History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

by John William Draper

In like manner they dispose of the doctrines of Evolution and Development, bluntly insisting that the Church believes in distinct creative acts. The doctrine that every living form is derived from some preceding form is scientifically in a much more advanced position than that concerning Force, and probably may be considered as established, whatever may become of the additions with which it has recently been overlaid.

In her condemnation of the Reformation, the Church carries into effect her ideas of the subordination of reason to faith. In her eyes the Reformation is an impious heresy, leading to the abyss of pantheism, materialism, and atheism, and tending to overthrow the very foundations of human society. She therefore would restrain those "restless spirits" who, following Luther, have upheld the "right of every man to interpret the Scriptures for himself." She asserts that it is a wicked error to admit Protestants to equal political privileges with Catholics, and that to coerce them and suppress them is a sacred duty; that it is abominable to permit them to establish educational institutions. Gregory XVI. denounced freedom of conscience as an insane folly, and the freedom of the press a pestilent error, which cannot be sufficiently detested.

But how is it possible to recognize an inspired and infallible oracle on the Tiber, when it is remembered that again and again successive popes have contradicted each other; that popes have denounced councils, and councils have denounced popes; that the Bible of Sixtus V. had so many admitted errors—nearly two thousand—that its own authors had to recall it? How is it possible for the children of the Church to regard as "delusive errors" the globular form of the earth, her position as a planet in the solar system, her rotation on her axis, her movement round the sun? How can they deny that there are antipodes, and other worlds than ours? How can they believe that the world was made out of nothing, completed in a week, finished just as we see it now; that it has undergone no change, but that its parts have worked so indifferently as to require incessant interventions?

THE ERRORS OF ECCLESIASTICISM. When Science is thus commanded to surrender her intellectual convictions, may she not ask the ecclesiastic to remember the past? The contest respecting the figure of the earth, and the location of heaven and hell, ended adversely to him. He affirmed that the earth is an extended plane, and that the sky is a firmament, the floor of heaven, through which again and again persons have been seen to ascend. The globular form demonstrated beyond any possibility of contradiction by astronomical facts, and by the voyage of Magellan's ship, he then maintained that it is the central body of the universe, all others being in subordination to it, and it the grand object of God's regard. Forced from this position, he next affirmed that it is motionless, the sun and the stars actually revolving, as they apparently do, around it. The invention of the telescope proved that here again he was in error. Then he maintained that all the motions of the solar system are regulated by providential intervention; the "Principia" of Newton demonstrated that they are due to irresistible law. He then affirmed that the earth and all the celestial bodies were created about six thousand years ago, and that in six days the order of Nature was settled, and plants and animals in their various tribes introduced. Constrained by the accumulating mass of adverse evidence, he enlarged his days into periods of indefinite length—only, however, to find that even this device was inadequate. The six ages, with their six special creations, could no longer be maintained, when it was discovered that species, slowly emerged in one age, reached a culmination in a second, and gradually died out in a third: this overlapping from age to age would not only have demanded creations, but re-creations also. He affirmed that there had been a deluge, which covered the whole earth above the tops of the highest mountains, and that the waters of this flood were removed by a wind. Correct ideas respecting the dimensions of the atmosphere, and of the sea, and of the operation of evaporation, proved how untenable these statements are. Of the progenitors of the human race, he declared that they had come from their Maker's hand perfect, both in body and mind, and had subsequently experienced a fall. He is now considering how best to dispose of the evidence continually accumulating respecting the savage condition of prehistoric man.

Is it at all surprising that the number of those who hold the opinions of the Church in light esteem should so rapidly increase? How can that be received as a trustworthy guide in the invisible, which falls into so many errors in the visible? How can that give confidence in the moral, the spiritual, which has so signally failed in the physical? It is not possible to dispose of these conflicting facts as "empty shadows," "vain devices," "fictions coming from knowledge falsely so called," "errors wearing the deceitful appearance of truth," as the Church stigmatizes them. On the contrary, they are stern witnesses, bearing emphatic and unimpeachable testimony against the ecclesiastical claim to infallibility, and fastening a conviction of ignorance and blindness upon her.

Convicted of so many errors, the papacy makes no attempt at explanation. It ignores the whole matter Nay, more, relying on the efficacy of audacity, though confronted by these facts, it lays claim to infallibility.

SEPARATION OF CATHOLICISM AND CIVILIZATION. But, to the pontiff, no other rights can be conceded than those he can establish at the bar of Reason. He cannot claim infallibility in religious affairs, and decline it in scientific. Infallibility embraces all things. It implies omniscience. If it holds good for theology, it necessarily holds good for science. How is it possible to coordinate the infallibility of the papacy with the well-known errors into which it has fallen?

Does it not, then, become needful to reject the claim of the papacy to the employment of coercion in the maintenance of its opinions; to repudiate utterly the declaration that "the Inquisition is an urgent necessity in view of the unbelief of the present age," and in the name of human nature to protest loudly against the ferocity and terrorism of that institution? Has not conscience inalienable rights?

An impassable and hourly-widening gulf intervenes between Catholicism and the spirit of the age. Catholicism insists that blind faith is superior to reason; that mysteries are of more importance than facts. She claims to be the sole interpreter of Nature and revelation, the supreme arbiter of knowledge; she summarily rejects all modern criticism of the Scriptures, and orders the Bible to be accepted in accordance with the views of the theologians of Trent; she openly avows her hatred of free institutions and constitutional systems, and declares that those are in damnable error who regard the reconciliation of the pope with modern civilization as either possible or desirable.

SCIENCE AND PROTESTANTISM. But the spirit of the age demands—is the human intellect to be subordinated to the Tridentine Fathers, or to the fancy of illiterate and uncritical persons who wrote in the earlier ages of the Church? It sees no merit in blind faith, but rather distrusts it. It looks forward to an improvement in the popular canon of credibility for a decision between fact and fiction. It does not consider itself bound to believe fables and falsehoods that have been invented for ecclesiastical ends. It finds no argument in behalf of their truth, that traditions and legends have been long-lived; in this respect, those of the Church are greatly inferior to the fables of paganism. The longevity of the Church itself is not due to divine protection or intervention, but to the skill with which it has adapted its policy to existing circumstances. If antiquity be the criterion of authenticity, the claims of Buddhism must be respected; it has the superior warrant of many centuries. There can be no defense of those deliberate falsifications of history, that concealment of historical facts, of which the Church has so often taken advantage. In these things the end does not justify the means.