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Science vs. Religion(Also see Where Is God? for a history of science vs. religion)
Step by step, from contest to ultimate conquest, in every single conflict of Fact with Faith, the Church has been defeated
and has retreated -- put to shaming rout. It has been a slow and tortuous progress,--
"For faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast
To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last"!
But fantastic Faith has wondrous powers of "accommodation"
and specious tenacity of false pretense of being forever inspiredly right. The process of adjustment throughout a thousand
instances has been the same: Faith is confronted with a discrediting Fact; it curses it and denies it. When the fact is crammed
down its throat and it is forced to recognize it, it lyingly denies that it had ever denied it. Then when all mankind has
united in joyful acceptance of the new fact, the arch hypocrite declares that it is entirely in accord with its "sacred science,"
and tries to steal all credit for it as one of its very own grand contributions to "Christian civilization," and sanctimoniously
wheezes, "How much grander a concept it gives of the infinite knowledge and glory of Gawd in His wonderful process of Nature"!
Oh, Hypocrisy! Thou art the Church of God! "Semper eadem" (always the same) -- lying and shameless! [1]
The
Catholic Church now admits the "Galileo Incident" was a "mistake". According to the Catholic Encyclopedia the Church is only
infallible in matters of religious dogma, and its current definition of religious dogma extends only to matters
of faith and morals. Thus the Catholic Church made a "mistake" with Galileo because the Church confused religious dogma with
a matter of science. However the Church's claim of papal infallibility is still intact because the pope never invoked his
infallibility and explicitly claimed that the universe was geocentric, and even if he did it wouldn't count because according
to the Church the pope's infallibility only extends to matters of religious dogma and not to matters of science.
However
it is quite clear that at the time of Galileo the Church's infallible religious dogma did extend to all matters
of science including astronomy, biology, geology, geography, and archaeology. Even today religious fundamentalists still insist
the Bible is the literal infallible Word of God, inerrant, without contradiction, correct in all matters of Faith and
all matters of science. They force the Bible to fit in with today's knowledge of science, like forcing a square peg into a
round hole, or they attack any science they can not yet force the Bible to conform to.
The priestly principle of the
subordination of scientific fact to dogmatic faith is thus naïvely posed by the Catholic Encyclopedia itself which I quote,
"When a clearly defined dogma contradicts a scientific assertion, the latter has to be revised." A more palpable and ridiculous
untruth has never been uttered by those who still insist on Biblical literalness. No single scientific fact ever discovered
and proclaimed, in all the struggling history of Science in defiance of Church, has ever been "revised," altered or withdrawn
in deference to religious Dogma. Every fact of science has proudly and triumphantly defied and refuted Dogma and Church, and
made them both cheap and ridiculous. Faith hates facts; they are forever divorced on grounds of congenital incompatibility.
The Church, True Church, and Protestant, has screamed and reviled at every truth of Science which was ever discovered; with
high priestly anathema, the curse of God, with prison, rack, and stake, it has sought to suppress and kill every thought of
the human mind, every bold thinker, whose truths for the benefit of mankind have contradicted and ridiculed it and its holy
dogmas. [2]
Even today there are those trying to prevent the teaching of Evolution in our schools, not for any scientific
reason, but simply because Darwin's theory of Evolution conflicts with their current religious dogma. But I do not believe
the science of Evolution will be the last nail in the coffin of Biblical literalness, just as the undeniable proof of a heliocentric
universe did not end it hundreds of years ago.
When it was finally accepted that the Catholic Church was wrong about
the structure of our solar system the Catholic Church changed its religious dogma to not include science, claimed that its
infallibility never extended to matters of science and therefore is still intact, and now claims the Bible all along agreed
with everything science has now proven.
REFERENCES:
- Joseph Wheless Forgery in Christianity: A Documented Record of the Foundations of the Christian Religion (Kessinger Publishing)
- ibid.
Source:
members.cox.net/deleyd/religion/galileo/sciencevsreligion.html
By common sense, why should science be incompatible with religion?
Our early ancestors worshipped the sun as a god for they knew without the sun there would be no life. They lived in balance
with nature.
Today, thanks to science we know that the sun -though an existential necessity for every form of life on our planet- is
only a tiny particle in a perfectly balanced universe far beyond our imagination in age and size. We know from science that
our planet is about 4-5 billion years old and the more we learn, the more we can sense the perfection, the wonder of life
in all its varieties, each born out of one cell and perfectly adapted to the enviroment.
We humans need to believe in something superior to us -best shown when we plead for help in times of need- so what more
would a true religion need to point to a power that created all this, a God we all should worship. Isn't the aknowlegdement
of the wonders that surround us compared to our own inadequacy something like true faith - even atheists cannot completely
deny that there must be "something"........
However, today's reality is quite the opposite:
Our religion is based on a book that dates the creation of the earth as the center of the universe back less than 6000
years, created by a God who also created us in his image, thus not only making mankind the crown jewel of His creation
but on top of that declaring the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob His chosen people.
Today we know that the story told in the bible is historically incorrect at least until aprox. 800 BC - "a brilliant
product of the human imagination." Archeology contradicts the bible, but nevertheless we stick to it, some of us even
by the letter, calling it God's Word.
If we believe that God created the universe - a perfect creation - then God also has to be not only faultless but He is
the absolute perfection, but the bible gives a somehow different picture: by limiting the creation to 6 days plus a day of
rest and creating us in His own image it reduces God to something human-like, a sort of "superhuman being" with human attributes
like jealousy, anger, or scorn, a God with preferences, demanding not only absolute obedience but also sacrifices. All these
attributes are negative thus making God a God not to be loved but feared greatly. A very human policy to rule a people
by a religion within the limits of human imagination, therefore no need to question or doubt any part of it.
Now lets look at the Ten Commandments: 10 distinct rules to grant a peaceful life if followed by all. According to the
bible, God gave them to Moses and He also gave Moses 613 mitzvot (commandments), rules for every condition of daily life,
yet some of those mitzvot are in strange contradiction to the 10 commandments, for example "Thou shalt not kill". A distinct
command to never kill, at least not by purpose. Yet at the same time God gave orders to kill by introducing the death
penalty - a revengeful God. Imagine somebody living strictly according to the 10 commandment has to execute another human
being - an inner conflict, except if the order was given by God.
Apparently, we have been given a free will, the ability to distinguish between good and evil and an imagination that enables
us to anticipate the consequences of our behavior - why then would God restrict His chosen people to a life ruled by detailed
mitzvot or better dogmas? Faith means to believe in something that cannot be proven - isn't this sort of faith in God worth
much more than to follow or worship the Lord according to rules like sheeple? Why deny free will given in the first place?
to be continued.....
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