The truth is that science arose only because the doctrine of the rational creator of a rational universe made scientific inquiry plausible. Similarly, the idea of progress was inherent in Jewish conce...
The reason so many innovations and inventions were abandoned or even outlawed in China had to do with Confucian opposition to change on grounds that the past was greatly superior.
The Industrial Revolution was the culmination of the rise of Western civilization that began in Greece twenty-seven centuries ago. It was the product of human freedom and the pursuit of knowledge, whi...
The Church never endorsed the notion of the divine right of kings. That was first proclaimed by James I of England (1566–1625), a Protestant after whom the King James Version of the Bible is named. In...
Science arose in the West—and only in the West—precisely because the Judeo-Christian conception of God encouraged and even demanded this pursuit.
SCIENCE AROSE ONLY IN Europe because only medieval Europeans believed that science was possible and desirable. And the basis of their belief was their image of God and his creation. This was dramatica...
Rachfahl noted that the Protestant Ethic thesis was contradicted by the geography of the rise of industrial capitalism. For example, Amsterdam and Antwerp developed industrial capitalism very early wh...
Property is insecure. In this one phrase the whole history of Asia is contained.
Once the Lutheran churches were secure, Luther, like most other leaders of the Reformations, believed in freedom of conscience only for those who agreed with him.
My explanation is that England led the way in science for the same reasons that it led the way in the Industrial Revolution31 – its substantially greater political and economic liberty had produced a...
It is a commonplace to identify Martin Luther as the ‘father of individualism’.
Immodesty’ in dress was outlawed. A woman was jailed for arranging her hair at an ‘immoral height’.
IN 1710, THE ENGLISH FREETHINKER Thomas Woolston (1670–1731) expressed his confidence that religion would vanish by 1900.1 Voltaire (1695–1778) thought this much too pessimistic and predicted that rel...
Given these attitudes and lack of attendance, it is hardly surprising that the German masses (and most Europeans) were ignorant of even basic Christian facts.
Given the American example, it should always have been obvious that the sacred canopy claims are silly. In the United States, in the most fully pluralistic nation that probably has ever existed, relig...
Coins and precious metals, food, slaves, and luxury goods flowed to Rome; little came back except tax collectors and soldiers.
Charging interest on loans was thus defined as the ‘sin of usury’, and widely condemned in principle while pretty much ignored in actual practice. In fact, as already noted, by late in the ninth centu...
By the same token, Martin Luther’s efforts to provide religious education for the German peasants and urban lower classes failed completely because the lessons were conceived by a university professor...
The Romans knew of the watermill but made nearly no use of it, continuing to rely on muscle power to grind their flour.20 The Ottoman Empire prohibited the mechanical clock, and so did the Chinese.
Until well into the twentieth century there even were legal bans on the sale of Bibles in most nations of Latin America, which led to the widespread belief that only Protestants accepted the Bible.