Of Plymouth Plantation: God and Non-Fiction

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Of Plymouth Plantation: God and Non-Fiction According to the University of California, Riverside, in 1543, astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus releases the astronomical model entitled Copernican heliocentrism, which conflictingly places the sun at the center of the solar system instead of the Earth. This raises an outcry in the Catholic Church, and they soon regard him as a heretic; but if it wasn’t for Copernicus’s rebellion against grounded Church teaching, the people of today might still believe in a primitive and God-centered world. Science threatens religion because people take their religion very personally; they take this astronomical change as a personal attack. This event in science directly illustrates that attributing God to scientific mysteries may result in a radically wrong hypothesis. This is relatable to the Puritan belief system; they had attributed everything to God with no evidence in their claim. In America, the earliest example of this is when William Bradford alludes to God, which taints the historical accuracy of Of Plymouth Plantation. Bradford credits God as the cause of death. While on the Mayflower, Bradford makes mention of one seaman in particular. This young and robust man makes very blasphemous remarks and he condemns the poor people on board for getting sick. Bradford writes, “But it pleased God…to smite this young man with a grievous disease….they noted it to be the just hand of God upon him” (29). It is likely that his death is the cause of a natural disease and not of God. Bradford, being ignorant of how pathogens and diseases work, quickly deems his death as God’s justice without recognizing the coincidence of this young seaman’s crude and irreverent behavior. Bradford only accepts God as the source of death or even life. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Bradford credits God with the outcome of life in a dire situation.
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