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We’ve Been Lied To: Christianity and the Rise of Science
BreakPoint ^ | 4 Dec 03 | Chuck Colson

Posted on 12/04/2003 11:18:40 AM PST by Mr. Silverback

To paraphrase the opening of a popular ESPN show, these four things everyone knows are true: Before Columbus’s first voyage, people thought the world was flat. When Copernicus wrote that the Earth revolved around the Sun, his conclusions came out of nowhere. The “scientific revolution” of the seventeenth century invented science as we know it. And the false beliefs and impediments to science are Christianity’s fault.

There’s just one problem: All four statements are false.

As Rodney Stark writes in his new book, For the Glory of God, “every educated person” of Columbus’s time, especially Christian clergy, “knew the earth was round.” More than 800 years before Columbus’s voyage, Bede, the church historian, taught this, as did Hildegard of Bingen and Thomas Aquinas. The title of the most popular medieval text on astronomy was Sphere, not exactly what you would call a book that said the earth was flat.

As for Copernicus’s sudden flash of insight, Stark quotes the eminent historian L. Bernard Cohen who called that idea “an invention of later historians.” Copernicus “was taught the essential fundamentals leading to his model by his Scholastic professors”—that is, Christian scholars.

That model was “developed gradually by a succession of . . . Scholastic scientists over the previous two centuries.” Building upon their work on orbital mechanics, Copernicus added the “implicit next step.”

Thus, the idea that science was invented in the seventeenth century, “when a weakened Christianity could no longer prevent it,” as it is said, is false. Long before the famed physicist Isaac Newton, clergy like John of Sacrobosco, the author of Sphere, were doing what can be only called science. The Scholastics—Christians—not the Enlightenment, invented modern science.

Three hundred years before Newton, a Scholastic cleric named Jean Buridan anticipated Newton’s First Law of Motion, that a body in motion will stay in motion unless otherwise impeded. It was Buridan, not an Enlightenment luminary, who first proposed that Earth turns on its axis.

In Stark’s words, “Christian theology was necessary for the rise of science.” Science only happened in areas whose worldview was shaped by Christianity, that is, Europe. Many civilizations had alchemy; only Europedeveloped chemistry. Likewise, astrology was practiced everywhere, but only in Europe did it become astronomy.

That’s because Christianity depicted God as a “rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being” who created a universe with a “rational, lawful, stable” structure. These beliefs uniquely led to “faith in the possibility of science.”

So why the Columbus myth? Because, as Stark writes, “the claim of an inevitable and bitter warfare between religion and science has, for more than three centuries, been the primary polemical device used in the atheist attack of faith.” Opponents of Christianity have used bogus accounts like the ones I’ve mentioned not only to discredit Christianity, but also to position themselves as “liberators” of the human mind and spirit.

It’s up to us to set the record straight, and Stark’s book is a great place to start. I think it’s time to tell our neighbors that what everyone knows about Christianity and science is just plain wrong.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: 1saveit4churchdamnit; bookreview; charlescolson; christianity; forthegloryofgod; religion; rodneystark; science
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To: Doctor Stochastic
Perhaps Seven Spanish Angels pushed the planets around.)

Was this before they went to The Altar of the Sun?

101 posted on 12/05/2003 1:14:43 PM PST by Mr. Silverback (Pre-empt the third murder attempt-- Pray for Terry Schiavo!)
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To: js1138
See post 100.
102 posted on 12/05/2003 1:15:20 PM PST by Mr. Silverback (Pre-empt the third murder attempt-- Pray for Terry Schiavo!)
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To: Mr. Silverback
Benefit is anything that confers a reproductive advantage. Take a look at this and tell me whether this individual, or its "normal" littermates is more likely to reproduce.


103 posted on 12/05/2003 1:21:25 PM PST by js1138
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To: js1138
What does a cat intentionally bred by humans to be hairless have to do with evolution?
104 posted on 12/05/2003 1:54:00 PM PST by Mr. Silverback (Pre-empt the third murder attempt-- Pray for Terry Schiavo!)
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To: Mr. Silverback
bump...thanks for the post.
105 posted on 12/05/2003 2:05:10 PM PST by Lady Eileen
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To: Mr. Silverback
What a ridiculous, unproveable statement.

No more "unproveable" than the statement: American High School graduates know what the First Amendment is." What's your point?

Since it's unproveable, it's foolish for the author to attempt to, at least in part, predicate an argument on it.

106 posted on 12/05/2003 2:06:33 PM PST by Pahuanui (When a foolish man hears of the Tao, he laughs out loud)
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To: Pahuanui
You are applying a uselessly high standard to the argument. If I said...

"The reason McCain Feingold is a stupid bill is that the First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech. Every high school graduate knows that, so why can't Congress figure it out?"

...would you then say my argument was invalid because I can't prove every single high school grad knows what the 1st Amendment guarantees?

There's a certain point where such nitpicking no longer serves the cause of reason, and I believe you passed that point a few miles back.

107 posted on 12/05/2003 2:23:29 PM PST by Mr. Silverback (Pre-empt the third murder attempt-- Pray for Terry Schiavo!)
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To: Mr. Silverback
It wasn't deliberately bred. It's a mutation.
108 posted on 12/05/2003 2:32:38 PM PST by js1138
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To: js1138
OK...by definition the selection to reproduce is artificial if a human does it. If the cat is more likely to freeze to death or have other problems due to a lack of fur, than in a natural environment it would make it less likely to reproduce.
109 posted on 12/05/2003 3:03:43 PM PST by Mr. Silverback (Pre-empt the third murder attempt-- Pray for Terry Schiavo!)
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To: js1138
Oops, pressed send before I was finished: If a human comes along and says, "Cool, hairless cat! I'm gonna breed me some of these" then it has no real relevance to what would happen in nature.
110 posted on 12/05/2003 3:06:08 PM PST by Mr. Silverback (Pre-empt the third murder attempt-- Pray for Terry Schiavo!)
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To: PatrickHenry
All eclipses of the Moon are circular, no matter what the angles betwixt the Sun, Earth, and Moon are. Only a sphere casts a circular shadow when illuminated from any angle.
111 posted on 12/05/2003 3:16:05 PM PST by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: Doctor Stochastic
I'd need a model of the earth-moon-sun system to play with in order to be certain of this, but I think all lunar eclipses are pretty much straight lineups. Total eclipses, anyway. More telling, perhaps, is that when there's no eclipse, but just the moon's own shadow making it go through its phases, the shadow of the moon is always circular. So the moon is observably a sphere.
112 posted on 12/05/2003 4:30:51 PM PST by PatrickHenry (Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.)
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To: Doctor Stochastic
Scratch my last post. I don't like it.
113 posted on 12/05/2003 4:31:45 PM PST by PatrickHenry (Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.)
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To: PatrickHenry
In response to your scratching post: you're right about the alignment of the Sun-Earth-Moon being in a straight line. The point is that while the Earth may be in different orientations during different eclipses, its shadow is indifferent to orientation.
114 posted on 12/05/2003 8:30:50 PM PST by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: BibChr
Ping... Weigh in?
115 posted on 12/05/2003 8:40:36 PM PST by tinacart ((I still hate hitlery!!!))
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To: Doctor Stochastic; PatrickHenry
The partial phase of a lunar eclipse is always delimited by a circular arc on the Moon; this is true whether the shadow is on the N, E, S, or W portion of the Moon, and is true no matter where the Moon is in the sky - rising, south, or setting.

Therefore, if we assume that the shadow on the Moon is actually the Earth's shadow, the Earth must be round in all directions, ie a sphere.

This logic is traditionally ascribed to Pythagoras ca 580 BC. Reference

116 posted on 12/05/2003 8:47:03 PM PST by Virginia-American
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Said Martin Luther: "People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is of course the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth."

...snip...

While Lutheranism was thus condemning the theory of the earth's movement, other branches of the Protestant Church did not remain behind. Calvin took the lead, in his _Commentary on Genesis_, by condemning all who asserted that the earth is not at the centre of the universe. He clinched the matter by the usual reference to the first verse of the ninety-third Psalm, and asked, "Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?"

Turretin, Calvin's famous successor, even after Kepler and Newton had virtually completed the theory of Copernicus and Galileo, put forth his compendium of theology, in which he proved, from a multitude of scriptural texts, that the heavens, sun, and moon move about the earth, which stands still in the centre. In England we see similar theological efforts, even after they had become evidently futile. Hutchinson's _Moses's Principia_, Dr. Samuel Pike's _Sacred Philosophy_, the writings of Horne, Bishop Horsley, and President Forbes contain most earnest attacks upon the ideas of Newton, such attacks being based upon Scripture. Dr. John Owen, so famous in the annals of Puritanism, declared the Copernican system a "delusive and arbitrary hypothesis, contrary to Scripture"; and even John Wesley declared the new ideas to "tend toward infidelity."

...snip...

Why the people at large took this view is easily understood when we note the attitude of the guardians of learning, both Catholic and Protestant, in that age. It throws great light upon sundry claims by modern theologians to take charge of public instruction and of the evolution of science. So important was it thought to have "sound learning" guarded and "safe science" taught, that in many of the universities, as late as the end of the seventeenth century, professors were forced to take an oath not to hold the "Pythagorean"--that is, the Copernican--idea as to the movement of the heavenly bodies.

Source

117 posted on 12/05/2003 8:54:50 PM PST by Virginia-American
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To: Virginia-American
Nevertheless, the shadow is yet round. (Who observes the shadow knows.)
118 posted on 12/05/2003 8:56:38 PM PST by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: tinacart
Thanks! Not a lot to say except... right! Science rests on Biblical premises, and must use them even to deny them. Like the girl who has to climb on her father's lap to slap him in the face.

Dan
Biblical Christianity web site

119 posted on 12/06/2003 10:24:51 AM PST by BibChr ("...behold, they have rejected the word of the LORD, so what wisdom is in them?" [Jer. 8:9])
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