The Rev. Michael Roberts, a British cleric quite skilled in historical
analysis and something of an expert on aspects of 19th century geology, has
sent me the following post to forward to the ASA listserve. My own comments
follow.
Ted Davis
Surely Ted Davies is being far too charitable about ADWhite's racily
written work of fiction pompously titled The Warfare of Science with
Theology.
>
>Every reference I have followed up in the book is false. My favourite is
his treatment of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce where his gives 7 quotes from
Sam's review of Origin of Species. Several are untraceable from the
Quarterly Review article of 1860 3 are misquotes and the seventh has a
mistake in it. Now that is what I call careful scholarship!!!!!
>
>Yet this book is the first to be used on the history of science and
religion recently reprinted and can be downloaded from the net. Most
people
reading White's fictitious rubbish are quite unaware of its inaccuracy and
it provides good weapons for the atheist and many christians swallow it
hook line and sinker. I'm not going to far am I, Ted?
>
>Ironically many YECs swallow the arguments but simply reverse the roles
of
goodies and baddies or cowboys-n-injuns.
>
>As aresult we have ended up with a very distorted picture of the
historical relationships of science and religion which crops up
everywhere.
ithink I could fill a 27 gb disc on examples!!
>
>Take a recent example Steve Jones a TV pop scientist who just produced a
series on BBC Wales. As he did a programme on Darwin's pre-Beagle geology
in Wales in 1831 he had to consult me for historical advice. It is
embarrassing to have to ask an English country vicar for advice on Darwin!
Basically he did not want to know the history but only to support the
story
he had already written of his great hero Darwin. The trouble was that iti
did not agree with my work in deciphering his manuscript notes and walking
every part of his route finding the rock outcrops Darwin described and
then
compapring them with his notes.As i did not play ball his researchers
contacted Cambridge scholars who said the same thing.
>Yet viewers will see the programme and say ooh aah and believe his story.
>
>I attach something I wrote on Jones including his rewrtie of the Origin
of
species which is full of historical howlers. aalso attache d a review of
AN
Wilsons God s Funeral and something I wrote for students
>
Thus far, Michael Roberts. Now my own further comments, in response to
Glenn Morton's points about White and Cosmas on the shape of the earth.
Yes, Cosmas did oppose the earth's sphericity: White is right about at
least this much. But--again, here comes the bigger issue, the matter of
interpretation--what are we to gather from this? White (and the very large
number of like-minded persons inspired by him) treats Cosmas as if he were
representative of the Christian tradition, whereas in fact the opposite is
true. We can count on one hand the number of Christian writers since the
start of the church who did not believe in the sphericity of the earth. The
whole Columbus/Magellan thing about "proving" the earth's shape to ignorant
theologians is absurd, a false story created by various persons (including
Washington Irving in our own country) as a deliberate piece of anti-Catholic
propaganda (note how the setting, Spain at the time of the Inquisition,
lends itself to this?). Yes, Glenn, one can find (perhaps) a modern
disciple of Cosmas--though in fact I note the date of the modern reprint,
1890s, the height of White's positivist debunking of all theological
inquiry, and strongly suspect the edition you found is by a "White-minded"
person who wants to illustrate the church's "folly" on this issue. Again,
what are we to make of all this?
My final comments on this thread (I'm not going to go further, I'd just be
repeating myself) are two. (1) On the specifics of Cosmas, Columbus,
Irving, and White, see Jeffrey Burton Russell's excellent little book,
Inventing the Flat Earth. Prof Russell spoke on this at the Westmont
meeting, incidentally. On the gross unreliability of White, esp his
untenable interpretations, see the splendid article by David Lindberg and
Ronald Numbers in our own PSCF (September 1987), and the references
therein.
(2) Glenn is right, that books are almost never 100% wrong. And White's
facts aren't nearly as bad as the non-contexturalist interpretations he
places on them: in other words, he's right about Cosmas having said what he
said, but he's wrong about what conclusions to draw concerning science and
theology, in other words his whole enterprise is wrong. What percentage of
"wrong" does it take before someone ought to stop citing them? Aren't YECs
often right about facts they cite? (And often wrong also, to be sure.) And
aren't they more often wrong about how to interpret them? If I were to
start citing Duane Gish and Ken Ham as if they were reliable sources on
cosmology, I don't think Glenn would let me get away with it.
Ted
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