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cedrwydden:

wisepeoplesaid:

“What worries me about religion is that it teaches people to be satisfied with not understanding.”

Richard Dawkins

This is demonstrably untrue.

Being in medieval studies, I can only speak knowledgeably of medieval Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, so if any of my followers know more about other faiths or eras, feel free to add on, because I’d love to learn more.

Let’s start with monasteries. Medieval monasticism was a great promoter of inquiry and learning. It isn’t a coincidence, it was built right into the rules by people like Cassiodorus and St. Benedict. Monasteries produced so many great thinkers with curious minds: St. Bede, St. Hildegard of Bingen, Roger Bacon, St. Thomas Aquinas, Joachim of Fiore, St. Julian of Norwich, etc., etc.

With the 12th century Renaissance, there was a boom in education. People could study in cathedral schools as well as monastic ones. The first universities were founded, and these were Christian institutions. To quote the historian Clifford Backmann in The Worlds of Medieval Europe, ‘The cosmos is a rationally ordered place, scholars maintained, and God has given mankind the capacity to think it all out, to comprehend fully the mysteries of the universe. To do so is intellectually stimulating, of course, but it also contributes to Christian faith – for what better way to love God than to appreciate the magnificent order He has given everything?’ In this period, Europe made great developments in law, mathematics, philosophy, literature, and almost every other existing scholarly field. All promoted by the church.

Medieval learning – at least on an institutional, academic level – was driven by religion as much as by natural curiosity. It is a different approach than in academia today, but history doesn’t sit still when it comes to education. For medieval people, faith and reason were reconciled, and many considered them inseparable. And they questioned the very fundamental concepts of Christianity. In his book Sic et Non, Peter Abelard tackled the questions of God’s omnipotence and whether or not He created evil. Thinkers like him were never satisfied with not knowing.

And so far I’ve only touched on Christianity. What about the Islamic Golden Age? During the Abbasid dynasty, Baghdad became an extremely rich centre of learning, and that influence spread all throughout the Islamic world. There were state libraries in Cairo, Damascus, Seville, and Baghdad, observatories, paper mills, and religious law schools called ‘madrasa’. At a madrasa, students were expected to learn not only the Qur’an, the shari’a (laws), and the hadith (words, actions, and approval of Muhammad), but also astronomy and mathematics, which were considered vital in understanding Islamic law. Amongst the elite, it was seen as the mark of a good Muslim to sponsor scholars.

And, boy, if Richard Dawkins thinks that Judaism doesn’t foster a questioning mind, he obviously doesn’t know a single thing about it. Judaism is well-known for its long tradition of debate and constant religious inquiry. Jewish scholars distinguished themselves in mathematics and medicine, with people like Asaph the Physician drawing upon Talmudic teachings in their work. Patients of all religions flocked to Jewish doctors. And that love of learning never went away. Nazi science was so weak because they were suspicious of theoretical physics, which they considered far too Jewish and highfalutin for their tastes. In fact, Nazi anti-intellectualism in general was often due to a dislike of the strong Jewish scholarly tradition.

I’m not going to deny that there were lines of inquiry that religious institutions were explicitly against people following, but that is not restricted to them. Secular governments and organisations do that today. They have a special fondness for trying to muzzle scientists who talk too much about climate change. And I’m not going to deny the atrocities committed in the name of faith. These are tragedies that cannot be ignored. But I cannot in good conscience as a student of history pretend that religion made people satisfied with ignorance.

Close-mindedness from a religious person and from an atheist are the same damn thing, and Richard Dawkins is too self-important to notice or care. He would not be able to do the work he can today without several millennia of religious people who were dedicated to understanding and discovery, but it seems that he himself is very satisfied in not understanding the past.