nicholasmagus88
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A History of Christianity's Harm to and Suppression of Science, Knowledge, books. reason, the mind, technology, and Human Progress.
Part 2: A History of Christiantiy's suppression of Science.
Table of Contents/Links
-On the Decline of Medicine, Health, and Technology, during the Dark Ages.
-Hatred of Science
-The clash of Science and Religion.
- Beginning Segment from "The Soul of the Individualist"
-Galileo
-On Evolution.
-On the Murder of Hypatia of Egypt.
-Stemcells abortion and Sex.
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Segment from the book, The Dark Side of Christian History, by Hellen Elerbe, pg. 41-44.
On the Decline of Medicine Health and Technology, due to the church during the Dark Ages.
The Church had devastating impact upon society. As the Church assumed leadership, activity in the fields of medicine, technology, science, education, history, art and commerce all but collapsed. Europe entered the Dark Ages. Although the Church amassed immense wealth during these centuries, most of what defines civilization disappeared.
The western Roman Empire fell during the fifth century under repeated attacks by the Germanic Goths and the Huns while the Roman province of Africa fell to the Vandals. Many blamed Christianity. In 410 when the Christian Visigoths sacked Rome, "the eternal city" which had held strong for 620 years, criticism of the new religion intensified. One of St. Augustine's most famous works, The City of God, was written as a defense of Christianity against such accusations.
However, the eastern Roman Empire, also called the Byzantine Empire, fared better. Especially under Emperor Justinian's rule (527-565), it recovered much of its power, regained control of Italy from the Ostrogoths and recovered Africa from the Vandals. Justinian and his wife, Theodora, were credited with the revival of literature, art, architecture, as well as the codification of Roman Law. But this flourishing Byzantine culture was cut short when the bubonic plague, beginning in 540, struck with a virulence unknown at any time in human history either before or since. In Byzantium alone, the plague was said to have claimed 10,000 people a day. The severity of this plague is difficult to fathom. The later Black Death of the 1300's, which
some think killed one-third of Europe's population, claimed an estimated 27 million lives. In contrast, the sixth century plague is thought to have taken 100 million lives.1 The Roman Empire never recovered.
The plague had quite different impact upon Christianity. People flocked to the Church in terror.2 The Church explained that the plague was an act of God, and disease a punishment for the sin of not obeying Church authority. The Church branded Justinian a heretic. It declared the field of Greek and Roman medicine, useless in fighting the plague, to be heresy.3 While the plague assured the downfall of the Roman Empire, it strengthened the Christian church.
After the plague, the Church dominated the formal discipline of medicine. The most common medical practice between the sixth and sixteenth centuries used for every malady became "bleeding." Christian monks taught that bleeding a person would prevent toxic imbalances, prevent sexual desire, and restore the humors. By the sixteenth century this practice would kill tens of thousands each year. Yet, when a person died during blood-letting, it was only lamented that treatment had not been started sooner and performed more aggressively.4
Once the fields of Greek and Roman medicine were declared heretical, the dangerous medical practice of bleeding became common.
Technology disappeared as the Church became the most cohesive power in Western society. The extensive aqueduct and plumbing systems vanished. Orthodox Christians taught that all aspects of the flesh should be reviled and therefore discouraged washing as much as possible. Toilets and indoor plumbing disappeared. Disease became commonplace as sanitation and hygiene deteriorated. For hundreds of years, towns and villages were decimated by epidemics.5 Roman central heating systems were also abandoned.6 As one historian writes:
From about A.D. 500 onward, it was thought no hardship to lie on the floor at night, or on a hard bench above low drafts, damp earth and rats. To be indoors was luxury enough. Nor was it distasteful to sleep huddled closely together in company, for warmth was valued above privacy.7
The vast network of roads that had enabled transportation and communication also fell into neglect and would remain so until almost the nineteenth century.8
1. Charles Panati, Panati's Extraordinary Endings of Practically Everything (New York: Harper & Row, 1989) 225-228.
2. Ibid., 225.
3. Ibid., 225.
4. Ibid., 264-265.
5. Charles Panati, Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things (New York: Harper & Row, 1987) 201-202.
6. Ibid., 131.
7. Ibid., 328.
8. The New Columbia Encyclopedia edited by William H. Harris and Judith S. Levey (New York & London: Columbia University Press, 1975) 2331.
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Segment from the book, Atheist Manifesto, by Michael Onfray. pg. 81-83.
Hatred of Science.
Hatred of science. This law of the one book, total and all-inclusive, coupled with the unfortunate habit of believing that "everything" can be contained within a single text, means that there is no recourse to nonreligious (which is not to say atheistic) books, such as scientific works.
Monotheism does not really like the rational work of scientists. Clearly Islam embraces astronomy, algebra, mathematics, geometry, optics, but only to calculate the direction of Mecca more accurately by means of the stars, to establish religious calendars, to decree prayer hours. Clearly Islam values geography, but only to facilitate the convergence on the Kaaba when pilgrims from all over the world flock to Mecca.
Clearly it prizes medicine, but only to avoid the impurity that mars one's relation with Allah. Clearly it esteems grammar, philosophy, and law, but only to enrich commentary on the Koran and the Hadith.This religious instrumentalization of science subjects reason to domestic and theocratic uses. In Islamic lands, science is not pursued for its own sake today but for the improvement of religious practice. Centuries of Muslim culture produced inventions, research, and important discoveries in the area of secular science, such as algebra and astronomy, as well as being responsible for the preservation of classical texts. One hadith indeed celebrates the quest for scientific knowledge as far afield as China, but always in the logic of its instrumentalization via religion, never for the human and immanent ideal of social progress.
Christianity too considers that the Bible contains all knowledge necessary for the effective functioning of the church. For centuries the Bible inhibited all research that scrutinized and questioned its contents (without ever contradicting its claims). Faithful to the lessons of Genesis (knowledge is not desirable, science distances us from the essential ¡ª God), the Catholic religion impeded the forward march of Western civilization, inflicting on it incalculable damage.
From Christianity's earliest days, in the beginning of the second century of the common era, paganism in all its aspects was condemned. Everything it produced was rejected, tied to false gods, polytheism, magic, and error. Euclidean mathematics? Ptolemy's maps? Eratosthenes' geography? Aristotle's natural sciences? Aristarchus's astronomy? Hippocrates' medicine? Herophilus's anatomy? They were simply not Christian enough!
The discoveries made by Greek geniuses ¡ª Aristarchus's heliocentrism, to take just one example ¡ª were obviously applicable independently of the gods and the religious systems of the day. What did the existence of Zeus and his kin matter when one had to determine the laws of hydrostatics, calculate the length of a meridian, invent latitude and longitude, measure the distance between us and the sun, argue for the revolution of the earth around the sun, perfect the theory of epicycles, elaborate the map of the heavens, establish the length of a solar year, link tides and lunar attraction, discover the nervous system, offer theories on the circulation of the blood, all of them truths of no interests to the denizens of heaven?
Turning one's back on the results of such research, acting as though these discoveries had never taken place, starting everything again from scratch is at best stagnation, evidence of a dangerous hostility to change. But at worst it means speeding blindly backward¡ªwhile others forge ahead ¡ª to the darkness from which every civilization, by its nature and by definition, strives to free itself in order to be. Refusal of the Enlightenment characterizes the monotheist religions: they prefer mental night for the nurturing of their fables.
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Segment from the book, Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris. pg. 62-71.
The Clash of Science and Religion
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While it is now a moral necessity for scientists to speak honestly about the conflict between science and religion, even the National Academy of Sciences has declared the conflict illusory: At the root of the apparent conflict between some religions and evolution is a misunderstanding of the critical difference between religious and scientific ways of knowing. Religions and science answer different questions about the world.
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Whether there is a purpose to the universe or a purpose for human existence are not questions for science. Religious and scientific ways of knowing have played, and will continue to play, significant roles in human history.... Science is a way of knowing about the natural world. It is limited to explaining the natural world through natural causes. Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral.
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This statement is stunning for its lack of candor. Of course, scientists live in perpetual fear of losing public funds, so the NAS may have merely been expressing raw terror of the taxpaying mob. The truth, however, is that the conflict between religion and science is unavoidable.
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The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma; the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science. Our religions do not simply talk about "a purpose for human existence." Like science, every religion makes specific claims about the way the world is. These claims purport to be about facts¡ªthe creator of the universe can hear (and will occasionally answer) your prayers; the soul enters the zygote at the moment of conception; if you do not believe the right things about God, you will suffer terribly after death. Such claims are intrinsically in conflict with the claims of science, because they are claims made on terrible evidence.
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In the broadest sense, "science" (from the Latin scire, "to know") represents our best efforts to know what is true about our world. We need not distinguish between "hard" and "soft" science here, or between science and a branch of the humanities like history. It is a historical fact, for instance, that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
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Consequently, this fact forms part of the worldview of scientific rationality. Given the evidence that attests to this fact, anyone believing that it happened on another date, or that the Egyptians really dropped those bombs, has a lot of explaining to do. The core of science is not controlled experiment or mathematical modeling; it is intellectual honesty. It is time we acknowledged a basic feature of human discourse: when considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and logical arguments, or one isn't. Religion is the one area of our lives where people imagine that some other standard of intellectual integrity applies.
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CONSIDER the recent deliberations of the Roman Catholic Church on the doctrine of limbo. Thirty top theologians from around the world recently met at the Vatican to discuss the question of what happens to babies who die without having undergone the sacred rite of baptism. Since the Middle Ages, Catholics have believed that such babies go to a state of limbo, where they enjoy what St. Thomas Aquinas termed "natural happiness" forever. This was in contrast to the opinion of St. Augustine, who believed that these unlucky infant souls would spend eternity in hell.
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Though limbo had no real foundation in scripture, and was never official Church doctrine, it has been a major part of the Catholic tradition for centuries. In 1905, Pope Pius X appeared to fully endorse it: "Children who die without baptism go into limbo, where they do not enjoy God, but they do not suffer either." Now the great minds of the Church have convened to reconsider the matter.
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Can we even conceive of a project more intellectually forlorn than this? Just imagine what these deliberations must be like. Is there the slightest possibility that someone will present evidence indicating the eternal fate of unbaptized children after death? How can any educated person think this anything but a hilarious, terrifying, and unconscionable waste of time? When one considers the fact that this is the very institution that has produced and sheltered an elite army of childmolesters, the whole enterprise begins to exude a truly diabolical aura of misspent human energy.
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THE CONFLICT between science and religion is reducible to a simple fact of human cognition and discourse: either a person has good reasons for what he believes, or he does not. If there were good reasons to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, or that Muhammad flew to heaven on a winged horse, these beliefs would necessarily form part of our rational description of the universe. Everyone recognizes that to rely upon "faith" to decide specific questions of historical fact is ridiculous¡ªthat is, until the conversation turns to the origin of books like the Bible and the Koran, to the resurrection of Jesus, to Muhammad's conversation with the archangel Gabriel, or to any other religious dogma. It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.
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While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any other area of our lives, faith in God still holds immense prestige in our society. Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about. It is telling that this aura of nobility extends only to those faiths that still have many subscribers. Anyone caught worshipping Poseidon, even at sea, will be thought insane.*
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The Fact of Life
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All complex life on earth has developed from simpler life-forms over billions of years. This is a fact that no longer admits of intelligent dispute.
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If you doubt that human beings evolved from prior species, you may as well doubt that the sun is a star. Granted, the sun doesn't seem like an ordinary star, but we know that it is a star that just happens to be relatively close to the earth. Imagine your potential for embarrassment if your religious faith rested on the presumption that the sun was not a star at all.
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Imagine millions of Christians in the United States spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year to battle the godless astronomers and astrophysicists on this point. Imagine them working passionately to get their unfounded notions about the sun taught in our nation's schools. This is exactly the situation you are now in with respect to evolution.
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Christians who doubt the truth of evolution are apt to say things like "Evolution is just a theory, not a fact." Such statements betray a serious misunderstanding of the way the term "theory" is used in scientific discourse. In science, facts must be explained with reference to other facts. These larger explanatory models are "theories." Theories make predictions and can, in principle, be tested. The phrase "the theory of evolution" does not in the least suggest that evolution is not a fact. One can speak about "the germ theory of disease" or "the theory of gravitation" without casting doubt upon disease or gravity as facts of nature.
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It is also worth noting that one can obtain a Ph.D. in any branch of science for no other purpose than to make cynical use of scientific language in an effort to rationalize the glaring inadequacies of the Bible. A handful of Christians appear to have done this; some have even obtained their degrees from reputable universities.
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No doubt, others will follow in their foot- steps. While such people are technically "scientists," they are not behaving like scientists. They simply are not engaged in an honest inquiry into the nature of the universe. And their proclamations about God and the failures of Darwinism do not in the least signify that there is a legitimate scientific controversy about evolution.
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In 2005, a survey was conducted in thirty-four countries measuring the percentage of adults who accept evolution. The United States ranked thirty-third, just above Turkey.
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Meanwhile, high school students in the United States test below those of every European and Asian nation in their understanding of science and math. These data are unequivocal: we are building a civilization of ignorance.
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Here is what we know. We know that the universe is far older than the Bible suggests. We know that all complex organisms on earth, including ourselves, evolved from earlier organisms over the course of billions of years. The evidence for this is utterly overwhelming.
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There is no question that the diverse life we see around us is the expression of a genetic code written in the molecule DNA, that DNA undergoes chance mutations, and that some mutations increase an organism's odds of surviving and reproducing in a given environment. This process of mutation and natural selection has allowed isolated populations of individuals to interbreed and, over vast stretches of time, form new species. There is no question that human beings evolved from nonhuman ancestors in this way. We know, from genetic evidence, that we share an ancestor with apes and monkeys, and that this ancestor in turn shared an ancestor with the bats and the flying lemurs.
There is a widely branching tree of life whose basic shape and character is now very well understood. Consequently, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that individual species were created in their present forms. How the process of evolution got started is still a mystery, but that does not in the least suggest that a deity is likely to be lurking at the bottom of it all. Any honest reading of the biblical account of creation suggests that God created all animals and plants as we now see them. There is no question that the Bible is wrong about this.
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Beginning segments from a Chapter titled: "The Soul of the Individualist" from the book For the New Intellectual by Ayn Rand pages 83-34.
"Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light. He was considered an evildoer who had dealt with a demon mankind dreaded. But thereafter men had fire to keep them warm, to cook their food, to light their caves. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had lifted darkness off the earth. Centuries later, the first man invented the wheel. He was probably torn on the rack he had taught his brothers to build. He was considered a transgressor who ventured into forbidden territory. But thereafter, men could travel past any horizon. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had opened the roads of the world.
"That man, the unsubmissive and first, stands in the opening chapter of every legend mankind has recorded about its beginning. Prometheus was chained to a rock and torn by vultures¡ªbecause he had stolen the fire of the gods. Adam was condemned to suffer¡ªbecause he had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Whatever the legend, somewhere in the shadows of its memory mankind knew that its glory began with one and that that one paid for his courage.
"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and me response they received¡ªhatred. The great creators¡ª the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors¡ªstood alone against the men of their time.
Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.
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"Galileo", an Encyclopedia Article from The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara Walker.
The first Christian man to achieve visual confirmation of the true motion of heavenly bodies. Before Galileo, all Christendom accepted the church's view that man and his works stood at the center of the universe, on a fixed earth surrounded by "spheres" of sun, moon, planets, and stars. This was the biblical view, supported by such infallibles as Albert the Great, Isidore of Seville, and St. Thomas Aquinas.
The Dark Age had destroyed or forgotten ancient astronomers' knowledge of the solar system. Aristarchus taught about 275. B.C. that the earth is a revolving globe in orbit around the sun. Eratosthenes about 250 B.C. calculated the circumference of the globe at 24, 662 miles, less than 300 miles short of the true figure, 24,902. About 240 B.C., Hipparchus calculated the diameter of the moon, and its distance from the earth, within a few miles of the correct figures.(1) But according to Christian authorites, this information was pagan and therefore heretical and wrong.
Almost two millenia later, Nicholas Copernicus patiently observed and calculated his way back to the knowledge that the earth moves arround the sun. After hesitating and re-checking his results for nearly thirty years, Copernicus published his book in 1543. It was not well received by Catholics or Protestants. Martin Luther scoffed at it: "People give ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heaven or the firmament, the sun and the moon. . . . This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth."(2)
The Roman church investigated Copernicus's theory by consulting the scriptures, and placed his book on the Index of Prohibited Books, whiere it remained until 1835. The pope announced, "The first proposition, that the sun is the center and does not revolve about the earth, is foolish, absurd, false in philosophy and . . . opposted to the true faith."
Copernicus's calculations nevertheless fascinated Giodano Bruno, who accepted the heliocentric theory, attacked St. Thomas Aquinas's cosmology of the spheres, published an early elucidation of the nebular hypothesis, and even developed something like a theory of evolution He also doubted the reality of witchcraft and asserted that most women burned at the stake were innocent. He was silenced in the same way: burned on the Campo dei Fiori in 1600.
Ten years later, Galileo's little telescope revealed the phases of Venus, the moons of Jupiter, and the moving spots on the sun. Galileo invited clergymen to look throuh the telescope for themselves, but they refused, saying it would imperil their souls because objects like the moons of Jupiter were illusions of the devil. The church said there could be only seven planets, because scripture presented seven archanels, seven churchs of Asia, seven golden candlesticks, and other such allegoires. One of the church's main objections at the time to Galileo's discoveries was that they upset the received knowledge of the zodiacal system; learned ecclesiastics leaned heavily on the guidance of astrology.
In 1632, Galileo published his Dialogue, with overwhelming proof of the Copernican theory. There was a storm of opposition from the church, which went on for many years and involved priests, cardinals, and two popes. A document was forged and "found" in the church's files, to the effect that Galileo had been previously forbidden to teach or discuss Copernicanism, on pain of punishment by the Inquisition Galileo was arrested, threatened with torture, and forced to abjure on his knees, vowing to "curse and detest the error and the heresy of the movement of the earth." According to legend, he went on to whisper under his breath, Eppur si muove--- "But it does move." Pope Paul V closed the subject with a solemn statemet: "The doctrine of the double motion of the earth about its axis and about the sun is false, and entirely contrary to Holy Scripture."(3)
The pope forbade interment of Galileo's remains in his family tomb, directing that he be buried without ceremony, monument, or epitaph. His memory was execrated for two centuries, for what Pope Urban VIII called "so great a scandal to Christendom." Ecclesiastical censors ordered that a later scientific work calling Galileo "renowned" must alter the word to "notorious." In 1846, Monsignor Marini was given the job of publishing the records of Galieleo's trail and falsifying them to the church's advantage. The deception was uncovered by M.L'Epinois twenty years later.(4)
Many books were hurried forth under ecclesiastical auspices to confute Galileo. Some contained very quaint reasoning, like Chiaramonti's:
Animals, which move, have limbs and muscles; the earth has no limbs or muscles, therefore it does not move.It is angels who make Saturn, Jupiter, the sun, etc., turn round. If the earth revolves, ti must also have an angel in the center to set it in otion; but only devils live there, it would therefore be a devil who would impart motion to the earth. (5)
The naive theology of the time often declared that if the earth moved, a stone dropped from a height would fall some way behind the spot directly below. Theology was shackled to the dictum of St. Augustine: "Nothing is to be accepted save on the authority of the Scripture, since greater is that authority than all the powers of the human mind." (6) Voetius in 17th-century Utrecht repeated the same dictum: "Not a word is contained in the Holy Scriptures whcih is not in the strictest sense inspired, the very punctuation not excepted." (7)
Even in the late 19th century, churchmen were still beating the dead horse of biblical cosmolgy. A president of the Luteran Teachers' Seminary published a book refuting Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and all subsequent astronomers:
The entire Holy Scripture settles the question that the earth is the principal body of the universe, that it stands fixed, and that sun and moon serve only to light it. . . . God never lies, never makes a mistake; out of his mouth comes only truth when he speaks of the structure of the universe, of the earth, sun, moon, and stars. (8)
In 1885 the Catholic scholar St. George Mivart realized that God had indeed lied about the structure of the universe, and hypothesized that god had deliberately led his popes and cardinals into error in order to teach them that astronomy lay outside their jurisdiction. This became the accepted Catholic view of Galileo fiasco. (9) It was a view that did irreparable damage to the doctrine of papal infallibility, and opened the way to future doubts about God's veracity. If he deceived his chosen envoys in one matter, who could be sure he didn't decieve them in others?
The battle with Galileo set the pattern for three centuries of ecclesiastical dondemnation of each new discovery in an Age of Enlightenment when almost all scientific knowledge was found to be contrary to Holy Writ. Linnaeus's observations of the sexual system of plants were banned. The theological faculty of the Sorbonne forced Buffon to publish a recantation of his geological discoveries "which may be contrary to the narrative of Moses." Bernoulli was forced to expunge from his works the proof that the living body constantly changes its parts, because this contradicted the church's doctrine of the resurection of the flesh. The Egyptologist Sir J. G. Wilkinson had to "modify" ancient Egyptian chronology because it interfered with the biblical flood myth. Dr. Franz Gall was forbidden to study the structure of the human brain on the ground that it was "blasphemous."(10)
Nearly every important scientific book of these three centuries appeared on the Index of Prohibited Books, "infallibility" declared false because it contradicted the Bible. The bioloist Huxley said he encountered in every path of natural science a barrier reading: "No thoroughfare. Moses." (11) In 1832, Pope Gregory XVI's encyclical Mirari vos decalred war on (1) all forms of society founded on liberty of conscience; (2) liberty of press, "which cannot be sufficiently execrated and condemned, for by its means all evil doctrines are propagated"; and (3) liberty of scientific research. (12) Stanton says, "All through the centuries scholars and scientists have been imprisoned, tortured and burned alive for some discovery which seemed to conflict with a petty text of Scripture" (13) The Galileo case was the very beginning of a long retreat.
Index of Prohibited books- (Index Liborum Prohibitorum) The first official edition appeared in 1559, though ecclesiastical authorites censoried, condemned, and destroyed various kinds of books from the ealriest centuries of the Christian era. Catholics were forbidden to read any books listed on the Index, which was reularly updated. Observation of this prohibition was obligatory up to 1966., when Pope Paul Vi suppressed the Index.
M.L'Epinois- Roman Catholic authority on the Galileo records.
Scipio Chiaramonti- Conservative theologian who dedicated his work confuting Galileo to Cardinal Barberini.
Bibliography:
1- Campbell, Joseph. Myths to Live By. New York: Bikin Press, 1972. pg. 15.
2- White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 vols.). New York: George Braziller, 1955. pg. 1, 126.
3- White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 vols.). New York: George Braziller, 1955. pg. 1, 138.
4- White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 vols.). New York: George Braziller, 1955. pg. 1, 162-63.
5- White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 vols.). New York: George Braziller, 1955. pg., 1, 145.
6- Smith, Homer. Man and His Gods. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1952. pg. 297.
7- White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 vols.). New York: George Braziller, 1955. pg. 2, 308.
8- White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 vols.). New York: George Braziller, 1955. pg. 1, 151.
9- White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 vols.). New York: George Braziller, 1955. pg. 165-66.
10- Bromberg, Walter. From Shaman to Psychotherapist. Chircago: Henry Regnery Co., 1975. pg. 77; White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 vols.). New York: George Braziller, 1955. pg. 1, 256.
11- White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 vols.). New York: George Braziller, 1955. pg. 2, 312.
12- Guignebert, Charles. Ancient, Medieval and Modern Christinaity. New York: University Books, 1961. pg. 452.
13- Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. The Original Feminist Attack on the Bible. New York: Arno Press, 1974. pg. 9
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Segment from the book, White Man's Bible, by Ben Klassen, pg. 200.
On Hypatia
Alexandria, Egypt, Center of Learning. Alexander the Great died at the early age, of 33. Before his death in 323 B.C. he founded the illustrious city of Alexandria in Egypt. Ptolemy I (Ptolemy Soter), Pharaoh of Egypt, started a Museum and Library in Alexandria about a generation later. This library grew and eventually comprised of 400,000 volumes. In the continuing intellectual growth an additional Library was established in an adjacent quarter of the city in the Temple at Serapis. It eventually comprised of another 300,000 volumes. During the next several centuries Alexandria was not only the capital of Egypt, but the intellectual capital of the world.
Also Hotbed of Christian Subversion. By the time of Julius Caesar in the first century B.C. Egypt became a Roman province. When Constantine became emperor in 313 A.D. he decreed Christianity the official religion of the Empire to the exclusion of all others. By this time Alexandria had become a hotbed of Christian subversion, and Constantine's edict encouraged the Christians to attack the intellectuals, whom they termed as pagan.
Hypatia. During the fourth century A.D. there lived in Alexandria a lovely intellectual woman by the name of Hypatia, the daughter of Theon. She grew up in an ideal intellectual climate, since her father Theon was a teacher, a mathematician and a philosopher. He taught her astronomy, astrology, mathematics and rhetoric.
Beautiful, Intellectual, Athletic. Hypatia was born in the year 355 A.D. She grew up to be a tall, slim, beautiful woman. Not only was she highly gifted intellectually, but she was unusually athletic. By the time she was 20 she could walk 10 miles without fatigue, could swim, row, ride horseback and climb mountains. She had bodily grace, beauty of face, and above all an abundance of intelligence.
Exposed Superstitions. By the time she began giving lectures of her own she was saying such things as: "Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child-mind accepts and believes them, and only after great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after-years relieved of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth ¡ª often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable."
Supported by Prefect. Orestes, who was the prefect of the city, attended her lectures. When in one lecture Hypatia stated: "To rule by fettering the mind through fear of punishment in another world is just as base as to use force," Orestea applauded her. News of this event was carried to Cyril, the then Bishop of Alexandria. He was infuriated and declared he would excommunicate Orestes.
Bishop Opposed Her. But neither Cyril nor Orestea could unseat each other, since both derived their power from the Emperor in Rome. The quarrel grew more acrimonious, with Bishop Cyril venting his pathological hatred more and more against Hypatia.
Viciously Attacked by Christian Mob. In March of 415 A.D., several years after Bishop Cyril had come to power, when Hypatia was 60 years old, she left the lecture hall one night to enter a carriage and go home. She was viciously attacked by the Nitrian Monks leading a fanatical, hatefilled Christian mob. After first stripping her naked, she was barbarously murdered. She was then dragged through the streets by the mob, her flesh cut from her bones and finally burned piecemeal.
Promoting Truth and Culture Her Only Crime. Her crime? She told the truth about the Christians' unreasoned and superstitious lies, she promoted learning and culture, and thereby undermined the power of the tyrannical Jewish-Christian power structure.
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"Evolution" an Encyclopedia Article, from The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara Walker.
The theory of species development given to the world by Darwin and his successors had no special religious significance, except that Christian authorites viewed it as a contradiction of their all-important Eden myth, just as Galileo's astronomical discoveries contradicted the bible's geocentric cosmos. The theory of evolution showed man could not have "fallen"; there was no original sin and therefore no need of salvation.
In 1869 a German theologian, Dr. Schund, said: " If this hypothesis be true, then is the Bible an unbearable fiction . . . then have Christians for nearly two thousand years been duped by a monstrous lie. . . . Darwin requires us to disbelieve the authoritate word of the Creator." Another theological heavyweight declared: "If the Darwinian theory is true, Genesis is a lie, the whole framework of the book of life falls to pieces, and the revelation of God to man, as we Christians know it, is a delusion and a snare."(1)
These gentlemen were right. The theory of Evolution does indeed contradict the biblical creation myths and the dogma of the fall. As the evidence in favor of Evolution continued to pile up, fundamentalist churches desperately sought ways to ignore it, or else reconcile the irreconcilable. Pope Paul IV spoke on the subject of Evolution in 1966:
Such explanations do not agree with the teaching of sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Church's magisterium, according to which the sin of the first man is transmitted to all his descendants not through imitation but through propagation. . . . The theory of Evolution will not seem acceptable to you whenever it is not decisevely in accord with the immediate creation of each and every human soul by God, and whenever it does not regard as decisively important for the fate of mankind the disobedience of Adam, the universal first parent.(2)
Since the theory of Evolution can never be "decisively in accord" with the orthodox view, it can never be accepted by the "infallible" church. The orthodox view has remained on the 17th century level of Father Mersenne who "expressed the opinion of the most enlightened theologians when he declared that orthodoxy did not fear either science or reason, and was quite prepared to accept all their conclusions, 'provided they agreed with the Scriptures'"(3)
Seventeen hundred years ago, Origen wrote of the Garden of Eden myth "No one would be so foolish as take this allegory as a description of actual fact."(4) But Origen was excommunicated, and countells millions have been precisely that foolish.
1- White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 vols.) New York. George Braziller, 1955. pages: 1, 72, 74, 271.
2- Wickler, Wolfgang. The Sexual Code. Garden City, N.Y..: Anchor Press/ Doubleday, 1973. page: xxix.
3- Guignebert, Charles. Ancient, Medieval and Modern Christianity. New York, University Books 1961. page: 422.
4- Shirley, Ralph. Occutists and Mystics of all Ages. New York: University books Inc., 1972. page: 170.
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A Segment from Sam Harris' book Letter to a Christian Nation pg: 28-32.
Your qualms about embryonic stem-cell research are similarly obscene. Here are the facts: stem-cell research is one of the most promising developments in the last century of medicine. It could offer therapeutic breakthroughs for every disease or injury process that human beings suffer¡ªfor the simple reason that embryonic stem cells can become any tissue in the human body. This research may also be essential for our understanding of cancer, along with a wide variety of developmental disorders. Given these facts, it is almost impossible to exaggerate the promise of stemcell research. It is true, of course, that research on embryonic stem cells entails the destruction of three-day-old human embryos. This is what worries you.
Let us look at the details. A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. The human embryos that are destroyed in stem-cell research do not have brains, or even neurons. Consequently, there is no reason to believe they can suffer their destruction in any way at all.
It is worth remembering, in this context, that when a person's brain has died, we currently deem it acceptable to harvest his organs (provided he has donated them for this purpose) and bury him in the ground. If it is acceptable to treat a person whose brain has died as something less than a human being, it should be acceptable to treat a blastocyst as such. If you are concerned about suffering in this universe, killing a fly should present you with greater moral difficulties than killing a human blastocyst.
Perhaps you think that the crucial difference between a fly and a human blastocyst is to be found in the latter's potential to become a fully developed human being. But almost every cell in your body is a potential human being, given our recent advances in genetic engineering. Every time you scratch your nose, you have committed a Holocaust of potential human beings. This is a fact. The argument from a cell's potential gets you absolutely nowhere.
But let us assume, for the moment, that every three-day-old human embryo has a soul worthy of our moral concern. Embryos at this stage occasionally split, becoming separate people (identical twins). Is this a case of one soul splitting into two? Two embryos sometimes fuse into a single individual, called a chimera.
You or someone you know may have developed in this way. No doubt theologians are struggling even now to determine what becomes of the extra human soul in such a case.
Isn't it time we admitted that this arithmetic of souls does not make any sense?
The naive idea of souls in a Petri dish is intellectually indefensible. It is also morally indefensible, given that it now stands in the way of some of the most promising research in the history of medicine. Your beliefs about the human soul are, at this very moment, prolonging the scarcely endurable misery of tens of millions of human beings.
You believe that "life starts at the moment of conception." You believe that there are souls in each of these blastocysts and that the interests of one soul¡ªthe soul of a little girl with
burns over 75 percent of her body, say¡ªcannot trump the interests of another soul, even if that soul happens to live inside a Petri dish.
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Given the accommodations we have made to faith-based irrationality in our public discourse, it is often suggested, even by advocates of stem-cell research, that your position on this matter has some degree of moral legitimacy.
It does not. Your resistance to embryonic stem-cell research is, at best, uninformed.
There is, in fact, no moral reason for our federal government's unwillingness to fund this work. We should throw immense resources into stem-cell research, and we should do so immediately. Because of what Christians like yourself believe about souls, we are not doing this. In fact, several states have made such work illegal. If one experiments on a blastocyst in South Dakota, for instance, one risks spending years in prison.
The moral truth here is obvious: anyone who feels that the interests of a blastocyst just might supersede the interests of a child with a spinal cord injury has had his moral sense blinded by religious metaphysics. The link between religion and "morality"¡ªso regularly proclaimed and so seldom demonstrated¡ªis fully belied here, as it is wherever religious dogma supersedes moral reasoning and genuine compassion.
Part 2: A History of Christiantiy's suppression of Science.
Table of Contents/Links
-On the Decline of Medicine, Health, and Technology, during the Dark Ages.
-Hatred of Science
-The clash of Science and Religion.
- Beginning Segment from "The Soul of the Individualist"
-Galileo
-On Evolution.
-On the Murder of Hypatia of Egypt.
-Stemcells abortion and Sex.
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Segment from the book, The Dark Side of Christian History, by Hellen Elerbe, pg. 41-44.
On the Decline of Medicine Health and Technology, due to the church during the Dark Ages.
The Church had devastating impact upon society. As the Church assumed leadership, activity in the fields of medicine, technology, science, education, history, art and commerce all but collapsed. Europe entered the Dark Ages. Although the Church amassed immense wealth during these centuries, most of what defines civilization disappeared.
The western Roman Empire fell during the fifth century under repeated attacks by the Germanic Goths and the Huns while the Roman province of Africa fell to the Vandals. Many blamed Christianity. In 410 when the Christian Visigoths sacked Rome, "the eternal city" which had held strong for 620 years, criticism of the new religion intensified. One of St. Augustine's most famous works, The City of God, was written as a defense of Christianity against such accusations.
However, the eastern Roman Empire, also called the Byzantine Empire, fared better. Especially under Emperor Justinian's rule (527-565), it recovered much of its power, regained control of Italy from the Ostrogoths and recovered Africa from the Vandals. Justinian and his wife, Theodora, were credited with the revival of literature, art, architecture, as well as the codification of Roman Law. But this flourishing Byzantine culture was cut short when the bubonic plague, beginning in 540, struck with a virulence unknown at any time in human history either before or since. In Byzantium alone, the plague was said to have claimed 10,000 people a day. The severity of this plague is difficult to fathom. The later Black Death of the 1300's, which
some think killed one-third of Europe's population, claimed an estimated 27 million lives. In contrast, the sixth century plague is thought to have taken 100 million lives.1 The Roman Empire never recovered.
The plague had quite different impact upon Christianity. People flocked to the Church in terror.2 The Church explained that the plague was an act of God, and disease a punishment for the sin of not obeying Church authority. The Church branded Justinian a heretic. It declared the field of Greek and Roman medicine, useless in fighting the plague, to be heresy.3 While the plague assured the downfall of the Roman Empire, it strengthened the Christian church.
After the plague, the Church dominated the formal discipline of medicine. The most common medical practice between the sixth and sixteenth centuries used for every malady became "bleeding." Christian monks taught that bleeding a person would prevent toxic imbalances, prevent sexual desire, and restore the humors. By the sixteenth century this practice would kill tens of thousands each year. Yet, when a person died during blood-letting, it was only lamented that treatment had not been started sooner and performed more aggressively.4
Once the fields of Greek and Roman medicine were declared heretical, the dangerous medical practice of bleeding became common.
Technology disappeared as the Church became the most cohesive power in Western society. The extensive aqueduct and plumbing systems vanished. Orthodox Christians taught that all aspects of the flesh should be reviled and therefore discouraged washing as much as possible. Toilets and indoor plumbing disappeared. Disease became commonplace as sanitation and hygiene deteriorated. For hundreds of years, towns and villages were decimated by epidemics.5 Roman central heating systems were also abandoned.6 As one historian writes:
From about A.D. 500 onward, it was thought no hardship to lie on the floor at night, or on a hard bench above low drafts, damp earth and rats. To be indoors was luxury enough. Nor was it distasteful to sleep huddled closely together in company, for warmth was valued above privacy.7
The vast network of roads that had enabled transportation and communication also fell into neglect and would remain so until almost the nineteenth century.8
1. Charles Panati, Panati's Extraordinary Endings of Practically Everything (New York: Harper & Row, 1989) 225-228.
2. Ibid., 225.
3. Ibid., 225.
4. Ibid., 264-265.
5. Charles Panati, Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things (New York: Harper & Row, 1987) 201-202.
6. Ibid., 131.
7. Ibid., 328.
8. The New Columbia Encyclopedia edited by William H. Harris and Judith S. Levey (New York & London: Columbia University Press, 1975) 2331.
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Segment from the book, Atheist Manifesto, by Michael Onfray. pg. 81-83.
Hatred of Science.
Hatred of science. This law of the one book, total and all-inclusive, coupled with the unfortunate habit of believing that "everything" can be contained within a single text, means that there is no recourse to nonreligious (which is not to say atheistic) books, such as scientific works.
Monotheism does not really like the rational work of scientists. Clearly Islam embraces astronomy, algebra, mathematics, geometry, optics, but only to calculate the direction of Mecca more accurately by means of the stars, to establish religious calendars, to decree prayer hours. Clearly Islam values geography, but only to facilitate the convergence on the Kaaba when pilgrims from all over the world flock to Mecca.
Clearly it prizes medicine, but only to avoid the impurity that mars one's relation with Allah. Clearly it esteems grammar, philosophy, and law, but only to enrich commentary on the Koran and the Hadith.This religious instrumentalization of science subjects reason to domestic and theocratic uses. In Islamic lands, science is not pursued for its own sake today but for the improvement of religious practice. Centuries of Muslim culture produced inventions, research, and important discoveries in the area of secular science, such as algebra and astronomy, as well as being responsible for the preservation of classical texts. One hadith indeed celebrates the quest for scientific knowledge as far afield as China, but always in the logic of its instrumentalization via religion, never for the human and immanent ideal of social progress.
Christianity too considers that the Bible contains all knowledge necessary for the effective functioning of the church. For centuries the Bible inhibited all research that scrutinized and questioned its contents (without ever contradicting its claims). Faithful to the lessons of Genesis (knowledge is not desirable, science distances us from the essential ¡ª God), the Catholic religion impeded the forward march of Western civilization, inflicting on it incalculable damage.
From Christianity's earliest days, in the beginning of the second century of the common era, paganism in all its aspects was condemned. Everything it produced was rejected, tied to false gods, polytheism, magic, and error. Euclidean mathematics? Ptolemy's maps? Eratosthenes' geography? Aristotle's natural sciences? Aristarchus's astronomy? Hippocrates' medicine? Herophilus's anatomy? They were simply not Christian enough!
The discoveries made by Greek geniuses ¡ª Aristarchus's heliocentrism, to take just one example ¡ª were obviously applicable independently of the gods and the religious systems of the day. What did the existence of Zeus and his kin matter when one had to determine the laws of hydrostatics, calculate the length of a meridian, invent latitude and longitude, measure the distance between us and the sun, argue for the revolution of the earth around the sun, perfect the theory of epicycles, elaborate the map of the heavens, establish the length of a solar year, link tides and lunar attraction, discover the nervous system, offer theories on the circulation of the blood, all of them truths of no interests to the denizens of heaven?
Turning one's back on the results of such research, acting as though these discoveries had never taken place, starting everything again from scratch is at best stagnation, evidence of a dangerous hostility to change. But at worst it means speeding blindly backward¡ªwhile others forge ahead ¡ª to the darkness from which every civilization, by its nature and by definition, strives to free itself in order to be. Refusal of the Enlightenment characterizes the monotheist religions: they prefer mental night for the nurturing of their fables.
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Segment from the book, Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris. pg. 62-71.
The Clash of Science and Religion
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While it is now a moral necessity for scientists to speak honestly about the conflict between science and religion, even the National Academy of Sciences has declared the conflict illusory: At the root of the apparent conflict between some religions and evolution is a misunderstanding of the critical difference between religious and scientific ways of knowing. Religions and science answer different questions about the world.
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Whether there is a purpose to the universe or a purpose for human existence are not questions for science. Religious and scientific ways of knowing have played, and will continue to play, significant roles in human history.... Science is a way of knowing about the natural world. It is limited to explaining the natural world through natural causes. Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral.
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This statement is stunning for its lack of candor. Of course, scientists live in perpetual fear of losing public funds, so the NAS may have merely been expressing raw terror of the taxpaying mob. The truth, however, is that the conflict between religion and science is unavoidable.
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The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma; the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science. Our religions do not simply talk about "a purpose for human existence." Like science, every religion makes specific claims about the way the world is. These claims purport to be about facts¡ªthe creator of the universe can hear (and will occasionally answer) your prayers; the soul enters the zygote at the moment of conception; if you do not believe the right things about God, you will suffer terribly after death. Such claims are intrinsically in conflict with the claims of science, because they are claims made on terrible evidence.
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In the broadest sense, "science" (from the Latin scire, "to know") represents our best efforts to know what is true about our world. We need not distinguish between "hard" and "soft" science here, or between science and a branch of the humanities like history. It is a historical fact, for instance, that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
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Consequently, this fact forms part of the worldview of scientific rationality. Given the evidence that attests to this fact, anyone believing that it happened on another date, or that the Egyptians really dropped those bombs, has a lot of explaining to do. The core of science is not controlled experiment or mathematical modeling; it is intellectual honesty. It is time we acknowledged a basic feature of human discourse: when considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and logical arguments, or one isn't. Religion is the one area of our lives where people imagine that some other standard of intellectual integrity applies.
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CONSIDER the recent deliberations of the Roman Catholic Church on the doctrine of limbo. Thirty top theologians from around the world recently met at the Vatican to discuss the question of what happens to babies who die without having undergone the sacred rite of baptism. Since the Middle Ages, Catholics have believed that such babies go to a state of limbo, where they enjoy what St. Thomas Aquinas termed "natural happiness" forever. This was in contrast to the opinion of St. Augustine, who believed that these unlucky infant souls would spend eternity in hell.
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Though limbo had no real foundation in scripture, and was never official Church doctrine, it has been a major part of the Catholic tradition for centuries. In 1905, Pope Pius X appeared to fully endorse it: "Children who die without baptism go into limbo, where they do not enjoy God, but they do not suffer either." Now the great minds of the Church have convened to reconsider the matter.
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Can we even conceive of a project more intellectually forlorn than this? Just imagine what these deliberations must be like. Is there the slightest possibility that someone will present evidence indicating the eternal fate of unbaptized children after death? How can any educated person think this anything but a hilarious, terrifying, and unconscionable waste of time? When one considers the fact that this is the very institution that has produced and sheltered an elite army of childmolesters, the whole enterprise begins to exude a truly diabolical aura of misspent human energy.
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THE CONFLICT between science and religion is reducible to a simple fact of human cognition and discourse: either a person has good reasons for what he believes, or he does not. If there were good reasons to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, or that Muhammad flew to heaven on a winged horse, these beliefs would necessarily form part of our rational description of the universe. Everyone recognizes that to rely upon "faith" to decide specific questions of historical fact is ridiculous¡ªthat is, until the conversation turns to the origin of books like the Bible and the Koran, to the resurrection of Jesus, to Muhammad's conversation with the archangel Gabriel, or to any other religious dogma. It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.
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While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any other area of our lives, faith in God still holds immense prestige in our society. Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about. It is telling that this aura of nobility extends only to those faiths that still have many subscribers. Anyone caught worshipping Poseidon, even at sea, will be thought insane.*
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The Fact of Life
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All complex life on earth has developed from simpler life-forms over billions of years. This is a fact that no longer admits of intelligent dispute.
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If you doubt that human beings evolved from prior species, you may as well doubt that the sun is a star. Granted, the sun doesn't seem like an ordinary star, but we know that it is a star that just happens to be relatively close to the earth. Imagine your potential for embarrassment if your religious faith rested on the presumption that the sun was not a star at all.
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Imagine millions of Christians in the United States spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year to battle the godless astronomers and astrophysicists on this point. Imagine them working passionately to get their unfounded notions about the sun taught in our nation's schools. This is exactly the situation you are now in with respect to evolution.
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Christians who doubt the truth of evolution are apt to say things like "Evolution is just a theory, not a fact." Such statements betray a serious misunderstanding of the way the term "theory" is used in scientific discourse. In science, facts must be explained with reference to other facts. These larger explanatory models are "theories." Theories make predictions and can, in principle, be tested. The phrase "the theory of evolution" does not in the least suggest that evolution is not a fact. One can speak about "the germ theory of disease" or "the theory of gravitation" without casting doubt upon disease or gravity as facts of nature.
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It is also worth noting that one can obtain a Ph.D. in any branch of science for no other purpose than to make cynical use of scientific language in an effort to rationalize the glaring inadequacies of the Bible. A handful of Christians appear to have done this; some have even obtained their degrees from reputable universities.
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No doubt, others will follow in their foot- steps. While such people are technically "scientists," they are not behaving like scientists. They simply are not engaged in an honest inquiry into the nature of the universe. And their proclamations about God and the failures of Darwinism do not in the least signify that there is a legitimate scientific controversy about evolution.
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In 2005, a survey was conducted in thirty-four countries measuring the percentage of adults who accept evolution. The United States ranked thirty-third, just above Turkey.
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Meanwhile, high school students in the United States test below those of every European and Asian nation in their understanding of science and math. These data are unequivocal: we are building a civilization of ignorance.
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Here is what we know. We know that the universe is far older than the Bible suggests. We know that all complex organisms on earth, including ourselves, evolved from earlier organisms over the course of billions of years. The evidence for this is utterly overwhelming.
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There is no question that the diverse life we see around us is the expression of a genetic code written in the molecule DNA, that DNA undergoes chance mutations, and that some mutations increase an organism's odds of surviving and reproducing in a given environment. This process of mutation and natural selection has allowed isolated populations of individuals to interbreed and, over vast stretches of time, form new species. There is no question that human beings evolved from nonhuman ancestors in this way. We know, from genetic evidence, that we share an ancestor with apes and monkeys, and that this ancestor in turn shared an ancestor with the bats and the flying lemurs.
There is a widely branching tree of life whose basic shape and character is now very well understood. Consequently, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that individual species were created in their present forms. How the process of evolution got started is still a mystery, but that does not in the least suggest that a deity is likely to be lurking at the bottom of it all. Any honest reading of the biblical account of creation suggests that God created all animals and plants as we now see them. There is no question that the Bible is wrong about this.
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Beginning segments from a Chapter titled: "The Soul of the Individualist" from the book For the New Intellectual by Ayn Rand pages 83-34.
"Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light. He was considered an evildoer who had dealt with a demon mankind dreaded. But thereafter men had fire to keep them warm, to cook their food, to light their caves. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had lifted darkness off the earth. Centuries later, the first man invented the wheel. He was probably torn on the rack he had taught his brothers to build. He was considered a transgressor who ventured into forbidden territory. But thereafter, men could travel past any horizon. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had opened the roads of the world.
"That man, the unsubmissive and first, stands in the opening chapter of every legend mankind has recorded about its beginning. Prometheus was chained to a rock and torn by vultures¡ªbecause he had stolen the fire of the gods. Adam was condemned to suffer¡ªbecause he had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Whatever the legend, somewhere in the shadows of its memory mankind knew that its glory began with one and that that one paid for his courage.
"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and me response they received¡ªhatred. The great creators¡ª the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors¡ªstood alone against the men of their time.
Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.
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"Galileo", an Encyclopedia Article from The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara Walker.
The first Christian man to achieve visual confirmation of the true motion of heavenly bodies. Before Galileo, all Christendom accepted the church's view that man and his works stood at the center of the universe, on a fixed earth surrounded by "spheres" of sun, moon, planets, and stars. This was the biblical view, supported by such infallibles as Albert the Great, Isidore of Seville, and St. Thomas Aquinas.
The Dark Age had destroyed or forgotten ancient astronomers' knowledge of the solar system. Aristarchus taught about 275. B.C. that the earth is a revolving globe in orbit around the sun. Eratosthenes about 250 B.C. calculated the circumference of the globe at 24, 662 miles, less than 300 miles short of the true figure, 24,902. About 240 B.C., Hipparchus calculated the diameter of the moon, and its distance from the earth, within a few miles of the correct figures.(1) But according to Christian authorites, this information was pagan and therefore heretical and wrong.
Almost two millenia later, Nicholas Copernicus patiently observed and calculated his way back to the knowledge that the earth moves arround the sun. After hesitating and re-checking his results for nearly thirty years, Copernicus published his book in 1543. It was not well received by Catholics or Protestants. Martin Luther scoffed at it: "People give ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heaven or the firmament, the sun and the moon. . . . This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth."(2)
The Roman church investigated Copernicus's theory by consulting the scriptures, and placed his book on the Index of Prohibited Books, whiere it remained until 1835. The pope announced, "The first proposition, that the sun is the center and does not revolve about the earth, is foolish, absurd, false in philosophy and . . . opposted to the true faith."
Copernicus's calculations nevertheless fascinated Giodano Bruno, who accepted the heliocentric theory, attacked St. Thomas Aquinas's cosmology of the spheres, published an early elucidation of the nebular hypothesis, and even developed something like a theory of evolution He also doubted the reality of witchcraft and asserted that most women burned at the stake were innocent. He was silenced in the same way: burned on the Campo dei Fiori in 1600.
Ten years later, Galileo's little telescope revealed the phases of Venus, the moons of Jupiter, and the moving spots on the sun. Galileo invited clergymen to look throuh the telescope for themselves, but they refused, saying it would imperil their souls because objects like the moons of Jupiter were illusions of the devil. The church said there could be only seven planets, because scripture presented seven archanels, seven churchs of Asia, seven golden candlesticks, and other such allegoires. One of the church's main objections at the time to Galileo's discoveries was that they upset the received knowledge of the zodiacal system; learned ecclesiastics leaned heavily on the guidance of astrology.
In 1632, Galileo published his Dialogue, with overwhelming proof of the Copernican theory. There was a storm of opposition from the church, which went on for many years and involved priests, cardinals, and two popes. A document was forged and "found" in the church's files, to the effect that Galileo had been previously forbidden to teach or discuss Copernicanism, on pain of punishment by the Inquisition Galileo was arrested, threatened with torture, and forced to abjure on his knees, vowing to "curse and detest the error and the heresy of the movement of the earth." According to legend, he went on to whisper under his breath, Eppur si muove--- "But it does move." Pope Paul V closed the subject with a solemn statemet: "The doctrine of the double motion of the earth about its axis and about the sun is false, and entirely contrary to Holy Scripture."(3)
The pope forbade interment of Galileo's remains in his family tomb, directing that he be buried without ceremony, monument, or epitaph. His memory was execrated for two centuries, for what Pope Urban VIII called "so great a scandal to Christendom." Ecclesiastical censors ordered that a later scientific work calling Galileo "renowned" must alter the word to "notorious." In 1846, Monsignor Marini was given the job of publishing the records of Galieleo's trail and falsifying them to the church's advantage. The deception was uncovered by M.L'Epinois twenty years later.(4)
Many books were hurried forth under ecclesiastical auspices to confute Galileo. Some contained very quaint reasoning, like Chiaramonti's:
Animals, which move, have limbs and muscles; the earth has no limbs or muscles, therefore it does not move.It is angels who make Saturn, Jupiter, the sun, etc., turn round. If the earth revolves, ti must also have an angel in the center to set it in otion; but only devils live there, it would therefore be a devil who would impart motion to the earth. (5)
The naive theology of the time often declared that if the earth moved, a stone dropped from a height would fall some way behind the spot directly below. Theology was shackled to the dictum of St. Augustine: "Nothing is to be accepted save on the authority of the Scripture, since greater is that authority than all the powers of the human mind." (6) Voetius in 17th-century Utrecht repeated the same dictum: "Not a word is contained in the Holy Scriptures whcih is not in the strictest sense inspired, the very punctuation not excepted." (7)
Even in the late 19th century, churchmen were still beating the dead horse of biblical cosmolgy. A president of the Luteran Teachers' Seminary published a book refuting Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and all subsequent astronomers:
The entire Holy Scripture settles the question that the earth is the principal body of the universe, that it stands fixed, and that sun and moon serve only to light it. . . . God never lies, never makes a mistake; out of his mouth comes only truth when he speaks of the structure of the universe, of the earth, sun, moon, and stars. (8)
In 1885 the Catholic scholar St. George Mivart realized that God had indeed lied about the structure of the universe, and hypothesized that god had deliberately led his popes and cardinals into error in order to teach them that astronomy lay outside their jurisdiction. This became the accepted Catholic view of Galileo fiasco. (9) It was a view that did irreparable damage to the doctrine of papal infallibility, and opened the way to future doubts about God's veracity. If he deceived his chosen envoys in one matter, who could be sure he didn't decieve them in others?
The battle with Galileo set the pattern for three centuries of ecclesiastical dondemnation of each new discovery in an Age of Enlightenment when almost all scientific knowledge was found to be contrary to Holy Writ. Linnaeus's observations of the sexual system of plants were banned. The theological faculty of the Sorbonne forced Buffon to publish a recantation of his geological discoveries "which may be contrary to the narrative of Moses." Bernoulli was forced to expunge from his works the proof that the living body constantly changes its parts, because this contradicted the church's doctrine of the resurection of the flesh. The Egyptologist Sir J. G. Wilkinson had to "modify" ancient Egyptian chronology because it interfered with the biblical flood myth. Dr. Franz Gall was forbidden to study the structure of the human brain on the ground that it was "blasphemous."(10)
Nearly every important scientific book of these three centuries appeared on the Index of Prohibited Books, "infallibility" declared false because it contradicted the Bible. The bioloist Huxley said he encountered in every path of natural science a barrier reading: "No thoroughfare. Moses." (11) In 1832, Pope Gregory XVI's encyclical Mirari vos decalred war on (1) all forms of society founded on liberty of conscience; (2) liberty of press, "which cannot be sufficiently execrated and condemned, for by its means all evil doctrines are propagated"; and (3) liberty of scientific research. (12) Stanton says, "All through the centuries scholars and scientists have been imprisoned, tortured and burned alive for some discovery which seemed to conflict with a petty text of Scripture" (13) The Galileo case was the very beginning of a long retreat.
Index of Prohibited books- (Index Liborum Prohibitorum) The first official edition appeared in 1559, though ecclesiastical authorites censoried, condemned, and destroyed various kinds of books from the ealriest centuries of the Christian era. Catholics were forbidden to read any books listed on the Index, which was reularly updated. Observation of this prohibition was obligatory up to 1966., when Pope Paul Vi suppressed the Index.
M.L'Epinois- Roman Catholic authority on the Galileo records.
Scipio Chiaramonti- Conservative theologian who dedicated his work confuting Galileo to Cardinal Barberini.
Bibliography:
1- Campbell, Joseph. Myths to Live By. New York: Bikin Press, 1972. pg. 15.
2- White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 vols.). New York: George Braziller, 1955. pg. 1, 126.
3- White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 vols.). New York: George Braziller, 1955. pg. 1, 138.
4- White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 vols.). New York: George Braziller, 1955. pg. 1, 162-63.
5- White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 vols.). New York: George Braziller, 1955. pg., 1, 145.
6- Smith, Homer. Man and His Gods. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1952. pg. 297.
7- White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 vols.). New York: George Braziller, 1955. pg. 2, 308.
8- White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 vols.). New York: George Braziller, 1955. pg. 1, 151.
9- White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 vols.). New York: George Braziller, 1955. pg. 165-66.
10- Bromberg, Walter. From Shaman to Psychotherapist. Chircago: Henry Regnery Co., 1975. pg. 77; White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 vols.). New York: George Braziller, 1955. pg. 1, 256.
11- White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 vols.). New York: George Braziller, 1955. pg. 2, 312.
12- Guignebert, Charles. Ancient, Medieval and Modern Christinaity. New York: University Books, 1961. pg. 452.
13- Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. The Original Feminist Attack on the Bible. New York: Arno Press, 1974. pg. 9
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Segment from the book, White Man's Bible, by Ben Klassen, pg. 200.
On Hypatia
Alexandria, Egypt, Center of Learning. Alexander the Great died at the early age, of 33. Before his death in 323 B.C. he founded the illustrious city of Alexandria in Egypt. Ptolemy I (Ptolemy Soter), Pharaoh of Egypt, started a Museum and Library in Alexandria about a generation later. This library grew and eventually comprised of 400,000 volumes. In the continuing intellectual growth an additional Library was established in an adjacent quarter of the city in the Temple at Serapis. It eventually comprised of another 300,000 volumes. During the next several centuries Alexandria was not only the capital of Egypt, but the intellectual capital of the world.
Also Hotbed of Christian Subversion. By the time of Julius Caesar in the first century B.C. Egypt became a Roman province. When Constantine became emperor in 313 A.D. he decreed Christianity the official religion of the Empire to the exclusion of all others. By this time Alexandria had become a hotbed of Christian subversion, and Constantine's edict encouraged the Christians to attack the intellectuals, whom they termed as pagan.
Hypatia. During the fourth century A.D. there lived in Alexandria a lovely intellectual woman by the name of Hypatia, the daughter of Theon. She grew up in an ideal intellectual climate, since her father Theon was a teacher, a mathematician and a philosopher. He taught her astronomy, astrology, mathematics and rhetoric.
Beautiful, Intellectual, Athletic. Hypatia was born in the year 355 A.D. She grew up to be a tall, slim, beautiful woman. Not only was she highly gifted intellectually, but she was unusually athletic. By the time she was 20 she could walk 10 miles without fatigue, could swim, row, ride horseback and climb mountains. She had bodily grace, beauty of face, and above all an abundance of intelligence.
Exposed Superstitions. By the time she began giving lectures of her own she was saying such things as: "Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child-mind accepts and believes them, and only after great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after-years relieved of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth ¡ª often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable."
Supported by Prefect. Orestes, who was the prefect of the city, attended her lectures. When in one lecture Hypatia stated: "To rule by fettering the mind through fear of punishment in another world is just as base as to use force," Orestea applauded her. News of this event was carried to Cyril, the then Bishop of Alexandria. He was infuriated and declared he would excommunicate Orestes.
Bishop Opposed Her. But neither Cyril nor Orestea could unseat each other, since both derived their power from the Emperor in Rome. The quarrel grew more acrimonious, with Bishop Cyril venting his pathological hatred more and more against Hypatia.
Viciously Attacked by Christian Mob. In March of 415 A.D., several years after Bishop Cyril had come to power, when Hypatia was 60 years old, she left the lecture hall one night to enter a carriage and go home. She was viciously attacked by the Nitrian Monks leading a fanatical, hatefilled Christian mob. After first stripping her naked, she was barbarously murdered. She was then dragged through the streets by the mob, her flesh cut from her bones and finally burned piecemeal.
Promoting Truth and Culture Her Only Crime. Her crime? She told the truth about the Christians' unreasoned and superstitious lies, she promoted learning and culture, and thereby undermined the power of the tyrannical Jewish-Christian power structure.
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"Evolution" an Encyclopedia Article, from The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara Walker.
The theory of species development given to the world by Darwin and his successors had no special religious significance, except that Christian authorites viewed it as a contradiction of their all-important Eden myth, just as Galileo's astronomical discoveries contradicted the bible's geocentric cosmos. The theory of evolution showed man could not have "fallen"; there was no original sin and therefore no need of salvation.
In 1869 a German theologian, Dr. Schund, said: " If this hypothesis be true, then is the Bible an unbearable fiction . . . then have Christians for nearly two thousand years been duped by a monstrous lie. . . . Darwin requires us to disbelieve the authoritate word of the Creator." Another theological heavyweight declared: "If the Darwinian theory is true, Genesis is a lie, the whole framework of the book of life falls to pieces, and the revelation of God to man, as we Christians know it, is a delusion and a snare."(1)
These gentlemen were right. The theory of Evolution does indeed contradict the biblical creation myths and the dogma of the fall. As the evidence in favor of Evolution continued to pile up, fundamentalist churches desperately sought ways to ignore it, or else reconcile the irreconcilable. Pope Paul IV spoke on the subject of Evolution in 1966:
Such explanations do not agree with the teaching of sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Church's magisterium, according to which the sin of the first man is transmitted to all his descendants not through imitation but through propagation. . . . The theory of Evolution will not seem acceptable to you whenever it is not decisevely in accord with the immediate creation of each and every human soul by God, and whenever it does not regard as decisively important for the fate of mankind the disobedience of Adam, the universal first parent.(2)
Since the theory of Evolution can never be "decisively in accord" with the orthodox view, it can never be accepted by the "infallible" church. The orthodox view has remained on the 17th century level of Father Mersenne who "expressed the opinion of the most enlightened theologians when he declared that orthodoxy did not fear either science or reason, and was quite prepared to accept all their conclusions, 'provided they agreed with the Scriptures'"(3)
Seventeen hundred years ago, Origen wrote of the Garden of Eden myth "No one would be so foolish as take this allegory as a description of actual fact."(4) But Origen was excommunicated, and countells millions have been precisely that foolish.
1- White, Andrew D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (2 vols.) New York. George Braziller, 1955. pages: 1, 72, 74, 271.
2- Wickler, Wolfgang. The Sexual Code. Garden City, N.Y..: Anchor Press/ Doubleday, 1973. page: xxix.
3- Guignebert, Charles. Ancient, Medieval and Modern Christianity. New York, University Books 1961. page: 422.
4- Shirley, Ralph. Occutists and Mystics of all Ages. New York: University books Inc., 1972. page: 170.
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A Segment from Sam Harris' book Letter to a Christian Nation pg: 28-32.
Your qualms about embryonic stem-cell research are similarly obscene. Here are the facts: stem-cell research is one of the most promising developments in the last century of medicine. It could offer therapeutic breakthroughs for every disease or injury process that human beings suffer¡ªfor the simple reason that embryonic stem cells can become any tissue in the human body. This research may also be essential for our understanding of cancer, along with a wide variety of developmental disorders. Given these facts, it is almost impossible to exaggerate the promise of stemcell research. It is true, of course, that research on embryonic stem cells entails the destruction of three-day-old human embryos. This is what worries you.
Let us look at the details. A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. The human embryos that are destroyed in stem-cell research do not have brains, or even neurons. Consequently, there is no reason to believe they can suffer their destruction in any way at all.
It is worth remembering, in this context, that when a person's brain has died, we currently deem it acceptable to harvest his organs (provided he has donated them for this purpose) and bury him in the ground. If it is acceptable to treat a person whose brain has died as something less than a human being, it should be acceptable to treat a blastocyst as such. If you are concerned about suffering in this universe, killing a fly should present you with greater moral difficulties than killing a human blastocyst.
Perhaps you think that the crucial difference between a fly and a human blastocyst is to be found in the latter's potential to become a fully developed human being. But almost every cell in your body is a potential human being, given our recent advances in genetic engineering. Every time you scratch your nose, you have committed a Holocaust of potential human beings. This is a fact. The argument from a cell's potential gets you absolutely nowhere.
But let us assume, for the moment, that every three-day-old human embryo has a soul worthy of our moral concern. Embryos at this stage occasionally split, becoming separate people (identical twins). Is this a case of one soul splitting into two? Two embryos sometimes fuse into a single individual, called a chimera.
You or someone you know may have developed in this way. No doubt theologians are struggling even now to determine what becomes of the extra human soul in such a case.
Isn't it time we admitted that this arithmetic of souls does not make any sense?
The naive idea of souls in a Petri dish is intellectually indefensible. It is also morally indefensible, given that it now stands in the way of some of the most promising research in the history of medicine. Your beliefs about the human soul are, at this very moment, prolonging the scarcely endurable misery of tens of millions of human beings.
You believe that "life starts at the moment of conception." You believe that there are souls in each of these blastocysts and that the interests of one soul¡ªthe soul of a little girl with
burns over 75 percent of her body, say¡ªcannot trump the interests of another soul, even if that soul happens to live inside a Petri dish.
¡¡
Given the accommodations we have made to faith-based irrationality in our public discourse, it is often suggested, even by advocates of stem-cell research, that your position on this matter has some degree of moral legitimacy.
It does not. Your resistance to embryonic stem-cell research is, at best, uninformed.
There is, in fact, no moral reason for our federal government's unwillingness to fund this work. We should throw immense resources into stem-cell research, and we should do so immediately. Because of what Christians like yourself believe about souls, we are not doing this. In fact, several states have made such work illegal. If one experiments on a blastocyst in South Dakota, for instance, one risks spending years in prison.
The moral truth here is obvious: anyone who feels that the interests of a blastocyst just might supersede the interests of a child with a spinal cord injury has had his moral sense blinded by religious metaphysics. The link between religion and "morality"¡ªso regularly proclaimed and so seldom demonstrated¡ªis fully belied here, as it is wherever religious dogma supersedes moral reasoning and genuine compassion.
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