Taiwan a "Missionary Graveyard"

almas_john · September 12, 2008, 11:24am

Chris wrote: [quote]But then we can also see how much Christianity was shaped by Greek, Roman, Jewish and Germanic cultures.[/quote]
Absolutely. It’s a pity our education systems don’t devote more time to this rich heritage.

bob · September 12, 2008, 12:05pm

Anyway, everyone knows there are two gods, one for big noses and one for Chinese people and the Chinese one is older so I don’t see what the problem is.

It is also a fact that hollywood movie scripts are all written originally in Chinese and translated to English so that the cast can read them, that is why the Chinese subtitles are always correct and so on.

whitetiger · September 12, 2008, 12:21pm

This is a free country my friend. I’m not religious, but don’t feel offended or pissed off by these people being here. Would you prefer an environment more like China? So by your logic the local folk religions, Taoism and Buddhism should also be banned?

Screaming_Jesus · September 12, 2008, 1:54pm

I recall reading somewhere (a history of the Dutch in Taiwan) that the Dutch found Chinese to be particularly resistant to their missionaries. Tomas says one convert per missionary over two years, and if only 15 % of these actually stay in the church after baptism…well, I guess this means that things haven’t changed so much.

So those of you who have been fretting about the destruction of Chinese culture thanks to Christianity–your concerns are obviously misplaced. Now go wage a crusade against pop culture and the mass media.

Oh yes–the Roman Catholic Church allows Chinese people to venerate their ancestors (but not to worship other gods). The allowance is for doing bai-bai, not for joining the Mormons in their unspeakable temple ordinances.

Fortigurn · September 12, 2008, 5:06pm

Yeah, and it is. But it would be the same if you converted an Englishman, Australian, South African, etc.

Only when they are actively involved in enforcing change. Otherwise, the indigenous cultures are simply changing in response to new influences, as they have for thousands upon thousands of years.

We do tend to retain in the West the quaint 19th century ‘Noble Savage’ myth which sees indigenous cultures as priceless artifacts which must never be altered from the state in which we found them (even by the people to whom they belong), but of course this is just ingrained cultural prejudice and the subtle conviction that ‘darky boy’ or ‘Mr Chinaman’ is pathetically incapable of choosing to change either his culture or his personal epistemology as a result of his own free will. He can only change it if ‘The White Man’ compels him to by force.

All cultures change over time as a result of internal and external influences. When they change as a result of the society’s members making the choice to do so, that’s not only natural it’s inevitable. Goodness, what next? Complaints that Chinese girls in Taipei wear jeans more often than qipaos?

The Jesuits and Dominicans and South America are excellent examples, because theyr’e examples of enforced cultural change. But I don’t see any evidence of that in Taiwan.

Do you think it’s ‘cultural genocide’ when UN and WHO health workers teach people in ‘underprivileged areas’ (or whatever they’re called these days), how personal hygiene is far more effective than their local witchdoctor? Was it ‘cultural genocide’ when advances in science chased away the shadows of European supersition, replacing the evil eye with germ theory?

You can’t kill a tribe’s belief in one set of gods and replace it with another without the members of the tribe making the independent rational decision to do so. In other words, you didn’t kill their beliefs, they did. If you want to call cultural change ‘cultural genocide’, I suppose you can, but that would mean every generation of every society is guilty.

Hmmm, perhaps we should tell the Australian Aborigines this. It might stop them making a fuss over their ‘sacred sites’ which the secular government could put to the far more rational use of generating vast sums by way of tourism. Or perhaps we should tell this to people like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, both of whom advocate telling everyone what they should believe, and to give up what they have believed for centuries and millennia.

[quote=“alidarbac”]This clause jumped out at me.

“Aww, shucks. This place is no longer mired in abject poverty and not susceptible to bartering away their native beliefs in exchange for vitally needed medicines and food. Gosh darn it.”[/quote]

That’s not actually what it said. It’s repeating exactly what Christians in Western countries say, that people in prosperous (or ‘prosperity oriented’), societies are highly resistant to religious conversion. Independent studies in the West have confirmed this over the years.

Cosmology: On the basis of the Christian cosmology, the 6th century Christian John Philoponus singlehandedly overturned the idiotic Aristotelian cosmology which had finally strangled Greek science to death, and laid the foundation for the modern Western scientific continuum. [1]

Of course, the Christian concept of the ‘two books’ (one being the Bible and one being the natural creation), led to a regular harmonization of religion and science, which permitted the modern Western scientific tradition to emerge from within Christian Europe despite the occasional opposition of despotic Christian leaders, whereas in other religious environments (such as Islam), science enjoyed only a brief ‘golden age’ before being completely killed off by religious extremism (Muslim science was dead by the 15th century, though Muslim conquests, political power, and economic prosperity continued to rise until the late 17th).

Of course we all know the Chinese managed to get nowhere near the modern scientific tradition, despite having all the sociological, cultural, religious, political, and economic advantages which historians of science suggest are necessary for the development of a successful scientific continuum.

Medical theory: Due to pagan Rome outlawing autopsies and the dissection of the human body, Roman medical science was stuck with Galen and his wacky ideas, derived from dissecting Barbary apes and saying ‘Well they’re probably the same as humans, they look the same’.

Christianity had no prohibitions against autopsy and dissection, and it was in the medieval era (supposedly during the ‘Dark Ages’), that legislation was passed requiring that phsycians be given a minimum quota of human bodies to dissect for research. The result was an explosive revolution in the understanding of the human body, and the rapid overturn of many of Galen’s unfortunate errors.

When it came to sanitation and hygiene, once again Aristotle is the enemy. His odd ideas prevented for centuries the development of a formal germ theory within Western medical science, and for centuries the only medical benefits which the Western medical tradition accrued were through the Jewish and Arabic traditions, drawing on the health and hygiene practices of the Law of Moses. [2]

The modern Western medical tradition grew out of the health and hygiene principles laid down by the Law of Moses, and extrapolated by both Jewish and Christian physicians. Christians were of course instrumental in arguing that mental illnesses had medical (rather than supernatural), causes, as early as the 8th century. The medical revolution in this area was brought about by Christian expositors, and trickled slowly into medical science.

Unfortunately the rationalist era inhibited this revolution, because it insisted on physical evidence to verify the arguments of the theologians, and the science of the day just wasn’t able to present that kind of evidence for some time. This was an odd case of theology overtaking science and having to wait for science to catch up (and not for the first time). [3]

Advances in jurisprudence: Christian lawyers and laymen such as Johnnes Weyer (1563-77), Johann Matthaus Meyfart (1583), Reginald Scot (1584), Cornelius Loos (1592), Anton Praetorius (1597), Hugo Grotius (1609, 1627), John Cotta (1624), Richard Bernard (1627), Friedrich Spee von Lagenfield (1631), John Wagstaffe (1669), Balthasar Bekker (1691), Robert Calef (1693-1700), John Powell (1711), and Francis Hutchinson (1720), argued powerfully on Christian grounds for the reformation of judicial processes and sentences, including the abolition of torture and confessions under duress, the institution of due process, and rules establishing the credibility of witness testimony. These were all a vast improvement over the pagan Roman law inherited from the old empire, which continued to influence Europe right up to the 20th century.
The end of slavery: The Christian track record on slavery is not what most people think. It’s no exaggeration to say that Christianity brought an end to slavery in the Roman empire, and that if the Law of Moses and the principles of the early Christians had been upheld by the early Western settlers of what became the USA, the scourge of ‘New World’ slavery could never have arisen.

I could write more, but this list will do for now. Anyway, it’s after 1am and this post is already too long for most people to read.

No, you can forget about the Greeks and the Golden Rule. Christianity inherited the Golden Rule from Judaism, which is a little older than the Greeks (who never really understood ethics anyway).

I’ll accept a few of these. However, Christianity isn’t responsible for these:

Sin, Guilt: both preceded Christianity by thousands of years, and appear in cultures all over the world (they already existed all through Europe wherever Christianity went)
Pederast Priests: I don’t think you can attribute this to Christianity
Hell: inherited by a certain strain of Christianity, but the idea did not originate with Christianity (it was adopted from the Greeks)
Satan: again, inherited by a certain strain of Christianity, but the idea did not originate with Christianity (it was adopted from the Persians and Greeks)
The Middle Ages: not sure how Christianity is responsible for the Middle Ages, but I’d love to say Christianity can take responsibility for this groundbreaking era in the Western scientific continuum
The flat Earth: alas this was a pagan idea (yes, held even by a number of the Greeks), which certain early Christians inherited (again, from the Greeks). It was held by a small number of Christians until around the early medieval era, when it promptly disappeared.

Hey, let’s do a quick historical survey of some lesser known facts (as opposed to the ones we all know):

640-545 BC: The Greek philosopher and mathematician Thales of Miletus states that the earth is flat

611-547 BC: The Greek mathemetician Anaximander of Miletus believes that the earth is convex, with a flat surface

525-? BC: The Greek mathemetician Anaximenes of Miletus states that the earth is flat

497-428 BC: The Greek philosopher Anaxagoras of Klazomenae states that the earth is flat

450-420 BC: Leukippos of Abdera states that the earth is flat

99-55 BC: The Roman philosopher Lucretius states that the earth is flat

480-526 AD: Boethius (Roman Catholic), believed that the earth is a sphere

560-636 AD: Isidore of Seville (Roman Catholic bishop), believed that the earth is a sphere

673-735 AD: Beda (Roman Catholic monk), believed that the earth is a sphere

745-784 AD: Virgil of Salzburg (Roman Catholic bishop), believed that the earth is a sphere

And so on.

True. Alas that it was shaped by the Greeks (who bequeathed it an immortal soul, hell, demons, an idiotic cosmology and a totally wrong medical tradition), the Romans (who bequeathed it unethical concepts of jurisprudence and a systematically flawed concept of church and state), and the Germans (who bequeathed it an unfortunate set of primitive supersitious concepts which resulted after centuries of fomentation in the witch hunt panics, among other evils). At least the Jewish influence was both benign and constructive.

[quote=“Screaming Jesus”]I recall reading somewhere (a history of the Dutch in Taiwan) that the Dutch found Chinese to be particularly resistant to their missionaries. Tomas says one convert per missionary over two years, and if only 15 % of these actually stay in the church after baptism…well, I guess this means that things haven’t changed so much.

So those of you who have been fretting about the destruction of Chinese culture thanks to Christianity–your concerns are obviously misplaced. Now go wage a crusade against pop culture and the mass media.[/quote]

A very sane post in the midst of some very muddled thinking. I don’t see anyone here complaining that the vast majority of Taiwanese belong to a religion imported from India (Buddhism), and that the Buddhists are the most prolific, visible, and effective (or ‘aggressive’, depending on your point of view), missionaries in the country.

Similarly, where’s the outcry over the obvious conquest of Chinese culture in Taiwan by Western pop culture?

Footnotes

[1]: Christianity and cosmology

[quote]'The Greek concept of God caused a deep confusion between cosmology and theology and was a dead-end to science, as we know it in our time.

The Judeo-Christian God provides the ground upon which a scientific culture can be pursued. This is a fact not well enough appreciated in our time.’

John McKenna, article ‘John Philoponus, Sixth Century Alexandrian Grammarian, Christian Theologian and Scientific Philosopher’, Quodlibet Journal, Volume 5, Number 1, January 2003[/quote]

[quote]‘However, of greatest important is Philoponus’ cosmology, based upon his monotheism. Believing that heaven and earth were both created by God ex nihilo he vehemently attacked Aristotle’s assumptions with regard to the eternity of the universe and its dichotomy into a heavenly and sublunary region.’

John McKenna, article ‘John Philoponus, Sixth Century Alexandrian Grammarian, Christian Theologian and Scientific Philosopher’, Quodlibet Journal, Volume 5, Number 1, January, 2003[/quote]

[quote]'Philoponus’s application of Christian theology to physics prefigured a new era in science. The Alexandrian scholar was the first to combine scientific cosmology (the study of the nature of the universe) with monotheism and the Christian doctrine of
creation.

In doing so, Philoponus anticipated not only the findings but also the methods of modern science.’

‘Philoponus’ replies anticipated the great Renaissance scientists Galileo (1564-1642) and Simon Stevin (1548-1620).’

Dan Graves, ‘Aristotle’s Earliest Creationist Critic’, 1998[/quote]

[2]: Law of Moses, health and hygiene:

[quote]Moses has been characterised as the greatest sanitary engineer that the world has ever seen. His doctrines laid down in that fine treatise on hygiene, the book of Leviticus, could be summed up by the objects of sanitation today—pure food, pure water, pure air, pure bodies, and pure dwellings.

R. H. Major, ‘A History of Medicine’, [b]1954[/b][/quote]

[quote]Among the physicians of classical antiquity we find no consistent view of transmission of infection by contact. Indeed the whole idea of infection was effectively absent from them, so that preventive measures based upon them could not be developed.

It was reserved for the Middle Ages to conceive serious official measures against spread of epidemics. These measures were constantly derived from the leper ritual of the Bible with its fundamental concept of isolation.

C. Singer and E. A. Underwood, ‘A Short History of Medicine’, 1962[/quote]

[quote]'Like Pringle, Brocklesby, Tilton, and others, Washington invoked the Mosaic sanitary code, as stated in the Fourth and Fifth Books of Moses in the King James Version of the Old Testament, Numbers 5: 1-4 and Deuteronomy 23: 12-14.

This is shown in the facsimile reproduction (fig. 7) of the broadside of his general orders for the Army under the command of Brigadier General McDougall, issued at Head Quarters, Peeks-Kill [in October? 1777]. A copy of this broadside (43) is reprinted as appendix A, p. 189.

In this broadside, Washington refers to Moses as “the wisest General that ever lived, for he was inspired.” He might also, with good reason, have referred to him as “the Founder of Preventive Medicine,” as proclaimed by Wood and others (44).’

Colonel Robert Anderson, Office of the Surgeon General Department of the ARmy of Washington, ‘The Evolution Of Preventive Medicine In The United States Army, 1607-1939’, 1968[/quote]

[quote]One has but to read the Bible carefully and thoughtfully to conclude that the wisdom expressed therein regarding health, hygiene and sanitation form the groundwork of today’s public health rules.

As one closes the book he must realise that these biblical rules on health and hygiene were far in advance of, and superior to, any which then existed in the world.

Many of these hygienic precepts have been little improved upon to this day, and are as worth following now as when they were first promulgated.

Wain, ‘History of Preventive Medicine’, [b]1970[/b][/quote]

[quote]'The Hebrew Mosaic Law of the five Books of Moses stressed prevention of disease through regulation of personal and community hygiene, reproductive and maternal health, isolation of lepers and other “unclean conditions”, and family and personal sexual conduct as part of religious practice.

It also laid a basis for medical and public health jurisprudence. Personal and community responsibility for health included a mandatory day of rest, limits on slavery and guarantees of the rights of slaves and workers, protection of water supplies, sanitation of communities and camps, waste disposal, and food protection, all codified in detailed religious obligations.

Food regulation prevented use of diseased or unclean animals, and prescribed methods of slaughter improved the possibility of preservation of the meat.’

‘The Mosaic Law, which forms the basis for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, codified health laws for the individual and for society, all of which have continued into the modern era as basic concepts in environmental and social hygiene.’

T Thulchinsky & E Varavikova, ‘The New Public Health: An Introduction for the 21st Century’, 2000[/quote]

[3] Scientific thought unfortunately inhibiting the overturning of superstition:

[quote]‘Although many stereotypes about witches pre-date Christianity, the lethal crazes of the Great Hunt were actually the child of the "Age of Reason."’

Jenny Gibbons, ‘Recent Developments in the Study of the Great European Witch Hunt’, article in The Pomegranate, #5, 1998[/quote]

[quote]'What I want to argue, is that beliefs in witches, ghosts, and demons were heavily under attack and on the wane in England at the very beginning of the 17th century before the rise of what we would usually identify as modern scientific attitudes. But witchcraft beliefs, and beliefs in other spirit phenomena underwent a remarkable revival among British intellectuals during the period after the Restoration of James II to the throne in 1660; and this revival of demonological beliefs was directly and self-consciously attached to the rise of modern scientific attitudes among the men who were members of the Royal Society of London.

So at least for a time it may be true to say that men actually came to believe in witches as a result of the development of scientific attitudes.’

Richard Olson, ‘Spirits, Witches & Science: Why the rise of science encouraged belief in the supernatural in 17th-century England’, Skeptic volume 1, number 4, Winter 1992, pages 34-43[/quote]

[quote]‘On the other hand, experimental philosophers, as a group, probably had a more profound impact in legitimizing Glanvill’s views among intellectuals. In any event, for at least a couple of decades after the Restoration, the belief in ghosts and witches–which had begun to decline in the late 16th and early 17th century–returned as a serious and popular topic for polemical discussions; and those who argued in favor of beliefs in spirit phenomena simultaneously drew arguments from and promoted experimental science (Jobe, 1981, pp. 343-356).’

Richard Olson, ‘Spirits, Witches & Science: Why the rise of science encouraged belief in the supernatural in 17th-century England’, Skeptic volume 1, number 4, Winter 1992, pages 34-43[/quote]

urodacus · September 13, 2008, 4:32am

You bring up some good points, not that i agree with them all, fortigurn.

[quote=“fortigurn”]Do you think it’s ‘cultural genocide’ when UN and WHO health workers teach people in ‘underprivileged areas’ (or whatever they’re called these days), how personal hygiene is far more effective than their local witchdoctor? Was it ‘cultural genocide’ when advances in science chased away the shadows of European supersition, replacing the evil eye with germ theory?

You can’t kill a tribe’s belief in one set of gods and replace it with another without the members of the tribe making the independent rational decision to do so. In other words, you didn’t kill their beliefs, they did. If you want to call cultural change ‘cultural genocide’, I suppose you can, but that would mean every generation of every society is guilty.[/quote]

no, i don’t think that first instance counts as cultural genocide, as the majority of their religion and belief set is left intact. Christian and Muslim conversion OTOH is a far deeper set of realignment of beliefs, and tears the converted away from the non-converted by a very apparent schism. teaching people a set of hygiene standards (like don’t shit in the river upstream of where you drink) does not divide the people against each other, and still leaves most of you hypothetical witchdoctor’s role intact. anyway, that’s a bit of a harsh way to minimise the ability of most traditional healers to recognise unhealthy practices, but of course, i am not talking about their medical knowledge here… that’s a wee bit different.

as for making a rational decision, and that the death of the original religion is a fault of the converted, not the missionary, quite evades the point that there would have been no decision to make if there were no missionaries in the first place. what gives them the right to bust up a culture of one set of superstitions to replace it with another?

cultural change that comes about gently over a span of generations is cultural evolution, as the whole culture moves with it, and the changes are often intitiated from within. but in a way, you can say that science has brought about the death of many of the old superstitions of europe. and good, is all i can say. it is also obvious that religion still feels threatened by it, as religion in most countries is dying, with the exception of the good ole USA, and muslim countries, though even there the fight against apostasy still claims the lives of many independent thinkers who reject the old ways.

if science truly was developed by the Christian church (and while you give some good examples, you miss a few points: the Arabs kept western science alive in the middle ages, the Pope variously excommunicated as many heretics as they could, and much of the biblical law you claim for christianity is actually Judaic) then the church wouyld have moulded its theology to fit the facts it observes by now. but it hasn’t, and it has had a long history of trying to find enough wiggle room left ion modern scientific theory for god and purpose. but there isn’t any, so christianity is simply a continuation of previous culture, and the gap between it and reality is simply being ignored or misconstrued by most adherents, or outright rejected by others like those loony creationist scientists.

Chewycorns · September 13, 2008, 4:54am

[quote=“almas john”]
When I was traveling in the wilds of PNG as a young fella, I was really struck by how shit scared the natives were of spirits in the bush. [/quote]

Imagine how afraid they would have been if they had found a bush on a spirit.

Fortigurn · September 13, 2008, 6:11am

Well that’s to be expected.

And as Western education increases in those countries, exactly how much of their religion and belief set is left intact? We both know the answer to that one. Western education, particularly the introduction of Western scientific and medical beliefs, has an overwhelming tendency to kill off local religions and beliefs, and that’s one of the main reasons why it is taught in these areas.

Of course there’s a difference in abruptness between a sudden conversion from religious system to another and the gradual deconversion from a religious system as the result of ingrained Western cultural teaching (including science and medicine), but the ultimate effect is the same. You’re quibbling over the timing.

The language you’ve used here is unfortunately loaded. You speak of the ‘death’ of the original religion, and you want to ascribe ‘fault’. There’s no need for such emotive terms. And if you really think that there was no decision to make if there were no missionaries in the first place, you must think non-Christian aboriginals are mentally defective or something. Do you honestly believe they’re cognitively incapable of challenging their own beliefs on the basis of their own reasoning, or changing their beliefs from one religious system to another which they have themselves devised? This just doesn’t belong in the realms of reality, either sociologically, cognitively, or historically. How do you think Hinduism started? Or Buddhism? Daoism? Introduced by Western Christian missionaries? I don’t think so.

But that’s just it, they aren’t. They’re simply sharing ideas. Whether or not people change is entirely up to them. You can’t forbid human discourse on the grounds that some members of group X might believe the ideas of some members of group Y.

I think we both know that cultural change does not always come gently, and typically comes in a complex cycle consisting of abrupt and gradual changes. But the bottom line here is that you’ve acknowledged you’re entirely happy with the idea of cultural change and the ‘death’ of religious belief as a result, so what’s the issue?

The Arabs did not ‘keep western science alive in the middle ages’. It didn’t die. The Arabs borrowed Western science as a result of military conquests, and developed it further in a number of significant areas, but Western science was still alive in the West. Unfortunately the Arabs were crippled ultimately by two problems. The first is that they didn’t understand a lot of the Western materials they had captured, and in fact couldn’t even identify them correctly. They thought they were reading Plato when they were reading neo-Platonic interpretations of Plato’s intellectual descendants. They thought they had Aristotle when they had third hand commentaries on Aristotle:

[quote]‘It is the story of two golden ages, one Greek and one Islamic. The former degenerated from gold to silver to bronze to iron to iron pyrite; the latter began with the fool’s gold. The mistake of the Islamic philosophers was that they were unwary of Greeks bearing gifts, or, to be precise, of what Islam had stolen. They unwrapped pretty packages labeled “Plato” and “Aristotle” and got Plotinus, Porphyry, and Proclus. They thought they were getting Aristotelianism, but they got Neoplatonism, which is neither Platonic nor Aristotelian.’

Jonatha Carson, ‘The not-so-golden age of Islamic philosophy’, The American Thinker, August 19th, 2005[/quote]

[quote]'The permanent recovery of Greek and Classical learning was undertaken as a direct transmission from Greek, Orthodox Christians to Western, Latin Christians. There were no Muslim middlemen involved.

As a result, by the late 1200s, Saint Thomas Aquinas and early Renaissance figures such as the poet Dante and the humanist Petrarch had at their disposal a much more complete and accurate body of Greek thought than any of the renowned Muslim philosophers ever did. What’s more, many of the translations that did exist in Arabic had been undertaken by Christians in the first place, not by Muslims.’

Baron Bodissey, ‘Islam, Christian Europe, and the Greek Heritage’, 2007[/quote]

Moving on:

Relevance to the topic at hand please? Specifically Christianity and the Western scientific tradition?

I didn’t claim it for Christianity:

This is what I claimed for Christianity:

Finally:

Which planet are you living on? The ‘church’ has a history of moulding its theology to fit the facts which is over 1,700 years old. [1] How do you account for the scientific discoveries of Sisebute of Hispania, Gerbert of Aurillac, Hugo of St Victor, Peter Aberlard, Robert Grosseteste, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, John Duns Scotus, John Dumbleton, Thomas Bradwardine, Jean Buridan, William Heytesbury, Nicholas Oresme, Nicholas of Cusa, Otto Brunfel, Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brae, Thomas Digges, Giordano Bruno, Francis Bacon, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and others (hey, we’ve only just hit the 17th century). They all harmonized science with theology, adjusting their theology if need be.

And it wasn’t simply individuals, it was the ‘church’ itself. Areas on which the church changed its theological position according to the increase in scientific knowledge include:

Astronomy: We all know about Copernicus and Galileo, and you would be hard pressed to find any church today which disagrees with their astronomy (note of course that Christian astronomers brought about the astronomical revolution, without fear of conflict with their theological beliefs)
Geology: Christian geologists brought about the revolution in scientific geology, and contributed significantly to the death of the global flood interpretation of Genesis 6-8

[quote]‘Notwithstanding diligent search, I have been unable to discover that the universality of the Deluge has any defender left, at least among those who have so far mastered the rudiments of natural knowledge as to be able to appreciate the weight of evidence against it. For example, when I turned to the “Speaker’s Bible,” published under the sanction of high Anglican authority, I found the following judicial and judicious deliverance, the skilful wording of which may adorn, but does not hide, the completeness of the surrender of the old teaching.’

Thomas Huxley, ‘The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science’, Collected Essays, volume 4, pages 217-218 (1890)[/quote]

Biology: Christian biologists also contributed significantly to the death of the global flood interpretation of Genesis 6-8
Cosmology: A large array of scientific discoveries by Christian scientists contributed to the ‘Collapse of “Flood Geology” and a Young Earth’, and the theological change in the church was so dramatic that by the end of the 19th century both the belief in a global flood and 7 day creation were minority opinions among Christians, as they remain today

As I noted previously:

Francis Bacon is one example of many churchmen who insisted that the creation (through the study of natural science), was the means of correctly interpreting the Scriptures:

[quote]'…our Saviour saith, YOU ERR, NOT KNOWING THE SCRIPTURES, NOR THE POWER OF GOD; laying before us two books or volumes to study, if we will be secured from error; first, the Scriptures, revealing the Will of God; and then the creatures [creation] expressing His Power; whereof the latter is a key unto the former: not only opening our understanding to conceive the true sense of the Scriptures, by the general notions of reason and rules of speech; but chiefly opening our belief, in drawing us into a due meditation of the omnipotency of God, which is chiefly signed and engraven upon His works.’

Francis Bacon, ‘The Advancement Of Learning’, Book 1, Chapter 6, Section 17, 1605[/quote]

[quote]‘Some are weakly afraid lest a deeper search into nature should transgress the permitted limits of sober mindedness, wrongfully wresting and transferring what is said in Holy Writ against those who pry into sacred mysteries, to the hidden things of nature, which are barred by no prohibition.’

'And others again appear apprehensive that in the investigation of nature something may be found to subvert or at least shake the authority of religion, especially with the unlearned.’

‘But these two last fears seem to me to savor utterly of carnal wisdom; as if men in the recesses and secret thought of their hearts doubted and distrusted the strength of religion and the empire of faith over the sense, and therefore feared that the investigation of truth in nature might be dangerous to them.

But if the matter be truly considered, natural philosophy is, after the word of God, at once the surest medicine against superstition and the most approved nourishment for faith, and therefore she is rightly given to religion as her most faithful handmaid, since the one displays the will of God, the other his power.’

Francis Bacon, ‘Novum Organum’, chapter 89, 1620[/quote]

Let’s have Kepler also:

[quote]‘Here we are concerned with the book of nature, so greatly celebrated in sacred writings. It is in this that Paul proposes to the Gentiles that they should contemplate God like the Sun in water or in a mirror. Why then as Christians should we take any less delight in its contemplation, since it is for us with true worship to honor God, to venerate him, to wonder at him? The more rightly we understand the nature and scope of what our God has founded, the more devoted the spirit in which that is done.’

Johannes Kepler, ‘The Secret of the Universe’, 1596[/quote]

[quote]‘May God make it come to pass that my delightful speculation [‘The Secret Of The Universe’] have everywhere among reasonable men fully the effect which I strove to obtain in the publication; namely, that the belief in the creation of the world be fortified through this external support, that thought of the creator be recognized in its nature, and that His inexhaustible wisdom shine forth daily more brightly.

Then man will at last measure the power of his mind on the true scale, and will realize that God, who founded everything in the world according to the norm of quantity, also has endowed man with a mind which can comprehend these norms.’

Johannes Kepler, letter to his teacher Mästlin, April 19, 1597[/quote]

[quote]‘Those laws lie within the power of understanding of the human mind; God wanted us to perceive them when He created us in His image in order that we may take part in His own thoughts…’

Johannes Kepler, letter to Herwart von Hohenburg, April 9/10, 1599[/quote]

Ok, let’s throw in Galileo:

[quote]‘On the contrary, having arrived at any certainties in physics, we ought to utilize these as the most appropriate aids in the true exposition of the Bible and in the investigation of those meanings which are necessarily contained therein, for these must be concordant with demonstrated truths.’

Galileo Galilei, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany, 1615[/quote]

[quote]‘I should judge that the authority of the Bible was designed to persuade men of those articles and propositions which, surpassing all human reasoning could not be made credible by science, or by any other means than through the very mouth of the Holy Spirit.’

‘I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree: “That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes.”’

‘And to prohibit the whole science would be to censure a hundred passages of holy Scripture which teach us that the glory and greatness of Almighty God are marvelously discerned in all his works and divinely read in the open book of heaven.’

Galileo Galilei, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany, 1615[/quote]

Footnotes

[1] For over 1,700 years Christians have conducted a systematic harmonization of science and theology:

[quote]‘Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.’

‘Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.’

Augustine, ‘The Literal Meaning Of Genesis’, chapter 19, section 39, [b]400s AD[/b][/quote]

[quote]‘The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.’

Augustine, ‘The Literal Meaning Of Genesis’, chapter 19, section 39, 400s AD[/quote]

[quote]‘If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?

Augustine, ‘The Literal Meaning Of Genesis’, chapter 19, section 39, 400s AD[/quote]

[quote]‘Reckless and incompetent expounders of holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books.’

Augustine, ‘The Literal Meaning Of Genesis’, chapter 19, section 39, 400s AD[/quote]

[quote]‘For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although “they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.”’

Augustine, ‘The Literal Meaning Of Genesis’, chapter 19, section 39, [b]400s AD[/b][/quote]

[quote]‘The church fathers used Greek scientific knowledge in their defense of the faith against heresy and in the elucidation of scripture, thereby preserving and transmitting it during the social and political turmoil of the first millennium of the Christian era.

Science was thus the handmaiden of theology – a far cry from its modern status, characterized by autonomy and intellectual hegemony, but also far from the victim of Christian intolerance that White portrayed. Science was not the enemy, but a valued (if not entirely reliable) servant.’

David C Lindberg and Ronald L Numbers,‘Beyond War and Peace: Reappraisal of the Encounter between Christianity and Science’, in ‘Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith’, 39.3:140-149, September 1987[/quote]