Science
And Religion, Refuting The Lies
Revd Dr Peter
Mullen - Fri 19 Oct, 2007
Some
of my most cheerful acquaintances as I go around the City are the street
sweepers, cleaning up all the mess. I think I will apply to join their trade
union, as I seem to spend much of my time cleaning up the intellectual detritus
and philosophical rubbish which dirties all our lives. The biggest issue in
public debate today is the relationship between science and religion. It is a
difficult subject made treacherous by opponents of the Christian faith who
spread lies about both Christianity and science with the deliberate aim of
destroying our faith. Here, then, I want to nail some of these lies and make
some corrections. The first big lie is that the scientific revolution of the
Renaissance and the Enlightenment banished the gloom and superstition of the
Dark Ages and the Medieval period. In fact the so-called Dark Ages were not
dark at all: they were a period of astonishing technological progress...
Some of my most cheerful acquaintances as I go around the
City are the street sweepers, cleaning up all the mess. I think I will apply to
join their trade union, as I seem to spend much of my time cleaning up the
intellectual detritus and philosophical rubbish which dirties all our lives.
The biggest issue in public debate today is the relationship between science
and religion. It is a difficult subject made treacherous by opponents of the
Christian faith who spread lies about both Christianity and science with the
deliberate aim of destroying our faith. Here, then, I want to nail some of
these lies and make some corrections.
The first big lie is that the scientific revolution of the Renaissance and the
Enlightenment banished the gloom and superstition of the Dark Ages and the
Medieval period. In fact the so-called Dark Ages were not dark at all: they
were a period of astonishing technological progress. For example, the Battle of
Tours in AD 732 was the first occasion when knights fought in full armour. They
could do so because of the invention of stirrups and the Norman saddle. The
ancient Romans had neither stirrups nor an effective saddle, so a knight trying
to wield his lance would only fall off.
Developments on the battlefield showed European farming technologists how to
invent the horse collar. This allowed the farmers throughout the continent to
switch from using oxen to horses for ploughing with the result that there was
an immense increase in food production. Also the ancient Romans shod their
horses in sandals – Nero had some made in silver - which slipped off and caused
the horses to go lame. The Dark Ages invented iron shoes by which horses could
travel over hard ground and cover much more territory without injury.
Other inventions which preceded the Renaissance by centuries were waterwheels,
mills, camshafts. Mechanical clocks and the compass.
The next big lie is that it was not until the voyages of Columbus and Magellan
that we learnt the world is not flat but round. This is nonsense. Among the
scholars of the Dark Ages who taught that the world is round were Venerable
Bede – his dates 673-735; Bishop Virgilus of Salzburg – 8th century; Hildegaard
of Bingen – 1098-1179 and St Thomas Aquinas.
Copernicus is usually credited in the book of lies with overturning the silly
flat earth view of the superstitious medieval church. Actually, Copernicus was
taught the heliocentric theory by his medieval theological professors. Nicole
d’Oresme (1325-1382) wrote: The earth turns, rather than the heavens. Oresme
was the most outstanding of all the medieval scientists and he saw no conflict
between science and religion. You may be interested to know that after teaching
science as Rector of the University of Paris, he became Bishop of Lisieux. And
the universities themselves were not the product of the Renaissance: they were
invented by the church.
Then there is the lie that the Renaissance began with the contributions of
Islamic philosophers or Byzantine survivors from the fall of Constantinople who
had rediscovered classical Greek learning. This is not true either. The reason
Greek learning had not been fully assimilated was that the language of the Dark
Ages was Latin. The Renaissance was actually the creation of the church whose
scholars for the first time between 1125 and 1200 translated most of the Greek
manuscripts into Latin and made them generally available.
Another big lie is that medical science was held back because the church
wouldn’t allow the dissection of corpses. But it was medieval churchmen who
permitted dissection and improved their knowledge of anatomy and pathology as a
direct result. The Greeks, the Romans and the Muslims all forbade dissection
because the dignity of the human body would not permit it. The church was not
so hindered, because of course the church possessed the liberating doctrine of
the immortal soul – what St Paul called the spiritual body. You want proof of
all this? The Christian scholastic Mondino de’ Luzzi (1270-1326) wrote a
textbook on the dissection of corpses.
Ah but what about the Galileo affair? Everybody knows the church persecuted
Galileo. Well, he was disciplined but this was rather for the way he arrogantly
presented his ideas than for the ideas themselves. When Galileo published his
book Assayer in 1623 he dedicated it to his friend Cardinal Barberini who went
on to become Pope Urban VIII. Barberini enjoyed it because of the many skits
Galileo had included in it about the Jesuits. As William Shea said, Galileo had
no doubts about God. Had he been less devout, he could have refused the summons
to Rome – Venice offered him asylum, but he turned it down. What about Galileo
himself then, always presented as a rebel against the church? What were his core
beliefs? Fortunately, we have Galileo’ written record and this is what he
wrote: The book of nature is a book written by the hand of God in the language
of mathematics.
Let’s turn to Isaac Newton. He wrote a great deal of theology and said nice
things about God, but those who hate Christianity tell lies about Newton too:
they say he only pretended to be devout for politeness’ sake and for a quiet
life. Fortunately, John Maynard Keynes bought all Newton’s papers in the 1930s
and discovered what Newton wrote, not for appearance’s sake but in private
letters to his friend Bentley. Newton wrote:
The true God is a living, intelligent, powerful being…he governs all things and
knows all things that are done or can be done…he endures forever and is
everywhere present…
So how about that other controversy, Darwinism and the theory of evolution? It
turns out that the severest critics of Darwinian theory are not theologians but
Darwinians in our own time expressing doubt about their own methods. So Stephen
Gould denied that great bedrock of the theory of evolution – the missing link
between old species and new. Gould wrote as follows: The evolutionary diagrams
that adorn our textbooks are based on inference not the evidence of fossils.
Modern Darwinians and Paleontologists such as Steven Stanley have declared
openly that the lack of fossil evidence for the theory of evolution has been
suppressed from the time of Darwin himself onwards. Niles Eldridge said
recently, We palaeontologists have said that the history of life supports the
principle of gradual transmutations of species all the while knowing that
really it does not.
Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not about to sign up to Bible-belt literalism. I
think some theory of the gradual development of life on earth is still the best
hypothesis available. But Darwinism does not even begin to explain how
inanimate matter could have turn into life and how primitive and microscopic
life forms could turn into creatures with the mind and consciousness of Bach
and Einstein.
There is no conflict between science and Christianity. The conflict is between
Christianity and ideological atheists such as Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot and
T.H. Huxley, right down to that prince bigot of our own time, Richard Dawkins.
These people lie about the history of science as a way of attacking the faith.
But in all the statistical surveys of working scientists you find that the
majority of them are believers – moreover that those who belong to the
so-called hard sciences such as physics and mathematics are the firmest
believers.
It is not only that there is no conflict between Christianity and science:
without Christianity, there would be no science. No other civilisation or
culture, ancient or modern has invented science – only the Christianity of the
Dark Ages and the Medieval period. This is because Christianity has declared
since the opening verse of St John’s gospel that God is reasonable. And this
reasonable God made the world in his own reasonable image: to be discovered and
understood by the rationality he has implanted in us by
his Spirit.
Let me end by quoting two authors, one ancient and one modern. A.N. Whitehead,
co-author with Bertrand Russell of Principia Mathematica says:
There is but one source for science: It must come from the Medieval insistence
on the rationality of God.
Finally, against irrationality and superstition, from St Augustine:
Heaven forbid that God should hate in us that by which he made us superior to
the animals! Heaven forbid that we should believe in such a way as not to
accept or seek reasons, since we could not even believe if we did not possess
rational souls
Regards,
Peter Mullen
For The Daily Reckoning
http://www.dailyreckoning.co.uk/lessons-from-history/science-and-religion-refuting-the-lies.html
