Showing posts with label Creationism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Creationism. Show all posts

Monday, January 14, 2019

War Between Science and Religion? The Real Enemy was Catholic Immigrants

Hating immigrants is nothing new in America

The anti-immigrant tradition in America is old and deep in America.  People accepted now as "white" people were hated and reviled more than 100 years ago, none more than Catholics.

In the 1870s two acclaimed American academics each published blockbuster books about the "War Between Science and Religion."  They were both brilliant men in their disciplines.  John William Draper was one of the first presidents of the American Chemical Society and was a pioneer in photographic chemistry. Andrew Dickinson White was the first president of Cornell University.

It is an old truism that being brilliant in your own area of expertise makes one libel to spout off with idiocy in an area where one has no training.

But fame and publishing best-selling books in the 19th Century turned to derision in the 20th Century.  Draper and White today are known today as the chief promoters of the discredited "Conflict Thesis" describing a two millenia war between science and religion.  The thesis is simply anti-immigrant bullshit.

Larry Principe, a professor of the history of science at Johns Hopkins University, teaches a course in which he uses Draper's book as an example of how not do history.  If you are interested in the field, Principe's lectures on "The Great Courses" are brilliant.

But the smell lingers.  Wretched writers like Dan Brown use the lies and half-truths in Draper and White to write trash thrillers like The "DaVinci Code."

So why did Draper and White trash the history of the Church?  Their target was not all religion, but the Catholic faith. Draper and White were rabidly anti-Catholic and were writing propaganda, not history.  In the 19th Century, anti-immigrant people tried to take control of the political system through secret groups.  The Whig Party fell apart in 1856 and was replaced by the Republicans in part because of internal divisions over slavery and immigrants.

Draper and White, for example, popularized the myth that the Church taught the earth was flat and Columbus proved otherwise.  That the earth is round and has a diameter of roughly 8,000 miles was known to every educated person since about 300 B.C. Anyone reading the Divine Comedy, written in the late 1,200s is quite aware of the earth as a sphere.

But like any propagandists, Draper and White began with a message and massaged all their facts to fit the message. So in order to prove the Catholic Church is anti-science they twisted facts to fit their message.

A secondary effect of their campaign against Catholics was to make add another layer of anti-intellectualism to a country already prone to making lunacy into policy.

Although they were both men intellectuals in their own fields, their real legacy in America putting stupidity in power.  The anti-vaxx movement, the John Birch Society, the Young Earth Creationists, the climate change deniers, birthers, and every kind of anti-immigrant movement can look back to Draper and White and see inspiration.



Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Screwtape in Iraq



This post is a repost from Iraq.  I haven't seen this post in years.  It was fun to write and mimic Screwtape.  But if you want to hear Screwtape at his best, the Audiobook is read by John Cleese!!!  No one could be a better mid-level bureaucrat in Hell than John Cleese.  The book is no longer available with Cleese as the narrator, but the letters are collected at the link above.


CLICK here for Screwtape in Iraq.

CLICK here for the book.

Exhibit of Contemporary Art from Ukraine and Talk by Vladislav Davidzon at Abington Arts

I went to "Affirmation of Life: Art in Today's Ukraine" at Abington Arts in Jenkintown, PA. The exhibit is on display through...