Los Angeles Times: Drawn into a religious conflict
“Back in the High Middle Ages,” writes Tim Rutten, “the three great monotheistic religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — reached one of those fundamental forks in the historical road.” Rutten says Judaism (largely thanks to Moses Maimonides) and Christianity (largely thanks to Thomas Aquinas) chose to believe that reason and faith led to the same truth. Ironically, Islam, whose early scholars had preserved the works of reason’s first apostle, Aristotle, “held that there were two truths — that of revelation and that of the natural world. There was no need to reconcile them because they were separate and distinct. It was a form of intellectual suicide and cut off much of the Islamic world from the centuries of scientific and political progress that followed.” Well done, Mr. Rutten!