Islam and Science: response to Pervez Hoodbhoy
Friday, December 11th, 2009Dear Professor Hoodbhoy,
This refers to your article on “Islam’s arrested development” (Guardian, UK, 25 Nov 2009:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/nov/25/islam-science-muslims-religion).
I reproduce below my response posted at
http://uk.buzz.yahoo.com/article/1:the_guardian665:47e5bc0f59fdfabb8fd85093cdd0f553/Islams-arrested-development–Pervez-Hoodbhoy
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I agree that “Science demands a mindset that incessantly questions and challenges assumptions”.
However, I would like to question and challenge the assumption you set out in your previous sentence “To do science, it is first necessary to accept the key premises underlying science – causality and the absence of divine intervention in physical processes, and a belief in the existence of physical law.”
These are not key premises underlying science, but rather key premises underlying post-Crusade Christian theology. In my article “Benedict’s Maledicts” (Indian Journal of Secularism, 10(3) (2006) pp. 79-90, also Zmag.: http://zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/3109) I outlined the political compulsions which drove Christian priests to just these theological positions after the Crusades. How come you didn’t notice this remarkable overlap between the premises of Christian theology and what you call the premises of science? This entanglement with Christian theology is the hallmark of Western science.