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Is Christianity really all that much science-friendly, or is that just the narrative that the West tells itself?
Well, what do you mean by friendly? For that matter, what do you mean by Science? The only times that something that is clearly akin to our idea of Science arose, was in Mediaeval Europe and Islamic Transoxiana. What they have in common is Abrahamic religion and Aristotle. For Science as a systematic body of empirically derived knowledge, requires certain ground rules like assuming some sort of Order in existence; that description of it results in understanding of it; that sense-data has some validity; etc. Abrahamic religion is particularly suited to these assumptions in a way that Dharmic religions, or Taoism, or Meso-American religions are not. We can't say for sure as there are many factors, but it is really not coincidence that Scientific Method was the work of Franciscan monks, nor that Churchmen are over-represented amongst great Scientists, I think. People are fast and loose by the term Science today though, so that for instance Medicine is often lumped with it, while Modern Medicine with its Evidence-Based paradigm actually repudiates Scientific Method entirely. Regardless, knowledge of Aristotle spread into both China and India, but neither of these developed a scientific tradition, so the Abrahamic grounding seems significant.
The largest industrialized nation in the world, and the one most impacted by Christianity, also tends to have policies dedicated to science-denial.
What do you mean by Science-denial? That is just a political shibboleth thrown about, a nice piece of propaganda. Are Flat Earthers or Global Warming denialists or Antivaxxers refusing Scientific method? No, they just try and craft alternative interpretations to support their chosen hypotheses (though often far-fetched it is true). What is really meant is denial of Scientific Consensus. Now what of it? The consensus has often been wrong, and those that went against it - Copernicus, Vessalius, Harvey, Newton, Lavousier, Einstein, Goddard, etc. are today lauded, though often vilified in their own time by many of their colleagues. The very structure of Scientific enquiry is that it is to be doubted, so that it is tested again and again, to craft a more robust form. The evidence for man-made climate alteration is much better today than back when Gore made his misjudged documentary because of such - and certain objections raised are valid up to a point, such as that we were anyway in a natural warming cycle - that were also dismissed back then.
How you can connect Christianity to 'Science-denial' is beyond me, except by a fallacy of association? I think the data is usually clear enough, but people pick and choose what data they want to use, and then label those that disagree with that version the denialists. It is similar to how opponents of female suffrage were labeled misogynistic, or how the Soviets called everything they don't like Imperialism or Fascism. It usually just amounts to an appeal to authority, as with epidemiologists that are lionised today. That is why Medicine considers expert opinion and consensus the weakest form of evidence, as once you adopted a deductive framework, many of its inductive reasonings fell away. Even then though, it still needs to be filtered through the presentation thereof. This is more a political issue, than a conceptual denial of Science, and labelling something Science-denial is really just vacuous if you investigate it. It is actually just a species of Tribalism.
"Shanti shanti shanti" is Hinduism, not Buddhism.
I was referencing Elliot's Wasteland, in order to refer to all western Orientalism - that is more often than not, more about the West holding a mirror to itself, than about the East. I only know of this through the prism of my Western Education anyway. Think of the Beatles seeing an Indian Guru, or Harris on Buddhism, or stage magicians affecting to have learned the art from the mysterious East. The best parody of this, was Ace Ventura in a Tibetan monastery, where he ran his slinky down the copious steps. It is actually decidedly silly.
