“Christianity has both spurred and retarded the sciences and social sciences. Indeed, most of the modern debates of profound significance were originally dialogues with or within Christianity.”

— Geoffrey Blainey , book A Short History of Christianity

A Short History of Christianity (2011)

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Geoffrey Blainey 72

Australian historian 1930

Phillip E. Johnson (1940–2019) American Law clerk

World Magazine, 30 November 1996
1990s

“If Jesus does come down out of the clouds like a superhero, Christianity will stand revealed as a science. That will be the science of Christianity.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, “Religion, Terror, and Self-Transcendence.” The Ethical Culture Society and the Center for Inquiry, New York, NY, November 16, 2005 (broadcast on CSPAN-2)
2000s

“When a politician, on a subject implicating science — hard science, economic science, social science — says, ‘The debate is over,’ you may be sure of two things. It’s that the debate is raging and he’s losing it.”

George Will (1941) American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author

Discussion, Fox News Sunday, February 16, 2014
2010s

“It is probably not an accident that modern science grew explosively in Christian Europe and left the rest of the world behind. A thousand years of theological disputes nurtured the habit of analytical thinking that could also be applied to the analysis of natural phenomena. On the other hand, the close historical relations between theology and science have caused conflicts between science and Christianity that does not exist between science and other religions.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

“After years of work in both areas of study, I concluded that the social sciences were different, in many important ways, from the natural sciences, but that the same scientific methods were applicable in both areas, and, indeed, that no very useful work could be done in either area except by scientific methods.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 1, Scientific Method and the Social Sciences, p. 33

“The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

“Well, I don't think there are any methodological conflicts either. As for those social conflicts, those aren't conflicts—in my opinion—between science and religion. They're conflicts between Christians and atheists or Christians and secularists: Christians want to do things one way, secularists want to do things another way. But that's not a science/religion conflict at all. You might as well say it's a science/secularism conflict. In each case, each group wants to do science and then use it in a certain way.”

Alvin Plantinga (1932) American Christian philosopher

[2011-12-13, Interview with Alvin Plantinga on Where the Conflict Really Lies, Paul, Pardi, Philosophy News, http://www.philosophynews.com/post/2011/12/13/Interview-with-Alvin-Plantinga-on-Where-the-Conflict-Really-Lies.aspx]
Posed question: Are you mainly trying to show that there's no logical conflict even though there might be a methodological conflict?

“The common root of modern science and Christian theology was Greek philosophy. The historical accident that caused the Christian religion to become heavily theological was the fact that Jesus was born in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire at the time when the prevailing culture was profoundly Greek.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

“Science has done more for the development of Western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Source: The Light of Day (1900), Ch. X: Religious Truth

“I think men of science as well as other men need to learn from Christ, and I think Christians whose minds are scientific are bound to study science that their view of the glory of God may be as extensive as their being is capable. But I think that the results which each man arrives at in his attempts to harmonize his science with his Christianity ought not to be regarded as having any significance except to the man himself, and to him only for a time, and should not receive the stamp of a society.”

James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) Scottish physicist

Draft of a reply to an invitation to join the Victoria Institute (1875), in Ch. 12 : Cambridge 1871 To 1879, p. 404
The Life of James Clerk Maxwell (1882)

“Christianity has both spurred and retarded the sciences and social sciences. Indeed, most of the modern debates of profound significance were originally dialogues with or within Christianity.”

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