Sunday, August 21, 2005

Were most Historical Scientists Christian Fundamentalists?

Over at the Evangelical Outpost a fundamentalist creationist left the following comment:

The good doctor seems to forget that it was born again, Bible believing, creationists who established the founations [sic] of modern science. Why? Because they were free thinkers, inspired by the Bible and unshackled by the dogma of their day. These include:

Lister, Pasteur, Newton, Boyle, Cuvier, Babbage, Lord Raleigh, Newton, Maxwell, Faraday, Fleming, Kelvin, Fabre, Faraday, Stokes, Herschel, Boyle, Mendel, Aggisiz, Simpson, Leonardo da Vinci, Maury, Pascal, Ramsay, Rayleigh, Ray, Reimann, Brewster, Woodward, Virchow, Kepler, Joule, Maxwell, Steno, Linnaeus, Kelvin, Davy, Cuiver.

These were so called "heroes of the faith," each of whom made major scientific discoveries that changed the world for the better. No. All science does not "disagree with the Bible," only the false and utterly pseudo science of evolution.


I've heard D. James Kennedy make a similar claim. It illustrates how misleading many religious right fundamentalists can be. The notion that all of these thinkers were "born again, Bible believing, creationists" is absurd. Now, they may have all be theists in some sense, but they weren't "born-again" Biblical fundamentalists. I don't know the details about many of the thinkers on this list, but I do know of a few.

For instance, Leonardo da Vinci was homosexual; he even had a boy-toy, nicknamed "Salai" which means "offspring of Satan." Does that fit the mold of a "born again, Bible believing, creationist"?

In fact, to categorize any artist or scientist from the Renaissance era as a Biblical fundamentalist is absurd given that Renaissance literally means "rebirth" and the "rebirth" being referred to was that of Pagan Greco-Roman culture.

However one wants to reconcile what the Bible says with the findings of modern science (which this commenter attempts to do), it was the Pagan Ancient Greeks who invented or discovered science and Christendom (the Catholic Church) to its credit, and through thinkers such as Aquinas, incorporated these Pagan Ancient Greek discoveries.

To categorize Newton also as a "born again, Bible believing, creationist" is equally ridiculous. Newton was an anti-Trinitarian who helped to usher in an age (the Enlightenment) which elevated Man's Reason over Biblical Revelation, and saw fit to throw out traditional Christian orthodoxies (like the Trinity) that didn't comport with notions of Man's Reason. He may have been a theist, but he was also an occultist and an alchemist.

Update: Sandefur emailed me with this link which sheds more light on that list.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Actually, if you look at the data, hardly any scientists are evangelicals. I can't think of one. That's what somebody should really be researching.

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