Re: Derbyshire’s comment to refute that “… Christianity provided the philosophical framework within which modern science could grow and develop…” as opposed to Islam misses the fundimental concept of God within the two religions.
First, God has set the universe this way because he wanted it this way. Thus any concept of the universe or smaller part of the universe we can descern, has been and will forever remain the case.
Islam, in contrast, Allah can change his mind or actively intervene on earth at any time for any arbitrary reason. Thus, for example, Einstein’s theory of relativity may not be the valid at some other time. As Spencer states in one of his previous books (I cannot remember which and I am paraphrasing), Islam considers the Christian concept as chaining God’s hands. As I see it, Islam’s concept of God is God as a micromanager (for lack of a better term).
Second, in most of the world’s religions, the “founder” (again, for lack of a better term) was already a leader of some sort. Moses, Siddartha, Muhammed, etc. had political or economic power (or both) already, thus were (if you will) providing further butressing of the existing societal structure. Jesus, in contrast, was a carpenter, not a leader in the sense of Moses, Muhammed, etc. Further, Jesus teaching was to question the “status quo” and turn certain accepted parts of society on its head. One of the tenets of science (and the scientific method) is to question the “status quo” to determine its validity. Thus, it can be argued that Christianity is a large part of the progress of science.
Conversely, Islam discourages questioning the status quo, because any questioning is considered apostasy.
Third, while the Church has the ugly treatment of Galileo etal., science was later encouraged to understand God (“know Him by His works”). There is no such encouragement in Islam to understand God because He is beyond understanding.
