A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

"He wanted to model it on the European system, which by that time had become secular. Universities were originally, in the Middle Ages, religious institutions. Dickson White and Cornell agreed that they were going to make this university secular because only by insulating universities from the influence of religion could there be free inquiry. And he’s absolutely right about that. They put a clause in the statement of the founding of Cornell — which was given a grant by the state of New York — that there would be no test for religious belief for professors. You could be an atheist and still be a professor. That really caused a lot of problems, to the extent that they almost refused to let the university be set up. Some people even said you should be required to be a preacher in order to become a professor. Dickson White stood his ground and won, with the result that Cornell is a purely secular institution. It’s one of the few really high-class American universities that doesn’t have a school of theology. “Accepting faith as a means to ascertain truth has invidious social consequences.” Dickson White was a believer, by the way. He says he’s a Christian and that by writing this book, he is furthering religion. In his view, it was the dogmatism of religion that was inimical to science, not religion per se. People misunderstand what he was trying to do. His purpose was not to impugn religion, but to show that it’s the dogmatism of religion that prevents social progress and here’s examples of that dogmatism. And then the book became too long…he spent 30 years on it… More or less. He covers almost everything: anesthesia, lightning rods, vaccinations and he winds up with Biblical scholarship, showing that at every step of the way, representatives of the church were opposed to this stuff. We can talk about some of the criticisms of this book. It’s in really bad odour amongst philosophers and historians of science because it takes such a strong stance, but also because they perceive errors in it. He also argues that attributing mental illness to demonic possession inhibited science. That’s a whiggish view of the history of science because back then we didn’t have any science. What else could we do, except use our knowledge the best we could, to explain why people were behaving oddly? It was only when science began to develop that religion could impede it. It’s not clear to me whether the Church itself actually impeded the development of science, or was neutral. Some people say Catholicism actually helped science. I don’t know the answer because we can’t rerun the tape of history. What is clear — and I think this is the point that White makes that people miss — is that once science got going, once people wanted to study naturalistic explanations for phenomena, many representatives of the Church fought it, and impeded that effort. But he does get stuff wrong. There is evolution stuff he gets wrong. Yes, as long as the religion is not what he calls “dogmatic religion.” He would take the Stephen J Gould attitude that non-dogmatic religion is religion that doesn’t make any statements about reality. Gould said that in his 1999 book, Rocks of Ages , and people loved that book. Here’s a famous atheist coming out and saying, “There’s a proper sphere for religion and there’s a proper sphere for science and they don’t overlap. Isn’t that great? We can all be friends.” I think that’s White’s attitude as well, the idea of these ‘non-overlapping magisteria’. The problem is it only works if you have a view of religion as something that does not make dogmatic statements about reality, and unfortunately most religions aren’t like that. Creationism is one example of how religions regularly violate their supposed stricture to stay out of science because they make statements about how life began, about when it began, etc. That’s a pretty strong statement if I say yes to that. Let me put it this way. I would prefer a world in which people base their beliefs on facts rather than faith (which is why I called my book that) and do not make dogmatic statements about reality based on no evidence, little evidence, or even counter-evidence. That world is the one that is instantiated in the Netherlands, in Denmark and in Sweden and the results are great. Most people in those countries are atheists and yet these countries are some of the most moral and pleasant places to live in the world. They take care of old people, they take care of sick people, they don’t demonize sexuality or smoking marijuana. They’re deeply empathic societies, and I’d like the United States to be like them. If people had a form of religion that did not make statements about reality…and there are some religions like that: that worship nature, pantheism, or maybe Confucianism or some forms of Buddhism. You can call them religions, but there’s no God, there’s no belief in heaven or hell — though some Buddhists believe in rebirth which is not right. Religions that are non-religious I don’t mind so much."