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September 01, 2004
Deus ex machina ... Method from the system?
Further to my recent post on the subject of the Church and its contribution to the advance of Scientific research, I would like to add some further thoughts. The "Flat Earth" myth is a classic example of distortion by self-interested groups in this debate, since, at the time of Columbus' arguments with the Spanish Crown and the Spanish Inquisition, the Church's official position was the Aristotilean Theory as modified by Ptolemy of the concentric Spheres. Hardly a "Flat" concept since they also argued that Solon's calculations "proved" the sphere. What was under debate was the argument as to what lay beyond the horizon - largely since (and as has been subsequently adequately proved!) Columbus produced a set of calculations that were less than half the Solonic ones for the diameter of the Sphere.
No doubt he intended these to show that the mystic East was close enough to reach from a Westward voyage, but here Christian Scholars challenged his calculations. As it turned out, they were right; he was only half way there!
It was Copernicus that seriously challenged the Aristotilean theory of concentric spheres, and he was a Canon of the Church. He also enjoyed considerable support and funding from that body, and it was his work that Galileo built upon after first trying to prove it wrong. In fact, the Church welcomed the change from the vision of Aristotle and Ptolemy, as their theories actually placed the Earth and Humanity at the bottom of the pile - as "tainted, flawed, and subject to all of creation!" Copernicus' new vision which elevated our planet to equal status with other heavenly bodies moved us up the ladder of creation. Nowhere does the Bible actually give any indication of how the writers actually saw its place in creation or, indeed, in the universe. Their concern was with what happened to the people and the places in which they operated. Matters such as the creation story (and if you take the trouble to look you will find that Genesis Chapter 1 is actually not a bad description of the Big Bang and Evolution in very simplistic terms) are dealt with in poetic rather than scientific terms. Why? Because it was taken from an oral tradition and was never intended to do more than explain for a nomadic people how the world came into being. Chapter 2 gives a second version of the evolution of man - and Adam and Eve means simply in Hebrew "Man" and "Woman". Again, a poetic story never intended as scientific fact - nor have the mainstream Churches promoted it as such, despite the propaganda of the Age of Enlightenment.
Equally, Darwin's theory moved mankind from being the lowest order of sentience (as was previously the case in "scientific" theory) to being the top of the heap in terms of creation and evolution. As the Theory of Evolution postulates, mankind is the pinnacle of evolution - and few thinking Churchmen have argued against that theory.
As early as the 14th Century, Church Scholars were studying anatomy and medicine, a practice much hindered by secular authorities who thought this was a ghoulish pursuit. Indeed, much of what is contained in many medical textbooks today has its origins in the "Medieval" research done by Churchmen. What the Church in this period did recognise was that the general populace did not and would not understand such deep concepts as the origins of life, the vastness of space, and the interactions of many substances - a point well proven by the witch-hunting outbursts in so-called "Enlightened" Protestant countries, often led by men of education! As more recent studies have found, these outbursts arose from the contamination of wheat and therefore bread by Ergot, a poisonous fungus which arises in wheat grown in waterlogged fields - something often avoided in areas where the Catholic Church held greater sway simply by virtue of the influence of the Monastic traditions of husbandry and study of what grew where and how best to avoid these problems.
What the protagonists of the Age of Enlightenment and their more recent propagandists such as Bertrand Russell and others of his generation have done is repeat myths generated in the white heat of the Reformation, where any argument to discredit the Catholic Church was considered a good argument, without checking their facts. Once the realities are studied in some depth, you begin to realise that these men are propagating disinformation which completely discredits their own arguments for the elevation of Human Reason as the substitute for God. This is a development of the great Victorian "Deus ex machina" theory which proposed that "The System" could be created which would ensure perpetual prosperity for all. Despite all the evidence of its failure, despite all the evidence that it cannot and will never work, its adherents continue to promote it assidiously - always attempting to undermine the message of the Gospels and of religious thinkers by constantly repeating the canards of the past.
What shame they cannot open their minds to the truth - and see that the one side compliments the other and that there is no contradiction between religion and science, only truth.
Posted by The Gray Monk at September 1, 2004 11:40 AM