Myths of a Godless Science

Polls show that, overwhelmingly, Americans believe in God, the Creator of life and of the universe. A small minority of Americans think we are idiots to hold those beliefs. In a nutshell, that is the core of the hysterical controversy over the teaching of Intelligent Design in public schools. Oh, there is a lot of obfuscation about the nature of science and the separation of church and state. But, make no mistake, the radical secularist’s goal is to chip away at the fundamental religious beliefs of the American people.

It is a national shame that we have allowed the atheists and their fellow travelers, aided and abetted by judicial activists, to control what our children are taught in the schools that we fund. One has to question our collective intelligence, but more so, our moral willpower in the face of the continuing leftist assault on what we know in our hearts to be true. So what happened, how did we lose this battle?

Rewriting history has been a common tactic of all totalitarian regimes, and the secular left has done such a masterful job of selling their myth that most Americans have come to believe it. Go to any school text on the history of Western Civilization and see what you find about the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. We all know the story.

The fall of the Roman Empire (circa 475AD) led to the Dark Ages when, for several centuries, intellectual life and cultural advancement receded into the darkness. Classics such as Gibbon's “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” expressed the author's contempt for "priest-ridden", superstitious, dark times.

The popular secular view is that the Renaissance, beginning in 15th century Italy, represented a reconnection of the west with classical Greek culture and knowledge. The Renaissance movement spread northward from Italy and by the late 16th century became closely linked to the Protestant Reformation.

Proponents believe that the rise of secularism and the corresponding decline of religion in so called 'secularized' countries, are the inevitable result of the 18th century Enlightenment, when people turned towards science and rationalism and away from religion and superstition. Recall that during the French Revolution, the desire for rationality in government led to an attempt to end Christianity in France.

Thinkers of the last wave of the Enlightenment – Rousseau, Kant, Adam Smith, Jefferson and Goethe - adopted the biological metaphor of self-organization and evolutionary forces. Enter Darwin.

So the storyline goes that the rise of Christianity brought on the ignorance and degradation of the Dark Ages while a reconnection to Greek antiquity and the adoption of secular humanism led to the emergence of rationality and science. God is out and all is fine with the world.

Except it is a myth and many have fallen for it hook, line and sinker. In his wonderful new book “For the Glory of God,” Rodney Stark shows that during the so called Dark Ages, Europeans (1) rejected slavery; (2) developed technology on a scale no civilization had previously known (including waterwheels, mills, camshafts, clocks, the compass and advanced military armaments); (3) enabled the 17th century Scientific Revolution by departing from the classical Greek model that was a scientific dead end (see where it led in Islamic societies); and (4) nurtured scientific ideas in the new Christian universities (first at Bologna and Paris in the middle of the 12th century then at Oxford and Cambridge around 1200, followed by a dozen more before the end of the century).

The Enlightenment claims of an inevitable war between religion and science has until this day been “the primary polemical device used in the athiest attack on faith.”

So I say that we reject the radical secular agenda. When they say that belief in God the Creator is non-scientific, I answer that they need to show me the beef. When they have better explanations for the origin of the universe and the origin of life, I’ll consider them.

Meanwhile the explanation we all believe needs to be tought in our schools. The Godless crowd needs to read the First Ammendment. Perhaps Chief Justice Roberts will read it to them.