Re: The role of debates and wedges

On Tue, 28 Jun 2005 15:55:36 -0400 Jack Haas <haas.john@comcast.net>
writes:
>
> Yet Huxley and Tyndall would use the scientific work of theistic
> evolutionist Rev. W. H. Dallinger for their own purposes and
> reward him with membership in the Royal Society and the chance to
> write
> papers in the leading scientific Journals. A key factor that Ted
> mentions is the 'professionalizing' and 'institutionalizing' of
> science
> - Amateurs such as Dallinger were soon shut out of the action.
> Peter
> Bowler, /Reconciling Science and Religion: the Debate in Early
> Twentieth Century Britain, /2001, p. 11 notes :
>
> " / /There was tension in the Victorian era, of course. Religious
> thinkers at first found the new scientific theories difficult to
> assimilate, and to some scientists - of whom Huxley is the best
> example
> - went out of their way to present science as a source of knowledge
> that
> would supplant religious superstition. But the latter policy was at
>
> least as much a tactic employed by professional scientists seeking
> recognition as it was the product of real antipathy, and many
> commented
> on the religious tone of Huxley's own pronouncements on the moral
> character of agnosticism."
>
> Jack.
>
Bowler has his point of view, but the impression I got from David N.
Livingstone, Darwin's Forgotten Defenders (Eerdmans, 1987), is that
evangelicals had less trouble than most others in accepting evolution.
Livingstone seems to have read all the relevant publications that have
survived.
Dave
Received on Tue Jun 28 18:10:06 2005