If you are not familiar with Lennox watch this video “The “Religion v Science” Myth.” In it Lennox examines the historically ignorant myth that religion is and always has been at odds with science.

Details of Lennox’s upcoming New Zealand tour are here: Hear John Lennox in New Zealand.

Hat tip: Glenn Peoples

I’ve been studying Christopher Columbus in my history class and my history books say that prior to Columbus everyone did think the world was flat……..I don’t know if it was a mistake in the history book or your mistake…..but anyway….I guess I have some things to learn! God bless ~ Katie

We have all heard the story behind this. Prior to Columbus, the Church and its theological scholars taught that the world was flat. For this reason they opposed Columbus’ proposed voyage in 1492 as they believed he would sail off the edge of the earth (or that he would prove them wrong and they would lose standing in society). Despite this Columbus sailed anyway and his rejection of the Church’s position was vindicated, he scored a victory for science and reason.

My correspondent is correct. They do teach this in high school text books. I was taught it at both primary and high-school. In fact, not too long ago Prentice Hall published claims to this effect in their middle school textbook Prentice Hall Earth Science.

At a philosophy conference at Otago University, shortly after I graduated, I recall one speaker using the example of “medieval flat-earthers” in his paper as an example of an irrational belief. Almost everyone in attendance nodded their heads in agreement; no one contested the historical assumptions implicit in the example. More recently Victoria University ran a slick television campaign stating that in the 14th century most people believed the world was flat. The ad showed a picture of a boat sailing across the sea only to fall over the side of the earth and concluded “It makes you think.”

You might have gathered from obvious clues like the title and from the way I have set this article up that I dispute the veracity of much of these historical claims. If I state this publicly there are very few settings where this admission does not at least earn me an incredulous stare (as if I were, in fact, asserting that the earth was flat). Invariably some comment follows, “come on Matt, everyone knows this story is true, didn’t you learn this at school? Haven’t you read any history textbooks?”

It is true that I did learn this story at school and that I have read it in more than one history textbook but because I took the time to research the history of theology when I was at university I know that this story is fiction. It is a slanderous fabrication invented by opponents of Christianity in the 19th century and has been thoroughly debunked by contemporary historians of science.

The definitive study is undoubtedly that of Jeffrey Burton Russell in Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians. Russell summarised his findings, in a paper presented to the 1997 American Scientific Affiliation Conference, as follows,

[W]ith extraordinary few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat. A round earth appears at least as early as the sixth century BC with Pythagoras, who was followed by Aristotle, Euclid, and Aristarchus, among others in observing that the earth was a sphere. Although there were a few dissenters—Leukippos and Demokritos for example–by the time of Eratosthenes (3 c. BC), followed by Crates(2 c. BC), Strabo (3 c. BC), and Ptolemy (first c. AD), the sphericity of the earth was accepted by all educated Greeks and Romans.

Nor did this situation change with the advent of Christianity. A few—at least two and at most five—early Christian fathers denied the spherically of earth by mistakenly taking passages such as Ps. 104:2-3 as geographical rather than metaphorical statements. On the other side tens of thousands of Christian theologians, poets, artists, and scientists took the spherical view throughout the early, medieval, and modern church. The point is that no educated person believed otherwise.

Russell traced the story about Columbus and medieval flat-earthers back to the 19^th century; it originated in a fictional novel by Washington Irving The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus I (1829). Later it was picked up by two influential books, John Draper’s History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874) and Andrew Dickson White’s book A History of The Warfare Between Science and Theology in Christendom. These books famously used the Columbus story plus many others to defend the thesis that the Church, for centuries, suppressed science and worked to prevent its flourishing; this is known as the conflict thesis.

These books and the conflict thesis they spawned, are highly influential in popular science and media coverage of theological and scientific issues today despite most historians rejecting them as propaganda. In The Encyclopedia of the History of Science and Religion, Collin Russell notes,

Draper takes such liberty with history, perpetuating legends as fact that he is rightly avoided today in serious historical study. The same is nearly as true of White, though his prominent apparatus of prolific footnotes may create a misleading impression of meticulous scholarship.

Steven Shapin wrote in the same vein in The Scientific Revolution,

In the late Victorian period it was common to write about the “warfare between science and religion” and to presume that the two bodies of culture must always have been in conflict. However, it is a very long time since these attitudes have been held by historians of science.

Numerous other specialists in the field of the history of science and religion concur that the existence of medieval flat-earthers is a myth. Numbers and Lindberg noted in a journal article, “there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference.” In his study of medieval cosmology, God and Reason in the Middle Ages, distinguished historian Edward Grant noted that,

All medieval students who attended a university knew this. In fact any educated person in the Middle Ages knew the earth was spherical, or of a round shape. Medieval commentators on Aristotle’s “On the Heavens” or in the commentaries on a popular thirteenth century work titled “Treatise on the Sphere” by John of Sacrobosco, usually included a question in which they enquired “whether the whole earth is spherical”. Scholastics answered this question unanimously: The earth is spherical or round. No university trained author ever thought it was flat.

Draper’s and White’s books remain widely cited despite being debunked as historically inaccurate. In fact, the kinds of textbooks Katie mentioned have been subject to scathing criticism precisely for making the aforementioned claims. Lawrence S. Lerner, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at California State University who is a member of the panel that wrote the 1990 framework for science education in California’s public schools criticised Pretence Halls history text denouncing it as “ignorant fakery.” In an article entitled “Fake ‘History’ That Is Flatly Wrong,” Lerner described the flat-earth claims as a “popular piece of pseudo historical folklore” he added that it “remains popular today among people who have had little education. These evidently include the people who produce ‘science’ books for Prentice Hall.”

The historical facts are difficult to dispute. During the, so called, “dark ages” Boethius (480-525) cited a well known and accepted ancient Greek cosmological model that affirmed the sphericity of the earth in the Consolidation of Philosophy. Isidore of Serville (560-636) affirmed a round earth in the Etymologies. Bede (672-735) in The Reckoning of Time taught the earth was round; as did Rabanus Marcus in the ninth century.

The late middle-ages are no different. Hemannus Contractus (1013-155) measured the circumference of the world. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) taught the world was round as did John of Sacrbosco (1200-1256) and Peire d’Ailly (1350-1420). Dante’s Divine Comedy portrays the earth as a sphere. In the Summa Theologicae Thomas Aquinas wrote,

The physicist proves the earth to be round by one means, the astronomer by another: for the latter proves this by means of mathematics, e.g. by the shapes of eclipses, or something of the sort; while the former proves it by means of physics, e.g. by the movement of heavy bodies towards the center, and so forth.

Even medieval textbooks taught the world was round. Both the Elucidarium of Honorius Augustodunensis, a twelfth century manual for educating clergy, and On the Sphere of the World, the standard cosmological textbook of medieval universities in the 13^th century, taught that the world was round.

As I have delved into religious history further I have found that this had not been the first or only instance where I was fed false propaganda about Christianity. I could document several other false versions of history; the flat-earth story will suffice for now. As New Zealand blogger Contra Celsum wrote, “the flat earthers are those who think they existed.”

I write a monthly column for Investigate Magazine entitled Contra Mundum. This blog post was published in the December 09 issue and is reproduced here with permission. Contra Mundum is Latin for ‘against the world;’ the phrase is usually attributed to Athanasius who was exiled for defending Christian orthodoxy.

Letters to the editor should be sent to: editorial@investigatemagazine.DELETE.com

RELATED POSTS:
The “Dark Ages” and Other Propaganda
More on the “Dark Ages” and Other Propaganda
Things They Don’t Teach you in Public Schools…
The Flat Earth Myth
Guest Post: Dan Brown’s History of Science

“proposes setting a level of population New Zealand could sustain and leaving room within that for climate change refugees from Pacific Islands.

They also want parents educated about the impacts of population growth when they are planning their family size and how far apart to have children.”

The myraid of problems that scream from those two sentences is so large I am not sure where to begin.

National, ACT and the Maori Party are declaring it a step in the direction of China’s one child policy.

Rodney Hide, making a carbon credits joke, said “that perhaps if parents planted a field of trees, they might be able to have twins.”

David Farrar makes the point that New Zealand already has a declining population rate and has done for some time anyway which makes one wonder why issue the policy?

Zen Tiger quotes from Frog Blog “Do we as humans have a ‘right to breed’?” this reminded me of other crazy lefty ideas like Jim Flynn’s Thoughts on Contraception.

Keith Locke, at a loss to understand why most New Zealanders would react negatively to the policy, claims they have been misinterpreted:

“There is no way the Green Party would ever dictate to any parent how many children they should have, … Every child is a loved and wanted child. It would also be racist to try to dictate family size, given that the various ethnic groups in our society have different birthrates.”

There are two problems in the above quote that are not being criticised about the blogosphere that I will highlight here.

The every child is a loved and wanted slogan is ambiguous. It could mean that every child that comes into existence, no matter how it comes into existence, is loved and wanted, or, it could mean that every child that is unwanted should be taken out of existence. Both these situations would lead to every child being wanted.

The statement is a eugenicist slogan promoted primarily by family planning movement which advocate the latter interpretation and promote the latter interpretation via abortion, contraception and sterilisation, campaigning against unplanned pregnancy. Now, I am not opposed to contraception or sterilisation or people knowing how to prevent unplanned pregnancy. My problem is that this organisation is opposed to all and every unplanned pregnancy, even those within stable, married, well-positioned-to-provide families. Dig a little on Family Planning and you find they are a sinister organisation whose roots are in eugenics, we have posted previously on the odiousness of family planning here.

So when Keith Locke used this statement which interpretation did he mean? Given the context of the policy, I think we can safely assume the latter.

The second issue is the Green’s definition of racism the reasons they cite for why if they were in fact dictating how many kids families should have it would be wrong. Lets have a closer look at Keith Locke’s statement:

“It would also be racist to try to dictate family size, given that the various
ethnic groups in our society have different birthrates.”

His argument essentially is that ethnic groups have different birth-rates so to impose one birth-rate, to disagree or be at odds with another ethnicity’s viewpoint on this subject, is racist. Racism according to the Greens is defined as disagreeing with the cultural values of another. I don’t agree with the cannibalism practices of some ethnicities – guess I am a racist.

Further, the only reason he offers as to why “the Green Party would ever dictate to any parent how many children they should have” is that to do so would be racist. The fact that such a dictum would be nanny-statist, eugenicist and is so far out of the realm of the proper role of the state that it is just plain, outright, wrong seems to be lost on him; but why am I not surprised?

[The following is a crude rendition of the issues in the debate - read the debate here: Pennock's case and Plantinga's response]

It is widely held that it is inappropriate for public schools to teach that a particular religion is true given that a segment of children attending the school come from families that do not believe in that religion. What is less noticed is the converse. If the former is correct then it must equally be true that it is inappropriate for a public school to teach that a particular religion is false given that a number of children attending the school come from families that do believe in that religion. Evolution contradicts the teachings of some religions; hence, the question arises, should evolution be taught as uncontested truth?

Having just re-read this debate in preparation for a lecture I delivered last week on the topic, stumbling upon Dr Bob Brockie‘s piece, Take Nobody’s Word for Anything, in the Dominion Post was intriguing; intriguing in how little he understood the issues involved and how he would manifest his own ignorance on the broader question of religion and Science for all in print. The number of straight-forward factual and Philosophical mistakes in one article was breathtaking.

At the heart of Brockie’s argument is a mistaken epistemology and fairly naïve Philosophy of Science. Brockie contends that “true scientists question all authority, trusting only to experimental and verifiable evidence”. However, if science is defined in these terms, science is an incoherent position. The claim that one should question all authority and trust only “experimental and verifiable evidence” is not itself an empirical claim. Hence, if the claim is true we should reject it because Brockie has not provided any “experimental and verifiable evidence” of its truth.

If scientists truly proceed on this assumption, their position will always be self-contradictory as to proceed on this assumption would lead to scepticism on all sorts of issues dear to Brockie’s heart. As a scientist, Brockie assumes that his senses are reliable and reason is a reliable method of getting at truth. Neither of these, however, can be verified experimentally by a non-circular argument. To verify anything, one needs to utilise one’s senses and reason from them, and hence, will presuppose the very sources under question.

However, the errors, myths and lack of verifiable evidence do not end here. Brockie began with the statement “Creationism is just a codeword for biblical Christianity.” This is mistaken. The term “creationism” normally refers to a particular theory of origins that holds the world was created a few thousand years ago in six 24 hour days (not seven as Brockie stated), and that the fossil record is the result of a worldwide flood.

To equate this with “biblical Christianity” is erroneous. First, many non-Christians, particularly Jews and Muslims, hold this theory. The story of Adam, Eve and Creation is shared by the three major monotheistic religions. Second, many Christian’s, even conservative evangelicals, do not accept creationism.

Creationism is premised on the assumption that the first two chapters of Genesis are literalistic history. Whether the genre of early Genesis is literal history is a hotly debated point in Biblical studies, one over which conservative scholars disagree.

Brockie ignored the subtle differences and issues and castigated Christianity as a whole, suggesting no rational person can believe in “answered prayer” a “virgin birth” or “life after death” much of his argument however consists of citing crude caricatures; such as, the claim Christians believe in the existence of “magic apples”.

Brockie’s central theme is the example of Isaac Newton. According to Brockie Newton believed the Latin slogan “Nullius in Verba” which Brockie translates as “take nobody’s word for anything”. Apparently “then” as “now” scientists adopted a policy of questioning “all authority, trusting only to experimental and verifiable evidence.” A stance Brockie asserts is incompatible with Christianity.

In fact, Newton was a devout Christian who wrote theological tracts and believed in “answered prayer” and “life after death”. Moreover, in the preface to Newton’s Principia Mathematica, Roger Cotes notes that Newton’s research rested explicitly on theological assumptions. Newton, in fact, even appealed to direct action of God to solve problems within his theory. The picture Brockie paints is well out of accord with the facts.

Incidentally, the Royal Society’s own website states it was founded in 1660 and not 1663 as Brockie stated. Moreover, his translation of “Nullius in Verba” is mistaken. The phrase is an abbreviation of a quotation from Horace; the full translation is, “not compelled to swear to any master’s words.” It does not advocate trusting no one, but rather praises objectivity; it the contention that one should be free to come to conclusions at odd with one’s political masters.

If we can learn anything from Brockie’s article it is that uninformed knee-jerk fundamentalists exist on both sides of this debate. The real informed debate on Evolution v Creationism in the public school system is far more nuanced and deserves to be heard; not caricatured, misrepresented and then dismissed on that basis.

I was reminded of this incident recently and the following thought struck me, if Falwell’s making comments about Teletubbies was newsworthy then surely stupid comments by liberal organisations must be newsworthy as well?

Suppose the staff of Planned Parenthood, one of the biggest providers of abortion in the US, a multimillion dollar industry endorsed and promoted by numerous Hollywood actors and a major donator to the Democratic Party, were to make outrageously racist comments. Would that be newsworthy? Suppose they accepted donations for the specific purpose of furthering eugenics? Suppose they also stated that racist views were understandable and they were excited to get such donations? Surely that would be newsworthy? Especially since the New Zealand Family Planning Association proudly claims to be a member of The Planned Parenthood Federation.

Well apparently No.

Here is what has come to light, for years critics of Planned Parenthood have been arguing that it was founded for racist and eugenic reasons. According to these critics, its founder Margaret Sanger was a racist eugenicist and the organisation was founded by her to further these ends.

Enter student journalists. The Advocate, a UCLA student newspaper, decided to test whether Planned Parenthood had turned from their founder Sanger’s ideas or whether they were still in support of them. They had an actor phone several Planned Parenthood clinics around the country and offered to donate money to Planned Parenthood provided that the money was used only to abort black babies. The actor made comments to the effect that he wanted to reduce the number of blacks, that he wanted to protect his own child from affirmative action, the less blacks there are the better, etc. He was overtly racist in his comments.

Apparently, despite ringing several Planned Parenthoods around the US none rejected the donatation, none called into question or criticised his racist view and in some instances they even laughed and appeared supportive of the views calling them “exciting” and “understandable.” An expose of just a couple of the conversations they taped can be found here.

For those who find YouTube tiresome, I reproduce some transcripts below.

Autumn Kersey of Planned Parenthood in Boise: Good afternoon, this is Autumn.
Donor: Hello, Autumn, I’m interested in making a donation today.
Kersey: Fantastic!
Donor: What about abortions for the underprivileged minority groups?
Kersey: Oh, absolutely. We have, um, in fact, uh wonderful, fantastic news. We just received a very generous donation to our women in need fund.
Donor: Wonderful. I want to specify that abortion to help a minority group – would that be possible?
Kersey: Absolutely.
Donor: Like the black community for example?
Kersey: Certainly.
Donor: OK, so the abortion I can give money specifically for a black baby, that would be the
purpose.
Kersey: Absolutely. If you wanted to designate that you wanted your
gift to be used to help (an) African-American woman in need, then we would
certainly make sure that that gift was earmarked specifically for that purpose.
Donor: Great. Because I really face trouble with affirmative action, and I
don’t want my kids being disadvantaged, you know, against black kids. I just had
a baby; I want to put it in his name, you know.
Kersey: Mmhmm, absolutely.
Donor: So that’s definitely possible.
Kersey: Oh, always, always.
Donor: So I just wanna – can I put this in the name of my son?
Kersey: Absolutely.
Donor: Yeah, he’s trying to get into colleges, and he’s going to be applying, you know, he’s just… we’re just really big… he’s really faced troubles with affirmative action.
Kersey: Mmhmm.
Donor: And we don’t, you know,
we just think, you know, the less black kids out there the better.
Kersey: (Laughs) Understandable, understandable. … Um David, let me, if I may, just get some sort of specific general information so we can set this up the right way. You said you wanted to put it in your son’s name, and you would like this designated specifically to assist (an) African-American woman who’s looking to terminate a pregnancy.
Donor: Exactly, and yeah, I wanna protect my son, so he can get into college.
Kersey: All right. Excuse my hesitation, um, um, this is the first time I’ve had a donor call and make this kind of request, so I’m excited, and I wanna make sure I don’t leave anything out.

After accepting the money and suggesting the donor’s wish to have “the less black kids out their the better” was “understandable” the operator, Autumn, stated that receiving a donation for this purpose made her fell “excited”. The You Tube video records a second conversation Autumn has with a woman claiming to be a donor concerned that planned parenthood would accept donations ear marked precisely for this purpose. Autumn outright tells lies. She states they would not accept donations for this purpose and also that views like that make her so uncomfortable she shakes.

The Advocate claims they have plenty more examples of this sort of thing from Planned Parenthood staff on tape.

I am left wondering, why this has not been reported in NZ media? Perhaps it will be soon. I wait with baited breath. I guess it is considered more in the public’s interest to hear lies about fundamentalists than to hear documented claims about major liberal abortion providers taking money to further genocide or the fact that some of their fundraisers claim to find the concept of genocide “understandable” or even “exciting”.

I’ve been studying Christopher Columbus in my history class and my history books say that prior to Columbus everyone did think the world was flat……..I don’t know if it was a mistake in the history book or your mistake…..but anyway….I guess i have some things to learn! god bless ~Katie Joy~

This was in response to a comment I made online, I had I criticised the popular claim that prior to the time of Columbus, the Church taught the world was flat. In another post on this blog I have criticised Victoria University for making a similar claim as part of it’s advertising campaigns.

For our overseas visitors, last year Victoria University had a slick advertising campaign where it is stated that in the 14th century most people believed the world was flat. It then showed a picture of a boat sailing across the sea only to fall over the side of the earth.

We have all heard the story behind this; prior to Columbus, the Church and it’s theological scholars taught that the world was flat. For this reason they opposed Columbus’ proposed voyage in 1492 as they believed he would sail off the edge of the earth.

Katie is correct; they do teach this in high school text books. I was taught it repeatedly at primary and high school. In fact not too long ago Pretence Hall published claims to this effect in a middle school textbook Prentice Hall Earth Science. I have heard the story repeated ad nauseam. Normally when I contest it’s veracity I get an incredulous stare (as if I were, in fact, asserting that the earth was flat) “Come on Matt, everyone knows this story is true, didn’t you learn this at school?”

Well, yes I did learn it but I also took the time to research the history of theology when I was at university. What they don’t tell you in high school is that this claim is false. It is a slanderous fabrication invented by opponents of Christianity in the 19th century and has been thoroughly debunked by contemporary historians of science.

The definitive study is undoubtedly that of Jeffrey Burton Russell, he summarises his findings here. However, the same thing is uttered in many studies on medieval science. For example, Edward Grant in his work notes that “there is no mention of a flat earth in any medieval writings, except for a few references to refute it.”

Even Wikipedia, not known for its ability to rise above popular anti-religious prejudice, concedes,

Today essentially all professional medievalists agree with Russell that the “medieval flat Earth” is a nineteenth-century fabrication, and that the few verifiable “flat Earthers” were the exception.

Interestingly, Wikipedia does not point to a medieval scholar who was one of these “verifiable “flat earthers” and its section on the Middle ages ends with the following conclusion.

A recent study of medieval concepts of the sphericity of the Earth noted that “since the eighth century, no cosmographer worthy of note has called into question the sphericity of the Earth. Of course it was probably not the few noted intellectuals who defined public opinion. It is difficult to tell what the wider population may have thought of the shape of the Earth – if they considered the question at all.

Yes, what the school textbooks teach is wrong. In fact the kinds of textbooks Katie mentions have been subject to scathing criticism in the literature. Lawrence S. Lerner a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at California State and director of The Textbook League University and a member of the panel that wrote the 1990 framework for science education in California’s public schools criticised Pretence Halls text denouncing it as “ignorant fakery.” He goes on state,

The flat-Earth story quickly became a popular piece of pseudo historical folklore, and it remains popular today among people who have had little education. These evidently include the people who produce “science” books for Prentice Hall.” [we kiwis can add that it includes the advertising staff at Victoria university]

The facts are very different. Here are just a few: during the so called dark ages Boethius (480-525) in the Consolidation of Philosophy cited a well known and accepted ancient Greek cosmological model which affirmed the sphericity of the earth. Isidore of Serville, (560-636) published in the Etymologies, affirmed a round earth. Bede (672-735) in his, The Reckoning of Time, taught the earth is round; as did Rabanus Marcus in the ninth century.

The late middle ages are no different. Hemannus Contractus (1013-155), in fact, measured the circumference of the world. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) taught the world was round. As did John of Sacrbosco (1200-1256) and Peire d’Ailly (1350-1420). Dante’s Divine Comedy portrays the earth as a sphere. In the Summa Theologicae Thomas Aquinas in wrote,

The physicist proves the earth to be round by one means, the astronomer by another: for the latter proves this by means of mathematics, e.g. by the shapes of eclipses, or something of the sort; while the former proves it by means of physics, e.g. by the movement of heavy bodies towards the center, and so forth.

In fact, medieval textbooks taught the world was round. The Elucidarium of Honorius Augustodunensis a twelfth century manual for educating clergy and On the Sphere of the World the standard cosmological textbook of medieval universities in the thirteenth century both taught that the world was round.

When I began studying philosophy and theology at University I was literally shocked to discover this. One of the reasons I despise public schools is because they repeated lied to me about things like this. This is not the first or only instance where I was fed false propaganda about Christianity at high school. I could document several other instances; the flat earth story will suffice for now. The point is that state institutions affirm falsehoods about the history of religion and teach propaganda for history.

The fact that a state University, like Victoria, should perpetuate discredited slander as part of its advertising campaign to obtain higher learning about the arts is appalling. One would have thought this institution imparts knowledge, not fraudulent anti-Christian propaganda.

RELATED POSTS:
The “Dark Ages” and Other Propaganda
More on the “Dark Ages” and Other Propaganda
Things They Don’t Teach you in Public Schools…
Contra Mundum: The Flat-Earth Myth
Guest Post: Dan Brown’s History of Science

The picture on this page shows women voting at the polls in New Jersey between 1790 and 1805.

Almost a hundred years before NZ granted women the vote.

Kind of reminds me of the woefully ignorant Victoria University ads that claimed that in the 14th century everyone thought the world was flat… must find that map of the world from the middle ages astronomy textbook and blog it, its a funny shape, it is round.

RELATED POSTS:
The “Dark Ages” and Other Propaganda
More on the “Dark Ages” and Other Propaganda
The Flat Earth Myth
Contra Mundum: The Flat-Earth Myth
Guest Post: Dan Brown’s History of Science