Chapter 5: Freedom- Points

1.Doctrinal religions
a.Slavery to the ideal
b.Truth is a group construct, not an individual conclusion
* The argument is that ideologies are inherently based on partial truths. However, since the adherents will not admit to any incompleteness, let alone any incorrectness, facts, observations, logic, all are twisted to fit the ideological framework.
* Of the three Abrahamic faiths, Judaism is the most accepting of argument and gives people the most freedom, while Islam provides the least. In Islam, as well, there is the concept of “taqiyya”, which justifies deceptions or concealing beliefs or intentions if by doing so Islam is advanced.

2.Mystical religions, science, art
All view freedom as an individual attribute

3.Mystical religions
a.Argue for skepticism and for rejecting dogma

4.Science
a.On the one hand, freedom is essential for scientific research
b.On the other hand, results must be validated by the group, the community of scientists
* Israel, which gives scientists essentially full freedom to investigate their specialties, is far, far more productive in science than Muslim countries that stifle scientific inquiry. Even within Muslim-majority countries, those (such as Turkey) that give scientists more freedom reap the reward of more scientific productivity than those (such as Iran and Saudi Arabia) that provide less freedom.
* This relation between freedom and success in science has, as Huff notes in “The rise of early modern science,” been present for several centuries. Huff compares the Chinese, Islamic, and European groups in the 11th- 13th centuries and discusses the differences that helped Europe leap ahead of the other groups. In particular, the changes in Islamic societies during this same period led to the stifling of science.

5. Art
a.Freedom is essential for the arts, and affirming quality is not as communal as in science

6. Case study (in effect)
The way that what we now call "science" arose in Europe, while it did not do so in Islam or China, is worth reading in detail, for the arguments on what differences led to the quite different outcome.