The Age of Wonder, When Science changed God

by designs 2 Replies latest social current

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  designs

  1700-1800

  There are periods when technological leaps change humans and change human perceptions forever. This was one such century. One young German family, a brother and sister, William and Caroline Herschel. William had taken a keen interest in astronomy as a child and as the wars in Europe would evolve he migrated to England where his fascination bloomed. His contribution to the science of the study of the universe was through his improvement of the Telescope and Newton's refractor lens. It allowed for the first time to sees the Milky Way as different than the canopy that it appears as to the naked eye or even with lesser telescopes. The Universe now had depth, real depth. Light and movement could be calculated in millions of years and not in the Genesis model of 6000 years.

  Nebula, once thought to be gases left by the hand of God and of no real importance were visible as stars and galaxies millions of light years beyond our own Galaxy. And the perception of God began to evolve as well with this new science. Distant, vacant, removed, the Hand behind the curtain was being revealed. Nothing would ever be the same.
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  trailerfitter

  " Freedom of though is best promoted by the gradual illumination of mens minds which follows from the advancement of science"

  Charles Robert Darwin 1809-1882........

  Just thought I'd underline the important bit.
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  PSacramento

  Saint Augustine (A.D. 354-430) in his work The Literal Meaning of Genesis (De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim) provided excellent advice for all Christians who are faced with the task of interpreting Scripture in the light of scientific knowledge. This translation is by J. H. Taylor in Ancient Christian Writers, Newman Press, 1982, volume 41.

  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 hold 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. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of 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. 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 and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? 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. 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. [1 Timothy 1.7]