We’ve Been Lied To: Christianity and the Rise of Science

BreakPoint ^ | 4 Dec 03 | Chuck Colson

[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.

[Mr. Silverback]

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.

Liberators, my tuchis!

I definitely need to grab a copy of this book. BTW, there are some great links at the source page.

[.cnI redruM]

5) Charles Darwin was a devout Christian as was American physicist Arthur Holly Compton, America's first pre-eminent modern scientist.

[Mr. Silverback]

BreakPoint/Chuck Colson Ping!

If anyone wants on or off my BreakPoint Ping List, please notify me here or by freepmail.

[GulliverSwift]

Good article. But wasn't Newton pretty devout, too?

[Mr. Silverback]

There is some controversy as to how devout Darwin was (especially at the end of his life), but what I think is interesting is that he (for all intents and purposes) settled a running argument in the editorial page of a london newspaper over the validity of Christian mission work. He said that any shipwrecked sailor finding himself on an unknown island would know he was safe if the natives had a church, otherwise he should consider himself fair game.

[Green Knight]

Ping.

[Independentamerican]

Excellent article..I will get his book..Thanks

[Mr. Silverback]

I believe so. Of course, the main point is that somebody got to it before the Enlightenment. Many of the best Enlightenment minds were quite devout and conservative in their faith, but that doesn't take any real steam out of those promoting the "no science until the Enlightenment" lie.

[mcg1969]

Yes he was, which was precisely the point of the article---that faith was not holding back science in Newton's day; that some (but not all) of the supposed examples of conflict are myths. In fact, the article goes further than that to argue that Christianity enabled the development of science due to its belief in a rational God.

[Prodigal Son]

Interesting. Thanks for posting.

[Capt. Tom]

People knew the earth was round before Christ was born.

Measuring the spherical Earth ranks as the first major milestone in scientific cartography. It was the achievement of a Greek scholar, scientist, theater critic and librarian named Eratosthenes. He lived in the third century B.C. and was a luminary at the famous Alexandrian Library. He knew of a well up the Nile at Syene (the Greek name for Aswan), where at mid day on the summer solstice, June 21, sunlight beamed straight down to the bottom. If Earth is a sphere, he reasoned, then sunlight at the same moment must strike different angles, casting measurable shadows. Since Alexandria was assumed to be due north of Syene, here were two places, separated by a known distance (paced off by camel caravans), lying on the same north-south meridian of longitude.

Without leaving the library grounds, Eratosthenes examined the shadow cast by a column at noon on the solstice. Its angle measured about one-fiftieth of a circle. Multiply the distance between Alexandria and Syene are not exactly on the same meridian and caravan measurements could not have been precise, the librarian's calculation was remarkably accurate - longitudinal circumference is known today to be 24,860 miles.

[mcg1969]

Here is a direct link to one of the articles referred to at the bottom of this one. I highly recommend it. My eyes bugged out when I read this!

An Old Urban Legend: Confused by the Copernican Cliche'

[Doctor Stochastic]

The round-Earth was known to the non-Judeo-Christian Aristophanes about 400 AUC anyway. Of course, Galileo isn't mentioned in the article nor is the church's response to Copernicus.

[mcg1969]

First, read that article about the "Copernican cliche'" I posted previously. It doesn't explain away the Catholic church's response to his work by any means, but it is an interesting revision of the history nonetheless.

Secondly, I would claim that exceptions such as Galileo and Copernicus were just that, exceptions. The church's intransigence over certain individual ideas hardly prevented them from supporting or encouraging a wide range of scientific pursuits (or just staying out of the way of them).

Heck, the chairmain of my Electrical Engineering department in undergrad was a young-earth creationist.

[E Rocc]

Good article. But wasn't Newton pretty devout, too?

So was Galileo, but it didn't do him much good when his experiments contradicted the "logic" of Aristotle, which had inexplicably become virtual holy writ.

Christianity's bad reputation vis a vis science is largely a product of the Rennaisance era, but is not entirely unjustified. The Church's view that some questions should not even be asked was a stifling force on advancement.

On the other hand, the learning of the Greek and Roman eras that survived the Dark and Middle Ages largely did so because of the Church. What happened was science outgrew the constraints of strict dogmatic faith.

-Eric

[js1138]

...these four things everyone knows are true:

Who is this everybody? Surely no one who ever made it through high school. Surely no one who knows enough to care about these issues.

[inquest]

In fairness to those who talk about belief in a flat earth at the time of Columbus, there is I believe a grain of truth to this. While it's undoubtedly true, as the author states, that educated men knew for centuries the shape of the earth, that wasn't necessarily true of the uneducated - among them ordinary sailors. These people were still steeped in all manner of superstition about sea monsters and mermaids and wandering spirits of lost sailors or whatever, and probably believed as well in the existence of the flat edge of the earth.

[Pyro7480]

Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, was a monk. That's why the basic unit of most life is called a cell.

[Varda]

"the church's response to Copernicus" ???

What do you consider the churches response to Copernicus to have been? Is it different than what's in this article?

Nicolaus Copernicus -http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04352b.htm

[mcg1969]

I imagine that what you're saying is absolutely true. And yet, I don't think that the beliefs of the uneducated are actually all that indicative of the progress of society.

After all, sure, most people today believe that the world is round. But how many people in the U.S. believe in horoscopes, psychics, channelers, crystals, ghosts, U.F.O.'s, alien anal exams, the Loch Ness monster?

Superstition does not seem to be defeated by the advancement of science.