ABSTRACT
If Christian beliefs about the natural world form the essential presuppositions of modern science, it is interesting to see what happens to that science when these Christian beliefs are either absent, repudiated or ignored. In the first category come primitive societies and ancient civilizations, together with the religions of the East, Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism, which have existed for thousands of years. In the second category come the totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany and Soviet communism that repudiated Christianity. In the third category comes our own materialistic, hedonistic and capitalist society. These will now be considered, except for the ancient civilizations that have already been considered in Chapter 2, and the Muslim civilization that has been considered in Chapter 3. In each case it is found that when science is deprived of its Christian roots, it eventually withers and dies. An apparent counter-example is provided by Japan, and this is discussed in a later section of this chapter. As this chapter deals with wider social problems, references are made to other sciences as well as to physics.
