The Gift of Spirituality

Integration
As a general view, this holds that while interactions are complex between influences of
science, theology, politics, social, and economic concerns, the productive engagements
between science and religion throughout history should be duly stressed as the norm.
Scientific and theological perspectives often coexist peacefully. Christians and some
non-Christian religions have historically integrated well with scientific ideas, as in the
ancient Egyptian technological mastery applied to monotheistic ends, the flourishing of
logic and mathematics under Hinduism and Buddhism, and the scientific advances
made by Muslim scholars during the Ottoman empire. Even many 19th-century
Christian communities welcomed scientists who claimed that science was not at all
concerned with discovering the ultimate nature of reality. According to Lawrence M.
Principe, the Johns Hopkins University Drew Professor of the Humanities, from a
historical perspective this points out that much of the current-day clashes occur
between limited extremists—both religious and scientistic fundamentalists—over a very
few topics, and that the movement of ideas back and forth between scientific and
theological thought has been more usual.
To Principe, this perspective would point to the fundamentally common respect for
written learning in religious traditions of rabbinical literature, Christian theology, and the
Islamic Golden Age, including a Transmission of the Classics from Greek to Islamic to
Christian traditions which helped spark the Renaissance. Religions have also given key
participation in development of modern universities and libraries; centers of learning &
scholarship were coincident with religious institutions – whether pagan, Muslim, or
Christian.
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