Having faith in science

10:18am Tuesday 20th May 2008

IWAS glad to hear Cardinal Cormac Murphy- OConnor tell Christians to be kind and courteous towards scientists.

It would be nice if scientists such as Richard Dawkins would show the same consideration towards religious believers.

For really there is no conflict between science and Christianity. There are bigots on both sides, but many of the most eminent scientists have also professed the Christian faith.

The trouble is that there is a lot of misinformation about. The first big piece of misinformation is that the scientific revolution of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment banished the gloom and superstition of the Dark Ages and the Medieval period. In fact the so-called Dark Ages were not dark at all: they were a period of astonishing technological progress. For example, the Battle of Tours in AD 732 was the first occasion when knights fought in full armour. They could do so because of the invention of stirrups and the Norman saddle.

Developments on the battlefield showed European farming technologists how to invent the horse-collar. This allowed farmers throughout the continent to switch from using oxen to horses for ploughing, with the resulting immense increase in food production. Also the ancient Romans had shod their horses in sandals which slipped off and caused the horses to go lame. The Dark Ages invented iron shoes by which horses could travel over hard ground and cover much more territory without injury.

Other inventions which preceded the Renaissance by centuries were waterwheels, mills, camshafts, mechanical clocks and the compass.

The next big folly is that it was not until the voyages of Columbus and Magellan that we learnt the world is not flat but round. This is nonsense.

Among the scholars of the Dark Ages who taught that the world is round were Venerable Bede (673-735), Bishop Virgilus of Salzburg (eighth Century) and Hildegaard of Bingen (1098-1179).

Another piece of nonsense is that medical science was held back because the church wouldnt allow the dissection of corpses. Wrong. It was Medieval churchmen who permitted dissection and improved their knowledge of anatomy as a direct result. Greeks, Romans and Muslims all forbade dissection because the dignity of the human body would not permit it. The church was not so hindered, because it possessed the liberating doctrine of the immortal soul. You want proof ? The Christian scholastic Mondino de Luzzi (1270-1326) wrote a textbook on the dissection of corpses.

It is not only that there is no conflict between Christianity and science: without Christianity, there would be no science. No other civilisation or culture, ancient or modern has invented science C only the Christianity of the Dark Ages and the Medieval period. This is because Christianity has declared since the opening verse of St Johns gospel that God is reasonable. And this reasonable God made the world in his own reasonable image: to be discovered and understood by the rationality he has implanted in us by his Spirit.

Never mind Christian apologists, listen to one of the most outstanding scientists of the last century. AN Whitehead, co-author with Bertrand Russell of Principia Mathematica, wrote: There is but one source for science: it must come from the Medieval insistence on the rationality of God.

ö Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michaels, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.

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