SS 45 - How The West Won with Rodney Stark

Rodney Stark is the Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University and author of, "HOW THE WEST WON: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity." He's the award-winning author of "The Victory of Reason", "The Rise of Christianity", and "God’s Battalions."   In the interview, Stark discusses:    - The lies teachers tell students about America - Why the fall of the Roman Empire was a blessing and not a disaster - Why the Crusades had nothing to do with grabbing loot or attacking the Muslim world unprovoked - Why there was no “Scientific Revolution” in the seventeenth century - When political correctness overwhelms historical evidence   Rodney Stark grew up in Jamestown, North Dakota, and began his career as a newspaper reporter. Following a tour of duty in the U.S. Army, he received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, where he held appointments as a research sociologist at the Survey Research Center and at the Center for the Study of Law and Society. He left Berkeley to become Professor of Sociology and of Comparative Religion at the University of Washington. In 2004 he joined the faculty of Baylor University. He has published 32 books and more than 160 scholarly articles on subjects as diverse as prejudice, crime, suicide, and city life in ancient Rome. However, the greater part of his work has been on religion. He is past president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and of the Association for the Sociology of Religion. He also has won a number of national and international awards for distinguished scholarship. Many of his books and articles have been translated and published in foreign languages, including Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, and Turkish.   Find out more about Rodney Stark at www.rodneystark.com.