I never really ‘got’ science, but I read this fabulous book called 2001 by a really clever bloke called Arthur C. Clarke, which proves beyond all doubt that there is a big black obelisk near Jupiter. I think the established space agencies (NASA, ESA and the like) deliberately mislead us on this. They are clearly false prophets.

As someone who has a master’s degree in library science, the picture of the East Side Public Library makes me want to cry. I know that was not your point, but it is my most recent reaction. Good article, though. I wasn’t even aware of these ideas. I always like to get good info before someone can throw the bad stuff at me.

I have known about the evil influence of Bart Ehrmann’s books and false teachings personally.  As a result of studying under this influence at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, a good friend left the Church and became a vocal adversary. It is no longer possible to “reach” her with the Truth as she has become so steeped in his falsity. Of course all things being possible with God we continue to pray for her soul. Thanks for bringing this man’s evil works to light. He has appeared from time to time on the best sellers list so I assume his influence is quite wide.
Please tell me what you mean by “...and bravely facing the applause of the MSM”. What do you mean by the MSM?

“...and bravely facing the applause of the MSM”
-
Translation: the mainstream media is anti-Catholic. Non-Catholics have it all wrong, we have it right. So vote for a Mormon this fall.

Thanks Zeke!

The thing about Bart Erhman is that he writes like he just discovered these so-called problems. Bernard Ramm and Bruce Metzger refuted stuff like this decades ago. And of course so did St. Thomas Aquinas!

“...sad case for an evangelical”.  You would do better to suppress the ad hominems and stick to the issues. We are all entitled to our own opinions, but not our own set of facts. A wise person seeks the truth where it lies[sic], not where s/he/it wishes to place it. In your article, a learned historian you are not.

The Gognostic ideas have a new life in Mormonism.  They too use Jesus’ name but in fact believe in many gods!  They even believe they will become gods and be given their own planets to populate with beings they will create!

Zeke:

Stay on topic.  This is not about Mormons, Romney, or the election (and I will emphatically *not* be voting for Romney any more than I will vote for Obama—though not because of his Mormonism).

Everybody: please stick to the subject.  Thank you.  The Management.

Please tell me what you mean by “...and bravely facing the applause of the MSM”. What do you mean by the MSM?

MSM=Mainstream Media.  People like Ehrman are routinely feted by reporters as “brave” for spouting rubbish about Christianity to a crowd of reporters and interviewers who would never dream of doing anything but cheering loudly and cooing softly at anyone who attacks the Christian faith.

Jeanne G, as a fellow library science Master’s degree holder, I am entirely with you regarding the East Side PL photo.  It gives me chills, it looks like a poster for a movie about the fall of civilization.

Good post, Mark.  And timely.  Ehrmann got most of his ideas from Walter Bauer, who was refuted way back in the forties, but the ideas keep cropping up.  Maybe somebody should write a book about this!?!?

As someone who grew up in Detroit, there is no “East Side Public Library”.  There were many branches of the Detroit Public Library (DPL)named after famous people and locations that have been closed over the years due to budget cuts and neglect.  Sorry to be such a stickler.

The article is spot on in its observations of Ehrman, who is full of crap.  Anyone who follows his teachings obviously leaves their skeptical and inquiring mind at the door, because anyone who does a little homework can refute it.  The mere fact that there were other writings and other sects that didn’t survive doesn’t mean that they were on the right track.  How willing and gullible some people are.  Guess that’s why he’s such a favorite of NPR and the “Great Courses” catalog.  I really wish they would offer some courses on Christianity by someone other than him.  Haven’t they heard of Scott Hahn or some other worthy professors?

I took a new testament class given by one of Ehrmans former grad assistants and we used Ehrman’s textbook for the course.  Even using his own words I could never figure out how he came to embrace soem of the theories that he expounded.  He seemed to base his theories on hard assumptions that I didn’t share.  He ruled out almost any supernatural explanation in favor of something more tame and palatable to his worldview.  I learned quite a bit, but failed to embrace any of his pet theories.

I really wish they would offer some courses on Christianity by someone other than him.  Haven’t they heard of Scott Hahn or some other worthy professors?

My dear Wormwood.  Do remember that the MSM is there to fuddle the patient.  From the way you talk, anyone would think it is their job to *teach*!

The reader (and everyone else) might want to check out this website put together by some Reformed Protestant scholars to specifically refute Ehrman’s books:
</br>
www.EhrmanProject.com/index

Yes, I’m a UNC-CH grad and familiar with Bart Ehrman; he was (in)famous among the Christian groups there while I was a student. Looking back, though, I think everyone just assumed he was another professor; nobody thought he’d be able to sell a lot of books and spread his influence around as he has.

His theories are quite bad in that they are imminently refutable but he doesn’t bother to address the existing refutations, or even give his readers the slightest clue that any counter-arguments to his views exist.

This is a bit dishonest: A bit like a physicist, in 2012, putting out a book declaring the earth-shaking news that light is a wave, not a particle “as formerly thought”, and completely failing to mention that this view is not only very old, but is unpopular precisely because it was long since thoroughly refuted in favor of quantum theory’s wave-particle duality.

Serious scholarship puts the earliest gospel material being composed by someone who knew Jesus and His apostles, with a Semitic background, probably within a decade after the events related therein, and possibly composed in Aramaic.

Later translations into Greek, and crosstalk between different translators, probably produced the Greek manuscript of the gospel attributed to Matthew, which preserves much of the Semitic influence, but also the Greek gospel attributed to Mark, which streamlines out a good bit of the Jew-oriented stuff in favor of adopting the “heroic story” narrative style then popular among the Romans for describing the lives of famous persons.

And the gospel attributed to Luke seems to have been written sometime later in Greek from the start by someone familiar with Greek culture, with anatomy and physiology, and with the idea of doing interviews with eyewitnesses in order to construct a reliable account of events. (A novel idea in those days, actually.)

That’s what the scholarship suggests.

Now this set of scholarly “discoveries” is BORING, because it accords entirely with early Christian tradition on the topic. Church historian Eusebius tells us that Jewish tax-collector Matthew composed his gospel first “in the language of the Jews”; yet we have only a Greek version, suggesting a later translation of Matthew’s Aramaic source into Greek (possibly with additional material added at the same time). John Mark, in cooperation with Peter, wrote his gospel to evangelize the broader Roman world. Luke was a Greek physician who claims to have interviewed eyewitnesses in order to bring a fuller record of events to his intended reader, Theophilus.

As I said, this is BORING. A Shakespeare scholar can make a lot of money with a book announcing—dum-dum-dum!!!—that Shakespeare didn’t actually write the works attributed to him after all. He can make money saying this because it’s novel, and novelty sells books. (Actually, this has already been tried a couple of times, so it isn’t novel any more. But there was a time when it was.)

But nobody can sell a book, or even fill up a book, by merely saying, “Shakespeare wrote what we always thought he wrote. Conventional wisdom is entirely correct. Nothing to see here. You can go about your business. Move along.” Nobody gets a guest spot on morning talk shows saying that.

And so too with the authorship and reliability of the Gospels. They’re early, they’re reliable, they look like eyewitness testimony not taken down moments after the events but more like a few years later…and what we know about them accords so well with what early tradition says about them that there isn’t any real reason to doubt the traditionally attributed authors. The worst you could say is that maybe Matthew wrote the original Aramaic version but got someone else’s help with the later Greek translation, producing a slightly mixed “voice.”

But that’s about it. Matthew’s gospel is from Matthew; Mark’s is from John Mark; Luke’s is from Luke. John’s is rather different and rather later, so there’s never been much controversy there.

See what I mean? Boring.

Unless you want to write a book that sells well. Then you have to come up with something new and interesting and clever to say.

Or, if not new, then at least new to those who aren’t terribly well-read in your field.

And if not interesting, then at least able to pander to the biases of certain readers (ideally your peers in academia, since your tenure may hang in the balance).

And if not clever, then at least sufficiently clever-sounding enough to obscure the lack of academic substance under a wash of academic style.

It can be expensive, living in the Chapel Hill area. But I imagine Bart Ehrman’s books have helped him a lot with that.

Brandon, You may also want to listen to William Lane Craig debate Erhman.  That debate along with many others, can be found here: http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/audio.htm

Sometimes, when discussing such matters, it’s convenient to have two or three “argument points” in your quiver.  Of course, a full and detailed discussion can’t be simplified into just two or three points, but often someone doesn’t have time for a full discussion.

Here are some suggested points:

1.  The Gospel of Philip, discovered at Nag Hammadi, quotes from Matthew, John, and the letters of Paul, and when it does so, it says “Scripture says X.”  Clearly this “Gospel” must have been written long after the books it is quoting and calling “Scripture”.  (Gospel of Philip 83:11-13 and 84:7-9.)

2.  Two other Nag Hammadi books—Dialogue of the Savior (139:8-11) and Apocalypse of James (8:1-10)—refer to lists of Jesus’ parables from the canonical gospels, citing them by name.  But Jesus’ parables do not have names in the gospels, even though modern Bibles often add these names as subheadings.  Therefore these two Gnostic texts must have been written late enough that the Christian community had begun to develop special names to refer to Jesus’ parables.

3.  Conspiracy theorists often claim that it was Constantine or his successors—the Christian emperors who ruled Rome in the 4th and 5th centuries—who suppressed these other Christianities and created the theology we know.  But then how can you explain the Christians in Armenia or in Iraq?  These territories were not part of the Roman Empire, and in fact they were enemies with Rome.  And yet the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Assyrian Church have the same New Testament as we do, the same belief in the Trinity, and the same belief that Jesus was true God and true man.  (There are subtle differences in how they understand the connection between Jesus’ divinity and humanity, but this is due to later theological reflection.)  In other words, the orthodox teaching was spread from Spain to Iraq by the second century, long before Constantine.  Meanwhile, the Gnostic theology—which says that there are many divine beings, that the evil Demiurge is the God of the Old Testament, and that Jesus had no physical body—was unknown except in a much more limited geographical region.

For anyone who is interested, here is a fantastic take down of Ehrman by William Lane Craig:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5u1dKk_sVM

Its long but is absolutely worth watching.

“Serious scholarship” is in earnest. It is never a matter of whether what is read is to our liking or not, nor should we read to affirm opinions already held. Bart Ehrman stands not alone. No good suffices to discredit a man with serial pejoratives ‘bashing’ anti-catholic or the like. There are many of serious intent able to discuss matters of import without being disagreeable and present a worthy discussion.  Since this blog is overly laden to a particular vein of enmity to all of which Ehrman presents, I would like to introduce other of serious thought:  Richard Carrier ‘Proving History’ using Baye’s theorem and the quest for the historical Jesus…an attmept at weighing belief with evidence. Another is Victor Stenger, heralded professor of physics with a life-long fight against superstition wrote numerous books in this regard;  “God and the folly of faith…the incompatibility of science and religion.  For those wishing an easier read:  Timothy Beal;  The “Rise and Fall of the Bible”...how the Bible was put together, and Philip Jenkins; “The Jesus Wars”, which traces the early church councils, the many conflicts amongst the church hierarchs leading to the Council of Chalcedon 451 CE…well worth the read. This reply is entered solely to acknowledge scholarship to those of good-will, with an open mind and is not intended for the non thinking mindlessly obedient, knuckled under in acquiescence…also any of Elaine Pagels writings…for those who can withstand it try Sam Harris “The End of Faith” or his book on “Free Will”.

Based on the comments here, i look forward to Ehrman being highlited as an expert on the History Channel :>)

Science and religion are not only compatible, but modern science is a result of the religious belief that the universe was created by a rational being, and so is intelligible.  Recommendation:
New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physiscs and Philosophy, by Robert Spitzer, S.J.

Poor Bart’s had his entrails handed to him by the eminent theologian Stephen Colbert at least once that I’ve seen, and Colbert really didn’t have to break a sweat in doing so. It really was sad and painful to watch. But he pulls down royalties from Great Courses, Discovery, NGC, TLC and the History Channel in just enough measure to keep his anesthetized soul frozen in deep doubt.
Even Dawkins would likely shew him off at a faculty mixer at UNC.

@ Carl Sommer

It seems that Bauer has become immensely popular these last few decades, even if no one knows who he is. Many (most?) books aboout how ‘Jesus is just a mythological figure’ are based on Bauer’s outdated (and long refuted) pseudo-scholarship.

Unfortunately many authors these days like to pick up Bauer’s ideas, maybe repackage them with some really wild claim (like: Jesus was a woman or Jesus was an alien from outer space) and KA-CHING.

—-

@ R.C.

Indeed for most people proper scholarship is ‘boring’.

I am a physicist working in research. Well I and others have very fascinating projects, investigating fundamental properties of new materials… but it will never sell in a pop-science magazine since we cannot claim anything shocking like parallel universes or that we can mke a bionic arm.

The trouble is that pop-science is incredibly bad. I sometimes put my hands in my hair when I read pop-science magazines or science articles on newpapaer or some websites. Since these media are run mainly by people who want to sell a product, they go for the shocking, often bending scientific results just enough to get away with it.

Now if pop-science is this bad… I dread to think how bad pop-biblical scholarship is…

@ fats

You are late! He already was I think… just check Discovery Channel or History Channel around Easter… ;)

Catherine Norman, unfortunately Spitzer SJ presentation is teleological. Intelligent Design is not a worthy subject for physics, nor is any of Aquinas’s five proofs for the existence of God, which are not proofs or immanent.

Walter:

It’s funny that you make the tired claim of ad hominem while insulting people who make sound arguments, claim critics of Ehrman’s bushwah are small-minded while never daring to read anything that does not already confirm your prejudices, and recommend a few authors from deep inside your extremely cramped theological bubble while never engaging anybody outside it (except to call names and shout “ad hominem”).  Is there any world more cramped than that of the out-of-date lover of bad modernist “scholarship”?

Of all people, Mark Shea ought to know that ‘ad hominem’ refers to an individual, not a class, group or any conglomerate. My reply was an earnest attempt to remain topical. Reread your diatribe directed against me, full of accusations, with considerable more vitriol than I could muster. Now you seem to insist some transcendental knowledge of my reading material, which you obviously do not know. It never ceases to amaze the inability to apply to oneself the same objectivity directed at another.
My point remains;  serious scholarship is in earnest…often recognizing a validity of point, if not outcome, in differing viewpoint. I see no use in tendering a ‘hard right’ viewpoint of the present day church since it is overly stated on this blog…only that there are counter opinions, the attack on Ehrman is an isolated one, separating him as if he is a sole voice, and citing voices against him - each of which fail scrutiny.  The church ought to subject itself to the same standards, critique and review as does science. Science has a willingness to validate new information, incorporate that information, adjust as needed…the church is fixed in an unchanging dogma stuck on Natural Law philosophy.

I’d respond to all those who are in the Ehrman camp but I, rather, intend to speak only to those who have “an open mind.” So, this comment “is not intended for the non thinking mindlessly obedient, knuckled under in acquiescence.” I’m not speaking to anyone in particular. These people know who they are. I thank myself for staying on topic and not allowing my commentary to be tainted by any ad hominem corruption.

“Science has a willingness to validate new information, incorporate that information, adjust as needed…the church is fixed in an unchanging dogma stuck on Natural Law philosophy.”  LOL.  I am a Ph.D. in a hard science with over 100 publications.  In my 30+ year career, I have seen scientist lie to obtain grants, falsify results, keep contradictory theories from being published by rejecting them during peer review, and telling outrageous falsehoods against competing scientists.  You need to point to a more reputable group…like carnival workers.

Just a caution: While I was in grad school at Franciscan, I talked to someone who knew Ehrman personally. We discussed his views, and he said that Ehrman was mistaken, but honestly mistaken.
 
There may be many reasons why a man takes a false position, and not all of them are venal. He may enjoy the applause of the MSM and other scholars, but I, for that matter, enjoy the applause of people I like and respect every time I stand up in front of my class and teach Catholic orthodoxy. Inasmuch as none of us are completely knowledgeable on anything, we rely on the confirmation of our peers for what we believe, and this is not necessarily dishonest. It’s just, contra Enlightenment, how people work.

Walter Rogers:

Why not remain “stuck” in Natural Law Philosophy? Isn’t that rather like being “stuck” in the Multiplication Tables, rather than abandoning them for an Orwellian two plus two is five? One can, of course, debate some of the conclusions that a person derives from the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God. But why shouldn’t right reasoning and our observations of the world, error-corrected by revelation when needed like a checksum on a network packet, be an avenue of illumination for man?

God exists—quite apart from all the relevant philosophical reasons to believe so, some folks have had personal dealings with Him and then there’s the ongoing trickle of modern miracles—so, given that, there’s no reason to assign the creation of time, space, matter, energy, the laws of physics, and the outcomes of each event at the quantum level to any other final cause (at whatever degree of removes)...unless one is interested in introducing other personal causes for those events.

To the fact of God, add two things: The Jews came out of Egypt, hung on to monotheism despite themselves and their neighbors, and are still here today—an oddity among the nations like almost nothing else save the Catholic Church—and, Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead. The mere existence of an all-powerful and transcendent God whose essence is existence and interactions various human beings have had with Him since would be a difficult thing to talk about sensibly without other data points. But the history of the Jews and the history of Jesus’ apostles and what they said and how they died provide us the additional data needed to say sensible things. They are data against which our worldview hypotheses may be tested and either verified or falsified.

And Natural Law comes out of that, quite naturally. To reject some particular formulation of it in order that the whole may better match the data is mere respect for the Truth, and for He who called Himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life. But to reject the whole thing is to reject the data and its implications in favor of a worldview of moonshine and unicorn flatulence. No clear thinker does that.

Speaking of clear thinking: I can’t be sure, but you seem to use the word “dogma” as if you thought it had negative connotations. But surely you must see that, if anything, its connotations ought to be positive? One can’t think without dogmas—without a bedrock of “true truths” that you aren’t willing to waste time challenging because you know that if they fell, your ability to think about anything including challenging them would be invalidated—and dogmas are generally the outcome of centuries of accumulated experience and evidence.

Dogmas are not mere hypotheses, mind you: They come about when mere hypotheses, which have usually been knocking about finding themselves more and more helpful over many years producing fresh insights and contradicting nothing that we already know, have survived so much testing against Natural Law and Revelation that one really doesn’t have hope of them ever not surviving, and have produced whole bodies of knowledge which themselves have likewise been multiply-confirmed and become old hat. (This is a somewhat modern-language restatement of the principle, I grant; for the more traditional view, see John Henry Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.)

Anyway, there are good solid reasons not to chuck all that out. And reason is a good thing. Which is why dogma—a refusal to chuck out notions you have good reason to think true merely because one’s emotions or society’s intellectual fads have temporarily whooshed in the opposite direction—is a good thing.

Or so it seems to me.

The church has a willingness to validate new information, incorporate that information, adjust as needed…science is fixed in an unchanging dogma stuck on natural materialistic philosophy.
 
There. Fixed it.
 
I don’t deny it’s a tu quoque. But it’s a good tu quoque.

Dms;  clever and funny…in this blog, the abode of humor is a sole refuge.
Carbon Monoxide;  you must hang with a motley group of scientist.  At least peer review ousts renegade scientists, unlike molesting priests who are transferred parish to parish.
R.C.;  My hope is that you can find a better metaphor than ‘multiplication tables’ which have withstood the test of time. Your well wrtten prose, nevertheless, confuses by mingling the transcendental with science of observation, testability, scrutiny, peer review, falsification. None of these transcendentals have passed evidentiary testing.
“dogma” as part of church teaching is unchanging and fixed.  Whether or not a perception of ‘negative connotation’ results is aside from the fact.
The legacy of the church is quite hostile to science, contrary opinions, and yes embodies the science of Aristotle and Aquinas.  Aristotle’s science has been demonstrated as clearly wrong, Aquinas knew only reason, and regarding the fixed and unchanging Natural Law obstructing the advances of science;  look no further than Copernicus, Galileo, and poor Giordano Bruno who was bent over, rod pushed through his back, and burned alive…all for stating the universe was endless, and that there were other life forms.
Columnist Michael Shermer, Scientific American, put it succinctly:  A comprehensive survey of studies in the psychology of religion revealed that there is a consistent positive correlation between ‘religious affiliation, church attendance, doctrinal orthodoxy, rated importance of religion, and so on: with ‘ethnocentrism, authoritarianism, dogmatism, social distance, rigidity, intolerance of ambiguity, and specific forms of prejudice…’

I have some of Erhman’s earlier works in my library and they are good reference material.  Agree that he is now not the person he was before.  In the intro to one of his more recent books, comes a clue (and I don’t remember the book title that it was in)—that he now doubts God and the claims of Jesus because God did not ‘answer’ Ehrman’s personal prayer about a situation or a person.  After the ‘no-you-can’t-have-what-you-want-in-the-way-you-want-it’ response from God (which Ehrman felt was a flat-out ‘no answer from God’, Ehrman was left confused, hurt, and without the clear answers his intelligence demanded.
I do hope he has someone in his personal life who is daily praying for his reconversion to embrace the Mystery of God’s Truth vs. remaining in the darkness while being ‘fed’ by popular—yet age-old - Christian heresies.

One of my former pastoral colleagues (U once was a protestant pastor, but now I see…) argued that the real problem with today’s research, study and ‘science’ of the faith is that eveyone is seeking ‘novelty.’  Because, as argued, it’s what gets you attention and acknowlegment.

However, the irony is, all the old gnostic heresies didn’t die out—specific groups adhering to them did.  But the heresies keep coming back around, decade after decade, in a new package.  That, I believe, explains Chesterton’s thrid point about all ‘reformers.’  Some snart aleck - uh, man, said that there is nothing new under the sun.

Dave,  whereas I think you are onto something regarding the seeking of ‘novelty’ for monetary gain, that is not science. Observation, research, methodology, or any of the scientific methods are not to be confused with ‘novelty’ which is certainly not in the diagnostic and statistical manual of science.

For the last 25 odd years, I’ve prayed for Dr, Robert Wennberg, the evangelical professor from Westmont, the college I attended, who published “Life in the Balance”.  He was voted best professor a number of times, his books were in the campus bookstores and are currently in scores of public libraries.  He was beloved by all, (a bit adored for his affability while he breathed death, to his white collar, waspy devotees, who don’t have a rock and don’t have confession.) He stated unequivocally that babies in the womb, and infants,... YES! Infants! are: POTENTIAL LIFE.  When I was in college I wrote him a story about the pregnant college student who while confused and maybe panicked would buy his book—and kill her child. I challenged him to consider how his published, philosophical musings could actually kill. I quoted Mother Teresa: “A society can be judged by how they treat their most vulnerable members”.  He laughed at me and took a drag from his pipe of erudition. He quoted me a word called “stringency”.  He proposed that people could be valued on how “stringent” their life is, ie: powerful, hardy, height of intelligence…(Heil Hitler?)  God rest his soul, he died a couple of years ago.  I pray for his soul, and can’t believe where a ship without an anchor (and a rock)can drift to.  It made me more thankful for my Catholic faith.

@ Walter, do you always wear your bias on your sleeve like this, or is this just an internet thing for you?

Suggesting that Mr. Shea insists that he possesses some sort of transcendental knowledge of your reading material, which he has not, and then proceeding to quote “Scientific American” (‘cause THAT’S an objective publication) has not exactly led to any chest-clutching moments of shock.  Perhaps we should be grateful for your utter predictability? 

To copy and paste your quote; “It never ceases to amaze the inability to apply to oneself the same objectivity directed at another.”

You don’t say?

R.C. is right about dogmas, in so far as man is a creature that constructs dogmas (to shamelessly paraphrase Chesterton).  That a group of dogmas have been collected and defended by the Church, of all institutions, should be of little surprise if one were to consider that the Church, and its members, regard its Revelation to be true. 

I would think that you would regard your own dogmas, even if you refused to name them such, as true. Why else would you otherwise hold them?  Perhaps you consider your own approach above reproach, since your dogmas came not from the Church, as did science?

That you make a stereotypical attempt to catalog some of the evils of the Church, bring up pederasty amongst Priests, and religiously chant “science” is so much yawn inducing blather. 

Yes, people have performed great evils in the name of God, in direct contradiction to the teachings of Christ, and we could go on for quite some time cataloging them.  People have performed still greater evils in the name of Evolution, which, I am sorry to say, consistently provides no consistent basis for the opposition to and identification of human evil. 

Yes, Priests are human, and fall short of the priestly ideal set forth in Christ.  So do public school teachers, and it would seem with much less media attention.  Have you held such an adversarial position to public schools?  Perhaps Catholic Schools are the thing for you?

And yes, religious people have opposed good science.  Scientists have opposed good science.  But the very notion that science is even possible, however long it has taken this notion to develop, has come about as a result of the revelation that the universe is a created thing, that it has been made comprehensible, and that it operates according to fixed laws that can be observed. 

And you won’t find a consistent basis for this belief outside of Christianity.

Philip;  if Scientific American bothers you, there are numerous others, but then they’ll also meet with disdain. I further doubt that “Mr. Shea” requires your defense.
“Dogma”, a word often found confounding on this blog, dates back to Aristotle. The universities in its wisdom adopted ‘scholasticism’ as its fixed and unchanging ‘dogma’, oh that word again. Science, however, is continually changing and challenging old assumptions. Church based ‘faith’ resorts to ‘beliefs’ that are accepted without empirical evidence. Science, contrarily, differs because it is the nature of science to test and retest explanations against the natural world’.
Evolution and Atheism:  There is no difference in goodness noted in ‘church goers’ from ‘atheists’. The difference is that ‘church goers’ tend to be more rigid and intolerant. The evils you cite regarding evolution fail the test. True, many atheists have committed horrendous deeds, But no atheist, Stalin et al did so in the name of Darwin or evolution. Yet, the atrocities of the church; crusades, inquisition, etc. have been committed in the name of ‘God’...big difference…‘there is no evidence Stalin killed anyone in the name of ‘atheism’.
The ‘ancients’ had sufficient knowledge of science to advance serious technology.  That advancement was quelled by religion, including Aristotle and Plato…but more so by the Xtian religion for one thousand years.  It was Islam from 700 to 1400 CE that translated the ancient Greek into Arabic…many scientist at the time needed to write in Arabic to preserve their studies. In other words Islam paved the way for the Renaissance.

Walter:

Thank you for your kind words about how I write.

I used the metaphor of the multiplication tables because the Church’s moral and theological formulations have indeed stood the test of time, while so many contrary formulations have falsified themselves in various ways.

I do, certainly, mingle the transcendental with that which is observable, testable, scrutinizable, repeatable, falsifiable. Naturally! Why, after all, do you think the word “Natural” appears in the phrase “Natural Law?” (I worry that sometimes materialists, when debating against persons who hold to a combined spiritual and material worldview, imagine they are debating against Gnostics, who reject as bad or irrelevant all that is material. But nothing is further from the truth: Matter is good, not least for training, instruction, and reproof: It is, in its own way, God-breathed.)

Regarding Dogma, you say that “as a part of church teaching [it] is unchanging and fixed.”

Well, yes, apart from doctrinal development which builds on what is known without contradicting what is known. This is only reasonable: Once you know that 1+1=2, you don’t get very far going back and constantly trying to find a new answer. It makes more sense to develop further insights; to expand knowledge rather than to undermine it.

Now if there were a real concern that 1+1 might equal something other than 2, then of course reason would demand examination of it. But that doesn’t happen in theology any more often than in mathematics, and for similar reasons: Just as one can’t be a good mathematician by arriving at a sum that says there aren’t any such things as sums, one can’t rationally draw conclusions about reality and existence that falsify one’s own reality, or one’s rationality, or one’s ability to conclude, or the reality of conclusions in general.

The only reasonable objection you could have to a Church dogma is not an objection to dogmas per se but one which could really falsify a dogma. I don’t mean an objection that you don’t like a particular dogma, or that it’s counter-intuitive, or that you can’t bring yourself to “buy” it: For one can easily see reasons why that might be the case, for any of us. I mean a disproof. Proofs of a negative are hard to come by, but not outright impossible, and if one should ever arise against a dogma, it would be our intellectual duty to consider it.

But many candidate disproofs have been suggested over the last two thousand years by people much brighter than you or me, and have been found wanting. I doubt you have identified any new candidates; I suspect your objection to the dogmas of Christianity do not involve, say, evidence against the historicity of the Virgin Birth or the Resurrection. I don’t think anybody can obtain that without first building a time machine.

Instead I suspect your objections boil down to one or more of the following (one of which you have already raised):

(a.) God as defined by Christianity can do anything, and is entirely good; yet three kinds of evil exist: (1.) Sin, (2.) Suffering, and (3.) Death. Don’t these things prove the non-existence of God?

(b.) Christian moral dogmas require persons to do (or abstain from) things in ways they find uncomfortable for reasons that many people find inadequate or incomprehensible. Isn’t this discrepancy between the moral standards articulated by Christianity and those embraced by non-Christians adequate reason to consider these moral dogmas false? and,

(c.) Christians often do bad things, or do good things badly, judged even by by their own moral code. And some non-Christians, even outright atheists, behave more morally (by Christians’ standards) than some Christians do. Isn’t this adequate reason to falsify the moral standards Christians call true?

Now my responses to questions (a.) through (c.) are ones which you undoubtedly can guess before I give them, but for the record, they are:

(a.) God would be falsified by the three evils if we lived in a universe where free will did not exist apart from God or if we had no reason to think that God had done whatever he could to alleviate the evil consequences of misused free will without eliminating free will itself. However, we believe that we exist in a universe where God has granted some real free will to creatures, which some of them have abused, and in which He has done whatever he could to alleviate the evil consequences of that abuse short of eliminating free will. Thus, the existence of the three evils does not falsify God.

(b.) We know that persons in various eras have moral blindnesses, which tend to vary greatly from one era to the next even while other moral judgments remain unchanged. So, a mere failure of Christian morality to label something as wrong which Joe Blow calls wrong, or of Christian morality to label something as permissible which Joe Blow calls permissible does not necessarily indicate a fault in the Christian moral code. It is also possible that Joe is wrong. That Joe can’t see why is unsurprising if he has merely absorbed the moral code of society around him on a gut-level basis. This is the meaning of the photographs of Nazi concentration-camp operators lounging about on holiday, smiling at the cameras, looking quite likable and normal: We each have reason to be suspicious of our moral judgments. An untrained, “state of nature” conscience is no more reliable than an untrained, “state of nature” set of arithmetic skills. Only a “well-formed” conscience is trustworthy for difficult or obscure problems of moral calculus.

That is the answer to the question of whether the Christian moral code is necessarily falsified by Joe Blow’s (or Walter’s) judgment of moral error against the Christian moral code itself. Either side may be incorrect; but the disagreement by itself does not prove the Christian side incorrect.

(c.) A different problem is when Christians disobey the Christian moral code in areas where atheists do not. Does that falsify Christianity? Well, no; no more than a person who brushes his teeth nightly falsifies the practice of toothbrushing if he has bad teeth. For of course some people have bad teeth to begin with, and others have better teeth; to judge the effectiveness of the toothbrushing we’d need to know a bit more about what raw material folks were starting from. Indeed, in a society where there was little notion of the difference between good and bad teeth (actors in 70’s-era U.K. television shows come irresistibly to mind) one might find much of the society oblivious as to the point of brushing one’s teeth at all. Only the folks with the nastiest teeth would realize that something was really wrong in their mouths, and start looking for a remedy. Only the folks who really knew they were badly off would bother with toothpaste and calling the dentist.

Now Christianity is a cure for all of the three evils (sin, suffering, death) but it begins with a cure for sin (the other two cures spring in a derivative and cumulative way from the first). But popular culture has moved so far (mostly for commerical reasons) to try to eliminate the word and concept of “sin” from our vocabulary that it is, these days, doubtful whether anyone ever becomes sufficiently cognizant of his own sinfulness to realize his need for God unless he’s a pretty bad sort of chap to begin with. So there may be reason to think that the “raw material” of those one finds in the Church was often worse than that one finds outside: The Church is a hospital for sinners, and a lot of people get very sick indeed before they’re willing to visit the doctor.

At any rate the hypocrisy of Christians doesn’t disprove the Christian moral dogmas any more than a math student’s error disproves mathematics. It does, however, demonstrate he needs to spend more time studying before he takes up tutoring. Jesus gave a parable to that effect.

Now I’m sure you noticed I didn’t bother proving correct any particular Christian dogma in the above. All I did is demonstrate that evil in the world, or popular culture’s disagreements with Christians’ moral standards, or Christians sinning (by their own standards), are not necessarily disproofs of Christian dogmas.

Those who would disprove a dogma must first pick one to disprove, and then offer arguments why it is false. But I can’t predict in advance which dogma might be selected nor what arguments against it might be raised, so it would be ludicrous to try to pre-empt all of them.

You go on to add: “The legacy of the church is quite hostile to science” ...with which I disagree, and then generalize about approval of Aquinas (and by extension Aristotle). But the Church’s approval of Aquinas’ theology doesn’t mean that the medieval cosmological model he used is taken to be a dogma by the Church; that’s a straw man. And Aquinas himself was agnostic about whether the medieval model itself was final: He viewed it as the best-known way to “save the phenomena”; that is, to account for existing observations of the cosmos. Perfectly reasonable, since at the time, it was the best accounting. It took better astronomical observations and the observations of the first novae to change that, and Aquinas passed on to his reward long before Copernicus started that revolution.

Anyway, to the degree that Christians are hostile to actual science, they are of course hostile to their own faith. For actual science is intent on learning the truth, and a Christian who knowingly opposes the truth is necessarily in opposition to He who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The Christian view is that “all truth is God’s truth” and there’s no reason not to expect, say, the Indians to come up with important bits of it first, as they did with the numbering system which led to so much of the scientific advancement you justly admire in the Arabs after whom Europeans unknowingly named that system.

You’re incorrect about Giordano Bruno, by the way. (Is the old saw about Hypatia and the Serapion next on deck?) The Church would have been fine had he stopped at other life forms and probably would have allowed for a spatially infinite universe. Even the unreformed medieval cosmological model allowed for other life forms, and indeed the medievals long held that the cosmos was so big that Earth was a mathematical point by comparison (you see this detail constantly used by Christian moralists to undercut human pridefulness throughout that period). Giordano Bruno was condemned for being a pantheist and considering Christ non-uniquely divine…which is rather different. And a temporally infinite steady-state universe, which he proffered, was also a problem, and might still be.

Now as for the Shermer quote:

I would, myself, associate “religious affiliation, church attendance, doctrinal orthodoxy, rated importance of religion, and so on” with “sensitivity to the importance of culture, the need of humanity for qualified respect for legitimate authority, the need for a foundation of true truths on which to base further conclusions, a sense of privacy and personal space, moral courage even in the face of peer pressure, an instinct for not simultaneously embracing two contradictory notions, and an unwillingness to deny that sin is sin even when doing so might be socially convenient.”

You see? It’s all in how you say it. I could correspondingly say that “absence of religious affiliation, or the role of conspicuous dissent within a religious group” correlates strongly with:

- A penchant for destroying critical elements of developed and stable cultures with utter insensitivity to the role those elements play in keeping that society stable;

- A hypocritical insistence on toleration of their worldview up until they achieve power, after which intoleration of dissent immediately follows;

- A flaky and intellectually masturbatory to philosophize about philosophizing and moralize about moralizing without being willing to use philosophy or ethics to learn whether any particular thing is true or good;

- A tendency to lie for social convenience and to favor gregariousness over whistleblowing;

- An unwillingness to commit to any particular philosophy or ethics that might obligate them to take a particular stance, with the outcome that whatever stances they adopt are selected for social advancement and convenience, and their philosophy or ethics updated after-the-fact to keep pace;

- And specific forms of prejudice

...which I’ve intentionally phrased in a fashion even more simultaneously ponderous and vague than Shermer & Co.‘s exercise in phrenology.

Now when Shermer comes out and says, for example: “I disagree with the Catholic Church’s teaching about the morally licit and illicit uses of human sexual pleasure,” then everything is all above-board and one can have a debate. But what you cite is less honest: It starts by assuming that Shermer & Co. are correct about the disputed matters, assigns nasty-sounding psychobabble adjectives to the other side of the dispute, sets up disagreement with Shermer & Co. as evidence of those adjectives, and reports the findings.

It is Shermer’s own form of dogma-enforcement; but at least when the Inquisition judged you non-Catholic and allowed the civil authority to kill you, you were bluntly told you were being killed for not being Catholic. I suspect that Shermer, if and when he gets to the point of being able to have people killed, will still euphemize while doing so. But I hope I’m wrong, both about the willingness to see people killed, and the unwillingness to do it with eyes open and without euphemism.

I think that addresses most of the items you raised. If we continue, perhaps you’d be willing particularly to either raise argument against a dogma, or comment on the three arguments I supposed you might hold against Christianity generally?

My mantra is that a wise person seeks the truth where the truth lies, not where s/he/it wishes to put it. If the issue becomes ‘transcendental’ it is incumbent to prove that the above natural has an effect on the natural. If you can do that science can measure it.
(c) Xtians sinning…here I can agree. It is not an individual fallacy, which proves the rule. No one is contesting what fallible people do with all their foibles or whatever else ails us. Again, the issue remains in degree higher than the particular ‘dogma’, but what can be observed and tested. There is no test for the transcendental. However, if it can be demosnstrated that the ‘transcendental’ impacts the natural world, that can be tested…do it.
“Legacy of the church is hostile to science”...I stand by that. Where do you wish to begin; with the ‘ancients’, the Middle Ages’, or the present with world overpopulation, condoms to fight aids, birth control, stem cell research.  As Carl Sagan accurately stated;  religion has always held back science…there is no need to go into this in detail.
Aquinas, pre-dates the scientific method.  I have enjoyed his writings and wisdom.  I do not discount his era or lack of scientific information available to him…his discourse on pure reason along with Aristotle…his five proofs for the existence of God represent his scientific failings…all of which are based on Aristotles ‘causes’. Through these ages as it advances the ‘God of the gap’ arguments were employed.  Whenever, a matter of import presented itself God entered as a resolve…much like Deus ex machina;  to fix the problem.  Fortunately, science as time wore on continues to answer these dilemmas without a transcendental happening…from the myriad myths and superstitions to present day quantum mechanics. All I request is ‘proof’ and a serious scholarship of earnestness.
Giordano Bruno;  what you affirm to be problematic is true…however, what I say is correct. Through his lifetime he was challenged and covicted of heresy, some tried to help him, but he was truly arrogant as he was brilliant.  The church certainly got on his case for his stating the universe was infinite and that there were other life forms scattered throughout. Nonetheless, the issue of Bruno is not resolved whether it is you or I who is correct, but the arrogance, lack of science, and unchanging inflexibility (dogma) of the church that matters.

From C.S. Lewis’ Pilgrim’s Regress, soon to be a major motion picture starring Walter Rogers as Mr. Enlightenment:

‘And where might you come from, my fine lad?’ said Mr. Enlightenment.

‘From Puritania, sir,’ said John.

‘A good place to leave, eh?’

‘I am so glad you think that,’ cried John. ‘I was afraid—’

‘I hope I am a man of the world,’ said Mr. Enlightenment. ‘Any young fellow who is anxious to better himself may depend on finding sympathy and support in me. Puritania! Why, I suppose you have been brought up to be afraid of the Landlord.’

‘Well, I must admit I sometimes do feel rather nervous.’

‘You may make your mind easy, my boy. There is no such person.’

‘There is no Landlord?’

‘There is absolutely no such thing—I might even say no such entity—in existence. There never has been and never will be.’

‘And is this absolutely certain?’ cried John; for a great hope was rising in his heart.

‘Absolutely certain. Look at me, young man. I ask you—do I look as if I was easily taken in?’

‘Oh, no,’ said John hastily. ‘I was just wondering, though. I mean—how did they all come to think there was such a person?’

‘The Landlord is an invention of those Stewards. All made up to keep the rest of us under their thumb: and of course the Stewards are hand in glove with the police. They are a shrewd lot, those Stewards. They know which side their bread is buttered on, all right. Clever fellows. Damn me, I can’t help admiring them.’

‘But do you mean that the Stewards don’t believe it themselves?’

‘I dare say they do. It is just the sort of cock and bull story they would believe. They are simple old souls most of them—just like children. They have no knowledge of modern science and they would believe anything they were told.’

John was silent for a few minutes. The he began again:

‘But how do you know there is no Landlord?’

‘Christopher Columbus, Galileo, the earth is round, invention of printing, gunpowder! !’ exclaimed Mr. Enlightenment in such a loud voice that they pony shied.

‘I beg your pardon.’ said John.

‘Eh?’ said Mr. Enlightenment.

‘I didn’t quite understand,’ said John.

‘Why, it’s as plain as a pikestaff,’ said the other. ‘Your people in Puritania believe in the Landlord because they have not had the benefits of scientific training. For example, I dare say it would be news to you to hear that the earth was round—round as an orange, my lad!’

‘Well, I don’t know that it would,’ said John, feeling a little disappointed. ‘My father always said it was round.’

‘No, no, my dear boy,’ said Mr. Enlightenment, ‘you must have misunderstood him. It is well known that everyone in Puritania thinks the earth flat. It is not likely that I should be mistaken on such a point. Indeed, it is out of the question. Then again, there is the palaeontological evidence.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Why, they tell you in Puritania that the Landlord made all these roads. But that is quite impossible for old people can remember the time when the roads were not nearly so good as they are now. And what is more, scientists have found all over the country the traces of old roads running in quite different directions. The inference is obvious.’

John said nothing.

‘I said,’ repeated Mr. Enlightenment, ‘that the inference was obvious.’

‘Oh, yes, yes, of course,’ said John hastily, turning a little red.

‘Then again, there is anthropology.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know—’

‘Bless me, of course you don’t. They don’t mean you to know. An anthropologist is a man who goes round your backward villages in these parts collecting the odd stories that the country people tell about the Landlord. Why, there is one village where they think he has a trunk like an elephant. Now anyone can see that that couldn’t be true.’

‘It is very unlikely.’

‘And what is better still, we know how the villagers came to think so. It all began by an elephant escaping from the local zoo; and then some old villager—he was probably drunk—saw it wandering about on the mountain one night, and so the story grew up that the Landlord had a trunk.’

‘Did they catch the elephant again?’

‘Did who?’

‘The anthropologists.’

‘Oh, my dear boy, you are misunderstanding. This happened long before there were any anthropologists.’

‘Then how do they know?’

‘Well, as to that . . . I see that you have a very crude notion of how science actually works. To put it simply—for, of course, you could not understand the technical explanation—to put it simply, they know that the escaped elephant must have been the source of the trunk story because they know that an escaped snake must have been the source of the snake story in the next village—and so on. This is called the inductive method. Hypotheses, my dear young friend, establishes itself by a cumulative process: or, to use popular language, if you make the same guess often enough it ceases to be a guess and becomes a Scientific Fact.

Thanks Mark Shea, you made my day…hilarious; I much prefer John Bunyon’s version, my favorite. Unfortunately, the Enlightenment, to replace religious superstition and myth with science and reason was much too short. Maybe, just maybe if we introduce Dante into the fold as we trespass from this world to the next…without any introduction by Milton (his periodic sentences were much to long)

Seriously.  You should educate yourself before regurgitating the standard"The Catholic Church: Enemy of SCIENCE![TM]” boilerplate.   You are ignorant as only the most cock-sure media-suckled post-modern can be.  It really is remarkable the combination of epistemic closure and conviction of open-mindedness you manage to combine, Walter.

I’d had much the same assessment. 

Spouting commonly known, cliched factoids and referencing historical facts are two very different things.  I’d wondered if Walter’s trolling was simply a matter of poor reading comprehension or obstinacy, or a combination of both.  A goat can enjoy Shakespeare, for instance, or Aquinas if you prefer, to the same extent.  Just don’t ask him if he understood it. 

For the record, Walter, Scientific American doesn’t bother me in the least, I have been known to pick it up periodically.  I just happen to know that the publisher is an avowed atheist.  As I mentioned earlier, that you’d quoted it was terribly predictable, as have been most of your posts.  I’ll recuse myself from this line of commentary shortly, since you clearly seem incapable of perceiving when people are trying to take the time to explain things to you, while you obstinately wave your hands about and try to railroad the conversation by defining (or redefining) commonly understood words and citing something you read uncritically in a magazine and unquestioningly adopted.  Mark has you pretty much pegged.

Science is great for certain things, to be sure, but it cannot help but fall short on others.  One can empirically demonstrate the force of gravity.  One cannot empirically demonstrate how much a father loves his children.  If you ever come to understand that statement, you will have become something of a mystic.

To respond, briefly, to your statements “The evils you cite regarding evolution fail the test.” 

I point out here that I cited no evils regarding evolution in my previous post, simply that they have happened and that evolutionary thought fails to condemn, or even identify them.  I suspect you’ve trolled often enough that you’ve confused my words with someone else.

“True, many atheists have committed horrendous deeds, But no atheist, Stalin et al did so in the name of Darwin or evolution.”

Actually, evolution was exactly the rationale that the Nazis used to cleanse themselves of “useless eaters”.  Evolution is the rationale used to forcibly sterilize people both here and abroad, though they called it “Eugenics” to make it marketable.  The list goes on.  Still.

And while you bring up Joe Stalin I might ask, if atheism wasn’t the reason he dragged Priests (and laypersons) out in front of their churches and had them shot, what name do you suppose he invoked?  The Rotary Club?

You articulate, but you don’t reason.  You quote, but you don’t question.  You have accepted for a religious truth the observations, speculations and assertions of fallible man, without ever stopping to wonder how we can know when we have observed correctly, or if we understood what we have seen, excepting that we have been created with the capacity to do so.  Science came about because of the Church.  You’re welcome.  But science is not the exclusive mission of the Church.  Please note that I didn’t say “religion”, just to be clear.

As Jesus truly said;

“If you were blind, you would have no sin; but since you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”  John 9:41

I shall pray for you.  I hope someday you see.

Philip and Mark, this must come to an end;  neither of you is capable of discerning your spiteful enmity from any attempt at critical reason. As you attempted to discredit Ehrman, so you continue your fall into swill defaming me…none of you know anything about me and I know not a thing about any ‘Catholic boiler plate’...at least R.C. kept a rational discourse…how Mark Shea, a regular journalist on Register is allowed his profane commentaries when ‘truthfulness is an obvious distraction’ to him…no shame is known. Poor Philip goes on condemning only to fall prey to his own accusations and misguided renderings…thanks for warning the puplic that the neo-know nothings have arrived.

Part I.
As Carl Sagan accurately stated;  religion has always held back science…there is no need to go into this in detail.
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Especially as the historical detail does not support the thesis. 
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Why go to Carl Sagan for a question of history?  Why not go to a dentist?  Or perhaps a plumber?  Where he pontificated on history he was embarrasingly wrong, a mere repeater of myths and legends.  For the details of the history of science, may I suggest the following, all written by respected historians and specifically historians of science. 
Toby Huff.  The Rise of Early Modern Science: China, Islam, and the West
A.C. Crombie.  Medieval and Early Modern Science, vol. I & II
Edward Grant.  The Foundations of Science in the Middle Ages.
Edward Grant.  God and Reason in the Middle Ages.
David Lindberg, ed. Science in the Middle Ages 
David Lindberg. The Beginnings of Western Science.
.  .
Frances Gies & Joseph Gies:  Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages.
Jean Gimpel.  The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages.
Lynn White. Medieval Technology and Social Change.
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This notion was tossed by historians a long while ago; but it constantly appears on the Internet, often in the guise of what atheist blogger Tim O’Neill called “THE STUPIDEST THING ON THE INTERNET EVER”  Mr. O’Neill is that rarity: an atheist who insists on logic, reason, and fact; in this case, historical fact.  http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2009/10/gods-philosophers-how-medieval-world.html
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The legacy of the church is quite hostile to science, ... look no further than Copernicus, Galileo, and poor Giordano Bruno who was bent over, rod pushed through his back, and burned alive…all for stating the universe was endless, and that there were other life forms. 
. .
Three names in all of history?  That’s the best you can do for a thousand years of history? 
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A. Copernicus does not support your thesis, since he was a churchman himself: a canon of Frauenberg Cathedral who was once short-listed for the bishop’s seat.  He was not a scientist himself.  The title for an astronomer back then was “mathematicus.”  Astronomy was a specialized branch of mathematics, not of physical science.  He himself made very few empirical observations and primarily did “new math on old data,” using Gerard of Cremona’s 12th century translation of Ptolemy’s Almagest and Peuerbach’s Epitome in Almagestum.  He was urged to publish his mathematical model by Cardinal von Schönberg and Bishop Giese, but he had already been satirized on the stage and dreaded the mockery of those who “on account of their natural stupidity hold the position among philosophers as drones among bees.”  IOW, it was the mockery of the physicists he dreaded.  His model contained more epicycles than Peuerbach’s edition of Ptolemy, put the Moon on a double-epicycle, centered each planet’s orbit on a different point, none of which were actually the Sun, and so badly messed up the solution for Mars that the Prussian Tables based on his work were no more accurate than the Alfonsine Tables based on Ptolemy.  After an initial burst of excitement, the Copernican model faded away. 
. .
B. Bruno does not support your thesis, since he was a purveyor of mystical neo-Platonic and hermetic woo-woo, not a scientist.  The translator of his Ash Wednesday Supper (you’ve read it, of course) commented that if they had bothered to read through it, the Copernicans themselves would have burned Bruno.  Historian Grigorio di Santillana, no friend of the Church, writes that the bill of indictment contained eight charges, and not one of them had to do with natural philosophy.  You may also recall that in the Condemnation of 1277 of certain Aristotelian theses, the bishop of Paris specifically condemned the proposition that there could not be other worlds.  God, he said, could have created as many worlds as he wished. 
. .
C. Galileo does not support your thesis for the excellent reason that his trial had to do with violating an injunction he had signed earlier that he would not teach Copernicanism as physical fact until he had gotten empirical proof of it.  Until then, he could teach it as a mathematical model (as the Jesuits were already doing).  He never did get the empirical proof, but published the Dialogue anyway, using Medici muscle.  In it, he not only pushed the bogus Argument of the Tides as “proof”—every sailor in Europe knew that there were two high tides each day, not one as Galileo insisted—but put the arguments of his friend and protector, Maffeo Barberini in the mouth of Simplicio.  Since Maffeo was Pope Urban VIII, this meant he had gratuitously insulted a prince of Machiavellian Italy.  Worse yet, the proposition he mocked and which Urban had put to him is what today we call Popperism: that scientific theories can never be proven with certainty.  Further, Galileo’s patron was an ally of the Austrian Hapsburgs and between the Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies the Austrian and Spanish Hapsburgs were pinching the Papal State, which was supporting the French Bourbons in the Thirty Years War against the Hapsburgs.  The last thing Urban wanted on his plate was a hoo-hah over astronomical mathematics accompanied by blatant ingratitude.  IOW, “no need to go into details” means you miss the whole context of the affair.  Because Late Moderns think Science™ is the be-all and end-all, they think that it was the number one concern of the Early Moderns as well.

Part II
The ‘ancients’ had sufficient knowledge of science to advance serious technology.  
. .
There was little advance in serious technology in the ancient world, and most of that was through rule-of-thumb trial-and-error, not the pursuit of knowledge about the natural world.  Poincare noted that science was no more a pile of facts than a house was a pile of bricks.  Science was not harnessed as a handmaiden to engineering and industry until Bacon, Descartes, and the Scientific Revolution.  As far as technological advances (which are not the same thing as “science”) compare the difference between AD 1000 Europe vs. AD 1500 Europe and the difference between AD 1 Rome and AD 500 Rome or between 500 BC Greece and the 1 AD Hellenistic World. 
. .
It was Islam from 700 to 1400 CE that translated the ancient Greek into Arabic…many scientist at the time needed to write in Arabic to preserve their studies. In other words Islam paved the way for the Renaissance. 
. .
By magically hiding the knowledge so that it would pop out of the ground half a millennium later?  First of all, during the Golden Age of Islam, the majority of the people of the Near East were still Christian.  (Egypt was 50% Christian at the time of the first crusade; Antioch was both Greek and Orthodox.)  This really did not change until the Turkish invasions, which not coincidentally saw the twilight of Islamic interest in what they always called “foreign studies” or “Greek studies.”  One might to well to ask what religion the Greeks were at this point.  Furthermore, the translations were made by Nestorian Christians like Hunayn ibn Ishaq and his nephews (who ran the House of Wisdom), made easier by the fact that the Christians had already translated the Greek into Syriac.  A lot of Greek work was lost to the West for the excellent reason that they never had it.  The Romans, ever practical, had not bothered translating it into Latin.  The upper class knew Greek, of course; but after the collapse of civil administration, the new upper classes of quondam Roman soldiers, and Frankish, Gothic, and Vandal warlords really had not much grounding in the Greek.  The pockets of Greek colonies in the West quickly Latinized, just as knowledge of Latin died out in the Greek East. 
. .
In the House of Submission, there were any number of individual faylasuf who pursued “foreign studies.”  Al-Kindi, ibn Rushd, ibn Sinna, etc.  (Interestingly, the vast majority were either Persian or Spaniard.)  However, “foreign studies” were never taught publicly.  That is, natural philosophy was never a subject at any madrassa, save that astronomy was taught briefly at one madrassa in Persia (Maragha) before it was sacked by a mob.  Al-Kindi was caned in public 60 lashes and his library confiscated.  Ibn Rushd lost out in an argument with al-Ghazali over the value of philosophy and had to flee al-Andalus.  Grant writes that virtually every natural philosopher in Islam was persecuted at one time or another.  The dominant approach of the mujtahid toward nature was al-Ghazali’s occasionalism, which held that there was no cause-and-effect in nature.  “Fire does not burn the cloth” but God causes the fire and causes the cloth to blacken and distintegrate.  Natural laws were simply the “habits of God.” 
+ + +
“Legacy of the church is hostile to science”...I stand by that. Where do you wish to begin; with ... the present with world overpopulation, condoms to fight aids, birth control, stem cell research. 
. .
World population is a result of sex, not science.  Whether one should use condoms or birth control or destroy embryos to harvest their cells are matters of public policy, not matters of science.  Stem cell research proceeds by leaps and bounds—on adult stem cells and regressed stem cells, both of which may be obtained without killing anyone.  Everywhere in Africa where, under pressure from neocolonialist white aid agencies, the condom approach has been relied upon, AIDS has spread.  In the sciences, such things would be data that must be accounted for.  Perhaps by noting the difference between condoms in theory and condoms in practice; or between stem cell research and embryonic stem cell research. 
+ + +
Aquinas, pre-dates the scientific method.  …his five proofs for the existence of God represent his scientific failings…all of which are based on Aristotles ‘causes’.  
. .
The scientific method can be traced to Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln and rector of Oxford, a generation before Thomas.  They were employed by, for example, Theodoric of Freiburg whose experiments with water-filled glass balls established the explanation of the rainbow, and by Peter Peregrinus deMaricourt in establishing the laws of magnetism.  Grosseteste’s method of composition and reduction is ancestor to the method of demonstrative regress which Galileo learned from the Jesuits. 
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I take it that Aristotle’s ‘causes’ are in scare quotes because like Popper and Kuhn you wish to delegitimize without actually making an argument.  Aristotle’s term aitia better translates as “reasons” or “becauses”.  The term ‘cause’ has been used so exclusively for metrical and controllable efficient causes that it is almost impossible for a Late Modern to think of the others as causes at all.  Hence, they fall into conceptual quandries when faced with “emergent properties” (formal causes) or “strange attractor basins” (final causes).  And even have a hard time dealing with material causes, of all things.  So it goes. 
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Thomas’ “Five Ways” are not scientific failings since they are not scientific determinations in the first place.  They are metaphysical proofs.  Natural science (physics) starts with a body of facts and proceeds by induction to a theory that explains them.  (Since the same finite set of facts can always support multiple theories, natural science is underdetermined.)  Metaphysical proofs are more like mathematics than science.  A metaphysical proof starts with a fact and proceeds by logical deduction to the consequences of that fact.  That is, the First Way, the argument from change (aka “motion”) is not an hypothesis to explain motion; it is a deduction from the fact of motion.  And far from being a Newtonian god-of-the-gaps kind of guy, he would have regarded something like the Theory of Natural Selection as additional evidence for his Fifth Way.  The Fifth Way was not an effort to explain gaps in our knowledge by plugging in God; rather it is premised on the belief that nature has no gaps at all and works all the time, even when we don’t know the workings. 
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Through these ages as it advances the ‘God of the gap’ arguments were employed.  Whenever, a matter of import presented itself God entered as a resolve…much like Deus ex machina;  to fix the problem. 
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God-of-the-gaps is a modern heresy, developed by people like Newton and Paley, coeval with the emergence of Science™.  The medievals did not treat God as a scientific hypothesis intended to explain something about nature.  Quite the opposite.  One of their doctrines, dating back at least to Augustine, was that God had endowed matter with natures, and these natures were capable of acting directly upon one another.  This was called “secondary causation” and it was the type explicitly denied by al-Ghazali in the House of Submission.  It is one reason why modern natural science emerged only in Christendom and nowhere else.  “God did it!” was deemed an unacceptable answer in natural philosophy, because it begged the question of how these things worked.  See William of Conches, Adelard of Bath, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, etc.  For example, when Thomas referred in passing to the possibility of new species emerging in nature he wrote: “Species, also, that are new, if any such appear, existed beforehand in various active powers; so that animals, and perhaps even new species of animals, are produced by putrefaction by the power which the stars and elements received at the beginning.”  He had never seen a new species appear; but he was confident that if any ever did it would be through the natural powers possessed by natural elements. 
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Columnist Michael Shermer, Scientific American, put it succinctly:  A comprehensive survey of studies in the psychology of religion revealed that there is a consistent positive correlation between ‘religious affiliation, church attendance, doctrinal orthodoxy, rated importance of religion, and so on: with ‘ethnocentrism, authoritarianism, dogmatism, social distance, rigidity, intolerance of ambiguity, and specific forms of prejudice…’ 
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Wearing a white lab coat while recovering your own prior commitments from badly designed “experiments” does not constitute a science.  Indeed, using scientificalistic terms like “instrument” or “experiment” does not make social studies into a science at all.  As one commentator wryly put it: “The studies rely on the principle that has informed the social sciences for more than a generation: If a researcher with a Ph.D. can corral enough undergraduates into a campus classroom and, by giving them a little bit of money or a class credit, get them to do something—fill out a questionnaire, let’s say, or pretend they’re in a specific real-world situation that the researcher has thought up—the young scholars will (unconsciously!) yield general truths about the human animal; scientific truths.”  And this is before we even get to the appallingly bad use of statistics to generalize from an unrepresentative sample to the human race as a whole.  There is some discussion here, with links to detailed analyses of some of these “studies”: http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=5588
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But then I remember that Mr. Shermer once wrote an article showing that the mutiny on HMS Bounty was the result of Darwinian natural selection, which had historians ROFL.  It seemed to pass notice that if his theory explained why the sailors on Bounty mutinied, it failed to explain why the sailors on other ships on similar long voyages under similarly draconian captains did not mutiny.  A successful theory in the real sciences has to explain not only what did happen, but also what did not happen.

There was a time that I thought that Ehrman’s writing was the best thing since sliced bread. I hung on his every word as proof positive that my deeply convoluted cafeteria Catholic notions were true. I went down that slippery slope and lost my faith. I fumbled about in darkness for several years.

By the grace of God, I returned to the Church and submitted myself to her authority. I surrendered myself totally to Jesus and learned the true meaning of ...and the Truth shall set you free.

Thank you, Mark Shea, for this blog. It has had such profound effect on me that I cannot even begin to articulate how or why.

p.s. Thank you for closing the commentary on your Protestant Friend blog. I must admit that I got sucked into the mud-slinging on that blog and was less than charitable in my posts I wasted so much time and energy and I feel drained. Now I need to go to confession…Even my poor husband, kids, and dog became victims of my sharp tongue.

In less than 24 hrs, I went from a person of peace to a shrew. If there is anyone reading this blog that I offended on the other blog, please accept my most humble apologies.

Walter:

Well, I was busy elsewhere and, returning, I now find that others were replying to you in my absence.

While the tone of these replies was not, in certain places, that which I myself would use—Mark’s sense of style leans Ann Coulterish where I would lean…I dunno, Brian Lamb, or something like that—I do think that Ye Olde Statistician gave examples sufficient to illustrate my overall view on the Church and science; namely, that the Church was often indifferent to it, often a proponent of it, and rarely an unreasoning opponent of science as science.

I grant that persons in positions of authority often got embroiled in disputes which, while they should have remained purely about truth, became political in nature. I find that this happens in Catholic parishes to this day, and in the Protestant churches of my upbringing, and in university faculty meetings, and in high school chess clubs, and pretty much everywhere that one sinful human being comes within earshot of another. I grant that this should not happen in the Church even if it happens everywhere else; but it clearly does. And when it happens, then the dispute is no longer about science as science but about science as a convenient excuse for wielding political power exactly as one likes. Much like it is today, don’tcha know?

I point out that several of the examples you give of religion “opposing science” (contraception, stem cell research, and so on) do not involve religious persons opposing science as science but rather religious persons opposing immoral uses of recently-invented technologies. These uses are not opposed because the technology is new (that is, for any reason that could be attributed to scientific advancement) but for reasons related to the Church’s desire to defend the dignity of human persons as persons, human sexuality as sacramental in character, and so on.

The fact that these objections are not objections to good science but rather to bad ethics coming from insufficient respect for human beings puts such examples in a rather different category: They are closer to folks’ objections to the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, than to the rather political objections of Galileo’s contemporaries against his satire-laced expression of unqualified confidence in the Copernican model.

To put it more succinctly: If you should happen to invent a way to clone Cindy Crawford and make the clone your sex slave, my opposition will be based on your commoditization of a human being and of human sexuality. It won’t be a criticism of your cloning technique! I’m not being anti-science, but anti-slavery; and assaults on human dignity don’t get a pass merely because they occur in a laboratory or involve recently-filed patents!

That leaves only the issue of the transcendent, I think. Your approach seems entirely positivist, correct? Or, to avoid terms besieged by their own internecine religious wars, am I correct in thinking that, in your view, only information obtained through measurable repeatable experiment involving observable phenomena is knowable, or reliably knowable?

If that is your view, then it seems to me that that view is missing a qualifier. It would become a plausible view (I’m uncertain if it would be perfectly correct, but it would be plausible) if it stated that “the most reliably known information about phenomena which are intrinsically observable and quantifiable is that information which can be gathered through measurements and observations taken in repeatable experiments.”

You see the difference: The original formulation denies the existence or the knowability of all phenomena that aren’t observable, measurable, and susceptible to repeatable experiment. (But such a denial, were it true, would be a truth itself unknowable through observation, measurement, and repeatable experiment; hence, it fails through reductio ad absurdum: If one knows it to be true, one cannot know it to be true.)

The second formulation is better because it defines the use of experimental observation and measurement to things which are observable and measurable without denying that some things exist which aren’t, including the truth that the measurable, observable properties of measurable, observable things can be best discovered through measurement and observation!

But I don’t think there is any escape for anyone from the reality of transcendentals. The very arguments one uses to try to escape them inevitably hinge on them in one way or another.

And, I fear that folk who accuse Christians of “God of the gaps” reasoning are themselves often guilty of “Ungod of the Gaps”; that is, of filling gaps with anything, with or without evidence, so long as the anything in question doesn’t look like God.

For example, one can’t logically have an infinite regression of prior moments so we’re not “allowed” to have a perpetual steady-state universe with a time dimension that extends infinitely in either direction. However, the notion of time having a beginning has traditionally been profoundly unsettling to scientists of a 19th-century kind of pure cause-effect materialism. They don’t like the Big Bang being co-opted by Theologians.

So they say (for example): M-theory allows our universe to be a part of a larger “loaf” of universes outside our space-time dimensions, with the possibility of collisions between one “brane” and another producing explosions of matter and energy and thus precipitating the expansions of whole new space-times. Good stuff, and mathematically-supportable, and fulfills the all-important escape-hatch from our universe’s timeline.

But then the question arises: Are these outside-our-timeline events occurring in a timeline of their own, or not? If the former, then the problem exists for them just as it did for us. If the latter, then what we are saying is that an unobservable extra-universal First Cause created our universe. At this point, the distinction between the raw Theist and the pure-materialist M-theorist is that the former allows the First Cause to have attributes of Personhood and the latter denies that the First Cause can be personal…but cannot give any scientific reason why he should be sure of the non-Personhood of the First Cause.

What we have, then, is a “gap” which one side fills with a Person (or a Trinity) and the otherside fills with “anything you like provided it isn’t Personal.” A “God of the Gaps” and an “Ungod of the Gaps”: Both posited to explain something as yet unexplained through observation, and the attribute distinguishing one from the other is one that isn’t selected for scientific reasons at all.

Moreover, keep in mind that it is only the materialist who even claims there is a gap of unknowing. He (as a tenet of his faith) only permits that which is knowable through experiment; so he claims all else is unknowable and anything not susceptible to experiment is a gap. But the person who does not limit knowable information to that knowable through experiment has no such difficulty: If God talks to him, he can say, “God talked to me, therefore God both exists and talks and has opinions,” therefore the First Cause is Personal.” This is not, for him, a “gap” any longer: He has information. The materialist excludes the information, and a gap appears: Not because the puzzle was missing a piece to begin with, but because he didn’t like that piece and threw it out of his own accord.

(BTW I grant that Revelation itself needs a validation scheme prior to wide approval. It’s one reason God created a Church. And of course there are tests of a revelation’s internal logic.)

A similar objection can be leveled against a comment by Steven Hawking a little while back, wherein he said the universe—“everything”—could come out of nothing provided the laws of the universe (e.g. that part of the quantum theory that produces vacuum energy or “quantum foam”) existed to produce it. But of course at this level of philosophizing, the laws of the universes are “things.” Hawking likes them as a First Cause because they are Ungods; but even as he instinctively begins work explaining them he doesn’t seem to notice that, as things needing explaining, they are “things” needing explaining: Every bit as contingent as the atoms in our bodies. A First Cause for THEM will of course either be temporal or transcendently eternal; if the former, then once again we need to find a First Cause for that timeline; if the latter, then once again we’ve got a large slice of God and the insistence of materialists on that slice not including Personhood is an insistence unrelated to the science.

But these are examples and I don’t mean for a minute to limit God to being merely the First Cause of the Big Bang, or causality in general to merely temporally prior causality. A Thomist like Ed Feser would take me to the woodshed if I did. The principle, though, is that transcendence, or even that subset of transcendence called eternality, or even that subset of eternality called extra-temporality, is inescapable; as is the need to acknowledge truths unknowable through quantitative methods, experiment, and the like.

The scientific method is thus the proper working tool for the scientist in his laboratory when he observes the physical world. There, it is laudable. But he’s a fool if he “takes his work home with him” and tries, for example, to ask his girlfriend to marry him, and if she says yes, takes it back and tries to ask her again in a different way the following day, or doesn’t ask at all “so that the experiment has a control.” The tool cannot be used that way. Some kinds of work are better left at the office.

And although an over-enthusiastic empiricist would certainly learn that lesson eventually by trying the experiment, he’d be much better served if he knew it without experimenting. Some things just aren’t meant to be known that way.

All truth is God’s truth and stooping to polemics and sticking our fingers in our ears saying Lalalala doesn’t serve the cause of God’s truth. Obviously this is your column, Mark Shea, and you can and should express whatever you believe, but (perhaps it’s more the tone of some of the comments than it is you) calling Professor Ehrman names and dismissing his work summarily WITH NO COUNTER ARGUMENTS doesn’t accomplish much.

The tone of many of the comments from readers truly reminds me of the admittedly tired analogy of the Church’s medieval reaction to Galileo and Copernicus, both of whom turned out to be correct. The Church wasn’t destroyed because these sharp observers and fact-collectors (i.e., scientists) were right and the devout were absolutely and unequivocally wrong. All truth is GOD’S truth!

I’ve read two of Ehrman’s books and yes, they are thought provoking and even a little troubling, but it’s gotten me down on my knees rather than plugging my ears and demonizing him personally. The thousands and thousands of well-documented variations in biblical text can’t (at least by seekers of truth) be just summarily dismissed because it’s an uncomfortable discovery. Anyone who’s actually read Ehrman can’t with a straight face accuse him of sloppy research or insufficient footnoting. I’m a university professor and the guy is an admirable scholar. It’s all legitimate and the only question in my mind is, what do I do with this information, Lord, to better serve you?

My two cents.

Sorry, I have no idea what happened to the returns between paragraphs, which I had in the original. Mark, if you can easily edit my post, would you please add them?

Thanks,

Alan C.

the Church’s medieval reaction to Galileo and Copernicus, both of whom turned out to be correct. 

Actually, there are not twenty or so epicycles and the planets do not travel in perfect Platonic circles.  So they were not absolutely correct.  Nor did the Church’s insistence on empirical evidence make them absolutely wrong.  When empirical evidence was finally found in the early 1800s, the objections were dropped.  Even that might not have been necessary had a certain Tuscan mathematicus not insisted on re-interpreting the Church Fathers on the basis of a then-so-far unproven hypothesis.  Not in the middle of the Protestant sola scriptura revolution.

Also, Alan, contra the Dan Brown version of history, Copernicus died in his bed and was buried with honors by the Church, after having garnered many honors from the Church in life.