dglenn's Journal

QotD

[I've rewritten my auto-posting program, hoping to make it more robust. If this entry shows up late, or dated funny, or only on half the sites it should be crossposted to, it's because this morning is the new program's first live test (the private test runs worked, so it should be fine, but Murphy has a way of screwing up "shoulds" ...).]

"Medieval scholars sought to uncover the mind of God via the three pathways available: revelation, scripture and the natural world. Scripture is obvious, as is revelation, and the natural world was described by Pliny and other ancient texts. However, the scholars (very) gradually became discontent with mere authority, especially where it seemed to contradict actual natural events. They sought greater and greater understanding of the world around them: the world created for them, by God.

"These were Christian scholars not only using the rational inquiry God had granted them, but using to investigate His world in order to appreciate His grandeur and His gift. This is the magnificent unfurling of rational thought which would eventually lead to the rift between science and religion so famously exemplified by Galileo. Nonetheless, these thinkers and philosophers and clerics doing the absolute best they could.

"I firmly believe -sans evidence, of course- that they would have regarded Creationists with absolute contempt. They sought to understand the universe in all its beautiful and astonishing complexity and, through that understanding, uncover the mind of God. God is magnificent and complex to these folk; He works in mysterious ways. They firmly believed that the universe was for us, and would remain conservative with regard the Great Demotions that Sagan wrote about. However, God would not lie to you. Or to them. The world was a reflection of God; His word was instilled in every piece of it. The world speaks to us of Him and to deny the evidence is to deny God.

"Creationists deny the evidence. They deny God. They belittle Him and strip Him of dignity and power and grandeur; they corrupt and mislead; they lie. Few scholars in the medieval period would want to be associated with these people."

goblinpaladin, "Bibles and Literalism", 2008-04-07