Another interesting article

[semerkhet]

This article likens the many splintered nature of modern Islam to Protestantism. He also makes some interesting observations about what the author terms as the major misconception, based on the Galileo episode, that the Catholic church was anti-science during the the Renaissance and Enlightment periods. I'll stop summarizing and let you read for

Comments

[michael_va]

I think Edward Feser is misappropriating Friedrich Hayek's ideas. The benefit of the rule of law, as Hayek saw it, was that it enabled and protected the individual's freedom to think, say and act as they personally saw fit to. There are many people who seem to confuse the order of law with the law of order, and I think Feser is one of them

[semerkhet]

I, too, was skeptical about Feser's attempt to cast the Catholic church in an entirely positive light. I was intrigued, however, by his points about the disunity of religious thought in both Protestantism and Islam, as compared to Catholicism. While the Sunni's have not splintered in name, there are enough divisions in the four major law schools and so many regional differences that there might as well be a dozen sects of Sunnis out there.

What did you think of his assertion that Luther, Calvin, and their followers were the ones that were anti-science, whereas the Catholics were mostly open to innovation?

[michael_va]

To my knowledge, neither Luther nor Calvin had anything to say about science. Martin Luther died in 1546, John Calvin in 1564. The Scientific Revolution had not begun in their lifetimes.

I think he may have been alluding to their insistence on the predominance of faith, which was reactionary at that time. Thomas Aquinas had reconciled Aristotelian Philosophy with Catholic Theology in the 13th century, resolving many scholastic questions about the relationship between faith and reason. But, those questions were about scriptural interpretation and metaphysics, not science.