Re: Colson on Christianity and science

Any comments on any of these quotations - unless you are from Messiah
College

Michael

THE FLAT EARTH, 1491
Columbus; The earth is not flat, Father. It's round!
The Prior; Don't say that!
Columbus; It's the truth; it's not a mill pond strewn with islands. It's a
sphere.
The Prior; Don't say that; it's blasphemy. (i.e. Columbus would have sailed
off the edge.)

Joseph Chiari; Christopher Columbus, 1979. (a play)

CALVIN ON COPERNICUS
"Who will dare to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy
Spirit?" (referring to Psalm 93 v1)

GEOLOGY AND GENESIS AT WAR, 1800-1840
'The hunch that God might not have done precisely as Bishop Ussher had
suggested [creation in 4004BC],., was beginning to be tested by real
thinkers, by rationalists, by radically inclined scientists who were bold
enough to challenge both the dogma and the law, the clerics and the courts.'
'

p29 Simon Winchester, The Map that changed the World

'The first rumblings of trouble ahead, for all who were fixed in these
beliefs, came from the science of geology. In the 1830s books by Sir Charles
Lyell and Dean Buckland establsihed the geological succession of rocks and
fossils, and showed that the world to be much older than the accepted date
for the Garden of Eden.'

Alec Vidler , The Church in an Age of Revolution p114

DARWIN DESTROYS THE LITERAL VIEW OF GENSESIS
'The conclusion that the higher animals and man had evolved . was obviously
fatal to the literal accuracy of the Book of Genesis, and what is more, it
seemed that the traditional Christian doctrines about the creation and the
fall would have to go by the board.'

Vidler p116

In 1860 the Bishop of Worcester's wife said, "Oh, my dear, let's hope that
what Mr Darwin says is not true. But if it istrue, let us hope that it will
not become generally known."

Many sources, also Sunday Times 17 Feb 2002

'. those religious believers who rejected Darwin's theory because they
thought it conflicted with the account of Genesis have been pretty much
discredited.'

p62 Keith Ward , God, Chance and Necessity

'. in 1862 the eminent physicist Lord Kelvin greatly worried Darwin by
'proving' that the .earth could not possibly be more than 24 million years.
Although this estimate was considerably better than the 4004BC date then
favoured by churchmen.

p155 R Dawkins in The Oxford Companion to Animal Behaviour
Received on Mon Dec 8 15:56:49 2003