Christianity & Science - Then and Now

The most important book that has ever been written about science and the Bible is none other than the Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, written in 1615 by the great mathematician Galileo Galilei (1564-1642).

The fourteenth century became a scientific golden age when much of the groundwork was laid for ideas that later ended up in the books of Copernicus and Galileo. Let me give a couple of examples.

So why are Christians nervous about evolution and why do we even use a phrase like the ‘e’ word? The word itself has a negative connotation in many groups.

As much as I sympathize with Giberson and Stephens, I am concerned that one of their central assumptions—that there is a divide between ‘secular knowledge’ and Christian—essentially undermines their very pursuit of a middle ground where the two can be ‘integrated’.

Considering the immense popularity of "Darwin's finches", it is quite surprising to learn that Charles Darwin himself had very little to say about them. In fact, it was actually David Lack, one century later, who conducted the critical research that immortalized the finches in biology textbooks and popular lore.

White’s reconstruction of the past was fundamentally mistaken, and his metaphor of warfare grossly oversimplified the actual relationship between Science and Dogmatic Theology.

During the medieval era, as we can see in examples from three different fields—science, theology, and literature—people were interested and engaged. They were not shrouded in darkness and anti-progression, yet for centuries the period was characterized in this way.

Watching the discussion surrounding Francis Collins's National Institutes of Health (NIH) appointment has been enlightening in so many ways. Especially interesting are the arguments by critics such as Sam Harris that someone with faith in God cannot be a good scientist.

On the morning of June 22, 1633 in the hall of the convent of Santa Maria sopra Minvera in Rome, Galileo Galilei knelt before the Lord-Cardinal Inquisitors-General and publicly abjured his false opinion that the sun was the motionless center of the universe.

Many evangelicals believe that Young Earth Creationism is the only authentic, biblical way for Christians to understand origins, and that until the advent of Darwin's theory of evolution, it was the only view held by Christians. However, in this excerpt from Saving Darwin, Karl Giberson explains that Young Earth Creationism's origins are surprisingly recent.