A Christian world without science

[Cmass]

What would the world look like if science had never developed?
One could assume we would still be wearing sack clothes and riding asses (so to speak) and chariots. No flight, no round earth, no solar system, no social or cultural science, no dentistry, no anthropology, no physics, just the same profound ignorance of the world.

Would the church have evolved in the same way it did? If not, in what ways might it be different?

[Jose]

Cmass, your question is worded wrong. The question is would science be what it is today without the church.

No, I worded it correctly. Although I think your question would indeed make a good thread.

I agree. The question posed in the OP is fine. Jjg's question is interesting also, but different--as you say,it would make a good thread.

The pagans deified nature too much to take science to more evolved levels. It was the Christians belief in a God that transcends nature and nature iss God's effect that allowed science to develop.

This is stated as fact, which implies that there is evidence to support it. I doubt that there is. One can as easily suggest that pagans who paid attention to nature might have developed science much more rapidly in their efforts to understand nature more fully.

But back to the question in the OP. If science as we know it had not developed, we can pretty much conclude that certain things would not now exist: chemical fertilizers (no green revolution), antibiotics (we'd still be leeching), high-yield crops developed through genetic breeding (we'd have those we developed without explicit goals, though, like corn), etc. We'd be confined to an agrarian lifestyle, with a small population. Perhaps we'd be like the Amish.

But we'd also have no mass transportation or rapid communication systems. We'd have spread across North America, if we'd found it, and lost cohesiveness. We wouldn't have local accents; we'd have local dialects and even local languages. Our religions would have diverged (look at the Penitentes, for example, or the Mormons). With divergent religions, and with nothing to counter the idea that My Religion is Truth, we'd end up having lots of wars. We'd also have trouble understanding unusual behavior, such as the neurological effects of alkaloid poisoning from mycorrhizal fungi that infected the wheat, and we'd think it made sense to drown people if we think they're witches. Fortunately, we've come a long way, and now we only drown people if we think they're terrorists.

[jjg]

deify not defy.

[Cathar1950]

Cathar, it couldn't be you just have a hard time admiting that you are wrong. Universities, science, law, economics, agriculture advancements and art etc. are not enlightenment by your standards.

I have no problem being wrong. I have no problem admitting I have no idea what you are talking about. The Church changed the face of Europe and even the Middle East. Some were good, some bad. For the most part i after it had some power, I believe it set things back a little. It tried to eliminate diversity and opposition inside and their competitors. I don't think it was all that good. Europe's contact with the Moslems ignited new ideas and reintroduced old ones that were forgotten or destroyed.
I do agree that the question might be misleading. It is like asking if the horse changed civilization or the camel. They would have been different had the animals been different but it is anyone’s guess how that would look. What I do see is you desire to over estimate and give credit where credit is not do for reasons that are not valid.

“The pagans deified nature too much to take science to more evolved levels. It was the Christians belief in a God that transcends nature and nature iss God's effect that allowed science to develop”

This is a good example of your pro church thinking. This is an overstatement as well as false. How are you defining Pagans? Egyptian’s with their gods seem to have done fine for thousands of years. Ancient Summer developed ideas that we still use today. Knowledge and the beginnings of science have marched on with or without God or gods.
Plato had an idea of a transcendent god as well as others. Deifying nature or even monotheism verses polytheism is not better just different and to contribute science and knowledge to either one is just silly and unjustified. There is a good case to be made that science developed despite theism.
You are just falsely trying to brag about your religion. Could you be any more obvious?

Certain passages in Scripture say that God ordered everything in measure and number and the Church believed that it is through human reasoning that we come to know God so that is why science developed out of the Church.

There ancient myths where the gods kicked the crap out of another god(Chaos) and created order. Big deal there are better details(about order) in older writings from other gods and monsters.
Sometimes some in the church believed in reason some times they forced their ideas with reason that made poor assumptions. Science did not develop out of the church. Some did some didn’t sometimes it was suppressed, some times it helped but that was usually and exception or an accident of history. Neither developed in a vacuum and that is the best you can say.
Now I can finish reading the other post.