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I. Science and Religion
Struggle
- a. In Galileo’s struggle with the inquisitorial Holy Office of the Catholic Church= struggle between science and religion
- i. Theology was queen of the sciences
- 1. Natural that churches continued belief that religion was final measure of all
- a. Emerging scientists disagreed and tried to draw lines between knowledge of religion and knowledge of natural philosophy (nature)
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I. Science and Religion
Galileo thought what was necessary...
- i. Galileo thought it was unnecessary to pit science against religion
- 1. To him, it made little sense for church to determine the nature of physical reality on basis of biblical texts that were subject to radically divergent interpretations
- 2. The church decided otherwise and lent its great authority to one scientific theory, the Ptolemaic-Aristotelian cosmology, because it fit with their own philosophical views of realityà consequences
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I. Science and Religion
Consequences
- a. for educated individuals, it established a dichotomy between scientific investigations and religious beliefs
- i. as scientific beliefs triumphed, it became inevitable that religious beliefs would suffer, leading to growing secularization in European intellectual life, which the church tried to prevent
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I. Science and Religion
17th Century intellectuals
- a. many 17th century intellectuals were both religious and scientific and believed that he implications of the split would be tragic
- b. Some believed split unnecessary, while others felt need to combine God, humans, and a mechanistic universe into a new philosophical synthesis
- i. Spinoza and Pascal illustrate the diversity in the response of European intellectuals to the implications of the cosmological revolution
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I. Science and Religion
Spinoza
- i. Philosopher who grew up in Amsterdam
- ii. Excommunicated from Amsterdam synagogue at 24 for rejecting Judaism and later Christian churchesà quite life, earning a living grinding lenses and refusing to accept an academic position in philosophy at the University of Heidelberg for fear of compromising his freedom of thought
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I. Science and Religion
Spinoza and new Scientific Lit
- i. Read new scientific literature and was influenced by Descartes
- 1. Unwilling to accept implications of Descartes’ ideas, especially separation of mind and matter and separation of infinite God from finite world of matter
- a. God not creator; he was the universe
- i. All is in God and nothing apart= pantheism (monism) in Ethics Demonstrated in the Geometrical Manner
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I. Science and Religion
Spinoza and beliefs
- i. Believed humans not situated in nature but are as much a part of God or nature or universal order as other natural objects
- 1. Failure to understand God led to many misconceptions, for one that natures exists only for one’s uses
- a. Unable to find any other cause for existence, they attributed them to creator-God who must be worshipped to gain their ends
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I. Science and Religion
Spinoza Beliefs of nature and humans
- i. When nature unfriendly (storms, etc), they though gods were angry at some wrong men did rather than realize that good and evil fall on both good and bad
- 1. Likewise, humans made moral condemnations of others because they failed to understand that human emotions follow the same necessity of nature and nothing comes to pass in nature
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I. Science and Religion
Spinoza and emotion
- a. To explain human emotion, we need to analyze them
- i. Everything has a rational explanation and humans are capable of finding it
- ii. Reason can help people understand the order and necessity of nature and achieve detachment from passing interests
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I. Science and Religion
Pascal
- i. French scientists who tried to keep science and religion united
- ii. Accomplished scientist and brilliant mathematician who excelled at practical, by inventing calculating machine, and abstract, by devising theory of chance or probability and doing work on conic sections
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I. Science and Religion
Pascal visions
- i. After a vision, which assured him that God cared for the human soul, he devoted life to religion
- 1. Planned to write apology for the Christian religion, but died before done
- 2. Left a set of notes for larger work= Pensees (Thoughts)
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I. Science and Religion
Pascal's Pensees
- i. Pensees
- 1. Tried to convert rationalists to Christianity by appealing to both their reason and their emotions
- a. Humans were frail creatures deceived by senses, misled by reason, and battered by emotions
- i. But nature required their thinking
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I. Science and Religion
Pascal was determined to do what?
- i. Determined to show Christian religion was not contrary to reason
- 1. It was the only religion that recognized people’s true state of being as both vulnerable and great
- a. To a Christian, a human being was both fallen and at same time God’s special creation
- i. But it was not necessary to emphasize one at the expense of the other—to view humans as only rational or only hopeless
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I. Science and Religion
Pascal's answer
- i. Even had an answer for skeptics in his famous wager
- 1. God is a reasonable bet; it is worthwhile to assume that God exists
- a. If he does= we win; if he doesn’t= we lose
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I. Science and Religion
Pascal Refusal
- i. Despite scientific and mathematical background, he refused to rely on scientists’ world of order and rationality to attract people to God
- 1. In the new cosmology of the 17th century, “finite man” was lost in new infinite world
- 2. Nature could never reveal God
- 3. A Christian could only rely on a God who through Jesus cared for human beings
- 4. In the final analysis, after providing reasonable arguments for Christianity, he rested on faith
- a. Reason could only take you so far
- b. Faith was the final step
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I. Science and Religion
Pascal Failure
- i. Failed to achieve goal of uniting Christianity and science
- 1. The gap between them grew wider as Europe continued along path of secularization
- a. Traditional religions not eliminated; churches did not yet lose followers (that comes later)
- i. Nevertheless, more and more of the intellectual, social, and political elites acted on basis of secular rather than religious assumptions
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