The Great Divide

Science and religion divorce

The medieval cosmology

• In the middle ages, the view of the universe is founded on the Bible, Aristotle and Ptolemy

• Dante’s Divina Commedia, the great epic poem about the journey of a soul from earth to hell, through purgatory and to heaven based on this perception

• Thus hell is literally below the earth, divided into many circles-Lucifer at the utmost bottom

• Heaven divided into different spheres- God above all the spheres

• Earth in the middle - man, the epitome of earthly creation, is at the center of the universe

The Copernican Revolution

• The first blow to this cosmology came when Nicolas Copernicus, a polish astronomer published De Revolutionibus in 1530

• For the first time, Copernicus created a model of the universe that put the sun, and not the earth at the center of the universe (a.k.a. Heliocentric model)

• Absence of Heaven and hell • Theory failed to gain widespread acceptance for

century due to its revolutionary nature and the lack of direct evidence

Kepler and the first scientific laws

• For the next century, astronomers like Tycho, Kepler collected data to prove the heliocentric model of the universe

• By 1609, Kepler published his Astronomia Nova in which he stated his 1st and 2nd law of planetary motion (the first scientific laws ever formulated in history)

• In 1618, he formulated his third law, which was the basis of Newton’s laws of gravity

• He refined and perfected Copernicus’ heliocentric system

Galileo and the Church

• At the same time in 1609, Galieo Galilei (renowned Italian astronomer) was turning the newly invented telescope to the skies

• And what he saw supported the Copernican model• For this, he got into much trouble with the Church and

was persecuted before forcing to recant• Giordano Bruno, Galileo’s contemporary, even held that

there were other suns with other planets around them. • For this he was burnt to death at a stake

The beginning of the great divide

• Despite religious enthusiasm from Bacon, Newton and the Rosicrucians, science threatens established religious views of the world

• Scientists and churchmen got into conflict, and the seeds of the great divide were sown

Let Newton be, and there was light

• In 1687, Sir Issac Newton published perhaps the most important scientific book ever, Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica

• It was a revolutionary view of the universe in which different physical forces and motions are explained and unified by a few universal mathematical laws

• In addition, these laws are backed by the firm cumulative evidence of astronomers since Copernicus

• Newton’s work showed the universe to be rationally comprehensible

• In contrast with the medieval and religious viewpoint where true knowledge about the universe is a matter of Revelation

The Newtonian irony

• Newton was deeply religious with obsessive interests in alchemy and biblical prophecy

• He spent only a small amount of time on scientific work (essentially 1666), and never bothered to publish his epoch-making theories for 20 years, locking them in a drawer.

• Instead, he spent much time on interpreting biblical prophecy, producing 4 commentaries on the Book of Daniel and Revelations

The Newtonian irony

• Also studied the Biblical description of the Temple of Solomon, convinced about the secrets encoded within its dimensions

• His alchemical pursuits were also very extensive• Indeed, even in his scientific work, he sought to glimpse

the mind of the Creator through the structure of His creation

• He sought to ‘prove’ the existence of an intelligent Creator through showing how the universe is governed by rational laws

• He clearly did not anticipate his work to have precisely the opposite effect

The Clockwork Universe

• Over the next century after Newton’s death in 1727, the idea of a ‘clockwork universe’ began to flourish

• God no longer govern the ‘spheres’ and the universe, instead the universe has been wind up like a clock at the beginning, and has been running automatically ever since

• Rational laws govern the universe, not divine providence, except when God initially framed these laws

• With this picture of the cosmos, God became quite irrelevant. It was not long before people doubt whether he needs to exist at all!

Darwin and Evolution

• Another blow to the traditional religious view came when Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859 where he set forth his idea of evolution

• Before that, religious people could still point to the wonders and adaptations of life and see them as evidence of God’s creation.

• Darwin’s theories argued that life’s diversity and adaptations are the result of Man himself (Descent of Man, 1871) and did not require any divine hand

• Completed the disenchantment of the universe that began with Copernicus

Evolution of Man

The dethronement of man

• Copernicus’s theories overthrow the centrality of earth, and partially that of man.

• The Newtonian picture exalts the power of man’s reason, but puts his soul in doubt (since free will is not very important in a universe of impersonal laws)

• Finally Darwin reduce man to become a close relative and descendant of apes

• Ironically, Bacon and his contemporaries believe in the fact that man is created in the Image of God, and that science/technology are the keys to recovering it

• Yet the movement they inspired finally reduced man to the status of a superior animal, and the universe to that of a cold impersonal machine

The Materialistic Dogma

• Emphasis on rational thought and evidence in science formed a materialistic view of the universe: “all is matter”

• Effectively reduced man from being a spiritual being in a material body, to being a lump of atoms that evolved to become conscious and intelligent

• Irony: Science cannot unravel the cause/nature of consciousness. Thus the so- called ‘scientific’ materialistic view is merely an assumption.

Examine your own conception of man. How far is it shaped by the materialistic dogma?