Faith is the basis for Darwinist Evolution and Creation Science...First, Creation Science IS the basis for modern science.
Faith is the primary component of both Evolutionism and Creationism.
"Yes, it is a press, certainly, but a press from which shall flow in inexhaustible streams the most abundant and most marvelous liquor that has ever flowed to relieve the thirst of men. Through it, God will spread His word; a spring of pure truth shall flow from it; like a new star it shall scatter the darkness of ignorance, and cause a light hithertofore unknown to shine among men." - Johannes Gutenberg
Faith is the primary component of both Darwinism and Creationism. This post investigates the faith ingredient of science. The Creationist believes that the Word of God is authoritative. The Bible is correct when it speaks to history and accurate when it speaks to science. The Bible is God's written way of communicating to mankind, showing us the way to Heaven after this life and the way to relationship with God during this life. While Creation Science is almost entirely involved in investigating the natural world, the eyewitness account of creation by God is considered authoritative. Creation Science believes in God as Creator and the Bible as Truth. Therefore God did indeed create the Universe and all that is material existence, including time itself and all the laws and forces of nature.
Christians believe that Jesus Christ came to Earth as the Messiah and did indeed both take the sins of the world upon Himself and also conquer death and Hell by rising from the dead and, after spending some time with His followers, returned to His place with God the Father and Spirit. We find salvation in accepting Jesus' sacrifice for us and becoming new creatures, reborn within as the Spirit of God replaces the dead spirit we inherited from our ancestors.
Darwinist Science (Naturalistic Materialistic Humanism) has faith that God did NOT create and that the Bible is NOT true or of any use. All supernatural causes are arbitrarily ruled out no matter what the investigation of evidence may seem to logically conclude. Darwinists are the modern day version of the CHURCH/STATE of the Middle Ages, determined to stifle dissension and censor and hide information from the common man. Darwinists deny God and deny that God created the Universe or life or information and ignore any evidence that is uncomfortable. In fact Darwinists work very hard to censor any non-Darwinist information. The NCSE is nothing but an organization designed to censor the information students will learn. Just as the CHURCH/STATE of the Middle Ages took a hard line against the common man being allowed to read or interpret the Bible and defended axiomatic science like a herd of Musk Oxen circling around their young, Darwinists rule the worlds of academia and science and also the news and entertainment media.
Occam's Razor has been tossed in the trashcan by the modern Darwinist. History has been rewritten and evidence has been twisted until it cries out in pain, as Burke said:
“Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality.” ― Edmund Burke
Martin Luther
THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE BIRTH OF MODERN SCIENCE
The most important event in Martin Luther's life was also the spark for one of the most important events in the history of modern man and that event began perhaps the most important movement in the history of Western Civilization. The Reformation! Powered by Christians, this was the impetus for a new kind of science, a new kind of church and a new world for mankind. Not the Renaissance. A bunch of elitists making art and music, which is perfectly fine, was noteworthy but it was the Christians who remade society. Luther's actions were the fulcrum and Christian priests who believed in scientific pursuits and the education of all men were the lever that changed the Western world.
Martin Luther, a priest, was reading from the Book of Habakkuk or from Paul's quote of Habbakuk in either Romans 1 or Galatians 3. The words were life-changing even though he certainly had read them before. THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY HIS FAITH! In honor of the event I am using an older translation of the Bible (albeit published over 50 years after his death) although Luther could read Hebrew and Greek, he himself had translated the Bible into German in order to make it available to everyone in his nation.
There were several influential Christians who paved the way for Luther's pivotal assertions that would eventually put an end to the ruling paradigm of elitists who worshiped Power, Ptolemy and Pfennigs above God. The desire to worship God by investigating His world and the belief that a Logical God would make a world that could be investigated lifted the chains from the common man and ended the so-called Dark Ages. It was a line of clerics who build modern science and presented it to us and we should acknowledge their valor and vigor.
Actually learning (during the so-called Dark Ages) continued as the elites founded schools and colleges. But as the church and the ruling class began to join forces, the resulting CHURCH/STATE was a haven to some of the most ruthless and ungodly of people and philosophies. The Jesuits promoted the idea of doing evil to bring about a greater good (in the eyes of the Jesuits). In fact, when the Protestant movement/Reformation began, there was actual warfare at times between those who separated from the Holy Roman Empire and its remnants and those who wanted the old ways to continue. In short, the Renaissance was a rebirth of learning and seeking for elitists. But it was the Reformation which brought this learning to the common man as the iron rule of the elitists was broken and the world of the peasants was provided real hope of an upward path.
Modern science was born in the minds of men like Grossteste and Bacon. The axiomatic idea that the ancients knew the truth and their thoughts would rule science was backwards. Yet it was the mainstream way of thinking. Just as the Darwinist concept that science must be limited by naturalism, which is an artificial barrier to discovery today, mankind had become chained to the pronouncements of a few respected philosophers and a CHURCH/STATE that had as much resemblance to the church Jesus Christ and his followers had started as a Banana Slug has to a Monarch Butterfly. The adulterous mix of a ruling class of elites and minds closed tight as an alarmed clam caused mankind in the Western world to be full of ignorant peasants, a small class of merchants and above them all, the elitist royals and clerics and their rich relatives. People were beaten and killed for the crime of even owning a Bible. Islam became an impetus for a horde of invaders seeking to conquer the world and impose their belief system on the West. As we know, the Crusades did defeat the Islamists and logic won over mainstream beliefs back then. Funny, isn't it, that in some ways we are finding the world beginning to look a bit like the Middle Ages again?
Luther's 1534 Bible
“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”
Yes, the likelihood that Noah and his sons came from a highly advanced society is strong. The very few artifacts found in coal include metals we do not know how to reproduce. However, imagine that we experienced the same thing. All of the machines and infrastructure and EVERYTHING gone, replaced by a world of mudrock and mounds of vegetation and muck. You step out into a world where all the things you know how to operate are gone. So it was their lot to make things of wood and stone. Yet their descendents made amazingly designed buildings and devices, some of which modern engineers still cannot accomplish with all the technology of our times.
Men like Aristarchus (310 - 230 B.C.) and Aristotle (384 - 322 B.C.) actually used a form of the scientific method. Not only did mankind know the Earth was a globe long before Christ (and this was written in the Bible in Isaiah 40:22 even before that) but Aristarchus was able to determine the relative sizes of the Sun, Moon and Earth. Eratosthenes (276 - 195 B.C.) used geometry to determine the circumference of the Earth and the tilt of the Earth's axis. His Sieve was a means of calculating prime numbers. Archimedes (287-212 B.C) was a brilliant scientist and inventor of his day, well known for his use of calculus and discovery of hydrostatics as well as inventing the Archimedes Screw and an actual death ray. Much like a Da Vinci of his day, he was called upon to invent weapons of war and had ideas far ahead of his time. In fact many ancients in India and China invented marvelous machines and discovered important scientific principles as well.
Unfortunately, the philosophers Aristotle, Plato and Socrates, although brilliant, led mankind to adopt an axiomatic view of science. Ptolemy's view of the Solar System was accepted as dogma and axiomatic science was adopted by the mainstream rulers and thinkers. To excerpt from Coppedge's fantastic online science history site:
The Early Christian Roots of Modern Science
Now that we have seen how the underlying philosophical assumptions essential to a scientific outlook were most exhibited within a Christian culture, how specifically did modern science get started in Europe? It helps to put some personality to these otherwise abstract concepts. In this section, we wish to introduce some key thinkers, medieval to Renaissance, that were prologue to the scientific age.
The so-called Dark Ages were not entirely dark The derogatory term “Dark Ages” is partly a construct of the Enlightenment that wished to distance itself from the Scholastic philosophers, but there were bright lights of scientific thought that antedated that so-called Age of Reason. Let’s take a moment to review the interval from the time of Christ to 1000 A.D., the beginning of our scientific timeline.
From 1 to 1000 A.D.
The First Millennium was a turbulent age. It is difficult for science to flourish without some political and economic stability. During the first 1000 years after Christ, the world saw a decaying Roman Empire split into two, and eventually sacked by barbaric tribes. For the first three and a half centuries, Christians were a despised and persecuted group, tortured by waves of intense persecution, seeking to keep alive the light of Christ’s message of salvation while huddled in dark catacombs and other secret places of worship. When Constantine finally ended the persecution in 313 A.D. and made Christianity the state religion, Christians suffered an even worse threat: the corruption of their core beliefs. It become increasingly common for pastors and teachers to compromise the integrity of Christian doctrine through political ambition and personal greed. Christendom slowly became an unhealthy mix of Christian and pagan traditions.
The Eastern church fell to the Muslims, while the Western church became, by the middle ages, a ruthless political power, exercising its domination over governments and peasants alike, often with utter disregard for the simplicity of the teachings of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, while the populace became more ignorant of the Scriptures, church leaders grew increasingly fond of Greek philosophy. Individual curiosity about the world and its workings were suppressed on two fronts: the necessity to subsist, and the fear of transgressing official church dogma. There was one institution that kept the flame of Scriptural truth from flickering out: the monasteries.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gutenberg's press
Quick timeline of the development of science as a discipline:
1230-45 - Robert Grossteste's campaign for literacy, his advocacy for freedom from Papal authority and the study of nature as a Godly pursuit make the Bishop of Lincoln and Oxford theologian crucial to the future of science. He actually devised a scientific method of study that was the opposite of the axiomatic way of thinking held by the ruling class.
1266 - Roger Bacon, Grossteste's protege, proposes an encyclopedia of knowledge be made and finds himself expected to produce it. Two years later he publishes a treatise on experimental science. His fellow Bacon, Sir Francis, now gets credit for the formulation of the Scientific Method, but Grossteste and Roger Bacon formulated it in basic form first.
1350-80 - Nicholas of Oresme, the "Einstein of the Middle Ages", published works that were seminal to the later work of Descartes, Newton and Galieo (in fact Galileo simply copied the earlier scholar's work is his Discorsi in a blatant act of plagiarism).
1450 - Gutenberg's printing press begins making Bibles. The first modern press produced the Gutenberg Bible and therefore was instrumental in bringing literacy to the common man. While it was not technically the first printing press, it was the first efficient press and it allowed the Bible to be printed in quantity rather than laboriously hand-copied.
1517 - Luther posts his 95 Theses, charges against THE CHURCH/STATE including decrying the practice of indulgences. The mainstream ruling paradigm was challenged thereby.
1521 - Luther is excommunicated. The two events (the theses and his excommunication) begin the modern Protestant movement. Luther, John Calvin and others formed church organizations which taught that the Bible rather than decrees of ruling priests had the authority.
1543 - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies is published as the aged Nicolai Copernicus lay on his deathbed. The publication signaled the beginning of the end of Geocentricism and Axiomatic science as well.
"Roger Bacon
Scholastic methodology also violated one of the fundamental precepts of Platonic humanism, that studying the world as it is rather than as we think it should be (or as other people think it is) can lead us to knowledge of God. Roger Bacon (ca. 1214-1294) understood this far better than most people in his era." - Christians Who Changed Their World (part 14)
We could talk of Da Vinci, Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Boyle, Kelvin, Maxwell and so many other Christians and Theists who advanced science from simply an aspect of philosophy to a field of study onto itself, holding within it multiple disciplines. We eventually come to Francis Bacon's Scientific Methodology:
In the deductive method, logic is the authority. If a statement follows logically from the axioms of the system, it must be true. In the scientific method, observation of nature is the authority. If an idea conflicts with what happens in nature, the idea must be changed or abandoned.
Here is a diagram that attempts to depict the scientific (inductive) method. It is oversimplified and incomplete, but...
The fatal flaw of Darwinism is the refusal to understand that the Supernatural MUST be superior to the natural and therefore, although only the natural can be investigated, the Supernatural must be considered as a cause or an answer to the questions that come from investigation. Why does a football drop back down to Earth after a punter kicks it many yards above the ground and many yards down the field? Gravity. Why are organisms so intricately and amazingly designed? They had a Designer! We can only investigate the natural and only right now. We need historical records to tell us of the past and imaginations to see the future in uncertain terms. We can only investigate in the here and now. Science cannot say exactly how gravity works but it is accepted. Science cannot say how God created, so He is not accepted. Do you see the dichotomy? Do you see the hypocrisy?
The Laws of Thermodynamics and the Law of Biogenesis preclude Darwinism from being correct. Does that stop them? Nope. They just decide that the Laws are no longer laws or that they do not apply to their pet hypothesis. There is no piece of evidence that will convince a Darwinist. Because it is not his mind that leads him. It is faith. Faith that there is no God and that the Bible is not authoritative and that natural causes are the only causes that can be considered. They do not see all the miracles that Darwinism requires as miracles because they are blind to truth. *Poof* made the Universe, life, time, information and scientific laws. Darwinism depends on miracles without the God required to power them.
So Christians were the primary force behind freeing the Western world from tyranny but also freeing the scientific mind from axiomatic to investigative thinking. Most of the influential men who advanced science in the Middle Ages were priests, for priests and rulers were the people who were educated and given access to books. You will find very few great scientists from Victor of Hugo to Pasteur and Lister who were NOT Christians or at the very least Theists.
But a second Dark Age was ushered in by the publication of works by Thomas Malthus, Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin. A world of elitists hungry for an intellectual excuse to abandon any responsibility to God and anxious to establish a Humanist society led to works authored by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and eventually Adolf Hitler. Eugenics was invented by Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, and it has led to world-wide baby murdering on demand and even by demand. Fascism and Communism are Socialist schemes that produced the three bloodthirstiest nations of the 20th Century, the Soviet Union, Red China and Nazi Germany. Fascist Socialism has infested the United States to the point that Jefferson and Franklin would hardly recognize us.
"Yes, it is a press, certainly, but a press from which shall flow in inexhaustible streams the most abundant and most marvelous liquor that has ever flowed to relieve the thirst of men. Through it, God will spread His word; a spring of pure truth shall flow from it; like a new star it shall scatter the darkness of ignorance, and cause a light hithertofore unknown to shine among men." - Johannes Gutenberg
Faith is the primary component of both Darwinism and Creationism. This post investigates the faith ingredient of science. The Creationist believes that the Word of God is authoritative. The Bible is correct when it speaks to history and accurate when it speaks to science. The Bible is God's written way of communicating to mankind, showing us the way to Heaven after this life and the way to relationship with God during this life. While Creation Science is almost entirely involved in investigating the natural world, the eyewitness account of creation by God is considered authoritative. Creation Science believes in God as Creator and the Bible as Truth. Therefore God did indeed create the Universe and all that is material existence, including time itself and all the laws and forces of nature.
Christians believe that Jesus Christ came to Earth as the Messiah and did indeed both take the sins of the world upon Himself and also conquer death and Hell by rising from the dead and, after spending some time with His followers, returned to His place with God the Father and Spirit. We find salvation in accepting Jesus' sacrifice for us and becoming new creatures, reborn within as the Spirit of God replaces the dead spirit we inherited from our ancestors.
Darwinist Science (Naturalistic Materialistic Humanism) has faith that God did NOT create and that the Bible is NOT true or of any use. All supernatural causes are arbitrarily ruled out no matter what the investigation of evidence may seem to logically conclude. Darwinists are the modern day version of the CHURCH/STATE of the Middle Ages, determined to stifle dissension and censor and hide information from the common man. Darwinists deny God and deny that God created the Universe or life or information and ignore any evidence that is uncomfortable. In fact Darwinists work very hard to censor any non-Darwinist information. The NCSE is nothing but an organization designed to censor the information students will learn. Just as the CHURCH/STATE of the Middle Ages took a hard line against the common man being allowed to read or interpret the Bible and defended axiomatic science like a herd of Musk Oxen circling around their young, Darwinists rule the worlds of academia and science and also the news and entertainment media.
Occam's Razor has been tossed in the trashcan by the modern Darwinist. History has been rewritten and evidence has been twisted until it cries out in pain, as Burke said:
“Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality.” ― Edmund Burke
THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE BIRTH OF MODERN SCIENCE
The most important event in Martin Luther's life was also the spark for one of the most important events in the history of modern man and that event began perhaps the most important movement in the history of Western Civilization. The Reformation! Powered by Christians, this was the impetus for a new kind of science, a new kind of church and a new world for mankind. Not the Renaissance. A bunch of elitists making art and music, which is perfectly fine, was noteworthy but it was the Christians who remade society. Luther's actions were the fulcrum and Christian priests who believed in scientific pursuits and the education of all men were the lever that changed the Western world.
Martin Luther, a priest, was reading from the Book of Habakkuk or from Paul's quote of Habbakuk in either Romans 1 or Galatians 3. The words were life-changing even though he certainly had read them before. THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY HIS FAITH! In honor of the event I am using an older translation of the Bible (albeit published over 50 years after his death) although Luther could read Hebrew and Greek, he himself had translated the Bible into German in order to make it available to everyone in his nation.
Habakkuk 2:4 - 1599 Geneva Bible (GNV)
"Behold, he that lifteth up himself, his mind is not upright in him, but the just shall live by his faith"
THE
CHURCH had become a something quite unlike the church. THE CHURCH
incorporated the rulers of nations, cities, all the rich and influential
families into an unrecognizable tyrannical entity that was a confusing
amalgam of greedy and evil people mixed in with the devout and earnest,
all in positions of leadership of some kind. Some of the greatest
philosophers and scientists of the era were priests. But rape and
infidelity and of course the infamous indulgences were a curse on the
monstrous overstuffed behemoth THE CHURCH had become. Indulgences were
money paid to priests in order to "buy" their sins or the sins of a
passed-away relative of other love ones, supposedly getting them out
of hell or purgatory in exchange for filthy lucre. It was the CHURCH/STATE and it was tyrannical, especially to the peasants who were completely at the mercy of their rulers.
Such practices were abhorrent to Luther but it was a moment of sudden clarity when he read the words "... the just shall live by his faith."
Luther grasped the concept. People do NOT receive God's mercy from paying priests or having priests pray for you or giving massive amounts of money to a church. Faith in the redeeming work of CHRIST is the one and only way to peace with God.
The beauty and grandeur of this idea finally brought Luther to the point of presenting his 95 theses to church leadership. It is unlikely that he actually nailed them to the door of the Wittenburg church, which would be counterintuitive to his purpose. He wanted to awaken the rulers to their grave errors which were counter to scripture. His attack on the non-Christian behavior of church leaders and their cohorts led to his eventual condemnation and excommunication from THE CHURCH. But Luther's actions were the spearhead of the Protestant movement which brought about the Reformation.
Luther grasped the concept. People do NOT receive God's mercy from paying priests or having priests pray for you or giving massive amounts of money to a church. Faith in the redeeming work of CHRIST is the one and only way to peace with God.
The beauty and grandeur of this idea finally brought Luther to the point of presenting his 95 theses to church leadership. It is unlikely that he actually nailed them to the door of the Wittenburg church, which would be counterintuitive to his purpose. He wanted to awaken the rulers to their grave errors which were counter to scripture. His attack on the non-Christian behavior of church leaders and their cohorts led to his eventual condemnation and excommunication from THE CHURCH. But Luther's actions were the spearhead of the Protestant movement which brought about the Reformation.
There were several influential Christians who paved the way for Luther's pivotal assertions that would eventually put an end to the ruling paradigm of elitists who worshiped Power, Ptolemy and Pfennigs above God. The desire to worship God by investigating His world and the belief that a Logical God would make a world that could be investigated lifted the chains from the common man and ended the so-called Dark Ages. It was a line of clerics who build modern science and presented it to us and we should acknowledge their valor and vigor.
Actually learning (during the so-called Dark Ages) continued as the elites founded schools and colleges. But as the church and the ruling class began to join forces, the resulting CHURCH/STATE was a haven to some of the most ruthless and ungodly of people and philosophies. The Jesuits promoted the idea of doing evil to bring about a greater good (in the eyes of the Jesuits). In fact, when the Protestant movement/Reformation began, there was actual warfare at times between those who separated from the Holy Roman Empire and its remnants and those who wanted the old ways to continue. In short, the Renaissance was a rebirth of learning and seeking for elitists. But it was the Reformation which brought this learning to the common man as the iron rule of the elitists was broken and the world of the peasants was provided real hope of an upward path.
Modern science was born in the minds of men like Grossteste and Bacon. The axiomatic idea that the ancients knew the truth and their thoughts would rule science was backwards. Yet it was the mainstream way of thinking. Just as the Darwinist concept that science must be limited by naturalism, which is an artificial barrier to discovery today, mankind had become chained to the pronouncements of a few respected philosophers and a CHURCH/STATE that had as much resemblance to the church Jesus Christ and his followers had started as a Banana Slug has to a Monarch Butterfly. The adulterous mix of a ruling class of elites and minds closed tight as an alarmed clam caused mankind in the Western world to be full of ignorant peasants, a small class of merchants and above them all, the elitist royals and clerics and their rich relatives. People were beaten and killed for the crime of even owning a Bible. Islam became an impetus for a horde of invaders seeking to conquer the world and impose their belief system on the West. As we know, the Crusades did defeat the Islamists and logic won over mainstream beliefs back then. Funny, isn't it, that in some ways we are finding the world beginning to look a bit like the Middle Ages again?
Luther's 1534 Bible
“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”
―
Edmund Burke
Yes, the likelihood that Noah and his sons came from a highly advanced society is strong. The very few artifacts found in coal include metals we do not know how to reproduce. However, imagine that we experienced the same thing. All of the machines and infrastructure and EVERYTHING gone, replaced by a world of mudrock and mounds of vegetation and muck. You step out into a world where all the things you know how to operate are gone. So it was their lot to make things of wood and stone. Yet their descendents made amazingly designed buildings and devices, some of which modern engineers still cannot accomplish with all the technology of our times.
Men like Aristarchus (310 - 230 B.C.) and Aristotle (384 - 322 B.C.) actually used a form of the scientific method. Not only did mankind know the Earth was a globe long before Christ (and this was written in the Bible in Isaiah 40:22 even before that) but Aristarchus was able to determine the relative sizes of the Sun, Moon and Earth. Eratosthenes (276 - 195 B.C.) used geometry to determine the circumference of the Earth and the tilt of the Earth's axis. His Sieve was a means of calculating prime numbers. Archimedes (287-212 B.C) was a brilliant scientist and inventor of his day, well known for his use of calculus and discovery of hydrostatics as well as inventing the Archimedes Screw and an actual death ray. Much like a Da Vinci of his day, he was called upon to invent weapons of war and had ideas far ahead of his time. In fact many ancients in India and China invented marvelous machines and discovered important scientific principles as well.
Unfortunately, the philosophers Aristotle, Plato and Socrates, although brilliant, led mankind to adopt an axiomatic view of science. Ptolemy's view of the Solar System was accepted as dogma and axiomatic science was adopted by the mainstream rulers and thinkers. To excerpt from Coppedge's fantastic online science history site:
The Early Christian Roots of Modern Science
Now that we have seen how the underlying philosophical assumptions essential to a scientific outlook were most exhibited within a Christian culture, how specifically did modern science get started in Europe? It helps to put some personality to these otherwise abstract concepts. In this section, we wish to introduce some key thinkers, medieval to Renaissance, that were prologue to the scientific age.
The so-called Dark Ages were not entirely dark The derogatory term “Dark Ages” is partly a construct of the Enlightenment that wished to distance itself from the Scholastic philosophers, but there were bright lights of scientific thought that antedated that so-called Age of Reason. Let’s take a moment to review the interval from the time of Christ to 1000 A.D., the beginning of our scientific timeline.
From 1 to 1000 A.D.
The First Millennium was a turbulent age. It is difficult for science to flourish without some political and economic stability. During the first 1000 years after Christ, the world saw a decaying Roman Empire split into two, and eventually sacked by barbaric tribes. For the first three and a half centuries, Christians were a despised and persecuted group, tortured by waves of intense persecution, seeking to keep alive the light of Christ’s message of salvation while huddled in dark catacombs and other secret places of worship. When Constantine finally ended the persecution in 313 A.D. and made Christianity the state religion, Christians suffered an even worse threat: the corruption of their core beliefs. It become increasingly common for pastors and teachers to compromise the integrity of Christian doctrine through political ambition and personal greed. Christendom slowly became an unhealthy mix of Christian and pagan traditions.
The Eastern church fell to the Muslims, while the Western church became, by the middle ages, a ruthless political power, exercising its domination over governments and peasants alike, often with utter disregard for the simplicity of the teachings of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, while the populace became more ignorant of the Scriptures, church leaders grew increasingly fond of Greek philosophy. Individual curiosity about the world and its workings were suppressed on two fronts: the necessity to subsist, and the fear of transgressing official church dogma. There was one institution that kept the flame of Scriptural truth from flickering out: the monasteries.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Quick timeline of the development of science as a discipline:
1230-45 - Robert Grossteste's campaign for literacy, his advocacy for freedom from Papal authority and the study of nature as a Godly pursuit make the Bishop of Lincoln and Oxford theologian crucial to the future of science. He actually devised a scientific method of study that was the opposite of the axiomatic way of thinking held by the ruling class.
1266 - Roger Bacon, Grossteste's protege, proposes an encyclopedia of knowledge be made and finds himself expected to produce it. Two years later he publishes a treatise on experimental science. His fellow Bacon, Sir Francis, now gets credit for the formulation of the Scientific Method, but Grossteste and Roger Bacon formulated it in basic form first.
1350-80 - Nicholas of Oresme, the "Einstein of the Middle Ages", published works that were seminal to the later work of Descartes, Newton and Galieo (in fact Galileo simply copied the earlier scholar's work is his Discorsi in a blatant act of plagiarism).
1450 - Gutenberg's printing press begins making Bibles. The first modern press produced the Gutenberg Bible and therefore was instrumental in bringing literacy to the common man. While it was not technically the first printing press, it was the first efficient press and it allowed the Bible to be printed in quantity rather than laboriously hand-copied.
1517 - Luther posts his 95 Theses, charges against THE CHURCH/STATE including decrying the practice of indulgences. The mainstream ruling paradigm was challenged thereby.
1521 - Luther is excommunicated. The two events (the theses and his excommunication) begin the modern Protestant movement. Luther, John Calvin and others formed church organizations which taught that the Bible rather than decrees of ruling priests had the authority.
1543 - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies is published as the aged Nicolai Copernicus lay on his deathbed. The publication signaled the beginning of the end of Geocentricism and Axiomatic science as well.
"Roger Bacon
Scholastic methodology also violated one of the fundamental precepts of Platonic humanism, that studying the world as it is rather than as we think it should be (or as other people think it is) can lead us to knowledge of God. Roger Bacon (ca. 1214-1294) understood this far better than most people in his era." - Christians Who Changed Their World (part 14)
We could talk of Da Vinci, Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Boyle, Kelvin, Maxwell and so many other Christians and Theists who advanced science from simply an aspect of philosophy to a field of study onto itself, holding within it multiple disciplines. We eventually come to Francis Bacon's Scientific Methodology:
Inductive vs. DeductiveMethod
The inductive method (usually called the scientific method) is the deductive method "turned upside down". The deductive method starts with a few true statements (axioms) with the goal of proving many true statements (theorems) that logically follow from them. The inductive method starts with many observations of nature, with the goal of finding a few, powerful statements about how nature works (laws and theories).In the deductive method, logic is the authority. If a statement follows logically from the axioms of the system, it must be true. In the scientific method, observation of nature is the authority. If an idea conflicts with what happens in nature, the idea must be changed or abandoned.
Here is a diagram that attempts to depict the scientific (inductive) method. It is oversimplified and incomplete, but...
The fatal flaw of Darwinism is the refusal to understand that the Supernatural MUST be superior to the natural and therefore, although only the natural can be investigated, the Supernatural must be considered as a cause or an answer to the questions that come from investigation. Why does a football drop back down to Earth after a punter kicks it many yards above the ground and many yards down the field? Gravity. Why are organisms so intricately and amazingly designed? They had a Designer! We can only investigate the natural and only right now. We need historical records to tell us of the past and imaginations to see the future in uncertain terms. We can only investigate in the here and now. Science cannot say exactly how gravity works but it is accepted. Science cannot say how God created, so He is not accepted. Do you see the dichotomy? Do you see the hypocrisy?
The Laws of Thermodynamics and the Law of Biogenesis preclude Darwinism from being correct. Does that stop them? Nope. They just decide that the Laws are no longer laws or that they do not apply to their pet hypothesis. There is no piece of evidence that will convince a Darwinist. Because it is not his mind that leads him. It is faith. Faith that there is no God and that the Bible is not authoritative and that natural causes are the only causes that can be considered. They do not see all the miracles that Darwinism requires as miracles because they are blind to truth. *Poof* made the Universe, life, time, information and scientific laws. Darwinism depends on miracles without the God required to power them.
So Christians were the primary force behind freeing the Western world from tyranny but also freeing the scientific mind from axiomatic to investigative thinking. Most of the influential men who advanced science in the Middle Ages were priests, for priests and rulers were the people who were educated and given access to books. You will find very few great scientists from Victor of Hugo to Pasteur and Lister who were NOT Christians or at the very least Theists.
But a second Dark Age was ushered in by the publication of works by Thomas Malthus, Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin. A world of elitists hungry for an intellectual excuse to abandon any responsibility to God and anxious to establish a Humanist society led to works authored by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and eventually Adolf Hitler. Eugenics was invented by Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, and it has led to world-wide baby murdering on demand and even by demand. Fascism and Communism are Socialist schemes that produced the three bloodthirstiest nations of the 20th Century, the Soviet Union, Red China and Nazi Germany. Fascist Socialism has infested the United States to the point that Jefferson and Franklin would hardly recognize us.
SING A NEW SONG
by Sir Francis Bacon
O sing a new song, to our God above,
Avoid profane ones, ’tis for holy choir:
Let Israel sing song of holy love
To him that made them, with their hearts on fire:
Let Zion’s sons lift up their voice, and sing
Carols and anthems to their heavenly king.
Let not your voice alone his praise forth tell,
But move withal, and praise him in the dance;
Cymbals and harps, let them be tuned well,
’Tis he that doth the poor’s estate advance:
Do this not only on the solemn days,
But on your secret beds your spirits raise.
O let the saints bear in their mouth his praise,
And a two-edged sword drawn in their hand,
Therewith for to revenge the former days,
Upon all nations, that their zeal withstand;
To bind their kings in chains of iron strong,
And manacle their nobles for their wrong.
Expect the time, for ’tis decreed in heaven,
Such honor shall unto his saints be given.
by Sir Francis Bacon
O sing a new song, to our God above,
Avoid profane ones, ’tis for holy choir:
Let Israel sing song of holy love
To him that made them, with their hearts on fire:
Let Zion’s sons lift up their voice, and sing
Carols and anthems to their heavenly king.
Let not your voice alone his praise forth tell,
But move withal, and praise him in the dance;
Cymbals and harps, let them be tuned well,
’Tis he that doth the poor’s estate advance:
Do this not only on the solemn days,
But on your secret beds your spirits raise.
O let the saints bear in their mouth his praise,
And a two-edged sword drawn in their hand,
Therewith for to revenge the former days,
Upon all nations, that their zeal withstand;
To bind their kings in chains of iron strong,
And manacle their nobles for their wrong.
Expect the time, for ’tis decreed in heaven,
Such honor shall unto his saints be given.