matters not one bit what the Bible records or suggests about the human condition of a group of women and men who ex- the history of the earth as far as modern science is concerned, perienced life differently because of another man, Jesus. In and it should not become an issue between the scientist and their construction of myths about that man are they very dif- the person of biblical faith. The public should not allow it to ferent from us? If they were disciples, often blinded by devo- disorder rational scientific inquiry in the public schools. tion, do they differ markedly from modern disciples of Freud There is a line in Hadrian VII in which Hadrian is accus- and Jung, Marx and Jefferson, Lincoln and King, Barth and ed of being in revolt against the faith. He replies, "I am not in Brunner? We need not strike out in anger or ill will at biblical revolt against the faith, I am in revolt against the faithful." writers merely because a lunatic fringe desires to co-opt them. For many humanists still related to the Christian tradition, no When Pat Robertson asserts that the United States is men- matter how tenuously, this statement applies. For, indeed, in tioned only once in Ezekiel (chapter 38, for the curious) it is the present decade the critic and the Christian humanist alike not the author of Ezekiel who is a fool! are camp followers, to borrow a phrase from Van Harvey, We can most assuredly take heart that our human ra- unacceptable to the faithful but unwilling to forsake the faith. tionality is pitted against a band of religionists who, taking a Now, by "the faith" I mean quite a different thing from cue from "Amazing Grace," claim to be wretches in the sight that suggested by various current orthodoxies. It does not oc- of God. We would be more comfortable with an appellation cur to me that I am required to abandon a worthy philosophy written by Emerson and reportedly applied by Thomas Hux- just because of a rather consistent pattern of lunacy asso- ley to Charles Darwin: "Beware when the great God lets loose ciated therewith. As a humanist I am prepared to respond to a thinker on this planet." • Creationism: 500 Years of Controversy ANNRIMITIN Gerald Larue When Christianity became the religion of kings and emperors the cosmos came into being through a series of divine acts and came to dominate the Western world, it inherited from spread across the Jewish week of six workdays. Because this Judaism a cosmology and a weltanschauung that fitted well revelation was conceived as divine truth, to doubt was with what was known of the world at that time. The earth was heresy. believed to be a flat disc, surrounded by seas. Above was the To be sure, the Christian and Jewish worlds confronted firmament, the hard shell of heaven, and above the firma- other ideas. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and other ment were the primeval waters. The sun, moon, and stars Europeans had differing theories, myths, and theologies, but were set immediately below the heavens, while somewhere the actual structure of the world in these so-called "pagan" above in a never too clearly defined locale was the realm of cultures was not out of keeping with the biblical view. It was the deity and the court of heaven. Below the earth was the only necessary to insist that the biblical view was correct or to place of the dead, the underworld, and the kingdom of Satan. enter into dialogue with the philosopher's teachings. Farther below this were the primeval waters. It was not until the time of Copernicus (1473-1543) and Sandwiched between heaven and hell, between the realms during the following five hundred years that the conflict bet- of light and darkness, were humans who inhabited the earth ween the church — or religion — and science developed. That and whose welfare depended upon their roles in the continual conflict is still going on. struggle between good and evil. For guidance toward the The Polish astronomer Copernicus, who said that good and for warnings against evil, God had provided reveal- planetary motion was heliocentric, lived at a time when other ed Scriptures. Included in those Scriptures was an account, horizons were being broadened. Christopher Columbus had believed to have been written by the deliverer Moses, of how sailed from Spain in 1492 and had discovered a new world, Summer, 1982 9 and Vasco da Gama had sailed to India (1493). The world was John Ray had argued that fossils were the remains of living quite a bit larger than before. Questions were being raised organisms whose presence revealed that the earth's surface about the geography of Genesis. There was excitement in the had undergone dramatic changes that could not be reconciled air, and the implications of these new discoveries had not yet with the Genesis creation account. had an impact upon the Christian church. It was not until the Georges Leopold Cuvier (1769-1832), the paleontologist, Italian scientist and philosopher Galileo began to make his had to some degree allayed the fears of believers by saying thinking known that the real conflict between science and that the earth had experienced a series of cataclysms that had religion began. Doubts were raised about the validity of destroyed its inhabitants, so that the idea of the Flood was biblical cosmology. left secure. But there still remained problems with the six days It is interesting to note that at this time the church did of creation. Something of the resentment of the ordinary not take a doctrinal stand, to try to show that science was churchgoer was expressed by the poet William Cowper wrong. Rather, personal limitations were put upon Galileo by (1731-1800): Cardinal Bellarmine so that certain precepts could not be taught. In 1615 Bellarmine wrote to the Carmelite Foscarini: Some drill and bore The solid earth, and from the strata there If there was a real demonstration that the sun is in the center Extract a register, by which we learn, and that the earth goes around it, then one would have to pro- That he who made it, and revealed its date ceed with much care in expounding the places of Scripture to Moses, was mistaken in its age. which seem to be contrary to that, and it would be better to say that we do not understand them than to declare that false which has been demonstrated. Between 1830 and 1833 the British geologist Sir Charles Meanwhile in China, where Roman Catholic missionaries had Lyell (1797-1875) published Principles of Geology, in which taken the theories of Galileo, correct calculations were made he tried to accommodate geological findings to Genesis by for an eclipse and, the missionaries reported, the Ptolemaic postulating a series of creative acts, but when he published formulae were found to be in error.2 Evidence for the Antiquity of Man in 1863 he demonstrated About this same time James Ussher (1581-1656), convincingly the presence of humans long before the time archbishop of Armagh in Ireland, determined that Adam was allowed by biblical chronology. The community of believers, created in the year 4004 B.C. and that the flood occurred 1655 however, held fast to the established date of 4004 B.C. Some years later in the year 2349 B.C. John Lightfoot of Cam- would expand the six days to six ages, but the conviction re- bridge stated in 1642 that the creation of man had taken place mained that somewhere, back in distant history, Adam and at 9:00 A.M. on October 23, 4004 B.C. Archbishop Ussher Eve had been created. published his chronology titled Annales Veteris et Novi There were objections to the attempts to reconcile the six Testamentum between 1650 and 1654. By 1703 the dates he days of creation with geological epochs. In 1855, Tayler proposed were being printed in the margins of the King James Lewis wrote: Bible published by Charles Bill. They have continued to be printed in modern times, and thus they tend to be given the It is a wretched self-deception, when we fancy we have a belief same authority as other Biblical materials by believers. grounded on the Scriptures, which after all rests for its main But by this time the rationalist movement was beginning. support on Buckland, or Lyell, or Hugh Miller ... If the Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and Rene Descartes (1592-1650), twenty-four-hour hypothesis is the one, and the only one, that both of whom professed orthodoxy, raised doubts about the comes from a faithful and exact exegesis of the Sacred Words, he [the believer] must accept it in spite of any difficulties of authority of the Bible because they made reason the ultimate science; he must believe — as faith is often required to do — criterion. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) and his followers, against appearances, however striking, or reasonings however with their concepts of celestial mechanics in which there was plausible. And he would not be irrational in so doing ... We no reference to a creator, were to start in motion scientific can get along very well without geology; our intellectual and ideas that would later have an impact on the church. Newton, moral dignity would not be impaired had no such science ever however, held that his research only served to enhance the existed. But where are we without Revelation, if the very initial wonder of the universe and exalt the wisdom of the creator. recognition of Man, and of the Earth, turns out to be all false, Since many church people subscribed to his idea, reveal- a lying legend — a work of fancy or designed deception?3 ed religion and science were able to coexist.