Thank you for this quote (which I did not know before) which wonderfully helps underline the points I was endeavouring to make earlier in this thread.
Fundamentalist formulations of religion (not all religions necessarily have 'fundamentalist' formulations, but that is another topic--for our purposes here, it is enough that Christianity and Islam will serve for illustration as religions which have some 'fundamentalist' or 'literalist' adherents) are by definition contrary and antithetical to science. Science commences with questions about the properties of the natural world and, through a well-established and self-correcting methodology, approximates towards answers of increasing accuracy. Religious fundamentalism commences with what it believes to be God-given and absolute answers, not questions. If you think you already know the answer before you even pose the question--well, whatever you are doing, it sure ain't science. And wherever objective science develops answers that are contrary to your pre-defined, 'God-given' answers (because observations in the natural world refuse to conform with your demands), you've got a problem.
Religious fundamentalists have historically attempted to deal with this problem with different strategies:
[1] Insist science is wrong and blasphemous in its answers. Thus, Galilleo was forced to recant the dreadful heresy, utterly contrary to a literal reading of the Bible, that the earth circled the sun. The Inquistion, which sentenced him to life imprisonment for this heinous claim, did so using justifications indistinguishable from those used by some Christian fundamentalists alarmed by the 'heresy' of evolution. The Church of Galilleo's time sought to limit science to whatever was compatible with a literal reading of the Bible--and they tied their brains into pretzels doing it.
[2] Or: a different, and perhaps more direct, solution adopted by religious fundamentalists, such as the Islamic Taliban in Afghanistan, is to simply ban science altogether, you just can't trust it to not keep coming up with answers grounded in observations of the natural world that are contrary to the answers found in the pages of religious texts.
[3] Or: there is always the tactic of the Creationists/IDer's, which appears to be an attempt to dress up unchallengable religious answers with an artificial gloss and try to pass them off as 'scientific.' When the scientific community spots this pathetic ruse (it's awfully easy to do, in any event), then the attempt is made to sell to the general public the claim to entitlement to 'equal time.' In any event, the results of Creationism are manifest: falsifications, distortions, and intellectual dishonesty.
Now, freedom of religious belief and worship is absolute under our Constitution--it is one of our invaluable and hard-won freedoms, we will always defend that, I hope you know that we are in raging agreement on that score. But do you think that the Calvin you quote would similarly defend that freedom? However noble Calvin's intentions may have been (and I am willing to grant they may have been very noble indeed), look at the monstrous results of his theocratic state! Please tell me, would you honestly prefer to live under the Consistory of Geneva or the United States Constitution? The "so much smoke" associated with Calvin, I am afraid, is the smoke from Michael Servetus--burned at the stake, at Calvin's personal wish, in 1553 for refusing to change his 'heretical' view of the Christian trinity.
I don't doubt that you and I would agree on most other topics, I regret (but am unrepentent) that we disagree here. Please do accept that, for me, Christianity is not the issue--but theocratic agendas by religious fundamentalists most certainly are. I would no more want Christian fundamentalists setting the curriculum in science classrooms than I would want Islamic jihadists to force sharia law upon us.
Since you asked...
If you knew your history as well as you know science, you'd know the United States is based on the Genevan principles of government. This country was founded on the Calvinist Presbyterian model of law, by Calvinists, for all. As in you and me.
I generally stay off these evo threads. The vitriol here makes the religion forum look almost quaint.
I am not a Biblical literalist. But I believe every word of the Bible as ordained by God for His glory and our joy.
Science serves God, like everything else serves God. Science just forgets that more often than it should.
Servetus
As far as Servetus goes, Calvin's opponents, the Libertine party, held the majority in Geneva at that time, and issued Servetus' death warrant, which had originally been demanded by the Pope for Servetus' subversion by his denial of the Trinity, an offense punishable by death throughout Europe.
More from Boettner's book, "Calvinism in America" --
"This striking similarity between the principles set forth in the Form of Government of the Presbyterian Church and those set forth in the Constitution of the United States has caused much comment. "When the fathers of our Republic sat down to frame a system of representative and popular government," says Dr. E. W. Smith, "their task was not so difficult as some have imagined. They had a model to work by."
"If the average American citizen were asked, who was the founder of America, the true author of our great Republic, he might be puzzled to answer. We can imagine his amazement at hearing the answer given to this question by the famous German historian, Ranke, one of the profoundest scholars of modern times. Says Ranke, 'John Calvin was the virtual founder of America.'"
D'Aubigne, whose history of the Reformation is a classic, writes: "Calvin was the founder of the greatest of republics. The Pilgrims who left their country in the reign of James I, and landing on the barren soil of New England, founded populous and mighty colonies, were his sons, his direct and legitimate sons; and that American nation which we have seen growing so rapidly boasts as its father the humble Reformer on the shore of Lake Leman."
Dr. E. W. Smith says, "These revolutionary principles of republican liberty and self-government, taught and embodied in the system of Calvin, were brought to America, and in this new land where they have borne so mighty a harvest were planted, by whose hands? — the hands of the Calvinists. The vital relation of Calvin and Calvinism to the founding of the free institutions of America, however strange in some ears the statement of Ranke may have sounded, is recognized and affirmed by historians of all lands and creeds."
All this has been thoroughly understood and candidly acknowledged by such penetrating and philosophic historians as Bancroft, who far though he was from being Calvinistic in his own personal convictions, simply calls Calvin "the father of America," and adds: "He who will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American liberty."
When we remember that two-thirds of the population at the time of the Revolution had been trained in the school of Calvin, and when we remember how unitedly and enthusiastically the Calvinists labored for the cause of independence, we readily see how true are the above testimonies..."
And as extra credit, keeping in mind the vast majority of signers of the Declaration of Independence were Calvinists, along with over two-thirds of all Americans at the time of the Revolution...
Thus I repeat...
"Knowledge of the sciences is so much smoke apart from the heavenly science of Christ." -- John Calvin
We are what we presuppose. If we are led by God alone, we presuppose His hand everywhere and have no recourse but to follow it.
If we presuppose we are autonomous specks of lint in the arid drier vent of the cosmos, that is what we become.
And if we think He's left us on our own to make that distinction for ourselves, we are little better off than the latter.