I’m not trying to imply that all the worlds famous scientist were Atheist. But clearly, they never considered the bible to be the absolute truth.
Is it a fair statement to say that all the greatest advancements in science were due in part because somebody refused to accept the bible on its face? Pre 18th century?
I wouldn’t say so. It’s a common belief among religious people that atheists are actively rejecting religion. There may be some public atheists for whom this is true but it’s not the general rule. Most atheists are just indifferent towards religion.
A scientist wouldn’t seek ways to disprove the Bible any more than he would seek ways to disprove the Quran or the Bhagavad Gita. Scientists study the real world and base their findings on what they find here.
The motivations of some were to prove the Bible correct. Then they found out it wasn’t. Still a discovery.
In the lat 18th and early 19th century many ministers got into science (which was a fad at the time) partly because they had a lot of free time, and partly to get the information to prove the Bible correct. It didn’t work out very well, and the more hard nosed anti-science religious leaders became more powerful.
I’d suspect most scientists who are not believers really don’t care what the Bible says. I’ve read extensively in this, and I can’t think of any scientists out to disprove the Bible. Darwin certainly wasn’t.
Right, I don’t think (as an example) Copernicus’ motivation was to disprove God. But clearly, had he been a true believer in religion, he wouldn’t have felt the need to explain the “Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres.”
No. It is completely false.
Pre 18th century - heck, pre mid twentieth - essentially every scientist you could name was a devout Christian (or Muslim, Jew, or whatever). In no respect did they see their work as contradicting the Bible. There really were not any atheists until the very late 18th century, and precious few even then (and those not, generally, scientists). Many of the great names of early science, people like Newton and Kepler, were fanatically religious. A great many saw their scientific work as a form of worship, a way of revealing God’s greatness through understanding the greatness of his creation (this applies even to Darwin in his early career).
On the other hand, mainstream Christianity has never taught (at least not since the 4th century) that the Bible is a reliable guide to scientific fact. Galileo, to take one famous example, argued that his heliocentric ideas did not contradict the Bible at all, because the Bible’s few offhand and indirect remarks about the structure of the solar system were never intended to be a part of its message. His arguments were drawn from the 4th century theologian St Augustine (by some distance the most influential and respected Christian thinker since Jesus and Paul themselves). The sort of anti-scientific fundamentalism we see today is very modern, and most theologians of the past (probably most today, actually) would have regarded it as heretical or even idolatrous, making an idol of the Bible.
Scientists did not have to deny the Bible to do their science because nobody (before fundamentalism took hold as an explicitly anti-scientific movement, in the early 20th century) thought it was a scientific textbook. (And, of course, it does not pretend to be one.) At least since St Augustine, mainstream Christian doctrine has been that when there seems to be a contradiction between the Bible and science (unless it touches on really key Christian doctrines, like the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus), Christians should defer to science. Most of the large denominations still adhere to this.
Copernicus was an ordained Catholic priest and a Cathedral Canon in good standing. There is absolutely no evidence even hinting that he was not a true believer. Neither he nor anyone else thought his work did anything whatsoever to “disprove God”. Indeed, it does no such thing. Neither did Galileo (or anybody else) think his work “disproved God”.
Why do you think he would not need to explain the revolutions of the spheres if he had been a believer? The Bible says nothing of any significance about the matter, and both Christian and Muslim scientists had been working on giving a mathematical account of the movements of the heavenly bodies (which was what Copernicus did) for centuries before his time. No-one ever thought there was anything in the least impious about this. Indeed, most of the people involved in the project (in the Christain part of the world) were churchmen. Many of the best observational and mathematical astronomers of Copernicus’s time were Jesuits (i.e., both priests and zealous defenders of Catholic orthodoxy), and they encouraged him in his work. A bit later (before the Galileo affair screwed things up), Jesuit missionaries in China were boasting of Copernicus’ work as an example of the wonders of Christian culture, in an effort (quite vain) to get Chinese intellectuals to convert.
Were there any alternatives to the Biblical narrative for educated people prior to 1859?
My impression was churchmen weren’t keen on competition, for obvious reasons.
That’s not really the way you should look at it. For hundreds of years in “the west”, joining the seminary meant learning how to read and get educated, while not joining it meant not learning how to read and not being educated. What use did kings have of literate peasants? There’s a reason why so many old universities have religious names.
Wasn’t he put under house arrest for heresy? And was it not a comonly held belief that the heavens revolved around the Earth?
Most people would have read classical natural philosophers like Aristotle, Hipparchus, or Ptolemy if they were seeking “scientific” information. As njtt noted, the Bible wasn’t regarded as a source for scientific knowledge.
By 1859, these classical sources would have been supplanted by more recent writers such as Kepler, Bullialdus, and Newton.
The people that upset the Church weren’t Copernicus and Galileo. The competition they were concerned about were Calvin and Luther. It wasn’t until the Catholic Church was geared up to defend against heresy over religious issues that anyone really bothered to squelch scientific theories. It was the challenge of Protestantism that made the Church so rigid in its defense of dogma.
Copernicus was exploring the glory of his God’s creation. He wasn’t looking for trouble.
The heresy part came from not shutting up when the bosses said to.
“Hey look what I found!” “Shut up about that, will ya?”
Nowadays you get fired for being obstinate- back then, house arrest was one of the nicer outcomes.
The question itself was bugging me, it seemed to me to be the wrong question.
I think a more accuratedly-asked and also more-general question would involve “questioning religious authority”. Neither Galileo nor Copernicus, who are often cited in this kind of conversations (and both of them are already listed in this thread) were saying anything that contradicted the Bible - they were contradicting the teachings of a very-specific Church which had gotten to the point of considering itself the maximum authority “on things human and divine”, and in the case of Galileo managed to piss off some specific individuals. But the teachings they contradicted weren’t religious in nature, much less Biblical; they were scientific teachings whose teachers happened to be part of the Church’s hierarchy.
Heliocentrism isn’t a Biblical doctrine, Shakes. People who think they are literalists have somehow ended up deciding that it is, and that they must therefore believe it, but in fact it is not mentioned at all. The closest one can come to finding heliocentrism in the Bible is Josue ordering the sun to stop so he and his men would be able to win a battle, and seeing heliocentrism there requires heavy squinting.
One thing still stands out, the Bible is a work by humans and it is therir beliefs that others follow. I believe that is why there are so many contradictions in the Bible, different translators see it in a different way and each wants to believe the one who best fits their life, and hopes.
If the Roman and Orthodox Bishops hadn’t tried to unite on the teachings of the Bible so Christianity wouldn’t be so divided, I doubt that there would be a Bible today. Constantine wanted a united Christianity, that was a way for there to be one doctrine, but as I understand it the RC goes more by the churches teachings, or traditions than the Bible. Until Luther’s time that was the way it went.
No props for Darwin here?
I wonder if anyone can identify a cutting-edge scientist prior to Darwin who was a skeptic.
His contemporary the great James Clerk Maxwell was, for example, an evangelical of the 19th-century type.
Well, their was a Baron.
Not a scientist, I know.
Darwin was very religious at the beginning of the Beagle voyage; and he was, like many then, looking to show how the bible was correct.
Did not turn out as expected.
http://www.aboutdarwin.com/darwin/whowas.html
I begin to see a trend here, I agree with others that most advancements were made because someone believed the bible was correct and looked to confirm their say so, found a different thing and the rest is history.