Science Finds God
1633 Galileo is censured by the Inquisition for writing about and teaching the Copernican system against papal orders. He's made to recant and is placed under house arrests.
1687 Isaac Newton's gravitational theory, published in the "Principia," completes the mechanistic vision of the cosmos. Newton leaves in a sliver of God--as the "first cause" of the universe.
1802 In "Research on the Organization of Living Bodies," the chevalier Lamarck posits an evolutionary view of animal species--contradicting the idea that God created them in immutable, constant form.
1842 Richard Owen determines that recently found fossils belong to an extinct animal group he calls dinosaurs. Some see further evidence of mutating species, others the effects of Noah's flood.
1859 In "Origin of Species," Charles Darwin concludes that species evolve and that change is driven by variations in offspring that are either favored or eliminated in the struggle for survival.
1871 Darwin publishes "The Descent of Man," in which he undermines the Biblical doctrine that humans are a divine creation. Instead, he argues, mankind evolved from apes.
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Member Comments
Posted By: jef4 @ 07/03/2008 9:45:54 PM
Comment: I found this article fascinating because it reflects my own experience. I was raised Catholic and attended Catholic grade school and University, both of which drove me to periods of atheism. It was science that solidified my belief in a Creator. The idea that the universe came from nothing and for no reason was rejected as far back as ancient Greece.
There must be a power, energy or force responsible for the Big Bang. Suggestions to the contrary remind me of "Mommy, the bowl fell off the table all by itself and broke itself."
The power that caused the universe is what most folks call God. I think it was Max Planck who said the though the universe might be "A matrix in the mind of God." That thought reappears in Thornton Wilder's play "Our Town." Stephen Hawking said that "It becomes increasingly difficult for me to believe that the Universe was created other than by a being who intended it to have an intelligence like us." Newton, despite his now discredited Clockwork Universe, was a religious man himself. And his idea of a universe that ran like a clock prompted the question ???Who wound up the clock????
Both scientists and theologians rely of both reason and faith. For example, scientists accept on faith that the laws of physics are uniform and theologians use reason when they study ancient secular scripts to supplement and/or confirm Holy Scriptures.
Congratulations on a well done article that many publications would have avoided.