Warfare Thesis - Part II
In a previous blog, I referred to some lectures I was listening to by Dr. Lawrence Principe on Science and Religion. In that post, I offered his debunking of this thesis, which states that science and religion have always been at war with each other. I also indicated that this thesis is still adhered to today by such men as Richard Dawkins.
Principe illustrates that the books by Draper and White which popularized this theory in the 19th century were examples of poor scholarship and sometimes outright fabrication. He also asserts that they rely on a central and fallacious assumption.
They assume that scientists and theologians formed two separate camps throughout history and that theologians imposed their will on scientists.
The problem is that these categories are modern ones. Pre-modern thinkers (scientists) felt that theology and religious texts were relevant to their work and vice versa. Religion was not an imposition but a key part of the background and motivation of natural philosophy (as science was then thought of). Divisions between science and religion may seem familiar to the modern American mind, but they were not historically so.
For example, Robert Boyle (1627-1691) (of Boyle’s Law fame) was deeply religious and viewed the role of the natural philospher (”scientist”) as a “priest of nature”. Newton was also deeply religious, as is the case for essentially all the “scientific greats” of the early modern period. Copernicus was involved in Holy Orders of the church. One could go on and on.
The bottom line is this. As has been stated before, scientific advancements came because of Christianity, not in spite of it or in opposition to it. Science arose in a context of understanding shaped by a Christian worldview: that of a rational supreme being who created an orderly world which can be understood by a rational creation made in his image.