The Scientific Revolution was a period in the 1500’s and 1600’s in which scientific thinkees challenged traditional ideas from the Catholic Church and relied on observation and experiments. They also believed that God controlled everything. European scholars accepted the theory of the Greek astronomer Claudius Ptolemy. Ptolemy taught that the Earth was the center of the universe. Which is what the Catholic church also believed.
Another noteworthy individual is Albert Einstein who was a great physicist but viciously attacked for his beliefs and even had his life threatened for believing in God. On a professional level, he was ridiculed in published articles and attacked in public speeches. 4 One famous quote of Albert Einstein is, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” While this paper is not focused on the history of each topic, it is significant to show how Christians were treated by the secular world. I believe the Christian response to Physics should follow suit to those great Christian predecessors in that the secular world cannot take away your achievements, knowledge or dignity for standing firm in the beliefs in which you base
Caitlyn Hammond November 7th, 2011 The beginning of the end In ancient times, the Greeks relied heavily on their gods to explain the natural phenomena happening around them. The sun rose and fell when Apollo drove his chariot across the sky, the ocean was controlled by Posiden and the Heavens by Zeus. However, not all Greeks were satisfied by this explanation. Out of this, grew the Pre Socratic philosophers and more importantly the material monists. The three material monists are considered the first "Physicists" because they were the first to attempt to explain the natural phenomena without reference to the divine.
Newton also changed the way we, even today, look at physics. Because of Newton, we learned that the reason that the planets all stay in perfect rotation with one another and not just going around everywhere is because of gravity pulling on them (Kagan, Ozment, and Turner 272-351). What did both the Protestant Reformation and the Scientific Revolution have in common? They both went against the church. The Roman Catholic Church didn’t want people to use science to explain things in the universe because it went against what they believe God did.
Scientists were working with theories of the speed of light and the “stuff” of the cosmos or ether (Ruswick, lecture 23). Scientists were trying to figure out how light moved through the universe, most thought of it as a particle moving through a medium (Ruswick, lecture 23). If light was a particle moving through ether than it should have had a variable speed as the earth was also moving (Ruswick, lecture 23). The Michelson and Morley experiment proved that the speed of light was constant; this disproved an ether (Ruswick, lecture 23). But fear of throwing away old theories for new led to the rejection of Michelson and Morley’s experiment not the ether theory (Ruswick, lecture 23).
He developed the heicentric theory which stated that the sun was the centre of the universe thus questioning the belief of the majority and the Catholic Church that the earth was at the centre of the universe. Although he was publically mortified because his theory contradicted the Earth being Divine he soon received acclaim from his followers such as Galileo and was accepted all over the world. Copernicus who was considered to be mad had finally changed the face of science forever. This notion is also emexplified in the novel To kill a mocking bord by harper lee. The actions of the central character atticus finch shows that only a few have the courage to go against the widely accepted facts.
Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection gives us an alternative way to explain the complex functionality that leads to Paley thinking that a designer has left his mark on the universe. However, the anthropic principle helps prove God’s existence. The Big Bang theory has strengthened the case for God, as has the theory of evolution. In fact when we consider all the physical conditions that the universe had to possess for humans to evolve then there seems to be a conspiracy to fix the
I want to start out this paper by first defining and explaining individually what science and pseudoscience are. Next, I would like to compare them and explain how they relate to an everyday life situation. I find it interesting that both, science and pseudoscience are important to the average human being and play a big role in their lives. Science is the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural. Or in other words, it is an activity that can “prove” through a test of experiments something to be true or not.
That it was the sun at the centre and everyone moved around it in a helio-centric motion. Now until these revolutionary scientists came along all people thought that the planets moved around the earth, this was called geo centric. The idea that we, Gods creation, were not the centre of the universe challenged Christians beliefs in the way that we weren’t special, at the centre, that we may not be his only creation perhaps. The work of these mathematicians and scientists were beginning to set the tone of Christian discomfort as the universe and our world was becoming more understood. Galileo Galilei gave his support towards Copernicus as well as adding his own findings to the new theory of a helio-centric universe.
‘Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world in which both can flourish…We need each other to be what we must be, what we are called to be’ (Pope John Paul II). Throughout history, from the times of Galileo Galilei and his proposition of a heliocentric universe, to Charles Darwin and his Theory of Evolution, the debate between religion and science has been heated and controversial. Although the argument continues today, a middle ground has emerged which raises the question of duality between the two. Whilst a contextual understanding of the Judeo-Christian story of creation is compatible with modern scientific theories,