Andrew Dickson White

“ Perhaps the most unfortunate thing that has ever been done for Christianity is the tying it to forms of science which are doomed and gradually sinking. Just as, in the time of Roger Bacon, excellent but mistaken men devoted all their energies to binding Christianity to Aristotle; just as, in the time of Reuchlin and Erasmus, they insisted on binding Christianity to Thomas Aquinas: so, in the time of Vesalius, such men made every effort to link Christianity to Galen. ”

“ May we not, then, hope that the greatest and best men in the Church—the men standing at centres of thought—will insist with power, more and more, that religion be no longer tied to so injurious a policy as that which this warfare reveals; that searchers for truth, whether in theology or natural science, work on as friends, sure that, no matter how much at variance they may at times seem to be, the truths they reach shall finally be fused into each other? The dominant religious conceptions of the world will doubtless be greatly modified by science in the future, as they have been in the past ”

“ Worse than that, the well-meaning defenders of the faith had wrought into the very fibre of the European heart that most unfortunate of all ideas, the idea that there is a necessary antagonism between science and religion. Like the landsman who lashes himself to the anchor of the sinking ship, they had attached the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, by the strongest cords of logic which they could spin, to these mistaken ideas in science, and the advance of knowledge had wellnigh engulfed them. ”

“ Strange as it may at first seem, Francis Bacon, whose keenness of sight revealed the delusions of the old path and the promises of the new, that man whose boldness in thought did so much to turn the world from the old path into the new, presents, in his own writings, one of the most striking examples of the strength of the evil he did so much to destroy. ”

“ The fictions, too, of those who have not feared to deduce and confirm from the principles and authority of philosophies the true Christian religion, have the same tendency, though in a different way. These celebrated the wedding of faith and sense, as though it were lawful, with much pomp and solemnity, and soothed the minds of men with a grateful variety of things, but, meanwhile, mingled the divine with the human in ill-matched state. And in mixtures like this of theology with natural philosophy, those things only which are now received in philosophy are included ”

“ He leads science on to greater victories. Kopernik, great as he was, could not disentangle his scientific reasoning entirely from the theological bias. The doctrines of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas as to the necessary superiority of the circle, had vitiated the minor features of his system, and left breaches in it through which the enemy was not slow to enter. Kepler sees these errors, and, by wonderful genius in insight and vigor in thought, he brings to the world the three laws which bear his name, and this fortress of science is complete. He thinks and speaks as one inspired. ”

“ My thesis, which, by an historical study of this warfare, I expect to develop, is the following: In all modern history, interference with science in the supposed interest of religion, no matter how conscientious such interference may have been, has resulted in the direst evils both to religion and to science—and invariably. And, on the other hand, all untrammeled scientific investigation, no matter how dangerous to religion some of its stages may have seemed, for the time, to be, has invariably resulted in the highest good of religion and of science. ”

“ Let the warfare of Science, then, be changed. Let it be a warfare in which Religion and Science [Pg 151] shall stand together as allies, not against each other as enemies. Let the fight be for truth of every kind against falsehood of every kind; for justice against injustice; for right against wrong; for the living kernel of religion rather than the dead and dried husks of sect and dogma; and the great powers, whose warfare has brought so many sufferings, shall at last join in ministering through earth God's richest blessings. ”

“ No one needs fear the result. No matter whether Science shall complete her demonstration that man has been on the earth not merely six thousand years, or six millions of years; no matter whether she reveals new ideas of the Creator or startling relations between his creatures; no matter how many more gyves and clamps upon the spirit of Christianity she destroys: the result, when fully thought out, will serve and strengthen religion not less than science. ”

“ He it was whose thought reared the most enduring barrier against those who, in that age and in succeeding ages, labored to open for science the path by its own legitimate method toward its own noble ends. ”

“ Had not Bacon been hindered, we should have had in our hands, by this time, the means to save two-thirds of these victims; and the same is true of typhoid, typhus, and that great class of diseases of whose physical causes science is just beginning to get an inkling. Put together all the efforts of all the atheists who have ever lived, and they have not done so much harm to Christianity and the world as has been done by the narrow-minded, conscientious men who persecuted Roger Bacon, and closed the path which he gave his life to open. ”

“ The first result of this great man's great compromise was to close that new path in science which alone leads to discoveries of value—the experimental method—and to reopen the old path of mixed theology and science, which, as Hallam declares, "after three or four hundred years had not untied a single knot, or added one unequivocal truth to the domain of philosophy;" the path which, as all modern history proves, has ever since led only to delusion and evil. ”

“ Such facts show, too, that the sacred books of the world were not given for any such purpose as that to which so many men have endeavored to wrest them—the purpose served by compends of history and text-books of science.
Is skepticism feared? All history shows that the only skepticism which does permanent harm is skepticism as to the value and safety of truth as truth. No skepticism has proved so corrosive to religion, none so cancerous in the human brain and heart. ”

“ Lactantius asks: "... Is there any one so senseless as to believe that there are men whose footsteps are higher than their heads?—that the crops and trees grow downward?—that the rains and snow and hail fall upward toward the earth?... But if you inquire from those who defend these marvelous fictions, why all things do not fall into that lower part of the heaven, they reply that such is the nature of things, that heavy bodies are borne toward the middle, like the spokes of a wheel; while light bodies, such as clouds, smoke, and fire, tend from the centre toward the heavens on all sides. ”

“ The efforts of Eusebius and Lactantius to deaden scientific thought; the efforts of Augustine to combat it; the efforts of Cosmas to stop it by dogmatism; the efforts of Boniface, and Zachary, and others to stop it by force, conscientious as they all were, had resulted in what? Simply in forcing into many noble minds this most unfortunate conviction, that Science and Religion are enemies; simply in driving away from religion hosts of the best men in all those centuries. ”

“ Thomas Aquinas gave all his thoughts to bringing science again under the sway of the theological bias, metaphysical methods, and ecclesiastical control. He gave to the world a striking example of what his method could be made to produce. In his commentary upon Aristotle's treatise upon "Heaven and Earth" he illustrates all the evils of such a combination of theological reasoning and literal interpretation of the Scriptural with scientific facts as then understood, and it remains to this day a prodigious monument to human genius and human folly. ”

“ Then the great man of science in that age is brought face to face with the greatest theologian: Galileo is confronted by Cardinal Bellarmin. Bellarmin shows Galileo the error of his opinion, and orders him to renounce it. De Lauda, fortified by a letter from the pope, ordering the astronomer to be placed in the dungeon of the Inquisition should he refuse to yield, commands him to "abandon entirely the opinion that the sun is the centre of the universe, and that the earth moves, and to abstain from sustaining, teaching, or defending that opinion in any manner whatever, orally or by writing." ”

“ The party which would subordinate the methods and aims of science to those of theology, though in general obedient to deep convictions, had given to Christianity a series of the worst blows it had ever received. They had made large numbers of the best men in Europe hate it. Why did Ricetto and Bruno and Vanini, when the crucifix was presented to them in their hours of martyrdom, turn from that blessed image with loathing? ”

“ The processes of mathematics were constantly improved, the heavenly bodies were steadily though silently observed; and at length appeared, afar off from the centres of thought, on the borders of Poland, a plain, simple-minded scholar, who first fairly uttered to the world the truth, now so commonplace, then so astounding, that the sun and planets do not revolve about the earth, but that the earth and planets revolve about the sun, and that man was Nicholas Kopernik. ”

“ I pass from the legions of those who from that day to this have stumbled into similar errors by degrading our sacred volume into a compendium of history or a text-book of science, and turn next to a far more serious class of effects arising from the great mediæval compromise between science and theology. We have considered the wrong road into which so many master-spirits were led or driven; we will now look at the war brought against those men of science who persevered in the right road. ”

“ All history shows that the first article of a saving faith, for any land or time, is faith that there is a Power in this universe strong enough to make truth-seeking safe, and good enough to make truth-telling useful. ”

“ In the Church Journal, New York, May 28, 1874, a reviewer, praising Rev. Dr. Hodge's book against Darwinism, says: "Darwinism—whether Darwin knows it or not; whether the clergy, who are half prepared to accept it in blind fright as 'science,' know it or not—is a denial of every article of the Christian faith. It is supreme folly to talk as some do about accommodating Christianity to Darwinism. Either those who so talk do not understand Christianity, or they do not understand Darwinism. ”

“ No man who has thought much upon the annals of his race can, without a feeling of awe, come into the presence of such inspired clearness of insight and boldness of utterance. The first thought of the reader is, that, of all men, this Francis Bacon is the most free from the unfortunate bias he condemns. He certainly cannot be deluded into the old path. But, as we go on through the treatise, we are surprised to find that the strong arm of Aquinas had been stretched over the intervening ages, and had laid hold upon this master-thinker of the sixteenth century. ”

“ Doubtless many will at once exclaim against the Roman Catholic Church for this. Justice compels me to say that the founders of Protestantism were no less zealous against the new scientific doctrine. Said Martin Luther: "People gave ear to an upstart astrologer, who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is, of course, the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy. ”

“ The work of Christianity has been mighty indeed. Through these two thousand years, despite the waste of its energies on all the things its Blessed Founder most earnestly condemned—on fetich and subtlety and war and pomp—it has undermined servitude, mitigated tyranny, given hope to the hopeless, comfort to the afflicted, light to the blind, bread to the starving, joy to the dying, and this work continues. ”

“ I might show how an attempt to meet the great want, in the State of New York, of an institution providing scientific instruction, has been met with loud outcries from many excellent men, who fear injury thereby to religion. I might picture to you the strategy which has been used to keep earnest young men from an institution which, it is declared, cannot be Christian because it is not sectarian. ”

“ The new position was, that the fossils were produced by the Deluge of Noah.
In vain had it been shown, by such devoted Christians as Bernard Palissy, that this theory was utterly untenable; in vain did good men protest against the injury sure to result to religion by tying it to a scientific theory sure to be exploded: the doctrine that fossils were the remains of animals drowned at the flood continued to be upheld by the great majority as "sound doctrine," and as a blessed means of reconciling science with Scripture. ”

“ These epithets can hardly be classed with civilized weapons. They are burning arrows. They set fire to great masses of popular prejudices; smoke rises to obscure the real questions; fire bursts forth at times to destroy the attacked party. They are poisoned. They go to the hearts of loving women, they alienate dear children; they injure the man after life is ended, for they leave poisoned wounds in the hearts of those who loved him best—fears for his eternal happiness—dread of the Divine displeasure. ”

“ From the many questions on which the supporters of right reason in Political and Social Science have only conquered conscientious opposition after centuries of war, I select the taking of interest on loans; in hardly any struggle has rigid adherence to the Bible as a scientific text-book been more prolonged or injurious. ”

“ The deepest Christian life, the most noble Christian character, have not availed to shield combatants. Christians like Isaac Newton and Pascal and John Locke and John Milton, and even Howard and Fénelon, have had these weapons hurled against them. Of all proofs of the existence of a God, those of Descartes have been wrought most thoroughly into the minds of modern men; and yet the Protestant theologians of Holland sought to bring him to torture and to death by the charge of atheism, and the Roman Catholic theologians of France prevented the rendering of any due honors to him at his burial. ”

“ But logic is not history. History is full of interferences which have cost the earth dear. Strangest of all, some of the direst of them have been made by the best of men, actuated by the purest motives, and seeking the noblest results. These interferences, and the struggle against them, make up the warfare of science.
One statement more, to clear the ground. You will not understand me at all to say that religion has done nothing for science. ”