Reason in the Balance and why Fundamentalists are Beyond Reason

Introduction As a teacher and a lifelong student of science and history, I must say I sit in dismay at the state of life in America. This country spends more on education than most countries in the world combined. Yet for all the money, talk, and hype on education, America ranks at the bottom of the industrial world in biology, geology, ancient history, geography, etc.

Learning and especially science has been caught in a cultural crossfire: Held in God-like admiration by some or a tool of Satanic humanists by others, reason/science has become the target of religious mystics both New Age and Christian fundamentalist alike.

Christian fundamentalists see it as undermining their understanding of God (Adam/Eve and original sin) while New Age religionists see the technology created by science as a tool of explotive capitalists and a desecrater of their "Mother Earth." (Gaia and the environmental movement.) While these two groups are very different in outlook, they are same in their rejection of reason/logic and their embracing of a mystical fantasy world.

My sole concern here is the effect of this on both the scientific and educational worlds. While I reject their outlooks on life, I have no concern as such with what they do in private. This is a free country and we all have a right to believe as we wish as long as others are not hurt. When religious fantasy ends up used in the political arena and effects all of us, I draw the line.

Both of these irrational groups have launched a full-scale attack on modern science for differing reasons. While Christian fundamentalists want it censored or rewritten to match their religious system, New Age religion resorts to distortion and misuse to promote a political agenda, which in the end is religious. Both of these groups weave an intricate web of lies, misinformation, and fears, which is a greater danger to our freedoms than any Soviet Union ever was.

An arrogant science community that speaks in mathematical riddles further compounds this problem. They act as if they are the priests of a type of mystery religion beyond the understanding of mere mortals. This plays into the hands of frauds and mystics of all kinds and leaves the public in contempt of the whole subject.

I will attempt to tackle all of these questions here and what I say will anger most extremists on these issues. Atheists will be enraged because science does not prove there is no god and that they are wrong to use it for that purpose. Christian fundamentalists whose entire faith rest on original sin and a literal Bible will be just as unhappy.

Who will be happy with this? Any reasonable person with an open mind and a willingness to check out the facts will do fine. Those moderate Christians whose faith evolves around Jesus and not the end of the world paranoia may find this helpful. Agnostics/atheists who really don't know what to believe because of conflicting information and our rotten education system could find this of interest. Finally, any person who really wonders what science is about outside of obscure mathematical jargon should find this helpful.

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Dawn of the New Age In 1348 a plague would break out in central Asia. By 1349 this plague had reached every corner of Europe. In the cities of France, Italy and Germany, upto two-thirds of the population would die within a few months and in England half the population would perish.

To the Christians of Medieval Europe the long promised Apocalypse had arrived, and Jesus would surely return soon to claim the faithful and punish the sinners. The Church had taught for ten centuries that all events, natural, political, and social must follow the Bible and all knowledge is revealed there. All events are the work of God for His ultimate purpose. So millions stopped planting crops, stopped planning for the future, and awaited salvation as Christian leaders promised.

But Jesus didn't come and the death continued. In 1357-62 a second outbreak would kill millions more, still no Jesus. All of this was made worse by famine, political chaos, and war. "It must be the work of the Antichrist" proclaimed Bishops while doomsday prophets lined every street corner. But, "who is Satan?" they would ask. Never mind the seven-year Tribulation had already gone beyond seven years, and anyone who mentioned this must be in league with the Devil! The great Satan hunt would begin.

First came the Jews, the favorite target of church hatred and abuse. Dragged from the ghettos that Papal decree had imprisoned them in, entire families would be burned alive or tortured to death. Thousands more would flee to Poland and to Islamic nations seeking safety. The screeching mobs failed to notice the clean streets and the lack of filth on every corner. They also failed to notice the absence of dead rats that lay with the Christian dead as whole families fell before the Black Death. Kosher laws were very strict on sanitation.

Murdering Jews didn't stop the plague, so the hunt went on. The Inquisition worked day and night to root out Satan and his followers as the screams of thousands of men, women, and even children echoed in the torture chambers of Europe. Unabated, the Black Death continued its dance across Europe as thousands of rats danced in the streets. In Germany the Hansel and Gretal fairy tale has its origins in this period as pregnant women and even children were roasted alive in ovens to drive out the Devil. It wasn't witches (there is no such thing as witches, just those who think they are) it was the Inquisition inflicting this horror. Things became so absurd that even domestic cats were burned at the stake, which produced even more rats.

Even the church itself and the Pope were accused of starting the plague. Jan Hus of Bohemia (1372-1415) openly accused the church of conspiracy and gets burned at the stake for his trouble. This led to the Husite Rebellion under Jon Milic (d. 1574) archdeacon of Prague. The crushing of this rebellion devastated much of central Europe. Catholics and Protestant heretics alike engaged in an orgy of murder and brutality that lasted long after the plaque ended.

In the end the plaques subsided, and Europe's population would not recover until the 18th century. The witch hunting and Inquisition also ended in the 18th century as well. From 400 AD to the late 1500s Europe had progressed little in science and all learning/inquiry was relegated to religious dogma. Reason never had a chance.

Today we know the Black Death (bubonic plague) is a disease carried by flees on rats whose bites kills humans and rats. This has nothing to do with anything in the Bible or any Apocalypse. Its death toll would rival a nuclear war today. It is just a part of nature that today can be combated with vaccines. Science and the scientific method gave us the vaccine.

By the dawn of the 19th century science and the scientific method would disentangle itself from superstition and dogma. A product of the Enlightenment, the scientific method would produce jet aircraft, the Space Shuttle, super computers, and biotechnology. The average person today lives two-three times longer than just 200 years ago.

Yet according to fundamentalists like Phillip E. Johnson in his book Reason in the Balance, the case against Naturalism in science, law, and education, and other Christian fundamentalists, the child roasters and cat killers were correct after all. Basically God, for some unexplained reason (sin as usual?), killed two-thirds of the European population in a plague for reasons unknown.

Everything we know of modern science is wrong, as he hints at some evil atheist conspiracy to lock out God in the science community. His proof is simply the fact everything that happens isn't contributed to some supernatural theme as opposed to it just happened. If he wants to say our Lord committed mass murder for no good reason, he can. I won't buy into it.

As fundamentalist religion and New Age mysticism consume millions, our nation is falling into a bottomless pit of mediocrity and irrational thought that dominated the Europe for 1000 years. The fact is that many people just don't have the knowledge to understand what separates issues of faith and humanity from the natural world. What is worse, they don't want to know because they have withdrawn from reality.

What is fundamentalism? More on this at http://www.sullivan-county.com/news/index.htm

Fundamentalist religion, (Either New Age, Christian, or whatever) are social phenomena caused by the stress of social, political, and economic change. Both groups in the theological sense are mortal enemies, but in practical reality are much the same. Both reject the modern world and the use of science and logic. They feel helpless, vulnerable, and their lives have no meaning.

Both have an attitude of impending doom and the end of the world. Christian fundamentalists arrive at their doomsday traditions from ravings of 19th century cults and mystics such as William Miller (Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses), John Nelson Darby and the Scofield Bible, and Joseph Smith (Mormonism). Though their distorted view of the Biblical Book of Revelations, they see God's punishment for sin in every job loss, school shooting, or natural disaster.

Everybody wants a reason why, a way to escape the bad things in life, a certainty that they can cheat death and misfortune. They can't. If they can't find a reason why, they invent one often resorting to irrational fantasy or hidden enemies, secret plots, etc.

Like the Christians of 1358, they are on a great Satan hunt. They tend to see government either with them in stamping out "sin" to save the world from destruction and judgement. Or against them if neutral or otherwise. (They, like the Puritans, see government as a theocracy with no separation of church/state.) They tend to ally themselves with the extreme political right and carry a large degree of paranoia.

New Age followers often have a degree of earth worship (a spiritual view of nature) and a doomsday theology of their own. Their traditions tend to see Armageddon via nuclear war and environmental destruction. Their version of "sin" is materialism and degradation of their "earth goddess." They ally themselves with the political left and also see government as a tool to end their version of "sin" and save the world. (A rejection of modern technology and return to mud huts in some simplistic/mystical world.) They dominate the feminist and environmental movements. Like Christian fundamentalists they tend to be authoritarian, undemocratic, and hunt for their version of Satan under every rock.

Debunking Myth Most people would be shocked to know that the ancient Greeks invented concepts of reason, modern science, modern history, and democracy 3000 years ago. They knew the world wasn't flat and even touched on evolution knowing the world wasn't 6000 years old. Even church fathers such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas figured out the earth was not only very old but life also sprang from a common source. They knew it was the work of God and it in no way diminished their belief in Jesus Christ.

Even more shocking to many people in America today is the gifts the Arabs would bring to the modern world. They would not only preserve the great discoveries of the Greeks, but would greatly expand them. They would invent algebra (an Arabic word), our base 10 number system (the concept of zero did away with the cumbersome Roman system), and expand science and math far beyond even Greece. Greek philosophy, destroyed or lost by the Catholic Church, would be brought back to light by contacts with Arabs. Arab writers in the 10th century even knew that mountains were formed by rain and wind over a long period of time and figured out what Christian Europe rejected until the age of Charles Darwin.

The Christian churches knew of all of this, but rejected them for political reasons and mindless dogma.

The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 would finally end the genocidal wars between Protestant and Catholic Christians. Religion would be left up to the ruling authority of a region. Thus French Protestants moved to Protestant sections of Germany while say Catholics in Holland could go to France, etc.

Two very important events occurred at this time. The Protestant countries, located mainly in Northern Europe and England, were finally free of church dogma and were ruled by princes who wanted commercial advantage and trade. Here would grow the first a middle class of merchants, artisans, etc who demanded a free and more open society. Many restrictions on the press, publishing, education, and thought were removed, thus creativeness exploded. Protestant Europe would advance technically and socially over the Catholic nations where the Inquisition still reigned terror on its citizens.

Do not make the arrogant mistake that Catholics are somehow backwards. The Renaissance began in Catholic Italy then moved north to what are Protestant countries today. Great men in Italy, France, and even Orthodox Russia all contributed to our technical world today. The Catholic nations were behind for a while, but caught up fast.

The other important event is the Islamic world would turn inward in the manner of 4th century Christian fundamentalist Europe. Steeped in mindless fundamentalism and dogma, time would stand still and the great Arab tradition of learning and achievement would wither away. The Islamic world, except perhaps Turkey that threw off crushing Islamic fundamentalism in the 1920s under Ataturk, today are poor, backward nations. Oil wealth aside, many of these nations are socially backward as ever.

From the 1496 to about 1700, "Christian Science" would be shoved aside by one discovery after another. The founding of the New World was conclusive proof of a round world (the ancient Greeks knew it but the church refused to accept it) would turn Christian Science on it's head. Copernicus and Galileo would put the crystal sphere, earth centered universe of Ptolomy in it's grave once and for all. The moon, planets and stars are made up of the same material as the earth, the Earth circled the Sun, and the Earth was not the center of creation. So mush for angels in the clouds.

Newton's Laws of Universal Gravitation would reinforce what the Greeks knew thousands of years before; the universe operates by natural laws that apply everywhere, don't rely magic, and supernatural intervention. Bacon would introduce the concept of empirical evidence (verifiable, physical proof, open debate) and this idea would greatly extend to civil law. No more torture and absurd accusations such as those used at the Salem Witch Trials, which sickened even the most ardent Christians. Thus the natural world operated on predictable, universal laws that didn't need divine intervention.

So what is the problem with Johnson and other fundamentalists? To quote Johnson himself, "Rational beliefs are those that are consonant with reality." (P, 10) Because science doesn't attribute everything to supernatural micro-management of God and leaves some elements to chance, he feels it undermines the Bible. Sorry, science works on reason and verifiable proof, not revelation. The other fact is science/reason actually produces results, something the claims of magic have always failed to do. Science at the same time doesn't address the matter of God at all. It comes down to a literal Genesis and the Adam/Eve story and original sin, which Jesus never mentioned but was created by the Apostle Paul.

It's time we cleared up the questions of Naturalism, the scientific method, and the misuse of both the Bible and science.

Naturalism and the Scientific Method Naturalism simply says the universe operates by natural, predictable laws free of divine control. Naturalism rejects miracles and magic. Do not think for one minute that the universe is a random juggling of atoms and planets. There is a large overall order, but many things at the lowest levels are left to chance. This doesn't mean there is no God, or that miracles may or may not happen, that there was no divine creation, etc. It means just what is says, don't try to add things to it like religious fundamentalists often do with the Bible by "filling in the blanks."

Thomas Aquinas (Doubting Thomas) would promote the notion that reason and faith could coexist because both ask a different question. The bottom line is simple: when one dominates the other, conflict will arise. In the Middle Ages natural science and Christianity did live side-by-side in an uneasy truce. As long as reason didn't infringe on dogma, it could stay. The Protestant Reformation and the questioning of authority would break that truce.

At this point I must say I have severe reservations on some things that are called "theories" but really shouldn't be. They belong in the realm of hypothesis or even mysticism (mysticism in my way of thinking are not good, bad, or stupid, but things of the mind or soul beyond the everyday physical world.) Things such as black holes, Chaos Theory, etc. These ideas have never been seen, tested, or can be tested. They are little more than some unproven math or just ideas.

The facts are science and religion are not really at odds and the problem is often political and social. The Catholic Church has accepted evolution as science since 1950; most mainstream Protestant churches do as well. All still believe Jesus is Lord and Savior.

The Scientific Method is not dogma. There are some variations in it, but works largely like this:

B. A hypothesis (educated guess) is given as to why this occurred or what caused it. Both induction and deduction are used.

C. The hypothesis is tested. This is important in that it MUST be testable. And the test must be repeatable. There must be testable evidence to support the hypothesis. This is where revelation, prophecy, and magic always fail. All psychic events, spiritual events, etc never pass this point. All tests and procedures must be published for others to check and verify. Sorry, no secret revelations allowed.

D. If the hypothesis passes the test it becomes a THEORY. This is totally different from "theory" as used in everyday life, where the meaning of hypothesis and theory are totally confused.

E. A theory accepted as fact becomes a LAW. For example, Law of Gravity, Law of Thermodynamics, etc.

Deduction is a process where one begins with a general idea and describes everything else based on that. The church in using the Bible to explain the plaque could only deduce some type of divine cause of which it is not.

What really happened was anything that couldn't be accounted for with their notion of Scripture was heresy and was thus rejected: If Scripture had bothered to mention flees and rats, perhaps a lot of cats wouldn't have been burned at the stake.

Induction is a process where many observations/tests are used to arrive at a new hypothesis or theory. This is often used to obtain new knowledge and is most often used in science. Science also uses deduction.

Evolution is a theory because it passes the test (in multiple scientific fields and thousands of tests) but is not a Law because some the mechanisms are still under dispute or study.

What is "pseudo-science? Pseudo-science are beliefs held as true by many people but lack proof, can't be tested, etc. This would "Creation Science," UFOs, Big Foot, all New Age beliefs such as pyramid power, faith healing, all psychic phenomena, talking to dead people, crystals, spiritualism, Gnosticism and self-revelation, and on and on. Science does not deal with any of this stuff and to claim "proof" one better be ready to produce it. "Six Day Creationism" and all New Age beliefs are pseudo-science. I also have to include parapsychology, psychology, and sociology in this realm because they really don't stick to the scientific method and ignore "pass/retest section. The dismal record of social engineering stands as testimony to this that applying science to human emotions is problematic.

Science, reason, and the scientific method do have limitations that when ignored or misused have led to disaster. There is no way that reason can say why a rose is prettier than a daisy or vice-versa. It can't even ask questions related to the soul, why we are here, is there gods or no gods, etc. Science cannot and should not be used for such questions. Science will ask, "How does it work?" It can't ask, "Why am I here?"

Fundamentalists and New Age religion both claims one can't prove the Apostle Paul didn't talk to a dead Jesus or a New Age mystic can't communicate with the dead. That is true, but just because I can't prove there isn't a tooth fairy, doesn't mean there is one. In all of this one must be very careful of what passes for "truth."

Because we are on evolution, let us look closely into how scientific evolution-reinforced misuse of the Bible. Charles Darwin has to be the most hated man in the world by religious fundamentalists. He is also known as the father of evolution, a process that basically says all higher forms of life on earth evolved from lower life by way of random genetic changes. Terms such as "natural selection," and "survival of the fittest" would be on everyone's lips.

His Origins of Species, published in 1859 put in scientific terms what many geologists of the day already suspected. Like all science, it did not deal with the concepts of God, Providence, or salvation, science never does. His later publication in 1871 of The Decent of Man would create uproar between science and religion that goes on to this day.

Christian fundamentalists just love to bash Darwin's "Theory of Evolution" and claim the earth was created in 4004 BC. Where did they get the idea of 4004 BC? It doesn't come from the Bible at all where the age of the earth is not mentioned.

Anglican Archbishop James Usher of Ireland (1581-1656) read the Bible and claimed the earth was created in 4004 BC. The Anglican Church or anyone never accepted this else even in his own day. It somehow got printed on the margins of the Authorized Version of the English Bible; thus it became the "word of God" to American fundamentalists of today. The Bible simply doesn't deal with the age of the earth in any scientific sense of the word, period.

What is more important is Darwin never invented any "Theory of Evolution." He promoted the hypothesis (ahh, that word again!) that species evolved by random mutation and random chance. Modern science provided the proof he was basically right and thus it accepted by many as fact today.

The "fit" would survive by some natural advantage and the least fit wouldn't. Does that mean if the bubonic plaque wiped out the human race that the decease was more intelligent (fit) than man? Of coarse not, that is an element of chance.

Today most scientists know evolution works within known parameters but there is also an element of chance as well. Darwin did not use fossils or radioisotope dating (radioactivity would be discovered in the 1890's after his death) nor did Darwin ever apply natural selection to civilized human beings. To quote Darwin himself: "Under civilized conditions the social and cooperative virtues were useful characteristics assisting in survival, so that we may expect that virtuous habits will grow stronger, perhaps becoming fixed by inheritance."

And evolution doesn't deal any deathblow to Christianity because most reasonable Christians (excludes fundamentalists) see the Old Testament as symbolic and reject Mosaic Law as done away with Jesus. I know several very strong church-going Christians who have no problem with evolution. Many fundamentalists today follow a cult known as Christian Reconstructionism that does away with Jesus (they refer to Jesus/Jews and their God as Satan) and prefer the Old Testament as the Law and themselves as the new chosen people. Followers of Jesus who actually believe in Him have no problem with evolution.

What really upsets many people is uncertainty, that the universe isn't really an orderly, predictable thing. Yes it is orderly within certain points; such as gravity will make a bowling ball dropped on one's foot painful. One could simply never bowl again or go near a bowling alley and be fairly assured that a bowling ball won't fall on their foot. If a meteor the size of a bowling ball hits you in the head, you are dead; there was no way to prevent it. That is random chance.

Life in reality is both, 50% random chance beyond our control, and 50% what we make it. Genetics plays the biggest part of all in cancer, so those who eat only brown, organically grown rice may die of cancer as easily as anyone may. One knows that not smoking tobacco lessons the chance one may get lung cancer, but sometimes we still can. Our choices in life only change the odds, but in the end we all die, nobody knows for sure beyond that.

I don't believe in modernism which says everything is relative and there is no right or wrong. Humans have intelligence and are not animals vulnerable completely to the whims of nature. To quote Einstein himself, "I shall never believe God plays dice with the world." We can make choices if we can separate what is certainly and stop wasting our time chasing phantoms. God gave us the ability to make choices for good or evil.

Life is uncertain as social, technical, and economic changes are a fact in today's world. Many people refuse to, or just can't handle the world around them, so they turn inward. In America this is made worse by an appalling education system that leaves millions in confusion unable to separate science from science fiction and religious faith from blind superstition and mysticism. All of this confusion limits many choices one could make.

Mr. Johnson's entire 245-page book never mentioned anything Jesus ever said, just his own frustration with the world. He wants his version of a spiritual world to be physical reality. Jesus clearly separates the spiritual from the physical world and is right on this matter as are many church fathers. I don't think these people believe what they preach, because if they did they wouldn't care what others think, and would be happy with life. The happy Christians, the ones who actually follow Jesus, who live as He says to live, aren't screaming at the world from the pulpit. I salute them.

The problem with fundamentalists like Mr. Johnson is we live in a technical and diverse world and they just can't handle it. Nobody tells any Christian in this country how to pray, when and where to go church, or what to believe. Nobody! They preach politics, power, and money, not God.

If they want to remain ignorant and uneducated, that is their choice. If they refuse to read the Bible and substitute their own self-revelations and political bullshit over the words of even conservative Christian scholars, they are free to do so. If Mr. Johnson wants to write a book claiming some unfounded garbage that the science community is conspiring to destroy Jesus, he is free to do so. (I bought his book, which I'm certainly free to do.)

If these fundamentalists want to attack even their fellow Christians because they don't see the same flat, 6000-year-old earth they see, that's fine. If they choose to be beyond reason and live in some fantasy world, it is their choice.

But they can't force the rest of us to follow them or meddle in the personal lives of other people. I've been in the scientific and technical fields for over 25 years and the fundamentalists leave us only two choices: believe in their flat-earth world or atheism. They drive millions out of the Christian community and often into irrational New Age religion. There is a third choice.

Get an education and read the Bible for yourself. I'm glad I did or I'd be an atheist! Stops adding in things that are not there! The recent Y2K fiasco was the work of fundamentalists Christians (along with New Age technophobes) who thought they knew more than the Bible did. These people are preaching politics, not Jesus. The Bible is not a science book or was not meant as a history book.

The earth is not 6000 years old, evolution is accepted scientific fact, and the Bible isn't threatened by it at all if properly studied and considered. Most of all allow an element of reason into these discussions and stop hunting for Satan under every rock. Finally, if being a Christian produces only anger and resentment of others, go find a new church. There are plenty of good Christian churches around that don't act like cults or endlessly attack everything they don't understand or refuse to deal with. It is up to you!

God gave man the one gift we have above all life in this world: reason and the knowledge of right and wrong. It doesn't come from holy books full of visions from unknown writers, depicting a flat earth, circled by the sun. All we have to do is look around at this vast beautiful world and endless universe. How do I know? Look out and see it, just like I did. It doesn't take magic and anyone can do it.

Abuse of Science When Charles Darwin wrote Origins of Species he warned that "natural selection" didn't apply where intelligence is involved, The reason is simple: intelligence changes the odds on outcome. The use of clothing for example enables human beings to withstand adverse weather conditions and changing climates. Defeating the weather enables humans to live and travel over wider areas and climates be it frigid Russia or tropical India. "Natural selection" just doesn't apply when natural conditions can be overcome.

The greatest problem in science is personal bias and keeping it from causing the researcher to draw the wrong conclusion. Because science by the middle 19th had achieved so much, it would be a short time before it would applied to people. "Social Darwinism" is a misuse of science to justify racism and class warfare. It easy for the Victorian English to justify their mistreatment of the Irish and Indians was the idea Englishmen were superior due to "natural selection." The reinforced much of the Calvinist/Puritan garbage and would follow the English to America.

Here is a case where some misguided Christian ideas/distortions were reinforced by doing the very thing Darwin warned against. Christian ideas of "chosen people," John Calvin's predestination, and the Apostle Paul's hatred of women, Jews, etc, reinforced the concept that "natural selection" had placed men above women, whites above non-whites, and Protestants above Catholics.

Racists in America had misused Scripture for years to justify slavery/segregation felt more justified with "scientific proof" that their version of Christianity is correct after all. The ultimate horror would come in the 1940s when Social Darwinism, Christian anti-Semitism, and a type of New Age mysticism would result in the near extermination of Europe's Jews.

The scientific facts are all humans 99.99% the same in the genetic sense. We are one species because all races can produce children who can go on to produce children. This is because there was enough intermixing over the eons (due to migration) that the gene pool never drifted enough apart. (Unlike horses, zebras, donkeys.) There are no chosen people in the scientific sense.

Cultural and social conditions often determine achievement outside of genetics. India was civilized long before the first Roman set foot in England and today India produces some of the world's best science/technical people. The Irish were treated like animals being stripped of their property rights, denied an education and other opportunities, would prosper in America. And the Jewish "untermenschen" murdered by the Nazis included many of Europe's finest scientists and artists.

All people when they receive the blessings of personal freedom will excel to the best of their abilities. Freedom makes all people equal, just as God intended. Only those who wish crush freedom, enslave their fellow man, or use terror to enforce dogma, are the real Satan. Satan is not a actuall being but does represent human evil. For that we must be on guard. Jesus wanted His people to be free from Roman tyranny and died at the hands of Romans for His beliefs. Anyone who wants less than freedom for others is no Christian.

"In the cities of France, Italy and Germany, upto two-thirds of the population would die within a few months and in England half the population would perish"

Basic factual error - confuses population *of cities* with population. 95% of medieval people lived in the countryside. It some places the urban population may have gone as high as 10%. But towns of more than 10,000 people were quite rare across the whole of Europe. Second, the population of a town can fall by 2/3rds in a plague, without 2/3rds dying from that plague. People run from plagues. Cities were much more dangerous than the countryside - though many in the countryside died as well.

The black plague may have killed as much as a third of the population of central Europe - but not half or two thirds. Also, it was around for a long time, recurring in waves, each hitting various cities or areas, after the first main onset. It was not the first major plague either.

"The Church had taught for ten centuries that all events, natural, political, and social must follow the Bible and all knowledge is revealed there."

Basic factual error - the medieval church was not literalist. Teaching authority resided in the church hierarchy, not in a book. That hierarchy taught an elaborate doctrine in which reason, authority, tradition, and revelation were all thought of sources of truth. Revelation was not equated with the bible, but was considered ongoing in the lives of saints.

The bible did not exist in the vernacular, and most people could not read anything, let alone the necessary church latin. Most clergy used small selections - psalters and brevaries - rather than the entire bible. There were claims to infalliability in medieval times, but they were raised by popes, not scholars, about edicts and decrees, not books.

The central role of the bible comes in only with Protestantism. Rejecting the existing hierarchy, they needed some other authority to appeal to. They needed something placed above popes, before which popes could appear to be in the wrong. For Luther, this was at first the doctrine of salvation by grace without regard to works, and later, literalism. Catholics also increased the importance they ascribed to the bible during the reformation. The bible was widely translated into the vernacular, and printed. Men could read what it said without having to ask a trained priest - which was entirely new.

So, it is simple false to claim that the church around 1350 taught that all knowledge is biblical. Moreover, it overlooks a central period in the history of reason, the so called first renaissance of the high middle ages, the time of Dante and Acquinas. This period saw the reintroduction of Aristotlean philosophy into Christendom. Principles of reasoning and philosophy were eagerly learned, notably at the university of Paris.

"So millions stopped planting crops, stopped planning for the future, and awaited salvation"

This is pure bumcomb. Certainly there were places were the plague disrupted normal life and trade, and as for "planning for the future", it was not everyone's highest priority when many expected to die before the end of the year. This phenomenon is in no way tied to Christianity. Thucydides describes the same reaction to a plague in pagan Athens during the Peloponnesian war, in the lifetime of Socrates.

"made worse by famine, political chaos, and war."

All of which, along with disease, were endemic. And still are.

"who is Satan?" they would ask.

Always a popular sport, certainly. According to books published in the last 15 years, the UN, Masons, Catholic Church, US, Islam, Trilateral Commission, Bildeburgers, Elders of Zion... A popular answer in the high middle ages was the Church, and not just among incipient protestants. Joachim of Flora was hailed for his interpretations of revelations in which he predicted an antichrist would become pope before the second coming. Unbelievable as it may seem to modern ideological sensibilities, this idea was enthusiastically backed by the church, though a debate over whether Joachim's teachings were heretical ensued. This was a century before the black plague - he predicted the world would end in 1260.

So what is wrong with the basic picture the author is presenting here? First, he gives the plague a centrality in medieval life it did not possess. He does so essentially so science's progress in understanding disease - much, much later - can be constrasted with medieval thinking. Fine as far as it goes. But then he also projects back into medieval times, modern ideological modes of thought that are fundamentally alien to that time.

In the 14th century, for instance, far from a monolith medieval society was crumbling. There were three rival popes at one time. Heresies led to secession of entire provinces. At least one was condemned not because it failed to predict an end to the world but because it threatened practically to bring one about - by forbidding marriage. The church in France had to fight literal military campaigns against celibacy. Modern ideological lenses simply and utterly fail to understand what was going on.

He also presents cleanliness as a supposed cure for plague in Islamic countries (or Jewish quarters), when they suffered from plagues as well. There was medical science of a sort in that day, it just didn't know very much. It is not like the church was mad and the doctors were brilliant. The doctors bled plague victims with leeches, and prescribed various poisons as "purgatives". Fine, we all know that we would not enjoy medieval medical care.

"The Inquisition worked day and night to root out Satan"

Presents it as directed against the plague, which is simply false. It began as a weapon against heretics, used by the hierarchy centered in Rome. But it was small in extent until the Spanish monarchy picked it up again, and turned it into a political and cultural weapon. This was a hundred years after the plague, though, so his story has rather unraveled. The Spanish kept it going, persecuting newly acquired subjects as they took Spain from the Muslims. Then later still, it got a broader field of application again during the counter-reformation, when Spanish Jesuits spread its use to Protestant enemies.

But none of this has anything to do with biblical literalism, waiting for apoclypse, or trying to explain plagues. It had everything to do with persecuting religious minorities for disagreeing with the majority, for political popularity, and for coercive control of subject populations by states. Bad politics is not bad science; both being bad and neither being good science does not suffice to make them equivalent.

"It wasn't witches (there is no such thing as witches, just those who think they are)"

At least slightly confused. There are, first of all, people who consider themselves witches. And there were in the middle ages. There are, second, people who think others are witches, when those others do not think they are. Neither has any magical ability to cast spells. The first are deluded and think they do, and have other religious beliefs that in the middle ages were considered heretical. They have been persecuted for long periods of time, sometimes by those who believe them, but also by those who do not, but did consider them heretics. As well as wrong, which they obviously were and are.

There was an entire medieval underworld of surviving pagan and local beliefs, religious and magical, that defied the existing religious hierarchy. And indulged at least as much wild magical thinking as the mainstream church, and far more than learned theology. (Augustine was refuting astrological and magical thinking as inconsistent with empirical evidence a thousand years before Bacon was a gleam in his mother's eye).

But the author wants to lump all unreason into one camp. He does not want to acknowledge that sometimes theology was a rationalizing force. It clearly was. None of which is meant to excuse violent persecutions; error is not crime, and they did not understand that principle. But sometimes those they persecuted were the ones in error, obviously. The rise of such scares in the late middle ages and early modern times goes along with the stirrings of the reformation and its precursors.

Religious doctrine was fragmenting, not monolithic. Unjust force was applied trying to keep it together, unsuccessfully.

Politically the main result, in this period (14th century) anyway, was to empower nations at the expense of the centralized institutions, papacy and emperor. This was the time when Gallicanism arose in France (subordination of a nation's clergy to its king, while staying catholic), when at the Council of Constance the votes were by national delegations. (The preceeding century had been dominated by the struggle between pope and emperor, rather than nations).

"Jan Hus of Bohemia (1372-1415) openly accused the church of conspiracy and gets burned at the stake for his trouble."

Misleading context. Hus was a proto-protestant, not someone who simply blamed the church for plague. He echoed Joachim's prophecies and claimed the church was now controlled by the antichrist. He was supported by some nationalist separatists, and by reformers scandalized by the state of the church (venality, disorder - as mentioned, 3 rival popes at a time, etc).

"This led to the Husite Rebellion under Jon Milic (d. 1574) archdeacon of Prague."

Whoops, just skipped 200 years there. Hus is a proto-reformation figure. He died long before the reformation. The Husite rebellion was part of the reformation. They appealed back to some things Hus had said, hence the name. But also from the rest of protestantism, which boiled over at this time.

Not of lick of which, incidentally, had anything to do with science or rationalism. None of the protestant reformers were rationalists in any modern sense. Erasmus was, but he advocated reform from within the Church. There were later rationalists who were also protestants - Francis Bacon e.g. - but they led nothing, religiously speaking. The protestants were stumping for literalism and the bible rather than an interpreting hierarchy and the pope. Not for rationalism against literalism.

"Catholics and Protestant heretics alike engaged in an orgy of murder and brutality that lasted long after the plaque" (sic). Again this idiocy about connecting the reformation to a plague 300 years earlier. They had nothing to do with one another. Yes an orgy of brutality and murder killed a third of the population of central Europe in the 30 years war (1618-1648). Which was the tail end of the counterreformation, not the reformation period itself. That started a hundred years earlier. In led to endemic conflict, but was also just "played" by great powers for nationalist and monarchical reasons.

"the plaques subsided, and Europe's population would not recover until the 18th century."

Um, WW I was the first war in human history in which more people were killed in combat than were killed by disease. And if you include the worldwide flu epidemic afterward, that one was about a draw. It didn't fully change until WW II. As for European population, he is referring to the decline occasioned by the 30 years war, which ended in 1648, not to the black plague, which was 300 years earlier.

He gives the entirely false impression that European population declined for 350 years, when actually it fell sharply during a major war in the first half the the 17th century, and then recovered, but only passed its 1618 level again in the early 1700s. Meaning 30 years of decline that took 50 odd years to recover from - and not in the middle ages, and not related to the black plague.

It is just a kind of stream of consciousness or of associations history, skipping merrily over missing centuries, blithely conflating entirely unrelated processes separated by hundreds of years and sea changes in culture, whose fundamental moral is simply, "formally all the world was mad, but now we have antibiotics and public hygiene".

Which has what to do with witches and cats and the Inquisition and the black plague and John Hus? Not a gosh darn thing, actually. Nobody has ever disagreed with antibiotics. You can't find the slightest trace of it. Nobody knew about them, then somebody discovered some, and everybody thought it was great.

The insinuation, of course, is that those whacky religious people prevented us from discovering everything for ages. Um, the pope didn't stop Averroes or Maimonides from discovering penicillin. But they didn't. Christianity did not stop Hippocrates or Galen from discovering the germ theory of disease. But they didn't.

You can be as rational as you like and still be ignorant of important facts about how the world works. It is, in fact, the natural state of mankind, at all times and in all places, regardless of cultural principles or religious beliefs.

Moreover, as will come up later, one can be as big an opponent of the usual historical bete noirs as they come, and still succumb to wild magical thinking and superstition, rather than rationalism. Superstition or wild magical thinking and religious orthodoxy are at right angles to each other, they are not synonyms. Ask an alchemist, or a palm reader. Or, on the other side, William of Occam or Moses Maimonides. They can, but need not, coincide. All four possible combination boxes are populated.

"From 400 AD to the late 1500s Europe had progressed little in science and all learning/inquiry was relegated to religious dogma. Reason never had a chance."

The former is largely true, the latter is not. Albert the Great and Roger Bacon would dispute the claim as to science, but by the standards of later accomplishment they were standing still. There was little learning to start with.

The western Roman empire was conquered by blood stained warlords who could not read their own edicts. For 500 years, essentially the only people in Europe who could read or write were monks or clergymen. It is like asking about scientific progress in central Africa today. There wasn't a university anywhere on earth. The closest thing in the west were the monastic houses. Medicine consisted in rough surgery performed by barbers and the home remedies of quacks.

Leading natural "scientists" were nearly all alchemists or astrologers. (Astrology was the standard profession of mathematicians well into the 17th century. Kepler was a court astrologer. Newton was made master of the British mint because he was one of Britain's leading alchemists). It is not that no such men existed or that they only thought about theology. Instead they wasted themselves in barren intellectual dead ends.

"It is just a part of nature that today can be combated with vaccines."

Actually, practically no one is vaccinated against bubonic plague. It is rare but still endemic in some parts of the world, and can be treated by antibiotics after infection occurs. Vaccines dealt with things like measels and smallpox. But disease as a widespread killer fell with the spread of urban sanitation, which itself was made possible by rising wealth, long before modern medicine. Modern medicine has managed to do more in the last century, but its impact is quite recent. Life expectancies were still around 50 years in 1900.

"By the dawn of the 19th century science and the scientific method would disentangle itself from superstition and dogma."

Superstition was endemic to "science", not an outside imposition or import, into early modern times. It is still present in the thought of the founders of modern science. Theology has been waging war on popular superstitions at least since the time of the Church fathers in the later Roman empire. Dogma, on the other hand, was certainly prominent in medieval thought. It was hardly less prominent in reformation thought and the early modern period.

Significant freedom of thought actually entered through the principle of religious tolerance, still struggling in the course of the 17th century. E.g. Milton arguing for freedom of speech, was championing a puritan position against Anglican comformity. Pennsylvannia was the first state on earth founded explicitly on the principle of freedom of conscience, because it was founded by Quakers (whom Massachusetts was still hanging as heretics in the late 1600s). Religious dissenters founded Rhode Island because Massachusetts was too Calvinist and dogmatic.

"A product of the Enlightenment, the scientific method would produce..."

Um, the method itself is usually traced to Galileo, Descartes, and Francis Bacon, and as such stems from the 17th century. The Enlightenment wasn't until 100 years later.

Roasting straw men is apparently still a popular sport. It doesn't show anything, but is fine as far as it goes. Of course unqualified literalists are committed to positions that are simply silly.

"falling into a bottomless pit of mediocrity"

Not a happy mixture of metaphor and claim. Ignorance might be bottomless, stupidity perhaps, but mediocrity? Surely the merely mediocre is a flat level expanse without significant features, not anything "bottomless". A quibble.

"many people just don't have the knowledge to understand what separates issues of faith and humanity from the natural world."

It is unsurprising that not only many, but most people, would lack any given special form of knowledge. Ignorance is the natural state of man. The idea that there are some matters of such great importance that a few simple points about them need to be learned by everyone, by heart, to avoid this, is called - (wait for it) - dogma.

Which is what the fellow is actually offering, though I am sure he would dislike the diagnosis. He could have offered the serious study of history in place of the above cartoons, for example. But he doesn't. It is enough if the cartoon version conveys a few basic lessons he considers essential, even if strictly speaking what he has said isn't true.

Quibbling with his errors should not detract, he will want to say, from the central importance of his message, which is that the dark ages were dark and we do not want to go back to them. So they were, and so we don't. But they were also religious, so we don't want that. Non sequitor, of the particular form post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Who came up with these compendiums of fallacies, that allow us to recognize such errors in basic reasoning? Why, the despised schoolmen and their scholastic philosophy. About astronomy they were clearly wrong (as was Maimonides, Aristotle, etc). About reason, nothing of the kind has been shown.

"Both reject the modern world and the use of science and logic."

This is largely true of the critters he is diagnosing. But just notice the conflating going on here. Clearly, one can embrace the modern world and the results of science without being particularly logical. One can just say, "antibiotics, yay" and leave it at that.

It should be just as clear that plenty of people in the past were logical, without their logicality leading them to modern science full blown. Logic does not establish the conclusions. It can't, and still remain a method for thinking about anything. It establishes soundness of reasoning and can help detect certain errors. There are whole classes of other errors (of fact rather than reasoning) it does not help with. Not a criticism, it does what it does. What it doesn't do it tell us what to think.

I also want to illustrate a phenomenon that happens in the long history of human ignorance and learning. The better arguments are not always on the side of the truth. The truth, and a good argument, are two different things. Good arguments are better than bad ones, and may tend to arrive at the truth more often. But they do not assure it. Through no ill will, the crucial piece may simply be missing. An example -

Aristarchus of Samos had the idea of putting the sun at the center of the solar system and having the earth revolve around it through the seasons, rotating on its axis as well to produce day and night. This was a fine idea. Then he had to argue in favor of it, against the objections of those who accepted the second (rotation) but not the first (revolution). And he had to argue from evidence actually available in his time.

Now, the main objection was that his model predicts parallax, and parallax was not observed. Parallax is the shift in apparent position of a star over the course of the seasons, as the earth revolves around the sun. From one side of the sun, the angle to the star is such. Move over to the other side, 6 months later, and you've changed the base of a triangle, and the angle to the star should have changed, too. They looked, they saw no change, they concluded "the revolution theory is wrong, it does not fit the evidence".

Now, Aristarchus heard this objection, and came up with an ingenious argument against the objection. He said, imagine the stars are infinitely far away. Then the angle difference will be zero. That is absurd, his opponents countered. He was not so lucky as to have hit on the argument, "just really large" - though even that would have been unobservable. He said infinite, and that made it quite a poor argument for quite a true position, and he lost his debate. Parallax was not observed empirically until decent telescopes allowed it, in the 19th century.

What were his opponents supposed to do? He committed a scientific method faux pas - he posited the existence of an unobservable to explain away a difference between what his model predicts and the actual available data. Worse, he posited such an unobservable as an infinite quantity, to make any possible observation (attempt to find parallax below this sensitivity or fineness) compatible with his theory. He made it empirically unfalsifiable, when observations disagreed with it.

In argument and method terms, he deserved to lose his debate. But his original proposition did not. The crucial piece, that parallax is real and observable, just way below the size they could detect yet, was missing. Which was nobody's fault. That is just how it sometimes goes, in the natural state of ignorance we all start from.

"a way to escape the bad things in life, a certainty that they can cheat death and misfortune. They can't."

A certainty or a possibility? It is easy enough to object to someone seeing certainty where it isn't. But since outside of mathematics, logic, and a few similar purely formal disciplines, certainty is not to be had, it is something of a straw man. What is really involved in such hopes is not certainty, but possibility. Some people cling to the possibility that e.g. death might not be final, or that bad things happening to good people will always come right in the end (perhaps the former is a particular case of the latter).

And this is not irrational. Sorry, it simply isn't. I know the world would be a lot less messy, intellectually, if it were always irrational even to hope (without claiming any false certainty) for some things without having evidence for them - or much evidence, or good evidence. But hope isn't like that, and neither is evidence. Wishful thinking is an acknowledged fallacy. Wanting something does not make it so. But the fact that something would fufill a wish, even combined with no evidence in favor of it, does not show that it isn't so, either.

Maybe Aristarchus wished stars were so far away that his theory would hold up. He put that wish badly, and it wasn't evidence, and it did not produce a good argument, and his wishing or finding the world would look more comprehensible if he it were so - even all combined - did not suffice to make him wrong. He just happened to be standing where the truth actually was - even if his counter to the objection was only an approximation, and a self-serving one.

"Like the Christians of 1358, they are on a great Satan hunt."

Is anyone in this thread on a hunt for a class of dangerous, deviant thoughts? Hmm. Are fundamentalists this fellow's candidate and entry in the great Satan hunt? Literalists are clearly wrong, it can be shown to anyone who is not a literalist in scads of ways, it is as easy as breathing. It can't be shown to any literalist unless he opens his mind, and departs however slightly from his literalism. But error is not crime. Freely offer them instruction. If they aren't interested, let them be and freely offer instruction to those around them. Simple. No Satan hunts. Ignorance is natural, it does not stem from Satan.

I haven't time to go through the rest yet, this must suffice for now. It is long enough as it is.

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