Thomism's ethics
Branched from another thread on Thomism:
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
For a Thomist, all sin brings about a greater good whether we understand how or not. So a Thomist doesn't have to explain individual examples.
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
The existence of evil brings about a greater good.
— frank
??
How does a rape contribute to the greater good, and if it does, why are there laws against it?
Regards
DL
For a Thomist, all sin brings about a greater good whether we understand how or not. So a Thomist doesn't have to explain individual examples.
Comments (46)
That is as good as hiding behind a supernatural shield.
That is called hypocrisy and religions called what you do as what led to inquisitions and jihads.
Try thinking for yourself in a logical way.
Regards
DL
No thanks.
I was explaining Thomism on ethics.
If what you put is their ethics, they are garbage.
That must be true as, like a Thomist, I do not have to make my case.
Regards
DL
Not at all. Thomism launched us toward the scientific worldview we have today, and so is worth examining.
In effect, you are saying:
If Thomism then all sin brings about a greater good
Tim and Gnostic Christian Bishop suggest that it is more reasonable to believe all sin brings about a greater good is false, which is sufficient grounds to reject Thomism:
1. If Thomism then all sin brings about a greater good
2. ~( all sin brings about a greater good) (problem of evil)
3. Therefore ~Thomism (1,2 modus tollens).
all sin brings about a greater good is logically possible, so your faith-based belief in Thomism is not refuted. Nevertheless, I hope you can see why this is not satisfying to non-Thomists.
Science???
Christians sing of Adam's sin being a happy fault and necessary to god's plan.
The Christians, even if they cannot explain their position the same way you cannot, shows that your Thomist thinking is just rehashed garbage.
Sure, sin helps in identifying evil, but to say that rape and murder somehow produce a greater good is ridiculous. We all know that those are evil.
Now if you were talking evolution and how we must all do some evil as we compete and create losers, then I would agree that those small evils do create the greater good by showing us who is the fittest humans.
Regards
DL
I don't think there are any Thomists anymore, but their ethical outlook is actually kind of refreshing to me. The Thomist God set the world in motion and then sort of turned away to let it run its course. Seeing sin as leading to a greater good means seeing wrong-doing and mistakes as part of the great machinery of the universe. Give yourself a break because redemption is assured. You're going to learn from your mistakes. You're going to stop being such a callous asshole and learn to love.
It's positive.
Yes there are: Edward Feser, and his devotees.
Quoting frankWhile Thomistic metaphysics doesn't entail intervention in the world, it doesn't preclude it either. Aquinas (and Feser) believed all the usual Catholic doctrine, including Jesus' virginal conception, his Resurrection, and transsubstantiation.
A venerable, old, (Augustinian) theodicy for excusing all evil (especially ecclesiastical atrocities).
Quoting frank
You're referring to Aquinas' antiquated (unquantified), mostly incoherent (teleological), and insufficiently empirical (unpredictive) Aristotelianism, right?
Quoting frank
Hear that Adolf? Christened & confirmed Catholic that you were, you need not have painted the bunker wall with your brains in despair "because redemption is assured" ...
Not to put too fine a point on it, but science doesn't preclude divine intervention either. It just goes about creating explanations for events as if we don't need supernatural explanations. Thomism was a starting point for that view.
Science didn't pop full-fledged out of nowhere. It evolved, and in the west, it evolved out of Christianity (with some help from Aristotle as @180 Proof mentioned.)
Quoting 180 Proof
My read on HItler is that he didn't commit suicide out of remorse. He just didn't want to go through the execution.
It didn't evolve "out of Chistianity". Rather, it happens to have primarily evolved within a culture that happened to be predominantly Christian. Christianity isn't really on the critical path.
The more evil there is in the world, the more you appreciate heaven when you get there. Heaven lasts longer than earth so it is therefore the optimal solution to have evil in the world; it results in greater good.
Interesting hypothesis. Where does modernity come from in your view?
With this statement:
Quoting Relativist
You seemed to be suggesting that science as we know it evolved independently of the Christian world, which invented the university and maintained for centuries the only population of educated people Europe had.
I didn't say that science must necessarily evolve out of Christianity. Obviously some of the basis for our present worldview came from Muslims and Hindus. But when Greek speakers came into Europe bringing with them a scientific perspective that contrasted with Platonic idealism, it was Christian thinkers who grasped their message and made room for it in Europe. Thomas Aquinas was one of them.
Our present scientific worldview (in the west) evolved out of Christianity. It's just a fact.
The "pagan" religion of the Roman empire was based on ritual, not adherence to a world view. There was no ideological barrier to making efforts to understand the world. Aristotelian metaphysics was consistent with pursuing natural explanations for the behavior of the world.
Don't forget that he is one of the greatest and most important individuals to ever live if you are really sticking to:
Quoting frank
If "all" sin brings greater good then the more the better...right?
Wouldn't intentionally sinning be working toward a positive good?
I really think some explanation is necessary.
Aristotle and Aquinas don't accept that a person can sin intentionally. When faced with multiple possible actions, you pick the one that you think will achieve your goal. Even if you know others take a dim view of your actions or goals, you have justified it to yourself.
You can be mistaken, though. You're imperfect. When you discover that your actions didn't really get you what you wanted, you have an opportunity to learn and grow.
Imagine a plant that always gets everything it needs exactly when it needs it. It will grow into a fine example of its species, but it won't have the strength to endure a storm. The tree that faces adversity develops grace.
Or imagine that you're learning a programming language and your first efforts are bugless. Contrast that to a situation where you're beset by 10 difficult bugs. In the first case, your knowledge of the language will remain somewhat superficial. Having to solve the problems created by your own mistakes will deepen your understanding and thereby draw you closer to the God of Software, which is the direction your nature always silently moved you.
And the real Hitler was just a guy. He wasn't the icon we've made him into. In another place and time, he would have been fine. It was the human world that had descended into insanity. I'm a moral nihilist, so the idea that it could be unforgivable doesn't make sense to me.
If you say it was unforgivable, what do you mean? What moral framework are you using?
So there is not even the appearance of free will? As someone who does not wholly believe in free will, I still find this very weird. Why would I not be able to intentionally sin? Define actions that count as sin...I can't choose to do them? What if my goal is to be contradictory? What if I want to be bad? Not to mention that you have defined sin as a good thing so I should be actively seeking ways to intentionally sin.
Aristotle and Aquinas were referring to the majority of people that lived during their time that hardly ever thought about the specific moral consequences of any action (things haven't changed much). That only suggests that most people...who are not thinking about whether or not their actions are "sin"...can not sin intentionally. Any of us that take efforts to define and analyze "sin" could absolutely do it on purpose...why not?
Quoting frank
Or I can be a dick. Who decides everyone else can just burn. Or I can even think I am learning and growing and helping others when I am actually just a self serving ass (I think this is what you are getting for no intentional sin, but this only describes some humans).
Quoting frank
If storms are a regular part of life then it sounds like the plant did not get everything it needs. But I am not sold on how genocide leads to a brighter future? Is America better today because it had slavery for a couple hundred years? And we are still feeling the benefits of 80 years of Jim Crow? Learning from a challenge is a lot different from saying "sin makes us better".
Quoting frank
First for the best programmers, you are unquestionably right. However, as someone in education, most humans quit by bug number 2 or 3...so, generally, I would expect more people to learn more in the first scenario. Many people in the second will learn nothing...everyone can get something from the first. You are right in that "zone of proximal development" requires that we be challenged. But it also requires interest. And anything that is too challenging is quickly abandoned.
Quoting frank
I have enough nihilist tendencies (objectively I am a moral nihilist, but subjectively I choose to believe that most of Hitler's actions should be condemned based on the goal of a well functioning society - I used "well functioning" in an attempt to avoid "good", but it is still rather subjective), along with my general belief that we have a very limited "free will" (if any), that I can get that Hitler was a product of his environment as much as any of us. But regardless of whether I "blame" Hitler I can still condemn him as "sinful" or how we should not act (I did not bring the word "sin" into this...but I am not sure you did either...when I hear "sin", I just think "ways we should not behave"...just to clarify as that word brings a lot of baggage).
Quoting frank
Hmmm, where did forgiveness come from? I am not christian and I don't really hold grudges...so I don't think it came from me. Do you mean "if you say it was WRONG, what do you mean?"
Quoting frank
To say that Hitler is bad? It would seem any framework but the Thomists, haha. But as it seems to be the most common non-religious version...how about "do no harm". I feel like you mean something else. You are probably referring to something more specific that I am forgetting?
.
It's not about will, it's about how Aristotle defined good and evil. Strip your concept of goodness down to something mundane, mechanical, and naturalistic. A good thing is an effective thing or a beneficial thing. Any time you act, you're trying to benefit yourself in some way. It's really more than that, though. It's close to this: for Aristotle, it's like you're a vector and "good" is a name for the direction you're trying to go in. "Evil" is what you're trying to leave behind.
If you choose a path that leads to what you're trying to leave behind, otherwise known as evil, then it's because you're mistaken, diseased, or ignorant.
For Thomism, add in an overarching Neoplatonic agenda: everything is on the path to a kind of Great Return to the One. This is not something you can choose to be a part of. It's an aspect of what you are in the cosmic drama. This might not translate to modern ears, but Aquinas didn't think of Neoplatonism as something bizarre and mystical. It was kind of like the received science of his day. So for us, it may seem like morality was stripped down to something naturalistic only to be built back up into something superstitious, but that's not true.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Exactly. If you burn others, it could be coming from a moment of overwhelming anger or grief, but you'll explain it to yourself as something good (they deserved it) until you realize it didn't get you what you wanted.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Precisely. That's Thomism.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
I think the challenge you're presenting is that if we say slavery ultimately imparted the precious gift of wisdom, then we're saying it was ok that a pregnant African woman was bound face down on the dirt in Brazil and whipped. It's ok that a Jamaican woman sat on a beach with the body of her dead infant in her arms, having killed it because she couldn't face having it grow up in the world she lived in. It's ok that somebody's son was tortured as he hung from a tree in Tennesee before being burned alive. It's ok that generations of our brothers sisters were systematically stripped of dignity until they learned to despise themselves for what they were.
No. It's not ok. And if it hasn't become part of our flesh and bones to know it's not ok, then no wisdom was imparted. No good came from it. They all suffered and died in vain.
I already told you I'm a moral nihilist, so you might be able to guess what my assessment is, and why I'm not a Thomist. But I don't think my view needs expression. What's your view?
I can answer the rest of your post later. Always great talking with you.
I see no reason to think science wouldn't have advanced had Christianity not gained the big following that it did, but historical what-ifs like this seem an exercise in futility.
I don't think that at all, and I've raised that point myself in other discussions. But neither do you know how they thought, and your claim depends on your speculations about their world views, and that these assumed world views were so ubiquitous that it would be impossible for science to develop.
What really drove individuals to explore nature? What external enablers (e.g. prosperity, education...)were there? What other enablers might have arisen? There are likely to be many answers to these questions.
For that matter, why did Christianity spread as it did? Under this hypothetical, had Christianity not spread - would something else have arisen? Because surely, the societal enablers for Christianity could have resulted in other directions equally productive to science, or even more so.
The history of the Western World is bound up with the development of Christianity. Had Christianity not developed as it did, history would have been very, very different - so much so, that no speculation can have a good basis. I guess you could write a story of speculative fiction, in the vein of "The Man in the High Castle", but nothing more.
I've done a fair amount of reading about the historical Jesus and it's pretty obvious to me that our knowledge of the distant past is very tenuous. And if we can't really know the actual past with any certainty, it is folly to think we can figure out what would have happened under this hypothetical.
You're mincing words. I described the various reasons why I believe it's impossible to know how western society would have developed had Christianity not developed as it did. (The hypothetical is: what if Christianity hadn't developed as it did? And you seem to be claiming that we would not have modern science). Quoting tim wood
Sure, but that's pretty sketchy. But there isn't what one would need to truly understand ancient world views, and how and why world views evolved over time, but you seem to think you have a strong handle on this. Are you a historian? Have you researched this?
Quoting tim wood
I think you're asking about Jesus, so I'll respond accordingly.
Yes, I think it much more likely than not that there existed a man of that approximate name, upon whom a religion developed. There IS some limited extra-biblical record of his having existed, but probably the best evidence is the fact that Paul discusses his own interactions with Jesus brother (James), and his #1 disciple Cephas/Peter.
This MIGHT be true for someone who is unaware of the meaning of what you said above. However, once I am aware of this tendency...I can certainly choose to go against it...right?
I just stabbed myself with a pencil. I can come up with a couple of bat-shit crazy reasons that the action benefited me...but I would rather you do it :razz:
I could reduce this to a challenge that seems easily overcome... I challenge anyone to do anything that does not benefit them...
Unless we change the meaning of language, wouldn't most people think up all sorts of actions that have no personal benefit? Hell, we could do it objectively for a third party...then just follow our own instructions.
Quoting frank
This sounds like an attempt at objective morality...? If we know what "good" is, then we know how we ought to act...? I think I confused you and the Thomists again. This quote is about the Thomists? Does not seem very nihilistic is the only reason I mention it.
Quoting frank
Unfortunately that is meaningless in English. So during the depression California was "good" and Oklahoma was "evil"? I know, I know. You meant it more on a personal emotional level. Fine, so gaining knowledge is "good" while the ignorance I used to possess is "evil"? So becoming severely obese is "good" while the skinny me I left behind was "evil"? So the serial killer is "good" while the troubled youth of the past is "evil"? This probably made more sense in Greek??
I've never been a fan of any version of virtue ethics I have ever heard...but obviously you should listen to Aristotle over me...so consider me unconvinced more than you are wrong (I doubt that was an issue, haha).
Quoting frank
Not only, "ok", but definitively "good". And you forgot to mention how slavery transforms the slave owner into an atrocious shadow of their former selves.
Quoting frank
This is the crux of the issue. Do I really need a holocaust to consider mass killings wrong? History shows we often do not learn and it certainly repeats. We all justify "good" from our own perspective and once it is "known" to be "good" any means are justified to achieve it.
And this logic defines "evil" as a "necessary good". We could not possibly learn this "knowledge" any other way than atrocities?
Quoting frank
Probably got lost in one of my walls of text :grimace: ...but I said enough for this conversation (I think) here:
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Quoting frank
Well I get a bit long winded, haha...so don't feel obliged.
Quoting frank
And here I thought I was being my typically annoying self. You may just be a polite human, but I appreciate it anyway :smile:
Of course they accepted that. It was well described by Plato, accepted by Aristotle, and described even more thoroughly by Augustine. The solution to this issue involves free will. We can freely choose to do what we know is wrong.
Quoting frank
Aristotle provided a distinction between real good and apparent good, which Aquinas developed further.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
If you believe in God, there is an objective morality, objectified by God. This is the basis for the "real good". But this brings up Plato's Euthyphro question. Is the good a real good because it's what God wants, or does God want it because it's good? In monotheism this is not a significant issue, but for Plato it was, because the different gods might want different things, resulting in incompatible goods, if "good" is defined by what a particular god wants. So to maintain a truly objective good we must say that God wants it because it's good. This places "the good" as external to God. But if the real good is necessarily external to God, why do we need "God" to objectify morality?
Because you're afraid you're in a dream and you wanted to wake yourself up.
For the Thomist, Aristotle provides a nice solution to the old problem of evil. I say "old" because their are two different ones. The old POE is about the apparently unreconcilable dualism (not substance dualism, just duality) that seems to be attached to good and evil.
The old Neoplatonic conception of divinity was that everything is God. This is the original meaning of the trinity. The Neoplatonic trinity is:
1. The One (the Father)
2. Nous (the Son)
3. Anima Mundi (the Holy Spirit)
I'm writing from memory, btw. Take it with a grain of salt. Anyway, your existence as a human is the result of a series of emanations from the One. Imagine a slow motion explosion that eventually turns and implodes back in on itself. That's how Neoplatonists saw God and humans are just bits of the explosion. You are on a journey back to the One, and everything you do (including stabbing yourself with a pencil) is coming from this underlying need you have to be re-integrated with your creator. It's like a wound you're trying to heal. You're part of a stream of living beings all headed toward the same sea, and some of the water swirls around and temporarily goes in the wrong direction, but it's all self-correcting.
So what's fascinating to me is that we've arrived at a feature of Stoic ethics: that all evil is self-correcting. And through Aquinas we're integrating Aristotle and Plato. There's a famous painting of the two of them in the Vatican with Aristotle gesturing downward and Plato point up. This is the meaning of that painting: the fusion of heaven and earth. The fusion of the form and matter.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Why would someone take you up on that challenge? Answer that, and you'll have the over-riding benefit.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Yes, California was the direction of goodness. All good action was in the direction of California. And no it's not personal. Aquinas is more naturalistic.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Plus per Lincoln, slavery threatened the Vision of the Free Society. When people get used to having someone else do their work for them, they lose sight of what freedom means. IOW, if you're a slob living off somebody else, you are not free and you don't know what freedom is.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
This is close to Schopenhauer's ethics, a totally different beast, but closer to my own perspective. I guess we could ponder what problems Schopenhauer doesn't address that Thomism does. I'd have to think about it.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Me too, when I'm writing about something that interests me like different cultural takes on ethics. A fun thing: take something like Sauron from the Lord of the Rings or the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and ask how different ethical frameworks would explain it. What would Aquinas say? Marcus Aurelius? Moses? Jesus? Zoroaster?
I am not sure I am getting all this...so I am going to go through it, and you can tell me the parts I am missing:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Makes sense so far.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Still good. I just asked a related question in a far less academic manner in another thread.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is what I have always felt...but as someone who does not believe in any gods, that may be more normal.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Assuming morality is external to god then we would not need god to objectify morality, but how could we ever define morality objectively? I would also think that the Christian/Muslim version of god would be objective in relation to the goal of entering heaven (although why is that goal desired? seems to become subjective). I guess any version where god=nature creates objectivity as god is no longer a subject (sort of)...but those versions of god rarely mandate morality??
I get I am a bit wishy-washy on this, but I think I am generally in agreement with what you are saying.
Maybe I was a bit flippant with my use of "objective"? I agree it is complicated.
That would be a possible reason, but it would be wrong in this case.
We can do better than that. How about because I wanted to prove you wrong? But notice this quickly becomes circular where from one perspective, you (the Thomists) are always right. But from any other perspective, it makes almost no sense??
Quoting frank
I think I finally get it. Thomism is a religion? (my ignorance shows I obviously won't mind you discussing these points from memory, haha) I don't see anything attempting to rationally convince me in that paragraph, but I can see dogma. If when I read that it fit my view of the world, I would like it. Since it doesn't, it just sounds like another religion. Sorry if I have been discussing this from the wrong perspective.
Quoting frank
The connection is interesting, but the phrase "all evil is self correcting" is too much mumbo jumbo for me...I am not sure I believe in evil other than as a vague descriptor of severely negative behavior. And "self-correcting" seems a dangerous way to label "a concerted effort by a large portion of society to create a better world for most humans and other forms of life". It takes intentional positive effort to spite the natural tendency for negative actions to create negative results.
Quoting frank
Sure, but that is very different from "California is good". And "good" being very subjective we can't say "all good" about anything (except some hypothetical heaven or utopia). I just feel like the Thomists are going to jump through a lot of hoops just to prove their circular definition is correct.
Quoting frank
Sounds good. But that last sentence suddenly sounds like libertarian (american) propaganda. Surely we are all "living off somebody else" to some extent?
Quoting frank
I am happy to join in the discussion, but my philosophy education is lacking (decent history education, but less on philosophy). Does the poster named Schopenhauer1 have similar views to the actual Schopenhauer? I have read a lot of his writing here, haha. I will happily do some short readings if it helps, but just know you are not talking to an expert (shocking, I know :smile:).
Quoting frank
Sounds interesting. I get especially interested when noticing the issues where all the answers are the same...we must be on to something :smile:
The way I laid it out, I omitted some key points which add complexity, that I will now try to elucidate. As demonstrated by Plato and Aristotle, we define "good" as the thing wanted, the good is what is wanted. In human beings, this manifests as a situation described by, "the thing is said to be good because it is what is wanted". If in God, we invert that to say, "God wants the thing because it is good", and this would mean that its goodness is independent of God, we need to be able to account for how the goodness of a thing makes God want the thing. This is explained by rationality. The intellect apprehends the goodness of the thing, and this is why it is the thing is wanted. The thing moves the rational intellect towards it, because it is good.
Now we still have to deal with the complexity that free will adds. In human beings, the intellect can apprehend something as good, yet the will might still move us in a different direction. So when we say that "the good" is what moves the will, as the thing wanted, and cause of human action, we call this the "apparent good". The "real good" is the thing which the omniscient intellect would apprehend as good. But the intellect doesn't have the capacity to necessarily move the body toward that thing, because the will, which is free, is what moves the body. If I understand the Thomistic argument correctly, if an intellect apprehends the real good (and this might require an omniscient intellect independent from a body), it would also be apprehended as the apparent good, and the individual would be incapable of acting otherwise.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
I think the issue is that it would require an omniscient intellect to accurately determine the "real good". Any time that a human being, or human beings attempt to determine the real good, they are actually only determining the apparent good, what is wanted by them. It is determined as "good", because it is what they have decided that they want, and a good which is determined in this way, good because it is what is wanted, rather than wanted because it is good, is an apparent good. Human beings haven't got the capacity to determine what is good independent of what they want, because this would require separating themselves from their desires. That's why Aquinas argues that only an independent intellect, one separate from, and not influenced by the body, could make such determinations.
So, we can say, and assume that there is a real good, independent from human wants and desires, and try to use this as the basis for an objective morality, but it doesn't do us any good. We haven't got the capacity to separate ourselves from our wants and desires, so we haven't got the capacity to determine the real good. As different human beings attempt to dictate this real good, it would rapidly become corrupted by these individuals' wants and desires. Therefore we would have to determine a "God's perspective", which we could agree on, and attempt to determine the real good from this "God's perspective". But isn't assuming "God's perspective" the same thing as assuming God?
Haha, I don't doubt that in this discussion. So many factors to consider (many of which have various popular interpretations...like free will).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Does this mean that dumb or irrational people primary do "bad"? Or good or bad, they just got lucky because they can't understand good? I know there is the Socrates (I think) quote that says something like, "there is only one good, knowledge. and one evil, ignorance." (I may have got that from Civ 5 so hopefully it is right, haha) So this may be what you are suggesting, and that is exactly how I like to think I subjectively select my morals. But I don't see that leading to an objective morality (I am not even certain that is what you are arguing to be fair).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Even with total omniscience, I would still only see objective "real goods" in relation to somewhat specific goals. Sorry, as you can tell, I just really struggle with any sort of moral being absolutely right. There is always another "why?".
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Dang I am really trying. But with no goal, I am struggling to understand why exactly anything is "good" (real or apparent). An omniscient intellect would know the "good" behaviors for the ideal society. But if I don't add "for the ideal society" what do we even mean when we say "good"? How would perfect knowledge solve this?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well even if I don't exactly understand what a "real good" might be (part of your point may be that omniscience would be necessary to understand the "real good" and that is why I don't get it), I can entirely agree that at the very least we would need this omniscient perspective for objective "real goods" and, as you say, we are long way from any sort of godly perspective (if such a thing is even possible).
Thanks for trying to clear this up for me.
That's just hijacking. ("if you can't beat them, join them"?)
Archimedes (-287 — -212), for example, predated Christianity, and contributed significantly to mathematics and physics; in a sense he showed that we can indeed understand things thus, for the benefit of later generations.
Aristotle (-384 — -322) had already expressed basic logic some years earlier.
Yeah, true, but ...
[quote=Matthew 7:6][i]Give not that which is holy unto the dogs,
neither cast ye your pearls before swine,
lest they trample them under their feet,
and turn again and rend you.[/i][/quote]
... just saying :roll:
Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science (2010) by Jim Al-Khalili
In the early days of Christianity, theology absorbed a great deal of what was important from Greek philosophy. Subsequently logic, science, mathematics, the university system, the hospital system, many fundamental elements of the concept of human rights, and indeed even the concept of the 'secular state' all came out of that. And Christianity has a coherent story, even if you can never figure out what it's about despite thousands of posts ;-)
Quoting jorndoe
God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science James Hannam.
No, they were all Christians all the way back to Adam. I can't believe you'd suggest otherwise. What's wrong with you?