Contrast this on-going battle over Darwin with the fate of the other great scientific revolutions. The same Christian fundamentalists who argue that public school should teach creationism have no quarrel with the Copernican revolution. No one argues that public schools should be forced to teach the Ptolemaic system because it permits Joshua to make the sun stand still.They don't argue with sun-centered systems now. They've given up on that one. Now.
But for a thousand years or so they most definitely argued against sun-centered astronomical theories. Most definitely did.
Compared to the barriers to sun-centered astronomy, natural selection is still very young. But it too will finally be accepted as the truth that it is.
It took until the 1700s for science to accept that hand washing would stop the spread of infection. People of faith aren't the only stubborn ones. ;)
Dude, do you even know who Copernicus was? He was a Catholic cleric.
I suspect you are referring to the age-old canard about Galileo. Galileo was in trouble with the Church for taking the heliocentric theory one step too far... to saying that the Bible is wrong. The Bible is fully compatible with heliocentrism or it would have gone away centuries ago having been proved false.
But for a thousand years or so they most definitely argued against sun-centered astronomical theories. Most definitely did.
Well put. Thanks. You saved me a 30 seconds of typing!!It’s not natural selection that so many creationists have problems with, it’s what’s referred to as speciation; that is that natural selection can provide for enough differences to cause a significant enough change in species to make them incapable of breeding with each other and give rise to completely new species.
You need to brush up on your science, history and understanding of Christianity.
First of all, no “true” scientist calls a scientific theory such as evolution, the “truth”. In science there are facts, and there are theories. Evolutionists have a hard time telling them apart.
And by allowing for evolution to be a theory I am being generous, as the broad generalization of common descent is not scientific. While many aspects of evolution are testable, the overall premise that evolution is THE one and only explanation for the variety of species is untestable (i.e. not falsifiable) and unscientific. (I do accept that a more limited scope of evolution is observable in real time and is an essential part of biology.)
Secondly, a brief reading of church history from readily available early church sources, such as Irenaeus, easily refutes the vitriolic attack of those who blame “The Church” for the unscientific and illogical and unbiblical views and practices of the pre-Reformation Catholic Church. While a dominant faction of heretics did persecute what they considered heretics who were scientists; the same persecuted even much more severely those who held the true faith and teaching of Christ, which you now indict as being guilty.
True Christianity is no more guilty of persecuting science than science is guilty of it.
True Christianity was the victim - right alongside science, reason and basic moral decency.
You can easily prove to yourself my view is not made up. The very scriptures that show the teachings of Christ contradicted the practices of this sad era of Christendom were safeguarded (and suppressed) by the very culprits of this evil.
To lay charge to Christians for this monstrous evil is far, far worse than telling a rape victim she (or he) is to blame.
By doing so, those who make these charges actually side with the evil beast that made rivers of blood flow from true martyrs of Christ. Do your homework before making slanderous accusations.
It is as informed of Christianity as someone claiming U.S. presidents are known to be bank robbers because he saw a Keanu Reeves movies in which Nixon robbed a bank.
Back to science. Darwin’s hypothesis was molded by a philosophic choice which rejected the reliable and authoritative revelation of scripture. All science requires philosophic choice to inform hypothesis selection. What makes one hypothesis more interesting and worth pursuing to a scientist than another? In a word, philosophy.
If Darwin had accepted the limitation proscribed in scripture that God made various “kinds” of animals to reproduce after their kind. He might have begun his quest seeking a more informed opinion of what a kind is. He could have still made as great or greater contribution to science without ignoring the record of creation.
Scoffers will quickly mock such claims, but I offer objective evidence:
Luis Pasteur was a contemporary of Darwin, and a greater scientist. He made more valuable contributions to biology and medicine. He began one of his quests with the scriptural premise I just cited.
I am not making this up. It is historical fact.
You don’t know the real reason for the acceptance of Ptolemy’s astronomy? It fit the available data, data that began to be collected thousands of years before Christ by men trained to read the movements of the lights in the night sky and to trace their patterns they saw forming. Ptolemy simply appled geometry to describe these movements. Only because it increasingly required more and more elaborate devises to save the theory. Once Copernicus repopularized the rival view and astronomers began to fit the data, and to modify the Copernican model in accordance, it began to supercede the old model. The new physics and a new mathematics supportd the new model, but it was not until the 18th Century that Ptolomey was finally relegated to the attic, along with the ancient physiology and in the 19th Century much of the old biology. To contend that religious obscurantism adamantly opposed the advance of science is refuted by the fact that Galileo himself was a strongly religious man who, ironically, pointed the way to reconcile Christianity with the new sciences in the very book that brought him condemnation.
There is more proof that it does not exist than that it does. It is unproven and not scientific.