The Warfare of Science with Theology by A. D. White

[_LittleNipper]

The "church" held to tightly to TRADITION rather than to the Holy Bible: http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c007.html

Have you looked into what Luther and Calvin thought about Galileo's and Copernicus' ideas?

Martin Luther and Calvin were not perfect, as I'm sure they would say regarding themselves. If they were, they wouldn't need Jesus.

[_Choyo Chagas]

Nature is however GOD designed it originally. GOD is supernatural, and so can do as He wants or needs to whenever it is reasonable for HIM to do it by whatever means in HIS power. And since GOD is ALL POWERFUL, I simply do not understand why anyone would suggest that placing a lightning rod on a barn can thwart GOD's abilities. In other words, if GOD wanted to stop the Universe for a day, HE created it, HE certainly has the ability to do it. And HIS gravity will prevent what HE wishes to prevent and hold what HE wishes to hold exactly as HE desires to accomplish it.

People who do not wish to read Biblical passages literally (though some are figurative/poetic and I feel they are clear in that intent) simply lack faith in an ALL POWERFUL CREATOR GOD. They instead worship the Universe, Time, Nature and Man's "scientific" explanations. Such are limiting GOD's abilities to man's judgments and explanations.

"GOD-GOD-GOD HE-HIS-HE-HE-HE"
hehehe

I don't know ...

... anything outside of the "writings" of half-illiterate taletellers who may or may not have lived thousands of years ago

especially scientific explanations... - written, proved and used since then

[_Maksutov]

Have you looked into what Luther and Calvin thought about Galileo's and Copernicus' ideas?

Martin Luther and Calvin were not perfect, as I'm sure they would say regarding themselves. If they were, they wouldn't need Jesus.

So the answer is no. So once again you're spouting off in ignorance. It's your spiritual gift.

You're really great with CAPITAL LETTERS but you really fail on stuff like logic and facts. But if you get your emotional fix, that's what matters, right?

If you were able or willing to read the book under discussion, you would see that "Christian answers" have been "pay, pray, obey" for far too much of the history of Christianity. And don't try the dodge of that was some other people pretending to be Christians. Falling back on a private Christianity, a Christianity for one, is fine but not while also preaching a body of documents that were assembled by Christians in committees for often political reasons. You can't have it both ways, Nipper. And that's why so many people are leaving religion. They don't buy the silly Jack Chick shtick any more.

[_LittleNipper]

Nature is however GOD designed it originally. GOD is supernatural, and so can do as He wants or needs to whenever it is reasonable for HIM to do it by whatever means in HIS power. And since GOD is ALL POWERFUL, I simply do not understand why anyone would suggest that placing a lightning rod on a barn can thwart GOD's abilities. In other words, if GOD wanted to stop the Universe for a day, HE created it, HE certainly has the ability to do it. And HIS gravity will prevent what HE wishes to prevent and hold what HE wishes to hold exactly as HE desires to accomplish it.

People who do not wish to read Biblical passages literally (though some are figurative/poetic and I feel they are clear in that intent) simply lack faith in an ALL POWERFUL CREATOR GOD. They instead worship the Universe, Time, Nature and Man's "scientific" explanations. Such are limiting GOD's abilities to man's judgments and explanations.

"GOD-GOD-GOD HE-HIS-HE-HE-HE"
hehehe

I don't know ...

... anything outside of the "writings" of half-illiterate taletellers who may or may not have lived thousands of years ago

especially scientific explanations... - written, proved and used since then

GOD LIVES or our entire lives are worthless & pointless. HALF-ILLITERATE? I don't see how? They didn't have television --- the boob tube!

[_Maksutov]

GOD LIVES or our entire lives are worthless & pointless.

Speak for yourself. I live quite well without GOD, thank you. If your "GOD" exists, he/she/it should be fired for incompetence. Such a dreadful being belongs in prison, not in heaven.

[_Maksutov]

Fortunately, too. Protestantism had no such power to
oppose the development of the Copernican ideas as the older
Church had enjoyed. Yet there were some things in its
warfare against science even more indefensible. In 1772
the famous English expedition for scientific discovery sailed
from England under Captain Cook. Greatest by far of all
the scientific authorities chosen to accompany it was Dr.
Priestley. Sir Joseph Banks had especially invited him.
But the clergy of Oxford and Cambridge interfered. Priest-
ley was considered unsound in his views of the Trinity ; it
was evidently suspected that this might vitiate his astro-
nomical observations ; he was rejected, and the expedition
crippled.

The orthodox view of astronomy lingered on in other
branches of the Protestant Church. In Germany even Leib-
nitz attacked the Newtonian theory of gravitation on theo-
logical grounds, though he found some little consolation in
thinking that it might be used to support the Lutheran doc-
trine of consubstantiation.

In Holland the Calvinistic Church was at first strenuous
against the whole new system, but we possess a comical
proof that Calvinism even in its strongholds was powerless
against it; for in 1642 Blaer published at Amsterdam his
book on the use of globes, and, in order to be on the safe
side, devoted one part of his work to the Ptolemaic and the
other to the Copernican scheme, leaving the benevolent
reader to take his choice.*

Nor have efforts to renew the battle in the Protestant
Church been wanting in these latter days. The attempt in
the Church of England, in 1864, to fetter science, which was
brought to ridicule by Herschel, Bowring, and De Morgan ;
the assemblage of Lutheran clergy at Berlin, in 1868, to pro-
test against " science falsely so called," are examples of these.
Fortunately, to the latter came Pastor Knak, and his denun-
ciations of the Copernican theory as absolutely incompatible
with a belief in the Bible, dissolved the whole assemblage
in ridicule.

In its recent dealings with modern astronomy the wisdom
of the Catholic Church in the more civilized countries has
prevented its yielding to some astounding errors into which
one part of the Protestant Church has fallen heedlessly.

[_LittleNipper]

Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543)
Copernicus was the Polish astronomer who put forward the first mathematically based system of planets going around the sun. He attended various European universities, and became a Canon in the Catholic church in 1497. His new system was actually first presented in the Vatican gardens in 1533 before Pope Clement VII who approved, and urged Copernicus to publish it around this time. Copernicus was never under any threat of religious persecution - and was urged to publish both by Catholic Bishop Guise, Cardinal Schonberg, and the Protestant Professor George Rheticus. Copernicus referred sometimes to God in his works, and did not see his system as in conflict with the Bible.

[_LittleNipper]

Just because humanity is the apple of GOD's eye, doesn't mean that it hangs in the center of the tree.

[_Maksutov]

Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543)
Copernicus was the Polish astronomer who put forward the first mathematically based system of planets going around the sun. He attended various European universities, and became a Canon in the Catholic church in 1497. His new system was actually first presented in the Vatican gardens in 1533 before Pope Clement VII who approved, and urged Copernicus to publish it around this time. Copernicus was never under any threat of religious persecution - and was urged to publish both by Catholic Bishop Guise, Cardinal Schonberg, and the Protestant Professor George Rheticus. Copernicus referred sometimes to God in his works, and did not see his system as in conflict with the Bible.

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~allch001/galileo ... 16docs.htm

Cardinal Bellarmine's Certificate (26 May 1616)
We, Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, have heard tht Mr. Galileo Galilei is being slandered or alleged to have abjured in our hands and also to have been given salutary penances for this. Having been sought about the truth of the matter, we say that the above-mentioned Galileo has not abjured in our hands, or in the hands of others here in Rome, or anywhere else that we know, any opinion or doctrine of his; nor has he received any penances, salutary or otherwise. On the contrary, he has only been notified of the declaration made by the Holy Father and published by the Sacred Congregation of the Index, whose content is that the doctrine attributed to Copernicus (that the earth moves around the sun and the sun stands at the center of the world without moving from east to west) is contrary to Holy Scripture and therefore cannot be defended or held. In witness whereof we have written and signed this with our own hands, on this 26th day of May 1616.

The same mentioned above,
Robert Cardinal Bellarmine

............

[_Maksutov]

Though various leaders in the older Church have com-
mitted the absurd error of allowing a text-book and sundry
review articles to appear which grossly misstate the Galileo
episode, with the certainty of ultimately undermining con-
fidence in her teachings among her more thoughtful young
men, she has kept clear of the folly of continuing to tie her
instruction, and the acceptance of our sacred books, to an
adoption Old Testament the Ptolemaic theory.

Not so with American Lutheranism. In 1873 was pub-
lished in St. Louis, at the publishing house of the Lutheran
Synod of Missouri, a work entitled Astronoimsche Unterre-


* For the attitude of Leibnitz, Hutchinson, and the others named toward the
Newtonian theory, see Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century,
chap. ix. For John Wesley, see his Compendium of Natural Philosophy, being a
Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation, London, 1784. See also Leslie
Stephen, Eighteenth Century, vol. ii, p. 413. For Owen, see his Works, vol. xix,
p. 310. For Cotton Mather's view, see The Christian Philosopher, London, 1721,
especially pp. 16 and 17. For the case of Priestley, see Weld, History of the Royal
Society, vol. ii, p. 56, for the facts and the admirable letter of Priestley upon this
rejection. Yox Blaer, see his V Usage des Globes, Amsterdam, 1642.


dimg, the author being well known as a late president of a
Lutheran Teachers' Seminary.

No attack on the whole modern system of astronomy
could be more bitter. On the first page of the introduction
the author, after stating the two theories, asks, '* Which is
right?" and says: " It would be very simple to me which is
right, if it were only a question of human import. But the
wise and truthful God has expressed himself on this matter
in the Bible. The entire Holy Scripture settles the ques-
tion that the earth is the principal body of the
universe, that it stands fixed, and that sun and moon only
serve to light it."

The author then goes on to show from Scripture the
folly, not only of Copernicus and Newton, but of a long line
of great astronomers in more recent times. He declares :
" Let no one understand me as inquiring first where truth is
to be found— in the Bible or with the astronomers. No;
I know that beforehand — that my 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. . . .

" Because the truth of the Holy Scripture is involved in
this, therefore the above question is of the highest impor-
tance to me. . . . Scientists and others lean upon the miser-
able reed that God teaches only the order of sal-
vation, but not the order of the universe."