Scientific Credulity
verses
Religious Beliefs
“To give a true and unprejudiced account of any religious system, a man must once have believed in it, or he will give an superficial view of it; and he must have ceased to believe in it, or he will be prejudiced.”
In quoting the above from M. Renan, I can use the words of H. M. Prior, who was 20 years a minister of one of the seven Catholic Apostolic Churches in London, on opening the account of his experience there. He said, “I am in this position,..with respect to orthodox astronomy, I formerly believed in theoretical astronomy, but now I renounce it as being contrary both to facts and reason and the Holy Scriptures.
“The Earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof; For he hath founded it upon the Seas, and Established it upon the floods.” Psa. 24.2
These words give strength to the argument of the sceptics, against the authority of the Bible, so long as the popular teaching is upheld, both by themselves and Christians.
I remember a conversation I had some years ago with a man who I judged to be an atheist; or a deist. He had been listening with others to a Mr. Walter Skinnner of Brighton who was preaching on the obtaining of the future life alone through Jesus Christ. We were on the Level at Brighton, and the sceptic told me that his principal of sole reason for doubting Mr. Skinner’s statements, “was grounded upon the fact that the Book from which he took them was in direct opposition to Science.” He further said that he was a student of science, and the opinions and discoveries of great and learned me, and therefore the gospel would not do for him, as the two: science and the Bible did not fit agreeably together. This shews how lamentable it is for a Christian to blindly yield to the claims of “science.”
In regard to Christianity, the Sceptic said that the masses believed in it, for the reason that they either had no power of thinking themselves, or they did not exercise this power; for they accept as truth without enquiry just whatever any preacher tells them who is under the impression that the he is above his fellows in knowledge, or who desires some little notoriety. But, I replied, is not this the case to a large extent in science as well as in religion? Sceptics profess to believe in science, and astronomy, although they possess no practical knowledge thereon, just because some great man teaches these things, and the masses about them are brought up to believe them.
So that “science” in all its branches, has its unthinking votaries as well as religion. I soon perceived that this man’s faith was blindly fixed in the accepted or orthodox doctrines of what is termed “science,” especially astronomy; and that everything in his mind was made to succumb to his prejudice and unreasoning faith in his astronomical speculations. I asked him if God had not created the stars? He said, “No!” However, according to Laplace, the sun had formed itself out of primitive nebula and that this was the case with myriads of other starry globes, including the earth, all of which being huge sparks had been shot off the great fire-wheel of the Sun, like sparks from a grinding stone in rapid rotation” The Sun’s immense distance account for for its apparently small size, and its apparently small size being due to its supposed great distance ! This is called “circular reasoning,” and infidels as well as unthinking Christians believe them.
This sceptic said that he “believed” that the Sun was 1,409,725 times the size of the earth; and that both these bodies in common with 100s of millions of “other globes” were formed by condensation from vapours as rain drops are formed in the clouds. He supposed they had done this of themselves, for by some mysterious process described as “the laws of Nature!”
The difference being that these rain drops required only a few seconds, whereas these supposed solid bodies and worlds required millions and millions of years for their formation. Men talk glibly of these immense periods in the formation of the so-called “crust” of our earth, and they say that is must have taken millions of years for the crust of the “globe” to form and to cool. But what reason have the masses for believing this so-called scientific theory rather than the grand and simple account of Creation as given in the Bible? None! Christ by his miracles proved himself to be from God, and Christ endorsed the Mosaic account of the Universe. But sceptics are as blindly prejudiced in their unthinking scientific beliefs as the masses were in the dark ages in their unscriptural and theological faiths. Let us turn from all these teachings of me, whether they be of Newton, Herschal, Laplace or Arminius, and let us turn afresh to Nature and the Word of God for our own information and instruction. Let us have facts, not fancies, and let us read facts even in the light of a little common sense and criticism. Like others I once accepted these theories without exercising any thought and inquiry. But now I see it is impossible for one who really thinks to accept both the speculations of astronomy and the Scriptures. I for one, therefore, prefer to stand by the bible account of the Universe as it harmonises with all I have now learned on the real facts and appearances of Nature. As for all human fancies and astronomical speculations let them be discarded before we give up our trust in the Word of Him who made the World, and who promises eternal life to all who believe in His Son.
At school in our unsuspecting childhood we are taught three great falsehoods as truth, and today our children are taught the same. First falsehood, “the world is a globe and round like an orange.” Second falsehood, “it rotates on its axis.” Third falsehood, “it revolves in an orbit round the sun.” Now it is not universally known that beside these two primary motions there are said to be five others, so that the globe of modern astronomy has seven motions!” But we dare for the truth sake tell these astronomers that when sentient beings are tossed and tumbled about in seven different directions at one and the same time, there must be “sensible effects” felt by them. No! Say modern astronomers, you must throw your senses to the winds, for those motions “are only appreciable to astronomers.” Happy innocence! What next? Let us look at theses seven movements in detail.
We all know that there are oceans tides, spring and neap, and they are due to the positions of the sun and moon relatively to the earth. “The full of the moon” strikingly affoots the sea. It did not occur to us to think whether it also affected the atmosphere and the earth itself. All that was notice about it, apart from its marine influence, was that the persons of unstrung nerves underwent crises at the full of the moon. Then so-called scientific men laughed at this belief, as being in the nature of old wives’ fables. But being founded on observation it was nothing of the sort. M. Bouquet de la Graye, an eminent hydrographical engineer, has, after long years of patient study, calculated the atmospheric expansions and depressions which coincide with the spring and neap tides. There have been cases in which air was moved in waves of 133 years high, and in places where the barometrical pressure was seven-tenths of an inch, of six and a half miles. Near the upper surface of the earth’s atmosphere condensations and dilatation of this magnitude are frequent. The human nervous system may be said to register these air waves. We are only aware they do so by the discomfort which we feel. The earth also registers them, and to its very centre. The incandescent and fluid matter under the earth’s crust acts in concert with the air and sea at the full of the moon. In 1890 a German scientist, Dr. Rebeur Pachwitz, thought he notice at Wilhelm-shaven and Potsdam earth oscillations corresponding with the course of the moon. He wrote to the Observatory of Teneriffe asking for observations to be made there in December, 1890, and April 1891, which would be propitious times for them. From these observations, and others simultaneously made in the sandy plains round Berlin, it was established that the earth rises and falls like the ocean and the atmosphere. The movements, common to them all, may be likened to that of the chest in breathing. – Paris correspondent, “Weekly Despatch.”
Astronomers say that because the sun, moon, and planets are globular, therefore the Earth must be globular; but they may as well say that,as the lamps in the room in which the meeting was being held were globular, therefore the room itself was globular. There was nothing to show that the Earth is one of the heavenly bodies, or that any of those heavenly bodies are “worlds.” The words in Hebrews i. 2, and xi. 3, translated “ the worlds,” are totis aioias (the ages), whereas in Hebrews i. 6, the terms, translated “ the world,” differ and signify’ “ the inhabited earth.”
