Advanced Bible Course Studies In The Deeper Life: Fill & Download for Free

If I am interpreting this correctly, it is a question of how the church’s power during the Renaissance might have interfered with development that would otherwise have taken place. I am guessing, but I think this is probably about the church’s supposed opposition to science.Allow me to quote Tim O’Neill:The standard view of the Middle Ages as a scientific wasteland has persisted for so long and is so entrenched in the popular mind largely because it has deep cultural and sectarian roots, but not because it has any real basis in fact.It is partly based on anti-Catholic prejudices in the Protestant tradition, that saw the Middle Ages purely as a benighted period of Church oppression. It was also promulgated by Enlightenment scholars like Voltaire and Condorcet who had an axe to grind with Christianity in their own time and projected this onto the past in their polemical anti-clerical writings. By the later Nineteenth Century the "fact" that the Church suppressed science in the Middle Ages was generally unquestioned even though it had never been properly and objectively examined.It was the early historian of science, the French physicist and mathematician Pierre Duhem, who first began to debunk this polemically-driven view of history….When he did what no historian before him had done and actually read the work of Medieval physicists like Roger Bacon (1214-1294), Jean Buridan (c. 1300- c. 1358), and Nicholas Oresme (c. 1320-1382) he was amazed at their sophistication, and he began a systematic study of the scientific flowering of the Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries.What he and later modern historians of early science found is that the Enlightenment myths of the Middle Ages as a scientific dark age, suppressed by the dead hand of an oppressive Church, were nonsense…When Toledo was recaptured from the Muslims in 1085, they left behind libraries filled with literary treasures that had long been lost to the West. Intrepid Christian scholars traveled dangerous medieval highways to Sicily, southern Italy, and Spain to translate these books into Latin and bring them home to the rest of Europe.One of the remarkable things about this is which books the translators concentrated on. The first scholars concentrated overwhelmingly on works on mathematics, astronomy, physics, logic and philosophy as well as medicine, optics and natural history. (They were not interested in plays and poems at the time. These would later be "rediscovered" by the humanist scholars of the later Renaissance.) Medieval church scholars were interested in science, logic and philosophy.Once these books became available, they gave birth to an explosion of intellectual development. This, in turn, led to the development of Universities. The University was a new phenomenon in European history. These were the first establishments of higher learning since the fall of Rome, but in fact, nothing quite like these schools had ever existed before—not in ancient Greece or in Rome. The institution that we recognize today, with its faculties, courses of study, examinations, and degrees, as well as the distinction between undergraduate and graduate study, comes to us directly from the medieval church.This should not surprise us. The peasants of this era were mostly illiterate and the aristocracy was concerned with other things: the church was "the only institution in Europe that showed consistent interest in the preservation and cultivation of knowledge."The papacy played a central, if not an exclusive, role in the establishment and encouragement of the universities: one way was through the granting of a charter. By the mid 1400s, 81 universities had been established in Europe, 33 possessed a papal charter, 15 a royal or imperial one, 20 possessed both, and 13 had none. It was the accepted view that a university could not award degrees without the approval of pope, king, or emperor. Pope Innocent IV officially granted this privilege to Oxford University in 1254. A University degree was a marketable commodity: it would get you a good paying job anywhere in the known world at the time.Inhabitants of medieval university towns loved the money Universities brought to an area, but they tended to hate the students. As a result, students and their professors often complained of how they were treated in the local towns. The Church responded by offering what was known as benefit of clergy, thereby providing special protection to university students.The popes intervened with secular rulers on behalf of the universities themselves on numerous occasions as well. Pope Honorius III (1216-27) sided with the scholars at Bologna in 1220 against infringements on their liberties. When the chancellor of Paris insisted on an oath of loyalty to himself personally, Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) intervened. This helped protect the integrity of the intellectual environment.Another novelty of the medieval university system was the way advancement and prominence was gained through disputation and debate. At least twice a year a university would hold a quodlibeta - a multi-day tournament of rigorous logical disputation where anyone could propose and defend any position on any subject. Masters and doctors maintained their positions (and their reputations) by their ability to win such debates, often throwing open the floor to all comers. Brilliant students could rise quickly in reputation and renown by taking on the masters and beating them. Often highly radical or even heretical ideas were presented and participants had to defend or attack them using logic and reason alone.The idea of a rational free-for-all where the finest minds of the time used reason alone to bat around ideas like "God is evil" or "the universe had no beginning in time" certainly does not fit most people's ideas of the Middle Ages, yet this was a regular event in Medieval universities.For example, a scholar named William of Conches (1090–1154), based at Chartres Cathedral, beginning from the position that his audience understood the creation story in Genesis to be symbolic, went on to interpret that story ‘according to nature.’ He proposed the idea that natural forces—set in motion by God—brought about the form of the heavens and earth as we have them today. He went on to talk about life arising from the primordial mud by the natural action of heat and how it developed from simple early forms. He even talked about how man probably arose in the same way and how, in theory, some other species of man could arise via natural processes in the same way.[1][1][1][1]Contrary to popular opinion, the Medieval Church did not insist on a purely literal interpretation of the Bible (fundamentalist literalism is a modern and largely American Protestant idea). This meant the church had no problem with seeing aspects of the Bible as allegorical or with exploring ways in which symbolic truth might relate to the real world. Most people who think of the Medieval period as one where Biblical literalists suppressed original thinking through fear would have a hard time explaining the work of William of Conches and his fellow "Chartrains"—students of Bernard of Chartres.[2][2][2][2]Starting in the Middle Ages, the church paid for priests, monks and friars to study at the universities. The church even insisted that science and mathematics should be a compulsory part of their syllabus.[3][3][3][3]It was within this vigorous intellectual environment that Medieval Europe saw the first real flowering of scientific innovation since the ancient Greeks. Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253) proposed that scholars should not only derive universal laws from particulars and then apply laws to particular cases (Aristotle's “principle of induction”), but they should also use experiment to verify the particulars. Roger Bacon (1214–1292) developed this idea further, proposing a method based on a repeated cycle of observation, hypothesis and experimentation.Fourteenth Century scholars hit on the idea of making observation and induction even more precise by using mathematics as the language of physics. This is probably the most revolutionary of all the many Medieval contributions to the rise of true modern science.[4][4][4][4]Thomas Bradwardine (1300–1349) was one of a group of scholars who worked on key issues in physics using this new approach. Along with William Heytesbury (1313–1372), Richard Swineshead (mid fourteenth century) and John Dumbleton (1310–1349) and building on the work of William of Occam (1285–1347) and Walter Burley (1275–1344), these Oxford University scholars became known as the Merton Calculators and they lay the foundations for modern physics as we know it.These men—churchmen—overturned the earlier Greek conception of motion by distinguishing kinematics from dynamics. (Yes, Galileo wrote a book and the concept was long attributed to him, but it is now clear that it was the Merton Calculators who discovered and proved this principle long before Galileo was born. There is some evidence that he read of their work and presented the idea as his own without attribution).Aristotle and other Greek scholars had seen motion purely as a matter of external force, whereas the Merton scholars looked at the persistence of motion via impetus—measurable by material volume and velocity. This laid the foundations for the later key understanding of momentum, but also allowed them to formulate the Mean Speed Theory.[5][5][5][5]Nicole Oresme applied this to astronomy, using impetus to show that most of the ancient Greek objections to the possibility of a revolving earth were invalid. He still believed that the earth was stationary on other grounds, but his arguments were later taken and used by Copernicus in the development of heliocentrism.Orseme, Jean Buridan and Nicholas of Cusa were also able to show how impetus is a constant motive power that is corrupted or halted only when it encounters some form of resistance. This allowed Medieval physicists to set aside the Greek idea that celestial motions took place in some incorruptible heavenly realm where earthly physics did not apply. It meant they could—and did—start applying principles discovered on earth to the motions of the heavens.Seeing the Medieval Church as a violent and intolerant theocracy that immediately consigned anyone with the whiff of a new idea to the flames is a polemic not a fact. In fact, the parameters for speculation and investigation into the nature of the physical world were quite wide, because the Medieval Church considered the cosmos to be the rational product of the rational mind of God; they believed that humans were given reason by God and that investigating the universe rationally had theological and spiritual support.This is why Thomas Aquinas—the Dominican friar—wrote two monumental summas which opened the door for the church’s promotion of scientific and intellectual development. He argued that reason is in harmony with faith, and that reason can contribute to a deeper understanding of revelation. It is also why the quodlibeta debates at Medieval universities were such open free-for-alls where all kinds of radical and even heretical ideas could be proposed to see if they stood up to logical analysis. This rationalist tradition is an intellectual watershed that helped to lay the foundation for the later scientific revolution of the 1700s which would not—could not—have occurred without it.At this point, it is inevitable that someone will bring up the manner in which Galileo was persecuted by the church for opposing its ideas. While there is truth to that, there is also some distortion.Galileo's championing of heliocentrism and Copernicanism was controversial during his lifetime—not because the church opposed scientific discovery—but because most scientists of the time subscribed to the Aristotelian view of the universe as geocentric, or they supported the Tychonic system[6][6][6][6] (which was a combined view of Copernicus with the philosophy of Ptolemy).However, Galileo had a flair for self-promotion, and while it had earned him powerful friends among Italy’s ruling elite, it also earned him some enemies. Galileo resolutely and vehemently set himself to the task of discrediting many popular beliefs which had hitherto been accepted as indisputable, arousing a storm of opposition and indignation amongst those whose opinions he discredited. He was a fierce controversialist, who, not content with refuting adversaries, unsparingly ridiculed and exasperated his opponents.The difference of opinion was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, which concluded that heliocentrism was “foolish and absurd.” The argument against the Copernican system said that if it were true, the inferior planets, Venus and Mercury, which are between the earth and the sun, should exhibit phases like those of the moon. Before the invention of the telescope these were impossible to observe with the naked eye. This had forced Copernicus to advance the explanation these planets were transparent and the sun's rays passed through them. That did seem foolish and absurd even to a non-scientific church.Galileo went on to defend his views in “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems” in 1632, which appeared to attack Pope Urban VIII and thereby alienated him and the Jesuits, who had supported Galileo up until this point. It didn’t help that he referred to his opponent as ‘Simplicius.’ This got him another summons to stand before the Roman Inquisition once again, in 1633. At first he denied that he had advocated heliocentrism, but later he said he had only done so unintentionally.Galileo was convicted of “vehement suspicion of heresy.” Nearly 70 at the time of his trial, Galileo lived his last nine years under comfortable house arrest, writing a summary of his early motion experiments that became his final great scientific work.[7][7][7][7]While people with no detailed knowledge of modern studies in the history of science still cling to Nineteenth Century myths about the Church suppressing science, taking an overview of all the church’s interactions with science and reason for the critical centuries involved, including Galileo, it is now clear that without the flowering of speculation and analysis in the period from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Century, western science would never have arisen at all.The Great Renaissance and the Late Renaissance lasted for 300+ years, from the 1300s into the 1600s. The Popes of these centuries were vitally concerned with the trappings of political power. They owned lands and ruled them in the manner of secular Princes. They engaged in wars, conducted diplomacy when force failed, were masters of political deceit, accepted bribes for church offices, or filled them with kinsmen, and corruption ran rampant and largely unchecked through the church.These same Popes also brought more riches to the church than it had ever before seen, and they spent much of it patronizing Renaissance artists and scientists. These Popes devoted themselves to the arts and humanities, built cathedrals, and mostly did not bother themselves over moral and spiritual issues, but they attracted artists and intellectuals to Rome, collected manuscripts, paintings and sculpture, and they built great works of art and architecture like the Sistine Chapel.What they did not do—in general—was interfere with intellectual and scientific development—even taking Galileo into consideration as one example out of many over a period of centuries.So the correct answer to this question is that the scientific, intellectual and philosophical development which did take place during the Renaissance could not have and would not have occurred without the crucial support of the church.The idea that the church interfered with development is an error that persists in the popular imagination of the uninformed.Footnotes[1] William of Conches[1] William of Conches[1] William of Conches[1] William of Conches[2] William of Conches[2] William of Conches[2] William of Conches[2] William of Conches[3] Catholic Church and science - Wikipedia[3] Catholic Church and science - Wikipedia[3] Catholic Church and science - Wikipedia[3] Catholic Church and science - Wikipedia[4] The Late Medieval Age of Crisis and Renewal, 1300-1500[4] The Late Medieval Age of Crisis and Renewal, 1300-1500[4] The Late Medieval Age of Crisis and Renewal, 1300-1500[4] The Late Medieval Age of Crisis and Renewal, 1300-1500[5] Speed & Velocity – The Physics Hypertextbook[5] Speed & Velocity – The Physics Hypertextbook[5] Speed & Velocity – The Physics Hypertextbook[5] Speed & Velocity – The Physics Hypertextbook[6] Tychonic system - Wikipedia[6] Tychonic system - Wikipedia[6] Tychonic system - Wikipedia[6] Tychonic system - Wikipedia[7] CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Galileo Galilei[7] CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Galileo Galilei[7] CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Galileo Galilei[7] CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Galileo Galilei

This answer got a little away from me, so I've added headings to help break it up. Anyway, let's get to it.Where does the 6,000 - 8,000 year Biblical estimate come from?The Bible does not explicitly state the age of the Earth anywhere. However, if you're one of those who accept the various books at more or less face value, you can add up different time periods/dates/ages that are mentioned to come up with a reasonable estimate of a Biblically based timeframe for the seven days of creation. Granted, you still need to make a few assumptions to fill in some gaps, but these gaps come in after Abraham, so they're nowhere near on the order of thousands of years, let alone millions or billions.Contrary to what some people might imply, this wasn't just some eccentric attempt by Archbishop James Ussher – there were many, many people who attempted the estimate, with broad agreement among most educated Jews/Christians on the general magnitude. Most estimates clustered around two dates for creation – 5500 BC or 4000 BC. According to the fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia, the discrepancy is down to which version of the Bible was used – the Greek Septuagint (5500 BC) or the Hebrew Masoretic text (4000 BC), due to the differences in the two versions regarding ages of various patriarchs when their children were born. Just a few of the more notable scholars besides Ussher who have attempted such estimates include Hillel II (3671 BC), Hippolytus of Rome (5500 BC), Johannes Kepler (3977 BC), Isaac Newton (4000 BC), Maimonides (4058 BC), Martin Luther (3961 BC), and Saint Augustine (~5500 BC). The main reason Ussher and his chronology are now the most prominent is that they were included in one publisher's printing of the King James Bible, which happened to become a very popular edition.You can argue about whether or not people should have interpreted the Bible so literally, but they did. And given how widespread the belief was that the Earth was only a few thousand years old, and how many centuries that belief was the consensus, it certainly doesn't seem obvious that the Bible implies a different age.How do we know the real age of the Earth?So, when did people start to get a real idea of the age of the Earth? In European scientific circles, at least, the sense of a truly ancient Earth really took hold after Charles Lyell published his multi-volume work, Principles of Geology, in the 1830s. Yes, there had been debate before then, but Lyell's work was truly influential. In contrast to people who thought that Earth had been shaped by catastrophes literally of Biblical proportion, such as Noah's flood, Lyell proposed that understanding processes occurring in the present, and extrapolating those into the past, was the key to understanding Earth's history. And when you look at how slow erosion takes place, how long it takes for sediment to build up (a particularly extreme example is the white chalk cliffs of Dover – more info), how long it takes glaciers to build up from snowfall, and many other processes, it becomes obvious that the Earth is more than just a few thousand years old.But people still couldn’t put a number to the age of the planet, yet. They just knew it was ancient (they did know the relative order of the geologic column, but not absolute dates). It was the discovery of radioactivity in the late 1800s that opened up the possibility of accurate estimates. Radioactive decay is the process where an element will decay into one or more lighter elements, and it does so at a predictable rate. This rate is usually described as a 'half-life' – the amount of time it takes for half of the original sample to decay. In the next half-life, half of the remaining amount will decay. And on and on. So, for example, let's consider radium (one of the first elements discovered to be radioactive), which has a half-life of 1600 years. If you started out with 16 kg of radium, put it in a time capsule, and had a future generation check on it in 1600 years, there would only be 8 kg of radium left. Have them put it back in the time capsule and check in another 1600 years, and only half of that will be left, 4 kg of radium. Another 1600 years – 2 kg. The matter doesn't simply disappear. Assuming your time capsule was sealed well enough, there would still be approximately 16 kg of stuff in there, just not radium. Radium decays into radon, which is itself radioactive. Radon decays into polonium, which is also radioactive. There's a whole chain of radioactive decay products, eventually ending up at lead-204, which isn't radioactive, so you'd have a mix of all these various decay products in addition to the remaining radium.So, if you can find something like solidified lava, where you know the elements have been 'locked' in place since the stone solidified, and then carefully measure the proportions of radioactive elements to their decay products, you can figure out how long it's been since the stone formed. Of course, there's a lot more detail to it than that, and you have to use a radioactive element with a half-life appropriate to the age you're measuring (e.g. Radium would only be good for a few thousand years, not millions). It took a little while for people to realize this potential, and a bit longer to perfect the techniques, but by the 1950s, people had used radiometric dating to come up with an accurate age of the Earth of ~4.55 billion years.This is also handy for dating various events in the distant past. You don't actually need a solidified lava flow or bed of granite to do this type of dating (though those will work, obviously). Volcanic ash works as well, and volcanic ash can be found lots of places. So, if you can find suitable dating material below and above a geologic layer, you can bound the ages of that layer – younger than the deeper material, older than the shallower material. Do this enough places in comparison to enough layers, and you can build up a pretty good idea of dates in the past – well enough to know, for example, that there was a mass extinction event around 65 million years ago that wiped out nearly all of the dinosaurs alive at the time (as far as we know, all of them except some birds).Why is there a discrepancy between the Bible and the real age of the Earth?So, now to the heart of your question – why the discrepancy? Well, there are lots of different proposed answers. Young Earth creationists would say that the science is wrong and that the Earth really is only a few thousand years old. But that's simply implausible. Besides a whole host of other reasons, pretty much everything we think we know about particle physics and radioactivity would have to be wrong. And to pick just one example, I'm not sure how we could design working computer chips – that you're using to read this answer – without a fairly accurate understanding of particle physics (for an example of creationists trying to dispute radiometric dating, see Book Review - Thousands, Not Billions, Part I).More liberal Jews/Christians don't think the Bible should be taken so literally. And to be fair, these represent a substantial proportion of Jews/Christians. I've never been able to find great data for the entire world's population of Jews/Christians, but they may very well be the majority (for more info, see Jeff Lewis's answer to Do Orthodox and Catholics believe that the Earth is literally 6000 years old? and Jeff Lewis's answer to Does belief in evolution almost always lead to atheism?). Even the Pope himself accepts the Big Bang and an ancient age of the universe.These more liberal Jews/Christians tend to view the early 'history' of Genesis as figurative or allegorical. Some say the 7 'days' of creation were actually 7 ages. Some say you're only supposed to take away the big message that God created the universe, but not focus on the details. If you browse through the other answers to this question, I'm sure you can find plenty of explanations from liberal believers.Even though I used to believe such things myself, I no longer find these arguments terribly convincing. Consider what I wrote above, about how widespread the belief was that the Earth was only a few thousand years old, back before science had advanced very far. Like I already wrote, this demonstrates that there's no obvious reason to interpret the Bible differently. It seems that people only do so now because they have to. They've got religious or emotional reasons for believing the Bible has to be true, but they also have the incontrovertible fact that the Earth is 4.5 billions years old, and the universe is even older, so they come up with post hoc rationalizations to try to smooth over the discrepancy. And when you actually look closely at some of these rationalizations, they tend to fall apart (Problems with a Day-Age Interpretation of Genesis).I think the real answer is pretty simple, but not something that most Jews or Christians would accept – the Bible is wrong. If you study some of the sources of Biblical criticism, you'll learn quite a bit about the history of how the Bible came to be. It becomes pretty clear that it wasn't handed down from on high in its current form. Each book has its own history. Some (like Paul's authentic letters) really are pretty close to the original versions. For a book like Genesis, though, it's hard to even pin down what the 'original' version should be. It was put together from multiple sources, each with slightly different beliefs and viewpoints. There are two different creation stories right in the first two chapters. There are repetitions of other stories with slight variations (Patriarchs claiming their wives are their sisters). There are stories where an editor tried to blend details from different versions (Noah's flood).Now, some of the most liberal Jews/Christians will accept that Genesis was cobbled together from multiple sources, but they'll still believe that God guided the process to get a final version that he wanted. But I suspect that this group is a minority. I know that from my own point of view, it's simply too much of stretch. Genesis was cobbled together from different sources for the simple reason that it's a human product. The people who wrote the original sources / edited the compilations didn't have any insight into the universe not shared by other people at the time. They had the myths and legends their cultures had invented, and wrote them down. You should no sooner expect the Bible to be an accurate history of creation than the Popul Vuh or the ancient Greek myth with Gaea.So there you have it. A plain reading of the Bible really does indicate that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, and this belief was widespread up until science started showing that it couldn't be true. Scientists were able to accurately date the planet thanks to learning about radioactive decay, and being clever in figuring out how to apply that knowledge to determine ages. While some religious people try to find ways to reconcile this discrepancy, such as figurative or allegorical interpretations, the most likely reason seems to be that Genesis was simply the product of human beings writing down their culture's myths, in an era when nobody knew the true history of the planet.

God’s original intent for Christianity? To spread throughout the earth and save as many as possible.How did Christianity change the world forever? That is a very long list. Most of Christianity’s impact are things we take for granted now, here in the West, as part of our cultural heritage. But they weren’t always part of culture. As the article says, the world Christianity came into was a very different place.Here is something I wrote on Wikipedia that surveys some of that long list of how Christianity changed the world forever. (Since I wrote it, I felt free to steal it accordingly. :-) )Christianity has deeply impacted our belief in Human ValueThe world's first civilizations were Mesopotamian sacred states ruled in the name of a divinity or by rulers who were themselves seen as divine. Rulers, and the priests, soldiers, and bureaucrats who carried out their will, were a small minority who kept power by exploiting the many.If we turn to the roots of our western tradition, we find that in Greek and Roman times not all human life was regarded as inviolable and worthy of protection. Slaves and 'barbarians' did not have a full right to life and human sacrifices and gladiatorial combat were acceptable... Spartan Law required that deformed infants be put to death; for Plato, infanticide is one of the regular institutions of the ideal State; Aristotle regards abortion as a desirable option; and the Stoic philosopher Seneca writes unapologetically: "Unnatural progeny we destroy; we drown even children who at birth are weakly and abnormal... And whilst there were deviations from these views..., it is probably correct to say that such practices...were less proscribed in ancient times. Most historians of western morals agree that the rise of ...Christianity contributed greatly to the general feeling that human life is valuable and worthy of respect.This value extended to everyone—including women and children. Women were not simply second class but were seen by many in ancient Greece and Rome as a kind of sub-species—not fully human in the way of men. It was common in the Greco-Roman world to expose female infants because of the low status of women in society. The church forbade its members to do so.Greco-Roman society saw no value in an unmarried woman, and therefore it was illegal for a widow to go more than two years without remarrying. Christianity did not force widows to marry and supported them financially.Pagan widows lost all control of their husband's estate when they remarried, but the church allowed widows to maintain their husband's estate.Christians did not believe in cohabitation. If a Christian man wanted to live with a woman, the church required marriage, and this gave women legal rights and far greater security.Finally, the pagan double standard of allowing married men to have extramarital sex and mistresses was forbidden. Jesus' teachings on divorce and Paul's advocacy of monogamy began the process of elevating the status of women so that Christian women tended to enjoy greater security and equality than did women in surrounding cultures.Christianity embeds a presumption in favor of preserving life, but concedes that there are circumstances in which life should not be preserved “at all costs", and it is this which provides the solid foundation for law concerning end of life issues.Christianity saved civilization after the Fall of RomeThe period between 500 and 700, often referred to as the "Dark Ages," could also be designated the "Age of the Monk". After the Fall of Rome in 476, (which had nothing to do with Christianity), culture in the West returned to a subsistence, agrarian, form of life. What little security there was in this world was provided by the Christian church.Western civilization suffered a collapse of literacy as well as economics and order. Following the collapse of Empire, small monastic communities were practically the only outposts of literacy in all of Western Europe. Disciplined Christian scholarship carried on in monasteries by literate monks became some of the last preservers in Western Europe of the poetic and philosophical works of Western antiquity.The “Rule of Benedict” became the foundation of thousands of monasteries that spread across what is modern day Europe;"...certainly there will be no demur in recognizing that St.Benedict's Rule —(poverty, simplicity, generosity: “work and pray”)—has been one of the great facts in the history of western Europe, and that its influence and effects are with us to this day."Monasteries were models of productivity and economic resourcefulness teaching their local communities animal husbandry, cheese making, wine making and various valuable skills. They were havens for the poor, hospitals, hospices for the dying, and schools. For centuries, nearly all secular leaders were trained by monks. These monks preserved classical craft and artistic skills while maintaining intellectual culture. By 800 AD, these monasteries were producing illuminated manuscripts such as the Book of Kells, by which old learning was re-communicated to Western Europe.Christian monasteries and nunneries changed social power foreverThe formation of these organized bodies of believers—distinctly separate from traditional power centers and behavioral controls such as political authority and familial authority—especially for women, gradually carved out a series of social spaces with some amount of independence. People could be responsible for themselves and their own choices—within reason. This revolutionized social history in ways we take for granted today.Christianity prevented Europe from becoming Islamic.Whatever else might be thought of the crusades, they did keep the Muslims from taking over much of the European continent. If they had not, the world would be a very different place now. My feeling is that the Enlightenment, and all that it brought, including the scientific revolution and many of the advances of Western civilization, would not have occurred otherwise.Christianity influenced sex and marriage more positively than most knowChristianity changed sexual mores forever, and while many disagree now, the sexual ethical structures of Roman society were built on status and inequality and what we perceive now as terrific injustices.Slaves had no status, therefore, it was not thought that they had any internal ethical life at all. Abusing them was therefore acceptable. Sexual ethics meant something different for men than it did for women, and for the well-born, than it did for the poor, and for the free citizen, than it did for the slave—for whom the concepts of honor, shame and sexual modesty could be said to have no meaning at all. Christianity sought to establish equal sexual standards for men and women and to protect all the young whether slave or free. This was a transformation in the deep logic of sexual morality. Paul made the body into a consecrated space, a point of mediation between the individual and the divine. Status and wealth became meaningless in this new view.The Greeks and Romans said our deepest moralities depend on our social position which is given to us by fate. Christianity "preached a liberating message of freedom. It was a revolution in the rules of behavior, but also in the very image of the human being as a sexual being, free, frail and awesomely responsible for one's own self to God alone.”During the Gregorian Reform, the Church developed and codified a view of marriage as a sacrament. In a departure from societal norms, Church law required the consent of both parties before a marriage could be performed, and established a minimum age for marriage, protecting “child brides” from being forced into unwanted marriages.Christianity influenced science and educationThe influence of the Christian Church on Western “letters and learning” has been formidable.One view against this idea is that the Church's doctrines are entirely superstitious and have hindered the progress of civilization through holding to its irrational thinking. The most famous incidents cited by such critics are the Church's condemnations of Copernicus, Galileo and Johannes Kepler.The evidence for the other side of that view overwhelmingly outweighs that argument. Not only did monks save the remnants of ancient Greco-Roman civilization during the barbarian invasions, but the Church actively promoted learning and science for hundreds of years throughout its history (even with those three notable exceptions).It is not unreasonable to claim the scientific revolution would not have happened without the Christian church. It did not happen elsewhere, anywhere in the world, in quite the same way as it did under the influence of Christianity.Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Johannes Kepler all considered themselves Christian. St.Thomas Aquinas argued in the 12th century that reason is in harmony with faith, and that reason can contribute to a deeper understanding of revelation. The church adopted his views.The Church's priest-scientists, many of whom were Jesuits, have been among the leading lights in astronomy, genetics, geomagnetism, meteorology, seismology, and solar physics, many becoming some of the "fathers" of these sciences.Examples include important churchmen such as the Augustinian abbot Gregor Mendel (pioneer in the study of genetics), the monk William of Ockham who developed Ockham's Razor, Roger Bacon (a Franciscan friar who was one of the early advocates of the scientific method), and Belgian priest Georges Lemaître (the first to propose the Big Bang theory).Other notable priest scientists have included Albertus Magnus, Robert Grosseteste, Nicholas Steno, Francesco Grimaldi, Giambattista Riccioli, Roger Boscovich, and Athanasius Kircher. Even more numerous are Catholic laity involved in science: Henri Becquerel who discovered radioactivity; Galvani, Volta, Ampere, Marconi, pioneers in electricity and telecommunications; Lavoisier, "father of modern chemistry"; Vesalius, founder of modern human anatomy; and Cauchy, one of the mathematicians who laid the rigorous foundations of calculus.Many well-known historical figures who influenced Western science considered themselves Christian such as Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton and Boyle.According to 100 Years of Nobel Prize (2005), a review of Nobel prizes awarded between 1901 and 2000, 65.4% of Nobel Prize Laureates, have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference (423 prizes). Overall, Christians have won a total of 78.3% of all the Nobel Prizes in Peace, 72.5% in Chemistry, 65.3% in Physics, 62% in Medicine, 54% in Economics and 49.5% of all Literature awards.The church is responsible for beginning the University system and is responsible for directly founding most of them. The Reformation is largely responsible for our modern commitment to literacy and the concept of public education. It was based on the idea every man should be able to read the Bible for themselves.A Pew Center study about religion and education around the world in 2016, found that Christians ranked as the second most educated religious group around the world after Jews.Christianity influenced art and architectureSeveral historians credit the Church for what they consider to be the brilliance and magnificence of Western art. "Even though the church dominated art and architecture, it did not prevent architects and artists from experimenting…” Important contributions include its cultivation and patronage of individual artists, as well as development of the Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance styles of art and architecture. In the late Middle ages, in name of Christianity, monumental abbeys and cathedrals were constructed and decorated with sculptures, hangings, mosaics and works belonging to one of the greatest epochs of art in all of history.Christianity impacted music and literatureIn music, Catholic monks developed the first forms of modern Western musical notation, leading to the emergence and development of European classical music, and its many derivatives. Without that invention there would be no modern music. An enormous body of religious music has been composed for God and church through the ages. The list of Christian composers and sacred music which have a prominent place in Western culture is extensive. Similarly, the list of Christian authors and literary works is also vast.Christianity affected politics and economicsCharlemagne instituted political and judicial reform that led to many modern concepts and practices.Christianity influenced economic theory through Scholasticism and the Protestant work ethic.Calvin resisted political absolutism and paved the way for the rise of modern democracy.Among several influences, it is still fair to say Protestants created both the English and the American democracies.Christianity developed the concept of human rightsThe philosophical foundation of the liberal concept of human rights is Christian. It is most specifically connected to Thomas Aquinas and Hugo Grotius."...one cannot and need not deny that Human Rights are of Western Origin. It cannot be denied, because they are morally based on the Judeo-Christian tradition and Graeco-Roman philosophy; they were codified in the West over many centuries, they have secured an established position in the national declarations of western democracies, and they have been enshrined in the constitutions of those democracies."David Gushee says Christianity has a "tragically mixed legacy" when it comes to the application of some of its own ethics. He examines three cases of "Christendom divided against itself": the crusades and Pope Frances' attempt at peacemaking with Muslims; Spanish conquerors and the killing of indigenous peoples and the protests against it; and the on-again off-again persecution and protection of Jews.Christianity founded hospitals and the practice of charityHistorians record that, prior to Christianity, the ancient world left little trace of any organized charitable effort. Christian charity and the practice of feeding and clothing the poor, visiting prisoners, supporting widows and orphan children has had sweeping impact.Albert Jonsen, University of Washington historian of medicine, says “the second great sweep of medical history begins at the end of the fourth century, with the founding of the first Christian hospital at Caesarea in Cappadocia, and concludes at the end of the fourteenth century, with medicine well ensconced in the universities and in the public life of the emerging nations of Europe.”Basil, as bishop of Caesarea, established the first formal soup kitchen and hospital. It was a homeless shelter, hospice, poorhouse, orphanage, reform center for thieves, women’s center for those leaving prostitution and more. Basil was personally involved and invested in the projects and process giving all of his personal wealth to fund the ministries. Basil himself would put on an apron and work in the soup kitchen. These ministries were given freely regardless of religious affiliation. Basil refused to make any discrimination when it came to people who needed help saying that “the digestive systems of the Jew and the Christian are indistinguishable.”The Catholic Church established a hospital system in Medieval Europe to cater to "particular social groups marginalized by poverty, sickness, and age." During the Middle Ages, the church “conducted hospitals for the old and orphanages for the young; hospices for the sick of all ages; places for the lepers; and hostels or inns where pilgrims could buy a cheap bed and meal". It supplied food to the population during famine and distributed food to the poor.The Industrial Revolution brought many urban workers deteriorating working and living conditions. Christianity responded by building hospitals, universities, orphanages, soup kitchens, and schools, in order to follow Jesus' command to spread the Good News and serve all people.In Western nations, governments have increasingly taken up funding and organization of health services for the poor, but the Church still maintains a massive network of health care providers across the world. In the West, these institutions are increasingly run by lay-people after centuries of being run by priests, nuns, brothers and Christian others. In 1968, nuns or priests were the chief executives of 770 of America's 796 Catholic hospitals. By 2011, they presided over 8 of 636 hospitals.In 2009, Catholic hospitals in the USA still received approximately one of every six patients.Christianity spread the Word of God and HopeThe impact of Christian missions throughout the world is immeasurable. According to a PEW study, "there is a large and pervasive gap in educational attainment between Muslims and Christians in sub-Saharan Africa." Muslim adults in this region are far less educated than their Christian counterparts, with scholars suggesting that this gap is due to the educational facilities created by Christian missionaries.Christianity has done more for gender equality than most realizeAccording to the same PEW study, Christians have a significant amount of gender equality in educational attainment, and the study suggests that one of the reasons is the encouragement of the Protestant Reformers in promoting the education of women, which led to the eradication of illiteracy among females in Protestant communities. Female literacy is still relatively low in the world outside the West.That’s how Christianity changed the world forever.Every now and then I contemplate what the world would have looked like without Christianity—with all its failures and all its problems and all its inadequacies—and I see that overall, Christianity has done substantively more good than harm. I wonder if perhaps that is the best that can be said of any venture involving humans.Would Europe have become Muslim and would that have prevented the scientific revolution? The Muslims built a great civilization but they repressed the kind of development that led the West. They never had a scientific revolution of their own. Colonialism was driven by economics and most certainly would have occurred even without Christianity, but without Christian missionaries to speak up for the rights of the conquered, how much worse would things have been? We like to think things such as charity and the founding of hospitals were inevitable, but world history doesn’t support that comfortable notion.It’s a completely fruitless exercise of course. But I look back in response to all those who advocate eliminating Christianity as we go forward, and I know without doubt—if the past is any clue— it would not make the world a better place.