Not religion, but the Renaissance.

>coolgoh:

I didn't study the Renaissance in full, thus I could have missed stuff that I am not aware of, and you could have known better. I have only studied a semester on how natural philosophy evolved throughout the Renaissance and the early modern period.

I probably have made a generalisation which is not accurate when I said that 'seeking the path to God is fundamental to all renaissance humanist scholars'. However, I can only accept your point regarding the Renaissance is a 'movement centered on Man' as true; because yes I admit my mistake if I have previously said that the Renaissance is a movement centered on God. Your claim that the Renaissance is a movement towards logic or reason, and a movement away from supernaturalism is accurate only on one condition: it is accurate if and only if you disregard the details of everyone's work during that time and look only at the outcome.

You sound as if you believe that Renaissance scholars are always attempting to move away from supernaturalism and faith - well, if that is really the case, you can't be more wrong. Renaissance scholars had this obsession with perfection (e.g. Kepler, who come out with his famous laws of planetary motion to convince people that his eccentric planetary orbits are still considered 'perfect'), and that is because they had a fundamental belief that the 'creator' (be it Plato's or the Christians') has to be perfect. They tried to conform every single observation and theory that they had to this, and in a modern eye this is hardly even logical. But it is perfectly logical to them.

None of them rejected the notion of God, let alone attempt to 'move away from supernaturalism and faith'. What happened more often was, they came out with a set of philosophy and theories, and realised that their theory didn't conform with their set worldview, and they became so confused or wary of their findings that they either refused to publish their work at all or spent their whole life reconciling the two. The Renassaince humanist movement allowed them to come out with these new ideas, but it didn't change them. What gradually changed during that period over several generations of scholars was how ideas were formulated and how people interpreted the world.

The Renaissance is NOT AT ALL set out with the aim of moving towards secularism. It began as a movement from the intellectuals as a rebellion against the set institutions in the universities, which was then stifling and not intellectually stimulating (analogous to the 八股文 in China - I always lament why isn't there a Renaissance in China...). Early humanist scholars set themselves apart from the universities so that they can perform intellectual explorations freely, and in order to fulfill their desire to obtain true and pure knowledge, they attempted to seek original classical texts before they were being corrupted by the medieval scholars (hence it is true that the movement is centered on Man). I would say, your 'movement away from faith and supernaturalism' claim is a logical extension of events during the Renaissance, but it didn't begin as such.

The Reformation is a natural and logical extension of the Renaissance movement, and it is not an anomaly like what you are trying to imply. The Lutherans saw the corruption of scriptures by the Medieval scholars and their commentaries as something that they wanted to get rid of, and the Church at that time was selling ridiculous indulgences to fulfill their own interests. The instigators of the Reformation decided that they should advocate returning to the sources and re-establishing a personal relationship with God according to the scriptures - these notions were rooted in humanist idealism and a sense of rebellion against the corrupted institution (both the Church as a political entity and Medieval Chritianity), whether you like it or not. Let me stress this again; the Reformation born out of and is thus a logical extension of Renaissance humanism. There is no such thing as 'let a spade be a spade' in history.

You are basically trying to imply that my defence of my viewpoint is based on an illogical Christian worldview. I can tell you that I am debating here on the grounds of a history student and not of a Christian. Let me point out to you straight like what I will do in a debate - no hard feelings - that you make generalisations about history based on your own strong opposition to the notions of God and faith in him; you wanted the Renaissance to be what you have described - a movement aimed towards secularism, logic and reason. Your strong views about secularism, logic and reason have created a huge blindspot for you and prevented you from understanding issues properly. Secularism, logic and reason is the logical outcome of the Renaissance; it is not Renaissance as it started and as it progressed.

You urge me to not look at the religious overtone to everything at the first instant (since when I am like that?), oh well that is fine. Though I also have to urge you to 1) open up your mind 2) not see things only in a way that you want it to be - I have been trying to get you to see this point for a long time, probably even before my organ transplant essay, the humes girl incident and the asking-me-to-buy-a-scarf-to-give-to-someone-in-Cambridge incident. You don't have to accept God and his word, because even Jesus didn't force people to follow him, but don't let your own hyper-secular worldview become a blindspot for you.

Yup this is going to be my last post on this issue, unless you have something to say - your post urging a change in topic won't work immediately after a post that tried to mock me. Now as I have fought back we can talk about marriage - or the direction of biomedical research. I have some ideas on that :) :) :)