The Victory of Reason

In his marvelous book, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, Rodney Stark writes that "Christianity created Western Civilization." Without Christianity's commitment to "reason, progress, and moral equality, today the entire world would be about where non-European societies were in, say, 1800."

This would be a world "with many astrologers and alchemists but no scientists. A world of despots, lacking universities, banks, factories, eyeglasses, chimneys, and pianos." The "modern world," to which globalization aspires, "arose only in Christian societies. Not in Islam. Not in Asia. Not in a 'secular' society—there having been none."