior to the fourteenth century.
26.) The late St. Augustine's complete and utter rejection of his previous limited support for natural science.
27.) Demonization of chemistry as one of the "seven devilish arts" during the Middle Ages.
28.) Proscribing human dissection until well into the Middle Ages. The superstitious belief that man was made "in the image of God" held back anatomy for centuries.
29.) Hostility of the Papacy towards the first Italian scientific societies.
30.) Glorification of ignorance by the Church fathers.

How about another one confined to the last, say, 200 years?

1. Opposing teaching of evolution, leaving major gaps in education.
2. Promoting all forms of false-science, 'creationism,' rewriting everything from biology to relativity.
3. Instilling a public distrust of science by claiming that anything that disagrees with the bible has to be wrong.
4. Teaching people from a very young age that unquestioning faith without evidence is a *good* thing.
5. Opposition to various forms of biotech research, including but not limited to the use of embryonic stem cells.
6. Promoting climate-change denial, due to a combination of politics and 'God will make it better'/'its the end of the world soon anyway.'
7. Producing fake, biased research in support of abstinance-only education.
8. Hampering campaigns to slow the spread of HIV by refusing to allow the use of the most effective tool, condoms.
9. The Catholic Church's ban on all forms of contraception.
10. Undermineing public confidence in medicine with 'faith-healing' scams.

Trying to replace a method that allows radically different people to come to the same conclusions about the world with a version that requires a sectarian presupposition (and thus can't be shared by non-coreligionists).

Another way to put the same thing is that they attempt to replace objective methods driven by evidence with rhetorical methods driven by theology. I assume this is based on the need for the hierarchy to maintain it's position of authority. Afterall, for 3000+ years religion was the sole authority about how the world works. That can't be easy to give up.

Caveats: This refers to organized religion in general, not religion in the abstract. Plus there are religious traditions that favor inquiry and skepticism. I don't think it's general religion that causes this, but rather the organized aspect.