Pastor's Blog

In a previous post we noted the conventional wisdom that posits an eternal conflict between Christianity and science, a narrative made plausible only by a selective reading of the historical evidence. One of the many subplots of this narrative is the Columbus and the Flat Earth Myth . The truth is that virtually no educated person in Columbus’ day believed the earth was flat—not leaders in church or state, not university professors, and probably not even the average medieval serf plowing the field of his lord. Another subplot focuses on the supposedly catastrophic consequences of the Copernican Revolution for the Christian faith. Prior to the 16 th century nearly everyone took for granted that the earth lay at the center of the universe, a view known as geocentrism. This certainly seemed obvious enough. After all, do we not see the sun, moon, and stars move across the sky? What could be more obvious than the fact that the heavenly bodies circle a stationary earth? The a...

In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. He took three ships with him, too, And called aboard his faithful crew. Mighty, strong and brave was he As he sailed across the open sea. Some people still thought the world was flat! Can you even image that? - A traditional child’s poem - In a recent post we remarked that conventional wisdom assumes a perpetual conflict between Christianity and science—perpetual and inevitable —because the two are inherently irreconcilable. [1] The history of science is said to be the history of the emancipation of the human race from the ignorance and superstition foisted upon society by two millennia of Christian teaching by obscurantist clergy who suppressed (sometimes violently) discoveries that undermined the view of the world as depicted in the Bible. John William Draper, for example, accused the Catholic Church of “ferociously suppressing by the stake and the sword every attempt at progress.” [2] T...

Conventional wisdom has it that there is interminable conflict between Christianity and science, that the two are irreconcilable. The conflict thesis—as this idea is called—was touted in two widely influential books written in the second half of the 19 th  century:  History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874) by John William Draper and History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896) by Andrew Dickson White. Draper, for instance, wrote: The history of Science is not a mere record of isolated discoveries; it is a narrative of the conflict of two contending powers, the expansive force of the human intellect on one side, and the compression arising from traditionary faith and human interests on the other. [1] The tale goes something like this: The theoretical foundations for science were laid by the ancient Greeks when they began the project of seeking natural explanations for natural phenomena instead of resorting to explanation...