The Dawn of Skepticism: Revisiting the Historic Conflict Between Scripture and Science
by Margaret Grace Voelter
The stars have prompted both religious and scientific inquiry for thousands of years. As Plato once wrote, “This study [astronomy] certainly compels the soul to look upward and leads it away from things here to those higher things.” (Plato) For the majority of human history, people considered the fields of science and religion to be one and the same. However, in our modern era, most consider them to be mutually exclusive. When did this paradigm begin to crumble, and what caused it? With a glance at history, it is apparent that this conflict originated with the study of our solar system, when Renaissance astronomers' technological innovations revealed that the universe was ordered contrary to the Catholic Church’s doctrine.
Until just a few hundred years ago the academic world was dominated by a Christian worldview. Only after the start of the Protestant Reformation around 1500 AD, did minds such as Nicolus Copernicus or Galileo Galilei begin to investigate and challenge the teachings of the Church. At that time, the Church asserted that the planets, sun, and everything visible in our solar system revolved around the earth. Church leaders or clergy members supported this claim with isolated verses from scripture. For example, Psalm 104:5, states that God, “Set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved” (Psalm 104:5). Three popes, Paul V, Urban VIII and Alexander VII, believed in the authenticity of geocentrism based on choice verses of scripture such as this. The Church made a strong claim about the interpretation of this psalm and its implications; earth must remain stationary in the cosmos. The church then committed to promoting a geocentric model with a stationary earth as their explanation of Biblical knowledge and minimal external scientific information. Copernicus, however, observed and recorded the Earth moving around the sun (Sobel). He researched and experimented with theoretical compositions of the stars and planets, ultimately landing on one model that could accurately explain all he had seen. In his book, Copernicus wrote, “All spheres surround the Sun as though it were in the middle of all of them, and therefore the center of the universe is near the Sun,”(Sobel). Galileo’s later work with more powerful telescopes further evidenced Copernicus’ theory. In discovering new celestial bodies orbiting Jupiter, Galileo gave credence to the idea that the universe does not revolve around Earth. At the time this theory and its evidence was received as a blasphemous criticism of the Church. But in reality, Copernicus’ and Galileo’s findings shed light on the scripture rather than discrediting the Biblical text. Psalm 104, which the Church used in defense of a geocentric universe, is taken dramatically out of context. The previous verses read, “covering yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent. He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters; he makes the clouds his chariot; he rides on the wings of the wind; he makes his messengers winds, his ministers a flaming fire” (Psalm 104: 2-4). These words describing God’s relationship with the world are metaphorical and poetic. These verses are not aiming to make a statement about the literal and physical construction of the light, the waters, the clouds or the winds. The passage simply paints a picture of God’s glory in the reader’s mind. The poetic language is a clue to the reader that this passage is best understood as an analogy for understanding the metaphysical concepts of God rather than outlining diagrams of the natural world. This misinterpretation of the Christian scriptures has led many to view faith and science as incompatible worldviews, when truly the incompatibility is with the perceiver.
Another notable misinterpretation which the Church used to defend the geocentric model of the universe is in Isaiah 40, which could possibly be interpreted to describe a stationary and flat earth. The passage reads, “It is [God] who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in” (Isaiah 40:22). Taken at face value, the text describes a circular mass, which has an above and a below; despite the fact that this is indeed compatible with our magnetic model of a spherical globe having a north and south poles, clergy of that era squeezed its meaning to align with their impression of a flat earth. Additionally, the description of the heavens as a tent for small grasshoppers does not imply a literal, scientific interpretation of this verse. These similes and metaphors are cues to the interpreter that this image is not an exact or definite depiction of God watching over us in a tangible cosmos but rather rhetorical imagery which the author uses to convey a sense of spiritual closeness to God. Once again this becomes a very effective example of careless interpretation creating needless conflict between scientists and Church leaders.
Further examination of more verses used to justify the narrative of geocentrism reveals a pattern to the verses which have been set in conflict with modern science. As the Church sought to interpret Genesis literally, they lost sight of the poetic subtleties which are just as central to a proper interpretation as knowledge of the literal details. The text reads, “God said, ‘Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse…And God called the expanse Heaven” (Genesis 1:6-8). For a time these words were explained as a picture of a flat earth with a dome of water arching overhead, labeled the ‘firmament’. This loose interpretation dramatically contradicts the most well-supported scientific explanations for the color of the sky and the curvature of the earth over the horizon. It is important to take scientific context and literary genre into account when reading Genesis. Dr. Lesleigh Stahlberg explains in an article published in the Notre Dame journal of Religion and Literature,
“To read the Bible…is to read literarily. It is to attend to narrative structure, character development, word choice. It is to think about repetitions and refrains, recastings of earlier narratives, inner-biblical allusions. It is to think about what the text means, and what it means to us. It is to think about how it was read by its first readers and how it is read now, even as the how and the now—to say nothing of the why—of these questions are constantly shifting” (Stahlberg).
What she is essentially highlighting is the need to look outside of the ‘literal’ meaning of the words to find the ‘literary’ meaning of the narrative. If the creation story was written as an entirely historical record, then a flat earth covered by a ‘firmament’ would be quite a reasonable picture to draw from Genesis. However, Genesis contains a uniquely complex dichotomy; renowned philosopher and biblical scholar William Lane Craig discusses the two distinguished characteristics of the text; the first being its function to record history and the second being the mythological aspect which passed down lessons in Jewish culture. In the first chapters of Genesis, he reminds us that “persons and events have been clothed in the metaphorical and figurative language of myth.”(Craig). But on the other hand, these narratives of Genesis “ are interspersed with genealogical notices that include the principal characters in lines of descent, thus turning the primeval narratives into a primeval history… the genealogies meld seamlessly into the historical period of the patriarchs, where the historical interest is obvious and not in dispute” (Craig). So is Biblical creation as told in Genesis history or fiction? Simply put: It is both. While Adam and Eve seem to be firmly placed in history, the epic poem of creation also acts as a memory device for generations of Jews to remember the people, places and lessons foundational to their culture. Through this contextual lens, we no longer force the creation story to fit the box of any preconceived physical model of the universe. Being conscientious of vague language, the repetition of crucial phrases and the overall brevity of the creation narrative, all point to a conclusion of poetic ambiguity. It follows that Genesis does not make any assertive claim to the construction of the cosmos as it has been misinterpreted.
Taken at face value, Biblical scriptures can at times appear to be diametrically opposed to scientific reality. However, when viewed with the proper historical, literary and scientific context, it is obvious that the modern scientific model of the universe poses no direct objection to the Christian scriptures. Throughout history, disagreement between the people who represent the church and the scientific community have polarized and separated what used to be an interdisciplinary study of philosophy through the observable world around us. In the interest of truth, consider that neither side may be right or wrong, but that each has valuable information to offer and that together through sharing ideas, we can come to a clearer picture of the universe that surrounds us.
Works Cited
Craig, William Lane. "The Historical Adam." First Things, Oct. 2021, www.firstthings.com/article/2021/10/the-historical-adam. Accessed 11 Dec. 2023.
The Holy Bible. English Standard Version, Crossway, 2011.
Plato, and Paul Shorey, Translator. Plato. The Republic. London, Heinemann. HeinOnline, https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.cow/plarepu0002&i=253.
Sobel, Dava. A More Perfect Heaven. New York City, Walker Publishing Company, 2011.
Stahlberg, Lesleigh Cushing. “Reading Genesis Literarily in the Liberal Arts Setting: A Case Study.” Religion & Literature, vol. 47, no. 1, 2015, pp. 209–15. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24752961. Accessed 12 Dec. 2023.