Posted on 11/21/2005 11:02:22 PM PST by Lorianne
AN event that occurred 250 years ago today stands as a singular reminder that the war between faith and science in America did not start in Dover, Pa., where several school board members who promoted the teaching of intelligent design were voted out of office last week, or even in that Tennessee courthouse in 1925 where John Scopes was tried for teaching evolution. It has been a recurring theme in our history since the very seedtime of the republic.
In the early hours of Nov. 18, 1755, the most destructive earthquake ever recorded in the eastern United States struck at Cape Ann, about 30 miles north of Boston. "It continued near four minutes," wrote John Adams, then a recent Harvard graduate staying at his family home in Braintree, Mass. "The house seemed to rock and reel and crack as if it would fall in ruins about us."
The shock was felt as far away as Montreal and Chesapeake Bay. Throughout the New England countryside familiar springs stopped flowing and new ones appeared; stone walls were thrown down and cracks opened in the earth. Two hundred miles out to sea one ship was knocked about so violently that its crew believed it had run aground. In Boston, 100 chimneys toppled into the streets and more than 1,000 houses were damaged. A distiller's new cistern collapsed with such force that it brought down the entire building...
For Bostonians, the experience was unlike anything they had been through and their reactions varied widely. On the one side were a few who absorbed the experience with keen interest; as a natural phenomenon with natural causes. In this group were people like Adams and his favorite Harvard professor, John Winthrop, who gave a lecture on the science of earthquakes the following week.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
"IF people are dismayed to find fresh examples of the type of faith that blames victims of natural disasters - like Hurricane Katrina, the Asian tsunami and the Pakistan earthquake - for causing their own misery, it is comforting to see that the other kind of faith is also alive and well."
I'm sure this asshat was only too happy to blame Katrina on Global Warming and George Bush.
Hatred of industry and conservatives is the religion of the elites. If you doubt it, just question one of their tenents of faith.
For those of us who wouldn't give the NYT the time of day, could we possibly get the point of the article posted?
The point was the same as always - bash Christians by cherry-picking facts and by lying.
"The point was the same as always"
Indeed. It was foolish of me to even ask.
More details:
Apparently, after the earthquake, some preacher blamed it on the invention of lightning rods. Since God's preferred method of judgement was defeated, He went to Plan B, which was much worse.
The effectiveness of Franklin's lighting rods were not as good as they were claimed to be. King George had a competing interest in lighting rod development. Modern science has proven you can catch more hellfire with the King's blunt rods than Franklin's pointy ones. For sure.
The best line:
For his part, [Benjamin] Franklin [inventor of the lightning rod] was amused by the reaction. Why, he wryly asked, was it acceptable to build a roof to keep out the rain but blasphemy to place a rod upon the roof to keep out the lightning?
The worst:
Many people of faith - Unitarians, Quakers and those who, like most of the founding fathers, were deists - were prominent members of the scientific community.
"Modern science has proven you can catch more hellfire with the King's blunt rods than Franklin's pointy ones. For sure."
Do you have some details on that? I've been dealing with some conflicting standards for lighting protection at work, and this might save me some time (and some tax $$$) if we can resolve it without replacing the rods. (USAF regs require pointed rods; the German contractors installed blunt rods IAW german specs.)
My faith is unshaken. I would have to guess that God Himself has grown bored with testing it as I have come nowhere near dying for several years now.
God doesn't hand out punishment. He says that sin is the cause of all our sorrows, the earth is flawed by sin.
He can however heal you and keep you safe if you believe in him and follow his words, have faith.
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Things have changed so much in the last 250 years.
Not.
Now what person of intelligence will believe that the first and the second and the third day and the evening and the morning existed without the sun and moon and stars? And that the first day, if we may so call it, was even without a heaven? And who is so silly as to believe that God, after the manner of a farmer, "planted a paradise eastward in Eden," and set in it a visible and palpable "tree of life," of such a sort that anyone who tasted its fruit with his bodily teeth would gain life; and again that one could partake of "good and evil" by masticating the fruit taken from the tree of that name? And when God is said to "walk in the paradise in the cool of the day" and Adam to hide himself behind a tree, I do not think anyone will doubt that these are figurative expressions which indicate certain mysteries through a semblance of history and not through actual events.--Origen, On First Principles, Book IV, Chapter 3, Section 1
Nuff said.
We have the original theocratic types still around, but we also have a few variations on the theme. Now we have Al Gore and the socialists preaching that global warming is our punishment for using the internal combustion engine, and our only salvation is to turn the economy of the world over to them. Different verse, same tune as the old song against Franklin's lightning rod.
For my money that would be Thomas Aquinas, or maybe Anselm - other Freepers will no doubt have their own favorites. If one reads them, and compares it to Origen's rather sardonic, ad-hominem style - no. Origen's prose communicates a certain arrogance and want of charity.
And of course Origen castrated himself - something not quite right there! This BTW is why he has never been considered for Sainthood.
That may be your opinion, but in recent days one of the Biblical literalists on FR has condemned "Origen of the Species"
For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.--Matthew 19:12
One might say that Origen alone had the balls take the Gospel literally.. ;^)
In any case, the reason that I place Origen above Aquinas in terms of brilliance is because the latter had 1000 years of theological discourse to draw upon. The former developed the foundation of orthodox doctrine practically from scratch.
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