How much convinced are you of your religious beliefs? Do you have some doubts about how some some of your "religious principles" originated? Do you simply accept your convictions without further questioning? Aren't you curious about how some of those infallible "dogmas", or some of those unshakeable "principles" that you stand for came about?
Do you know that some your "beliefs" arose from political interests? Beware! Politicians are the same everywhere and in every epoch!
Why is it that there is an eternal "conflict" between religion and science. Is it possible to reconcile the ambitions of both, or there will always be an underground war between both? What side do you think is interested in the reconciliation? Maybe you are acquainted with the so-called Christian Science, but have you ever heard of Religious Physics?
History of the Conflict between Religion and Science --by John William Draper-- is for critical thinkers!
For example, many fundamentalists hold today that the age of the earth is no more than a few thousand years, a number computed by them using the chronology of ancient patriarchs and other relevant people of their faith. This is part of their sacred science, and sacred cosmogony.
And what about The Deluge? For a critical essay about this incredible event we also have another free EBook dedicated to this subject: The Deluge In The Light Of Modern Science by William Denton. But Draper --in his History of the Conflict... also has something to say about this:
Marine shells, found on mountain-tops far in the interior of continents, were regarded by theological writers as an indisputable illustration of the Deluge. But when, as geological studies became more exact, it was proved that in the crust of the earth vast fresh-water formations are repeatedly intercalated with vast marine ones, like the leaves of a book, it became evident that no single cataclysm was sufficient to account for such results; that the same region, through gradual variations of its level and changes in its topographical surroundings, had sometimes been dry land, sometimes covered with fresh and sometimes with sea water. It became evident also that, for the completion of these changes, tens of thousands of years were required.
That is, the conflict between religion and science is a showdown between many religious beliefs and many scientific facts; it is not merely a conflict between one "dogma" and a single scientific fact or experiment.
As another example of confrontation, let us take the following excerpt from Draper's book regarding the earth's origin, that is, the earth's cosmogony:
Sacred cosmogony regards the formation and modeling of the earth as the direct act of God; it rejects the intervention of secondary causes in
those events.
Scientific cosmogony dates from the telescopic discovery made by Cassini-- an Italian astronomer, under whose care Louis XIV placed the Observatory of Paris--that the planet Jupiter is not a sphere, but an oblate spheroid, flattened at the poles. Mechanical philosophy demonstrated that such a figure is the necessary result of the rotation of a yielding mass, and that the more rapid the rotation the greater the flattening, or, what comes to the same thing, the greater the equatorial bulging must be.
Furthermore, abounding on the age of the earth, Draper says:
One school of geologists, resting its argument on very imposing evidence, teaches that the whole mass of the earth, from being in a molten, or perhaps a vaporous condition, has cooled by radiation in the lapse of millions of ages, until it has reached its present equilibrium of temperature. Astronomical observations give great weight to this interpretation, especially so far as the planetary bodies of the solar system are concerned. It is also supported by such facts as the small mean density of the earth, the increasing temperature at increasing depths, the phenomena of volcanoes and injected veins, and those of igneous and metamorphic rocks. To satisfy the physical changes which this school of geologists contemplates, myriads of centuries are required.