Rodney Stark’s book “For the Glory of God” which is avalible at http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=5Ayx7e3C3kYC&dq=%22For+the+Glory+of+God%22+Stark&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=k05iHWLMWT&sig=eSWykgyNqoz2apuUgmbaGl7e3qY&hl=en&ei=KNncSrL0OJeWkQW7p-jIDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=&f=false. Has a good overview of the events Sid refers to.

The original link to the full chapter is: http://jameshannam.com/Godsphilosophers.pdf
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Matt, do you have the link address to the article the publishers asked to be taken down?
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should be: http://www.mandm.org.nz/2008/04/the-dark-ages-and-other-propaganda.html
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Hi Anthony, could you provide more info about this. I’m interested because this is a topic that is very often brought up. Any Wikipedia link (won’t be shocked if non exists there) or book title or something?

As for the Church restricting thought in general this is true if by thought you mean unsupported and socially destructive doctrines. For instance slavery made it’s come back in the Enlightenment, something that the Church had worked hard for a millenia to abolish and finally had by the middle-ages. Galileo for instance only had to provide evidence for heliocentrism in order for his assertions to be allowed, he couldn’t do so. And even then only his biblical interpretation was at issue not the science, which was allowed even after his appearing before the inquisition as long as he kept it as a mathematical theory and did not assert it to be absolutely true before he could prove it.

“Nor was he burned to death by the Church, it was the State that issued that condemnation.”

You are being picky, the Church and the State were effectively one and the same.

Matt I take your point that the Church did not suppress science and technology, however the Church did suppress thought and contrary ideas and philosophies. The renaissance marked the begining of the separation of Church and State and withi it the emergence of new philosophies.

I did not say this, Dr James Hannan said it in his PhD thesis on the history of science and religion which he did at Cambridge University which has now been published by Icon books. But in response to your query I would refer you to Anthony’s comments above.

I think it is fair to say science progressed in spite of not because of the Catholic Church, so long as scientists did not challenge the teachings of the Church they were left alone.

My understanding is that this claim though common is false. The thesis that the Church for centuries consistently suppressed science and prevented its flourishing (known as the conflict thesis) originates in two works, John Draper’s History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874) and Andrew Dickson White in his book A History of The Warfare Between Science and Theology in Christendom. The conflict thesis is now widely rejected by historians of science. Several people such as Stanley Jaki, (The Road to Science and the Ways to God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)); Alfred Whitehead, (Science and the Modern World (New York: Macmillan, 1925); Peire Duhem, (L’Aube du savoir: épitomé du système du monde (histoire des doctrines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic), ed. Anastasios Brenner, Paris, Hermann, selections from Duhem 1913-59). Michael Foster (”The Christian Doctrine of Creation and the rise of Modern Natural Science,” Mind 43 (1934), 446–468 “Christian Theology and Modern Science of Nature (I)” Mind 44 (1935) 439–466; “Christian Theology and Modern Science of Nature (II)” Mind 45 (October, 1936), 1–27. Also, Reijer Hookykaas (Religion and the Rise of Modern Science (Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans, 1972) and Stark have all called this thesis into question and argued that Christian ways of understanding lead to the rise of Science.

Other’s, most notably Numbers and Lindberg, while not wanting to defend the claim that Christianity fostered the rise of Science, also question the conflict thesis. In an anthology they edited, entitled God and Nature, Numbers and Lindberg suggest a more nuanced thesis; that the relationship between theology and science has been too complex over the ages for either generalisation to be correct.

However both schools, as far as I can tell, reject Whites work as a piece of propaganda. As Collin Russel notes “Draper takes such liberty with history, perpetuating legends as fact, that he is rightly avoided today in serious historical study. The same is nearly as true of White, though his prominent apparatus of prolific footnotes may create a misleading impression of meticulous scholarship.” (”The Conflict of Science and Religion” in The Encyclopedia of the History of Science and Religion, New York 2000). John Hedley Brooke, the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford, writes in Science and Religion – Some Historical Perspectives (1991), “In its traditional forms, the [conflict] thesis has been largely discredited”. Similarly, Edward Grant Professor Emeritus of the History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University writes, “If revolutionary rational thoughts were expressed in the Age of Reason [the 18th century], they were only made possible because of the long medieval tradition that established the use of reason as one of the most important of human activities” In the same vein Steven Shapin Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego writes, “In the late Victorian period it was common to write about the ‘warfare between science and religion’ and to presume that the two bodies of culture must always have been in conflict. However, it is a very long time since these attitudes have been held by historians of science.”
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The idea that the Catholic Church has stunted science is ridiculous. The University system itself wouldn’t exist without the Church creating it, and for other reasons I’ll refer you to the above article for some pointers.