Ernie Stokely 9-25-2007
Imagine yourself sitting around a campfire 15-20,000 years ago somewhere in the area of Mesopotamia. Look to the sky ablaze with stars without light and air pollution. (Have you ever been out West on a cold winter's night away from light pollution and looked up? It is truly a wondrous sight not to be forgotten!) The ancients were equally humbled by the night sky, by the rising and setting of the sun and moon, the change of the seasons, etc. The human mind wants to try and understand, to rationalize its surroundings. Thus, our species was led to postulate the presence of mystical beings, a god or gods who had powers beyond those of the human. There is no time here to talk about the evolution of our god concepts, but I heartily recommend to you Karen Armstrong's book, The History of God. God concepts have evolved over the millennia. According to Armstrong, very ancient humans that preceded the Hebrew tribes had a monotheistic God called the Sky God (monotheism is ancient), but this god was apparently so remote he/she was replaced by more accessible multiple gods, and polytheism became the norm. (One of the more popular was a female goddess called Great Mother. Sadly, the female component of our current God model was lost somewhere toward the end of the Middle Ages ... but that is another story!) Monotheistic god notions leading to our current monotheistic god of the Abrahamic religions re-emerged starting about 14,000 years ago. Read Armstrong's book to find out more about this interesting evolution. Modern Cosmology - Let's quickly jump to the present and take a very fast romp through some humbling facts from what we currently know about the universe that we can observe (much of our universe is not observable by us). If we take a string 10 feet long and let it represent the roughly 15 billion years since the "big bang," we see that about 2/3 way down the string (4.8 billion years ago) we have the creation of our galaxy and the coalescence of our planet Earth. Just a short billion years later we have evidence of the first simple single-cell life forms. These were probably archaebacteria that developed around fumaroles in the deep ocean. Life had evolved on earth! That is just eight inches down the 10' string from the formation of the earth. So, it took about a billion years of chemical experiments on the earth for life to evolve. It was just a wink in time ago, or only about 235 million years (less than two inches on the string from the present!) when the dinosaurs roamed the earth. So, where is our species, homo sapiens, on this scale? How much distance on the string would we occupy? Well, if you take the time on the earth of our species to be about 50,000 years when our current species is thought to have become distinctly evolved from our nearest primate ancestor, we occupy a distance of 1/2 the width of a human hair on our 15 foot string!! We are indeed so very, very recent on the planet. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, a modest galaxy as galaxies go, is over 100,000 light years across. That is the distance light would travel going at 186,000 miles per second in 100,000 years! In our galaxy there are estimated to be over 400 billion stars. Yet, there are 125 billion galaxies in the observable universe. This means there are over 5,000 billion billion estimated stars in the observable universe, more stars than there are grains of sand on all the beaches on the entire planet Earth! Now let me give you some science factoids at the micro scale. Our spiral DNA molecule (see here for scientific details), composed of nucleic acid base pairs connected together in a spiral, is present in every cell and contains the code to make any cell in our body. Every living cell on the planet, be it bacteria, animal, or plant, has roughtly the same kind of biochemical machinery in its cell(s). There are 3.2 billion base pairs in the human genome, yet there are over 4,000 known diseases that are caused by an error in a single base pair. The human genome contains 23 chromosomes and about 20,000-25,000 genes (each gene codes for one or more proteins), as do most mammals. Plants have 40,000-50,000 genes (more than us marvelous humans ... isn't that interesting?), mice also have about 20,000 genes; in the nematode (C. elegans) that feasts on the roots of my tomato plants each summer, the number is around 19 000; in a yeast cell (S. cerevisiae) that rises our bread there are approximately 6,000 genes; and the microbe responsible for tuberculosis has around 4,000. 97% of the human genome does not code for a protein and we are just now beginning the process of understanding the function of this part of the genome. Between humans, our DNA differs by only 0.2 per cent, or 1 in 500 base pairs. Finally, human DNA is 99.1 per cent identical to chimpanzees. Can there be much doubt about our evolution from the flora and fauna of the past? The Ancient World
For example, Babylonian mathematics in 3000 BCE ("before common era", or more commonly, "BC", or "before Christ") had developed a number system, or a "place system," based on the base 60. Our modern number system is based on 10 (the decimal system). Around 2000 BCE the astronomers of Mesopotamia used tables with squares of numbers, a system that came much, much later in the West. In 1800 BCE the Egyptians used equations to deal with food distribution. Even the earliest recording of the creation story came from India around 2000 BCE and was recorded in the Rig-veda, which evolved into Hinduism. More about the contributions of the non-Greek scientists can be found in the paperback, Lost Discoveries, by Dick Teresi. The Abrahamic Genesis story was first written down around 1400-1200 BCE (before it was oral tradition), and around 1000 BCE the Sumarians and Babylonians were using a sophisticated algebra, millennia before algebra was introduced in Egypt and Greece by Hero of Alexandria. The Greek Era and the Beginning Disagreements between Science and Religion
In the second century (150) CE, Ptolemy, a North African astronomer, created an astronomical canon that incorporated ideas of Aristotle (the orbits of the planets and the sun were thought to be circular and contained in concentric spheres around the earth). This planetary system orbiting the earth at its center was called the "geocentric" system and was the accepted system by the early Christian church as the one created by God. It was not questioned until centuries later by Copernicus. What's the Big Deal With Cosmology? - Why all this fuss about astronomy and cosmology? Well, religion (which preceded science) contained mythologies regarding the early understanding of astronomy, the stars, the planets, etc., and it contained stories about the creation of the universe. The priests, popes, and bishops who controlled the early (Christian) Church took these stories literally, since they were believed by most everyone. However, as more and more became known through scientific methods of astronomy and careful observation, the viewpoints of scientific cosmology and Biblical cosmology (and the official interpretations sanctioned by the Church) began to differ. Cosmology was the first arena of science for a disagreement with the Church. Others were to follow later. The Rise of ChristianityEarly Christianity has a rich history between 0 and 400 CE ("common era," or AD, or "after death"). It will not be covered in this short presentation, but more detail can be found here.The great theologian, Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE), authored a number of treatises that become the foundation of modern Christian theology. He was heavily influenced by Platonism (Plato: 427-347 BCE), NeoPlatonism, and Stoicism, and brought Greek influence into Christian theology at this point. However, he missed much of Greek natural philosophy (such as works by Aristotle) and insisted on basing Christian theology on faith rather than reason. The main cause of this omission was the few scholars in the Roman empire who could read and write Greek. Thus, so much of Greek science and philosophy was lost to Roman scholars for centuries to come. The Decline - The "Dark" and Middle Ages
The Attempt to Preserve Learning - Between roughly 400 -1400 CE we have what are called the Middle Ages. During this time learning was kept alive in the Christian monasteries (abbots, priories, hermitages, etc.), but only the science that was written in Latin was preserved. Again, there were few that could read or write Greek. Universities began to appear across Europe and Great Britain during this time (in Oxford, Bologna, Paris, e.g.). The Great Islamic Handoff! - Although the Roman Empire was uneducated in the Greek language, not so with the Islamic world. Islamic scholars not only transcribed the Greek science into their own language, they carried forward the science and made their own contributions (see Teresi's book, Lost Discoveries, for more details or go here for more details). In fact, the period 700 - 1400 CE is known as the Islamic Golden Age. Beginning in about the 13th century or so, the science that had been nurtured by Islamic scientists began to make its way back into Western Europe ... across the Pyrenees from the Moors in Spain and from documentation from the Christian crusaders returning from the Middle East. The Renaissance was beginning to bloom in Europe as knowledge began to once again grow and new thinking began to flourish. Unfortunately, Islamic science began a decline about that time - between the 10th and 13th centuries - due to several reasons, but primarily due to conservative and restrictive interpretations of the Qur'an and a turn from thought-based on reason to thought based on strict beliefs. That situation persists today in some sects of Islam. The Rise of Science - The Enlightenment in AstronomyThe Trouble Begins with Copernicus - Nicolaus Copernicus was born in the Kingdom of Poland in 1473. His handbook, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, was revolutionary in its time. It was the first open suggestion in more "modern" times that the planets revolved around the sun, rather than the earth. This is known as a "heliocentric" system, rather than the "geocentric" system discussed earlier where the planets and the sun revolve around the earth.
Copernicus circulated his theories mainly to his friends, and was too fearful of persecution by the church to publish his works widely. They did, however catch the eyes of Martin Luther, Johannes Kepler, Tyco Brahe, and Galileo Galilei. The Rise of Science - The Enlightenment by Great Scientists and PhilosophersJohannes Kepler and Tyco Brahe - Two great astronomers lived during the 16th century. Johannes Kepler was a German astronomer born in Swabia in the south of Germany. Tyco Brahe Tyco Brahe was once out drinking with friends as a 20-year old. He got into an argument and wound up getting his nose cut off in a duel. For the remainder of his life he wore a copper nose prosthesis. He is also reported to have had a pet moose which somehow drank too much beer during a party and feel down onto the floor and died. It is not known why he was in the house. Tyco Brahe was indeed a colorful fellow! He was also a very bright scholar and astronomer who was determined to provide a compromise between the heliocentric system proposed by Copernicus and the geocentric system maintained by the church. So, he advanced a theory that the sun and moon rotate around the earth, while the remainder of the planets rotate around the sun. The resulting system tied mathematicians and astronomers in knots for years until Brahe's theory was finally disproved. However, the Church was convinced that his speculations were correct, and they adopted his combination planetary system. Meanwhile, Johannes Kepler tried in vain to convince Brahe that he was wrong, and that the Copernican heliocentric system was indeed correct. In fact, Kepler even figured out the ellipical orbits of the planets and laid the foundations for the careful observations later by Galileo. Remember, there were no telescopes yet in the 16th century.
The Rise of Science - Galileo, Newton, and Kant
Galileo did brilliant work in a number of fields of science including physics, mathematics, philosophy, and astronomy. It was his careful observations and keen thinking in astronomy, however, that got him into trouble. He built the first telescope (invented in Holland), and stubbornly believed that the church would accept his conclusions about the heliocentric nature of the solar system and his agreement with Copernicus' earlier speculations. Alas, the church was in no mood at this point in history to tolerate the contradictory views of a lay person, not even the famous Galileo Galilei! He spent the last 10 years of his life under house arrest and narrowly escaped death and being condemned as a heretic of the Church. It took over 400 years for the Catholic Church to forgive Galileo. Only in October of 1992 did Pope John Paul II officially forgive Galileo and express regret for the way things had been handled in the mid-17th century. Wow. Isaac Newton - On the year that Galileo died (1642), Isaac Newton was born in Protestant England into a lower income family. Newton was a very bright child, although as an adult he had a somewhat egotistical personality. After finishing his education he received a faculty post at Oxford. In 1664 he was sent home due to an outbreak of the plague in England. There he had time away from his professorial duties to study in his garden, observe the falling of the apple from the tree, ponder issues of gravity, mathematics, and write down his ideas. It was during this year most of his founding ideas in astronomy, physics, and mathematics were developed. His foundational document was Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (in Latin), a pillar of science to follow. Would this have happened if Newton had not had his sabbatical away from the plague? Newton was a Unitarian and he rejected Trinitarian theology. This became known at Oxford, and he was held back from advancement because of his religious views. The Rise of Science - The Ages of Reason and Enlightenment
![]() The Philosophers and Theologians - Only a small sample of the ground-breaking and original thinking of the 19th century will be presented here. David Strauss (1808-1874) dared to suggest that the stories surrounding Jesus's life and work did not derive from actual events but had resulted from an Old Testament mythological tradition. Theology in the 19th century became diverse and sometimes contentious. For example, Charles Hodge (1797-1878), Professor of Theology at Princeton, wrote simply that Darwinism was atheism. Thomas Huxley - Thomas Huxley (1825-1895) wrote treatises supporting the theory of evolution, even though he had doubts about Darwin's ideas of natural selection and gradualism. He enlarged evolutionary thinking to include ideas about human evolution and distinction between human races and genders. Huxley considered himself an agnostic. Almost totally self-schooled, Huxley made contributions not only in areas of thinking about evolution, he made large contributions to biology. The 20th and 21st Centuries- Rise of Fundamentalism, Evangelicalism, and ProgressiveismAlbert Einstein - Before moving to religious movements of the last century, no discussion of science The Rise of Fundamentalism - In the 19th century there were two significant movements in Christianity that would be played out in the coming centuries - conservatism and liberalism. Liberalism in particular adopted many of the ideas from the philosophy of the times, and rejected the more orthodox teachings of Christianity. Finally, in the 20th century some Christians had had enough. They set out to formalize what it meant to be a Christian. Fundamentalism was born in the 1920s. Theologians at the conservative Princeton Theological Seminary played a role in this movement with their writings. In 1909, Lyman Steward, a businessman and Christian philanthropist, wrote a 12-volume series called The Fundamentals. This series of books became the foundation for the fundamentalist movement in the United States. Fundamentalists belong to all the major Christian denominations, and fundamentalism exists in all of the major religions today (especially troubling is the current Islamic fundamentalism and its beliefs regarding the lack of sanctity of human life). The fundamentalist belief often assumes the Bible is inerrant; hence, the fundamentalist cosmology follows that of the Iron and Bronze age understanding of the Bible. For example, fundamentalists may believe that the earth was formed as recently as 4,000 years ago. Evolution is rejected out of hand. The experimentation with stem cells is also another point of departure between many fundamentalists and scientists. There are many points of disagreement withscientific findings. Evangelicalism is often confused with fundamentalism, although the two movements share some common characteristics. Evangelicalism is often characterized by Biblical inerrancy, and this causes conflicts between evangelicals and modern science. Progressive Christianity is a relative new movement that can be considered to be a branch off of liberal Christianity of the 19th century. Progressive Christians have a metaphorical understanding of the Bible, and attempt to reconcile modern science with their Christian beliefs. The Argument Over the Creation - Conservative and fundamentalist Christians reject the evolutionary and "big bang" stories of the history of the planet, and insist on adhering to the Biblical stories of the creation (there are two of them) in Genesis. "Creationism" is a word that has been coined to describe the process whereby God created the universe in 7 days. Scientists were content to let religious believers have the right to believe in creationism until they began in intercede in the schools and change the way science was taught to children. Scientists became alarmed and felt that this jeopardized the scientific future and competitiveness of the U.S. in the world economy. Thus, there have been bitter, vocal outbreaks between the two camps over the creation story. "Intelligent design" is another way to suggest that God interceded into the evolutionary process by laying out the design of life found in nature. Scientists reject this theory as well, and consider it a threat to an enlightened, modern understanding of biology, cosmology, and the other natural sciences. This battle still rages in the United States. Personal Theologies of GodPeople who come to SPAFER meetings have many understandings of God. Some are atheists and do not believe there is an entity such as God. Others are agnostics. What one comes to believe about God is a personal conclusion that results from a personal search. However, one's god theology has everything to do with one's ability to reconcile religion and science. Only a very brief summary will be given here. Go to the links to read more about these theologies, many of which are very complex. Theologies that bear on the issue: Theism – The ideas embedded in theism go back to the 16th century, but is still a primary God theology, especially in modern U.S. churches. In theism, God is an omnipotent entity that intercedes into the modern world (divine intervention), sometimes suspending the laws of nature by. A belief in a theistic god makes reconciliation with modern science very difficult. Deism – Deists believe that God created the world and the natural laws, but does not interfere with the process in the present. Many scientists who still hold onto a belief in God have this model of God. It is compatible with modern science since there is no divine intervention. Atheism – Many scientists, if not most, consider themselves to be atheists. There are more kinds of atheism than you might expect! See the link to the left to explore more. Atheism is compatible with modern science. Agnosticism – Agnosticism is a belief that the existence of God cannot be proved, but the possibility for God to exist is left open. Many scientists share this belief. It is compatible with modern science. Pantheism – Pantheists believe that God and the universe are synonymous, i.e., God is in and is everything. Pantheism is compatible with modern science. Panentheism – Panentheists believe God is all that is in the universe, but is more, is the source of universal truth, and that God will likely always be beyond human understanding. Panentheism is compatible with modern science. Process theology – Process theology plays a large role in the underpinnings of pantheism and especially panentheism. Process theology describes a God that is not omnipotent, and that God and everything in the universe is in change or "process". Self-determination plays a large role in the world. God maintains a mysterious component, but moves the world toward “completion” or “good” in ways not understood. Process theology is compatible with modern science. One's God theology is not the only key to one's view of modern science. The belief about the role of the Bible in one's religion also plays a key role. Two polar views are common today: a) The Bible is to be taken literally and is the infallible Word of God. This viewpoint makes reconciliation with modern science difficult since the entire Bible is written by men during the Bronze and Iron Ages when almost no modern science was known.b) The Bible is to be best understood metaphorically and understood in terms of the time when it was written. This viewpoint leaves room for building a compatibility between science and religion. |
Video Clips
Dr. Joerg Rieger,
Our Fall of 2012 Lecture Speaker
Dr. Joerg Rieger on Anselm of Canterbury
Dr. Joerg Rieger, Perkins School of Theology, on Progressive Christianity
Rev. Robin Meyers,
Our Spring 2012 Lecture Speaker
Oklahoma Minister Claims Jesus Is Not God
Robin Meyers on the Christian Right
Bishop John Shelby Spong,
Our Fall 2011 Lecture Speaker
Beyond Theism -- John Shelby Spong
The Call of Jesus -- John Shelby Spong
Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow
Our Spring 2013 Lecture Speakers
Michael Dowd - "Darwin Day Celebration" 2011, Omaha
Fred Plummer
Our Fall 2011 Lecture Speaker