A Few Points of Light

By

Mark Swint

author of

OCULUS: The Zebulon Initiative

Isn’t it funny how the smallest things can sometimes lead to the biggest  discoveries?

Take, for example, stars, or more specifically, starlight. For the common human experience stars are little more than twinkling points of light in an otherwise black sky. They are separated from us not only by unimaginably vast distances – distances so great that even the explanation of how far away they are fails to properly acquaint us with the true scale – but also by time. It’s true! Oddly, all of the points of light we see in the night sky represent completely different times of earthly existence. For example, when we look upon stars like Belletrix, Sirius, Betelgeuse, Vega, Antares or the Andromeda Galaxy, we actually see them as they were, not as they are. For example, we see Sirius as it was 8.6 years ago, Belletrix as it was 243 years ago, and Betelgeuse as it was 427 years ago. Antares shines light upon us that started its journey in 1402! Remarkably, if you can find the Andromeda Galaxy south of Cassiopeia you can look at light that left that galaxy 2 million years ago. More remarkable still, the Hubble telescope has taken photographs of galaxies whose light began its journey 13.5 BILLION years ago! Looking at a night sky that isn’t even representative of “real time” makes it even more amazing that these tiny points of light could have ever had any real, tangible effect on us and on our lives. Yet they say that truth is stranger than fiction and in the case of starlight they are right.

Early humans first perceived the regular east to west motion of the Sun and established the day as the first real measure of time. Each sunrise (or sunset depending on tribal preference) marked the beginning of a new day. The Moon crossed the night sky as a counterpoint to the Sun but it also did something very different as well. It not only moved east to west like the Sun but on each succeeding night it moved a little bit more to the east through the background of the star field. It also had phases , changing from full to waning gibbous and waning crescent to no moon at all, and then to waxing crescent and waxing gibbous until once again shining in the night sky as a full moon. This complete cycle took about 28 days and that repetitive cycle became the next demarcation of time, a lunar month. Closer examination of the Sun’s motion revealed that it too moved against the backdrop of the star field although at a much slower rate. It turned out that as the Sun moved against the background stars it also rose at a slightly different point on the horizon each day. In the summer the Sun rose well north of east ( for those in the Equatorial Band) and it slowly moved southward until the dead of winter when it rose well south of east. This north/south cycling repeated over and over and people noticed that the seasons followed suit. This period became a year and it lasted about 365 days. Early observers marked the northernmost and southernmost points of sunrise and these became the solstices. They also noticed that midway through the Sun’s trek from north to south and back again the daytime and the night time were of equal length so these points came to be known as the equinoxes. The four seasons were tied to these four points so we now have Spring commence on the Vernal equinox, Summer begins with the summer solstice, Fall starts at the autumnal equinox and Winter starts when the Sun hits the lowest point on the horizon, the winter solstice. In the early days of the Roman Empire (and in many other cultures as well) the New Year was celebrated at the beginning of spring. Have you ever wondered why September, October, November and December have names that begin with the prefixes for 7, 8, 9 and 10 even though the months are the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th months? The vernal equinox came on the 15th of March on the Julian calendar so our 3rd month was the early Roman 1st month (although when Julius Caesar established his calendar he made January the first month, breaking with old tradition).

Once it was observed that the Sun moved against the star field it was decided to divide the star field along the ecliptic (the path followed by the Sun and Moon) into twelve portions. The constellations in those sections made up the Zodiac. When a person was said to be born under Pisces it meant that he or she was born during the time that the Sun was in the Star field in front of Pisces. Each of the signs of the Zodiac represented the time when the Sun was in that particular portion of the ecliptic. The men who studied this stuff were called astrologers and they held a very important place in society. As most all societies were agrarian it was crucially important to know when to plant and when to harvest. Tomato and melon growers, for example, dared not plant until the last frost of the year had fallen or else they would lose their whole crop. Likewise, harvesting had to be done before it got too cold. Astrologers were the people assigned to read the stars and make those determinations. The very survival of whole societies depended upon their accuracy.

Reading the stars took on a mystical aura and soon people began to ascribe all sorts of things to them. It was believed by many that the stars a person was born under were determinative of the course for that person’s life. So strongly held was this belief that the saying “you can’t change a person’s stars” was born along with the rather fatalistic determinism that followed. Many of us might remember a grandparent who would say “my stars’ as an exclamatory statement. It was also believed that stars controlled health and sickness and as pandemics swept Europe during the Middle Ages it was believed that sick people were under the ‘influence’ of the stars. The Italian word for influence is ‘influenza’ and we still use that word today, or its foreshortened term ‘Flu’.

What does this have to do with science and religion you may ask? Well, everything, as a matter of fact. You see, the early astrologers were often the theologians as well, or at least in the employ of the head cleric. This was appropriate as who better than men of God to study the heavens? However, things began to happen in the third and fourth centuries that would change the course of humankind forever, just not right away.

The emperor Constantine, the last Caesar of the Roman Empire fought tirelessly to quell the rising interest in Christianity until he finally concluded that it would be easier to adopt it as the official religion and transform the ‘Roman Empire’ into the ‘Holy Roman Empire’. In 325 A.D. he called all the clerics from around the Mediterranean to a conclave in Nicaea, a city in Turkey. There they were instructed to hash out their doctrinal differences and come out of the council with one unified, universal (or ‘Catholic’) doctrine. They were to make determinations and set doctrine on almost everything they could think of, including the heavens and the Sun, Moon and stars. They made decisions on whether there was empty space and just exactly what the Sun was. They decided that the stars were fixed in a shell that rotated around the earth. The Sun had its own shell as did the moon. They decided that the earth was the center of a geocentric universe and all things in the heavens revolved around our little planet. Now, this would have been OK if the council had issued a proclamation saying something to the effect that these new doctrines represented the best of their understanding to that point and that as further light and knowledge appeared doctrines would be reviewed and amended as appropriate. Instead, they declared the doctrines of the Nicaean Council to be ‘infallible’. Furthermore, they declared that anyone who disagreed with the doctrines would be guilty of ‘Heresy’, a sin punishable by death! Well, this worked OK for a little while but even from the beginning there were problems that unsettled the hearts of people of learning. Among the biggest of those problems were the stars the Greeks called the wandering stars or “Planetas”.

No one was really quite sure what the planets were. What was sure however was that the planets didn’t seem to follow any of the rules that all the other heavenly bodies followed. For example, the rest of the stars all moved in unison across the sky. Likewise the Sun and the Moon had their own predictable patterns. But the planets were a different story altogether. An individual planet like Mars, for instance, would move west to east for a while against the backdrop of the stars. It might then suddenly stop. Once it started moving again it might resume its eastward trek or it might just as easily begin moving east to west! It would follow this path for a time and then suddenly resume eastward movement. It might then disappear completely only to reappear some months later on the other side of the night sky! Jupiter and Saturn would likewise ‘wander’ around the sky although much more slowly while Venus verily zipped back and forth across the face of the Sun. All this was most confusing and no acceptable model could be made to explain it according to Catholic doctrine. It remained for many centuries a mystery.

Now let’s jump ahead 1100 years to Firenze, Toscana, or as we know it, Florence, in the Provence of Tuscany in Italy. It is the 1400s and a very powerful Florentine family known as the Medicis rule Tuscany. The Medicis were a banking family who, through intrigue and hard work, had become the bankers to the Vatican. This yielded them wealth and power beyond imagination. But the Medicis were an amazing family as well for they determined to spend some of their wealth serving as patrons for many of the brightest minds they could find. They patronized artists and architects, philosophers and poets. Among their more famous and productive patronages were people like Michelangelo, Botticelli, and Leonardo Da Vinci. Another of their men was a brilliant mathematician whom they hired to tutor (ultimately) multiple generations of Medici children. His name was Galileo Galilei.

Galileo was a man of wide a varied interest with an intellect sufficient to accommodate them all. His discoveries and inventions were numerous and his work lives on today. On the British two pound coin is inscribed around the edge “standing upon the shoulders of giants”. It is Sir Isaac Newton’s homage to Galileo and refers to his answer to the question “How have you managed to see so much farther than other men?” to which Newton replied “If I have seen farther than others it is only because I have stood upon the shoulders of giants!” referring particularly to Galileo.

Galileo is perhaps best known for two things, dropping two rocks of dissimilar size from the Leaning Tower of Pisa (his birthplace) and the invention of the telescope. It is this last item which brings us back to our tiny points of light that changed the world.

The telescope was a remarkable invention. It had the previously undreamt of ability to bring distant objects into full view. It could even reveal things unable to be made out with the naked eye. Galileo probably first used the new device to check out the sights of the surrounding Florentine environs. After scoping out the hot Italian ladies in the neighboring buildings (come on, you know he did!) he then turned his sights on even more heavenly bodies – the moon and the stars. The brightest star in the night sky was Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. (Though Jupiter is today referred to as a planet, in Galileo’s day planets were considered mysterious ‘oddly acting stars’). As he trained his telescope on Jupiter Galileo made a surprising discovery that forever changed the relationship between scientists and theologians and, more generally, between science and religion. He saw four tiny specks of light next to the giant planet. That’s all, just four tiny points of light. After a few weeks of observation and careful note taking it became obvious that the four little lights were in fact moons of Jupiter! And that, my friends, was earth shaking! That four previously unviewed sparkling points of light could change the world seems oddly disproportionate to their apparent significance but, like it or not, the world would never again be the same.

The Galilean moons, as the newly discovered objects came to be known, weren’t supposed to be there. They weren’t supposed to exist at all. The doctrine established by the Nicaean council had declared that all objects in the sky revolved around the earth and nothing else, yet here were four objects clearly and indisputably revolving – orbiting – another object in the sky! The implications were enormous and the entire geocentric (earth centered) theory of stellar mechanics – already hanging by a thread – was brought to the brink. Copernicus had already advocated an Heliocentric ‘Solar system’ in which the planets, including Earth, orbited the Sun. Galileo subscribed to this thinking and the discovery of the Galilean moons only reinforced that belief. In 1615 he was denounced for his beliefs before the Roman Inquisition. Though he was cleared of offenses at this time his ideas, published in 1632 in a supposedly fictional conversation called “Concerning the Two Chief World Systems” brought him back before the inquisition where he was found “vehemently suspect of heresy”. He could have been sentenced to death but by recanting his support for the heliocentric theory and through the intercession of the Medicis he was merely sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of his life.

The damage to the already uneasy relationship between the thinkers and the Church had been done and the rift was only to grow wider from this point on. Galileo’s moons were obviously real and easily seen by anyone who cared to gaze through the telescope. That the church would doggedly maintain a doctrinal disagreement with readily observable fact only heightened the suspicion held by some that the church was not, in fact, the sole and absolute repository for truth. This, coupled with the persecution of the Inquisition against any who dared think along lines other than those expressed by the church, created a cabal of intellectuals who began to rely on their own cleverness and discovery rather than the proclamations of the church. More damaging still to the church was the growing willingness of others to question other aspects of theological edict and doctrine. The coming forth of Guttenberg’s printing press and the accompanying availability of the written word to the huddled masses empowered people to begin their own self directed searches for truths and answers. Ultimately, growing discontent with the official church doctrines led to the Protestant Reformation.

The die had been cast and the grip of the Holy Roman Empire was quickly losing purchase. There was change in the air and a sense of empowerment that the people had never before known. People began to explore and question all aspects of their lives and the western world began to emerge from the long intellectual sleep we call the ‘Dark Ages’. The Renaissance had begun and the rate of discovery and progress it spawned are unrivaled in the annals of history.

To say that Galileo single handedly started the Renaissance would be incorrect. There had been a restless undercurrent of discontent which inspired men like Galileo to challenge the conventions common to the time. However, Galileo’s invention of the telescope and the ensuing discoveries of moons around another planet were the first tangible, ‘hard’ evidence that, as Shakespeare wrote, ‘There are more things under heaven, Horatio, than are dreamt of in man’s imagination.”

It’s hard to imagine that a few points of light could change the world – but it’s true.

Exoteric and Esoteric Knowledge

By

Mark Swint

author of

OCULUS: The Zebulon Initiative

Knowledge comes in several flavors. The most basic and common knowledge is ‘exoteric’ knowledge; that is, the basic facts of the matter. Exoteric knowledge was made famous with Jack Webb’s famous tag line “Just the facts Ma’am” from the 60s TV show “Dragnet”.

We often operate with ‘just the facts’. We know the ‘what’ of the matter without necessarily knowing the ‘how’ or the ‘why’. This is the basis of how the military works, where people receive orders and execute them without knowing the bigger picture or the reason for the execution of the orders. But the same thing happens in business as well. In fact, in much of our daily lives we receive and react to information without ever knowing why or how it was generated or to what purpose it aspires. We simply follow orders. Societies and civilizations enjoy stability and longevity, without progress or growth, just fine when the populace is happy to follow orders without questioning or challenging the purpose or motivation behind them.

Esoteric knowledge, on the other hand, leads to revolution, growth, progress and expansion. Esoteric knowledge is the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ behind the ‘what’. It was and is this quest for understanding why something is so or how something works that has driven curious people and forward thinkers to seek answers beyond the simple facts of any matter. Esoteric thinkers are not happy to just acknowledge that birds can fly; they want to know HOW birds fly. They want to understand the forces that allow wings to develop lift and permit heavier that air objects to soar aloft as lightly as a feather.

For millennia people observed and acknowledged that lightening was a frightening and lethal force to be respected and feared. It took someone like Benjamin Franklin to ask what lightening was and how it did its horrible magic. “Why does lightening kill?” he wondered. “How does it form and how does it make such awful noise?” Because of his curiosity, and with the help of others like JJ Thompson and Michael Rutherford, the world slowly gained an understanding of electricity, what it is, how it works, and why it kills. Because of the work of men and women like these, the world became electrified; it came out of the darkness – literally – and was changed forever.

It is the quest for understanding the esoteric nature of things that moves the world forward. It is the gaining of knowledge that provides us with an ever growing array of devices and machines and services that have enabled us to do incredible and marvelous things – to be sure, we have gained some terrible powers as well – and which has allowed the world to grow and provide sustenance and support for an ever increasing population that would be unsustainable without such technology.

In ancient days the world was awash in exoteric knowledge. People saw the changing phases of the moon. They watched the sun go daily around the earth. They observed the changing seasons, all without understanding the forces at work to bring about such phenomena. People watched with awe as birds soared, seemingly effortlessly, on wind currents. They puzzled as to how fishes could breath underwater. Weather phenomena such as tornadoes, hurricanes, hail and thunderstorms brought fear and amazement and generated countless myths and legends.

Without an esoteric understanding of the things they observed and knew to be fact, people turned to superstition in a futile attempt to give reason for things they could not understand. This led to the establishment of traditions and behaviors that were not always in the best interest of the portion of the population that fell victim to the execution of those superstitions. People were sacrificed to any number of false gods. Others were burned or otherwise killed for being witches or demonically possessed. Wars were waged and battles fought over the preservation of ideas supported by superstition and tradition and much progress was lost that otherwise would have brought the light of understanding to people.

Science, which was originally labeled ‘natural philosophy’ or ‘the love of nature,’ arose when curious men and women were able to set aside some of their superstitions and traditions and listen to the earth and to nature around them. They started with the simplest of matters and studied them, seeking a deeper understanding, seeking the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of the object being studied. Slowly people began to see the truth of the things around them. Superstition was replaced with understanding and understanding led to harnessing the truths learned for the eventual benefit of all. As the knowledge of electrons came to light researchers were able to induce current and electric motors were invented. These motors were employed to do the work otherwise done by hand or by horse and harness. This same electric current was captured in a filament and coaxed to produce incandescent light which illuminated the world and opened up the nighttime hours to more productive uses and enjoyment.

The laws of physics were expanded and the study of aerodynamics finally unlocked the secret that the birds had known for so many thousands of years. At last man was able to soar on the winds and travel across vast distances just as the birds had done for so long.

It is important to understand the relationship between exoteric and esoteric knowledge to understand the relationship between good science and good religion. I say ‘good’ because there is an abundance of both good and bad religion and good and bad science.

In generations past, when people believed what the scriptures said, they took the ‘truths found therein and viewed them as exoteric knowledge. The Bible simply said ‘what’ was true and ‘what’ was real. A careful reading of the Bible, however, will show us that the scriptures seldom, if ever, explain how or why something was so. It seems the purpose of scripture was and is merely to tell us what is what and leave it to our faith to accept or reject it. In earlier days this was acceptable because, having been told what was real, we then let our scholars and scientists explain for us how those things could be. In other words, the Bible was a legitimate source of exoteric knowledge.

For example, Moses said that in the beginning the earth was featureless and covered with water. He did not offer any explanation for how this was so or why this was so, he merely said that is was thus. He also said that after a time, the waters were gathered together and the dry land appeared. Again, he did not explain the mechanism that made this true. He simply stated it as fact – observed fact that he had seen in a vision. Moses’ history would indicate little to suggest that he had the technical or scientific training to understand the processes at work. But, as a simple and humble man, he claimed that he was given a vision of the creation of the world and this is what he saw. Imagine for a moment that you sit down in a movie theater and watch a short film by Steven Spielberg on the creation of the world. With his extraordinary vision and special effects teams he makes a movie of wonderful detail showing us exactly how it looked as it was happening. When the movie is over you leave the theater, filled with wonder and amazement at the things you have just seen. You know the creation of the world. The things you have seen are fantastic and astounding. However, you do not know how those things came about or what mechanism drove them to be. You simply know what happened. You are now tasked to relate what you have seen to your grandmother who could not go with you to the theater. You tell her all the wonderful things you have just seen and she stops you with questions like ‘how did that happen?’ You say, Mom, I don’t know but it did! Congratulations, you have just experienced what Moses experienced when he had his vision. He was a goat herder not a scientist. He did not know about Plate Tectonics. No one knew about Plate Tectonics and no one would know until 1965. However, Plate Tectonics is the scientific explanation for the formation of the Earth’s surface features. It in no way contradicts the scriptures and it provides the ‘how and why’ to Moses’ ‘what’ as he related it in Genesis.

 In many other examples science and religion worked hand in hand to decipher the world and our surroundings. This partnership propelled the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, the Persians and the Babylonians to seek answers to their greatest mysteries, almost all of which were related to their relationship to their Gods and to their world around them. The advances they gave to the world form the foundation of much of the knowledge we enjoy to this day.

The great rift between science and religion began during the dark ages, that period of time in the Western world that started in the fourth century A.D. and ended with the renaissance, beginning in the late fourteenth century. For the Middle East it began around the seventh century A.D. and continued well past the Western renaissance. In each case it was powerful and almost totalitarian religious dominance that brought a screeching halt to progress and understanding.

In the West it began innocently enough and with good intentions. Constantine, last Emperor of the Roman Empire, decided that this emerging Christian movement, which he was unable to stop, would be a good unifying force to hold his increasingly restless empire together. Wisely, he decided that he should convene a council of all the Christian bishops and leader from throughout the empire so that they could come up with a single, unified – Catholic – doctrine under which all would live and be judged. A council was convened in 325 A.D. in Nicaea, now Turkey. At this council doctrines were hammered out for just about everything the leaders could think of. Items included the nature of God and the Trinity, the proper date and observance of Easter, as well as more worldly things such as whether or the not Sun or the Earth was the center of the universe, and just what, exactly, was the sun? What were the planets and the stars and how did the planets move in the night sly against the curtain of immovable stars? Much great work was done and in the process a few errors were made. This would have been OK had there been a provision for revisions to be made as knowledge was gained, however, the council made one fatal error. They included a point of order that stated that the doctrine of the Nicene council was infallible. In other words, it was perfect and could not be wrong in any point. That meant that anyone disagreeing with any point of doctrine in the Nicene doctrine was a heretic, a sin punishable by death.

Well, this worked for a few years though it had a chilling effect on inquiry and research. After all, with the answers so clearly and unbendingly stated in the Nicene doctrines, there was no need to look for any other or contrary answer. Thus, progress was stopped.

In the Middle East it was the establishment of Islam that cooled the scientific enthusiasm of their greatest thinkers, thinkers who had given us astronomy, mathematics (Al Gebra for example) and medicine. Indeed, Islam declared that all of the progress and all of the knowledge brought forth by their forefathers was contained in a period for ever after known as the ‘time before enlightenment’. This is not to say that Islam repudiated the acquired knowledge of their progenitors but rather that the emphasis was taken from academic pursuits and turned towards Allah. By implying that the early thinkers were unenlightened the new law stifled further thought and progress.

The Library of Alexandria was one of the original Wonders of the World. It was the repository of all of the world’s accumulated knowledge and we can only imagine the truths and histories that were contained therein. Its destruction was one of the greatest tragedies of all time. It is a matter of much controversy, with many scholars claiming several different destructive events, including an accidental fire by Caesar’s men in 48B.C. However, one account attributes some of its destruction to the Arab army led by Amr Ibn al’Aus in 642 A.D. Though this is a matter of much dispute, one of the statements attributing the event to him is revealing of the attitude of the times. It is claimed that he said, speaking of the scrolls in the library, “They will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous.” Here we see the same attitude as that held by the Roman church with regard to contradictions with the Nicene Creed. It is claimed that they (al Aus’ army) used the scrolls to fuel the fires that heated their bath water and that there were enough scrolls to fuel the fires for six months.

Whatever the truth, the fact is that serious scientific inquiry was dramatically curtailed during the first millennium after the meridian of time. Suddenly, scientists and the scientific method were viewed warily and esteemed as ungodly. The prevailing attitude was that there was no need for science, and only the worship of God, as ordained by the state, was a worthy venture.

Then, along came Galileo Galilee, son of a musician, and an accomplished lute player in his own right. He lived and worked in Firenze, Tuscany, (You know it as Florence Italy). He was a brilliant and insightful thinker and just the kind of person that the Medici’s, rulers of Tuscany, were looking to patronize. With their support, Galileo was able to pursue his quest for understanding and knowledge.

It was the invention of the telescope that really got things riled up in Galileo’s world. His first endeavor was to turn his new invention to the heavens. He set his sights on the brightest star in the night sky, Jupiter. What he saw changed the world. Besides the spectacle of a clearer view of our largest neighbor in the solar system, Galileo saw four small distinct points of light. He observed them nightly for a month, carefully noting their position in a note book. After a month it became clear that the objects were orbiting the great giant planet. They were moons. To this day Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto are still referred to as the Galilean Moons. The problem was that the Nicene doctrine did not allow for anything to orbit any other thing except the Earth. The doctrine had clearly defined the nature of the cosmos, and moons orbiting other planets were not part of the equation. Galileo was a heretic. Nevertheless, he had seen what he had seen and no written doctrine could change that. Through his telescope Galileo saw other wonders equally contradictory and equally damning. The age of conflict between science and religion had finally been fully established and the rift would only grow over the years.

The assumption that the Nicene doctrines accurately reflected the writings of the Bible and the thoughts and intent of God meant that one must either choose to follow religious leaders (And by extension, God) or scientific reason and evidence, but not both. For the first time the scriptures were not viewed as a source of exoteric knowledge. In fact, everything said and claimed in the scriptures was suspect and began to be viewed as fantasy and superstition. People of reason and understanding were suddenly forced to choose between their faith and their understanding. It was an awful choice and many great scientists struggled mightily with the issue.

The sad truth is that one simple change to the great work done by the participants of the Nicene council would have changed the world. Had they simply allowed for a provision to modify and adjust the doctrine as knowledge was gained, they would have formed a partnership with the scientific community that would have allowed for an ever more refined and accurate world view. Obviously, there are many matters that rely on faith alone, but a greater understanding of the true nature of measurable things would have led to the elimination of false and silly superstitions and notions that kept many good people of faith from seeing as far as they might otherwise have.

If God is real – if God is true – then truth in all things will only lead closer to Him and to the truths of the universe that He, through means not fully understood just yet, created. To understand how someone does something does not diminish the accomplishment. So too, to understand just a little bit more of God does not diminish His Godliness. To know that Plate Tectonics may be the method that God used to form the landmasses of the earth does not diminish the accomplishment of that fact. After all, don’t the scriptures tell us that “ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free” and, “this is life eternal, to know thee the one true God…”?

To know what God does gives us faith. To know how God does it should only build on that faith. If we could get science and Religion back together again just think of the possibilities. Of course it would take great humility and cooperation on both sides. If we could accept the general nature of things said on the scriptures, with faith, and then turn our own considerable powers of investigation and inquiry to those subjects for understanding, just think what we might learn.

If you think this would destroy faith then I remind you of the promise contained in the scriptures which says, “Ask and ye shall receive, Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you”.

As Agent Mulder says, “The truth is out there.”

In The Beginning

By

Mark Swint

author of

           This Blog is sure to generate controversy so let me say right up front that I do not in any way mean to pick on or poke at any particular belief or creed. I want to explore, in a general conversational way, the history of the conflict between Science and Religion. I realize that any look at historical events is always subjective and I admit that try as one might, it is impossible not to view past events through some type of filter, whether it be acquired bias or experiential perception.

This is a very dicey discussion because whether we like it or not certain religious movements have had a greater or lesser effect on the events of world history and human events. It is impossible to discuss some topics without treading on sensitive ground and I do not, in any way, wish to criticize or offend. On the other hand, I do willing admit that I believe individuals throughout history have used the cloak of organized religion to forward their own personal agendas, often to the detriment of the organization. Such, I believe, is the case with the conflict between Science and Religion.

To begin though, let’s talk about happier times, times when theologians and natural philosophers – the name given to people we now call scientists – were not only on the same page but actually complimented each other’s work. You see, the natural philosopher was devoted to trying to explain observed and accepted realities. For example, since the beginning of time (Whenever that was) people have observed that birds – admittedly heavier than air creatures – could fly. Men wondered at the graceful way that an eagle or an albatross could soar without even flapping their wings and stay aloft seemingly endlessly. Human experience taught that all other things that were heavier than air fell to the ground when released. Why then did birds dance aloft in seeming defiance of the universal laws of gravity that influenced everything else?

The ‘Science’ of natural philosophy attempted to explain the ‘truths’ that people observed. Both human experience and the teachings (admittedly often wrong or superstitious) of theologians left the populace with a set of ‘facts’ that existed without explanation or understanding. What were the stars? Why did the sun rise higher in the summer than in the winter? How did the moon cycle through a complete period of new to full every 28 days? Who was God? To whom did the prophets speak when they received revelation? Who were the angels and the demons that both blessed and plagued the people? All matters of the natural and the unseen world were the source material with which the natural philosophers worked.

Aristotle was perhaps the most accomplished at his trade, leaving his mark on a form of science known as Aristotelian Physics which lived on for over 2000 years before a timid little Englishman named Isaac Newton dared challenge him. There were others though, even before Aristotle, who made remarkable observations and posited insightful theories about the things around them. Democritus gave us the term Atom (from the Greek ‘Atomos”) millennia before John Dalton found it through the gasses he studied. Archimedes took a bath and comprehended displacement thus forwarding the science of ship building and further defining the difference between mass and volume.

So too, early philosophers took ideas and statements from the Bible to be fact. Their faith in biblical declarations ultimately led to discoveries in astronomy and cosmology. However, just as with misperceptions about the nature of the observable world around them, early philosophers often strayed far afield due to interpretational errors of scriptural revelation. Other times local traditions and religious practices would be modified to adapt to the conclusions of the philosophers. One example of this was with the earliest scientists, then known as ‘Astrologers’.

Astrologers fulfilled a far more crucial and legitimate purpose in those early years than they do today. It was their observations of the solar and lunar cycles that determined much of the pattern of early agrarian life. They told farmers when to plant and when to harvest. Their observations of weather patterns led to the first weather forecasting. As they built a body of observations about the world we live in their conclusions found their way into scripture and spiritual teaching. The traditional wisdom ” red sky in the morning, sailor take warning, red sky at night sailor’s delight”  comes from the New Testament statement by Jesus to the Pharisees as found in Matthew 16:2,3;

 

When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red.

And in the morning, It will be foul weather today: for the sky is red and lowering.

 

This early observation found its way into religious teaching after natural philosophers and astrologers noticed the pattern of approach and retreating weather patterns and their effect on the morning and evening skies.

Science and religion enjoyed a generally peaceful partnership for many centuries, the one explaining the ‘how and why’ to the other’s ‘what’. It was a partnership that was to continue more or less uninterrupted until the 4^th century A.D.

As Christianity took hold around the Mediterranean, and more specifically throughout the Roman Empire, it was at first met with resistance from the governing bodies. Religion had always been perceived as a wonderful way to control large masses of people. It was therefore a threat to have a religion, or more correctly, a religious movement, take hold without government sanction. Any power base that arose without the support of the governing power was automatically deemed a threat to the stability of the society and efforts were expended to put it down before full blown rebellion erupted. Thus it was for the Roman Empire.

Constantine, last emperor of the Roman Empire, at first tried to quell the rising fervor of the emerging Christians. As his efforts failed to have the anticipated affect he made the bold and audacious move to adopt the movement as the new official theology of the previously polytheistic Roman society. Simultaneously, the Roman Empire ceased and the Holy Roman Empire emerged.

The adoption of Christianity by the Roman Emperor was more than a simple name change. All the Roman Emperors had struggled with the challenge of maintaining their tenuous grip on the disparate components of their far flung empire. The adoption of a single religious movement, one that was spreading fairly simultaneously throughout the Mediterranean was a unifying move that brought the individual groups together. Or at least that was the plan.

The first task that Constantine had to undertake was to unify the individual Christian groups doctrinally.  During the three hundred plus years since the crucifixion of Jesus, Christianity had taken hold throughout the land. It grew quickly but differing people had adopted individual and differing interpretations of what Christianity was all about. Constantine convoked a grand council in Nicaea in Bithynia (Now Turkey) in 325 A.D.to address this issue.  At this council he charged the gathered pastors and bishops with the mandate to begin the process of establishing a single, unified or ‘Catholic’ doctrine. This council of Nicaea was the first of a series of convocations called synods that met to ultimately create one unified doctrine for everything under the Sun – literally! They had to address issues such as whether or not space was a vacuum, or the nature of the stars and their motions, or the Sun itself; just what was it? Of course the synods decided ecclesiastical issues as well, such as the nature and place of Mary, mother of Jesus; issues of life and death and birth and baptism and the proper observance of Easter and so on and so on. This was a formidable task – and a noble one. It should have been the crowning achievement of the Roman Empire; except for one –make that two things! At the conclusion of the effort to find their Catholic doctrine they included two doctrines that set in motion a conflict that would be the cause of such horror and death as the world had seldom seen.

The first offending doctrine was essentially that the doctrine was infallible, it could not be wrong, and anyone who disagreed with it, or taught a doctrine contrary to it, was considered heretic and subject to the judgment of death. The second doctrine was that the Pope was infallible and could never do or be wrong. Again, anyone who disagreed with this doctrine was considered heretic and faced death, often by the most gruesome and inhuman manner.

For a while these doctrines were survivable and the church flourished, expanding the reach of the church and the Roman Empire significantly. This reach endured for a thousand years, until the fourteenth century.

The renaissance began, more or less, in Florence Italy in the late fourteenth/early fifteenth century. Cosimo Medici and family began a series of patronages of artisans, thinkers and scientists who eventually changed the world. Men like Da Vinci, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, and Galileo changed how people viewed the world. Collectively they sought order and reason against a backdrop of what had become tyranny and abuse afforded by absolute power. Unrighteous men were wielding the power of the church in unrighteous ways. This caused conflict among a populace too afraid and too cowed to speak up, but not too unaware to notice that the things they saw and suffered through were wrong.

Men of science were beginning to observe things that didn’t fit within the Catholic doctrines but they faced horrific persecutions when they voiced their findings. In what should have and could have become a period of rich enlightenment for the church darkness reigned instead due to the inflexibility of the doctrine held infallible by declaration. To change doctrine to fit the observable truths becoming evident would have been to admit that the doctrine had been wrong. This would have implied that the church was wrong when it declared that the doctrine was true in the beginning. The church could not be wrong or every part of it could be held up to scrutiny and modification. Instead of growing with the growing body of knowledge, the church had to stick stubbornly to its dogma. Because of this good men and women died. Men like Copernicus, who simply wanted to understand the mechanics of the stars and planets revolving around him, were persecuted and censured by the church. Copernicus’ work was soundly condemned by the church and Galileo was rebuked for forwarding Copernicus’ ideas and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.  Another follower of Copernicus, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake on Feb. 17, 1600.

Galileo’s crime and condemnation is the perfect example of the growing rift between science and religion. It occurred in several steps but perhaps the seminal event occurred when Galileo turned his newly fashioned telescope on the brightest planet in the night sky. Jupiter is probably the easiest identifiable object in the sky after the Sun and the Moon. What Galileo saw when he focused his invention on it was shocking! He saw four distinct lesser stars next to it. He continued to observe Jupiter every night for a time and he recorded his observations in a book. After a month or so his conclusion was undeniable, the objects next to Jupiter were moons and they were orbiting Jupiter! This was heretical because of the doctrine that said that every object in the sky orbited Earth – the center of the universe – and no object could orbit anything else. Galileo chose to believe his own eyes over the decisions made by unlearned men over a thousand years before. Those four moons, forever known as the Galilean Moons, were orbiting Jupiter and no priest, bishop or Pope could make it otherwise.

The church’s unwillingness to adapt its doctrine to accommodate emerging technology put it at odds with observant men and women who saw conflict in other areas of doctrinal confusion. Soon, people realized that the church could talk about spiritual things but it was no arbiter of observable and verifiable truths that were becoming more and more discoverable. Really for the first time, scientific method and observation had to step outside of the church to continue. This, in spite of the fact that the church had, and still maintains to this day, the Vatican observatory where many good and valid observations were made. In fact, the calendar we use today, the Gregorian Calendar was made to correct errors that had crept into the Julian Calendar ever since 46 B.C. That effort was ordered by Pope Gregory XIII who directed his Vatican Astronomers to correct the calendar according to the solar cycles so that the correct observance of Easter could be held.

Other scientists broke free of the shackles of the church and brought forth new truths about the world. One of Galileo’s admirers, Evangelista Torricelli, determined that, contrary to established dogma, the atmosphere was indeed finite and ended with the vacuum of space.

The rift between science and religion was growing and the church made no attempt to stem it other than to condemn those who practiced the ‘dark arts’. Scientists, on the other hand, grew bolder, often holding in derision the superstitious and foolish beliefs of the church. By the time the church came around and began to embrace undeniable truths it was too late. The idea that religion could hold any truths worthy of scientific study quickly faded.

Sadly, today many in the scientific community- though not all to be sure – view religion as the domain for the foolish and the uneducated. This is grossly unfair but understandable. The tragedy is that common perception places on the Catholic Church in particular, and religion in general, the stigma of ignorance as to things of the world. I would propose that well intended efforts of sincere but uneducated men unfairly placed the stink of error and falsehood upon the scriptures when, in fact, the scriptures could just as easily have been misunderstood and misinterpreted but which, at their core and with the proper interpretation, are true!

Let us not condemn the whole because part of it may or may not have been correctly deciphered. The scriptures – correctly interpreted – may yet hold many wonderful truths and great treasures waiting to be mined.