Christianity - God and the Scientists

in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and God said let there be light the gathering together of the waters called he seas God created man in his own image for more than 1500 years Christian saw the Bible as the primary source of knowledge but in the 17th century a new movement emerged that challenged the Christian view of the world the Scientific Revolution it was a time when people were looking towards a new way of thinking about the world during the Renaissance the rising power of science forced the Catholic Church to silence rebellious scientists the sentence says the reason that you're burning is because you've denied the divinity of Jesus and because you questioned our authority by the 19th century the Enlightenment had given rise to a new generation of scientists who pushed Christianity into retreat Darwin removed the main argument for God's existence if science continues to make discoveries that conflict with Christian doctrine I wonder will the Scientific Revolution ultimately make Christianity redundant what we now call science emerged about four hundred years ago through the work of a group of European thinkers who discovered new ways of interpreting the world they no longer relied on the delivered Word of God the Scientific Revolution put individual curiosity inquiry reason and experiment above religious dogma to my mind science is quite simply the biggest challenge that Christianity will ever have to face I don't believe in God some scientists managed to retain their faith but I think science is our only route to knowledge an idea that some people still find threatening nowadays we all recognize the power of science we look to science to explain the world to solve our problems but science also has its enemies I myself was subjected for 15 years to a campaign of hatred and terror from animal rights activists because of the research that I did perhaps it's because science necessarily challenges the Orthodox view of the day in order to make progress and often that orthodoxy is fundamentally religious today I'm professor of neuroscience here at Oxford when the first colleges were founded in the 12th century the Christian Church was planting the seeds of science Oxford's been a seat of learning for more than 900 years just 30 years after the Norman invasion in 1066 scholars were teaching here Oxford became a center for discussion for debate for investigation all of it sponsored and encouraged by the Christian Church the motto of the University says it all really dominus Illuminati Oh mayor God is my light believing that God had given humans the power of reason the church championed the beginnings of science assuming it would confirm their faith this is the old school's quadrangle was built in the early 17th century and it was the focus of all the teaching of the university is it's dominated by the Divinity School there's logic metaphysics grammar and history there's mathematics there's astronomy and here the school of natural philosophy natural philosophy was a 17th century word for science science being nurtured in an ecclesiastical environment as part of a religious and classical education for hundreds of years Christians had looked to the leading experts on the natural world the ancient Greeks to explain God's creation in Christianity there is a central notion that God created the world Aristotle however probably the most important of the Greek natural philosophers argue that the cosmos was eternal they thought that many Christian ideas were rather silly right from the start rational thinkers forced Christians to consider the possibility that the biblical explanation of the world was wrong in the 5th century the Christian theologian st. Augustine came up with a solution he says the message we find in the Bible is accommodated to human capacities which is to say that the Bible speaks in language that we can understand and this thing will account for some of the discrepancies between what we find in Genesis and what we find in the the current or contemporary science st. Augustine laid down the rules for the relationship between science and Christianity the church would accommodate science findings as long as they didn't threaten its authority for the next thousand years Christianity remained firmly in control of all knowledge and helped generate the first glorious period of the Scientific Revolution the Renaissance hard to believe but in about fifteen hundred and ten one of the most significant developments with RNA saans took place not in glorious Rome or in Venice or in Florence but here in a sleepy little town on the Baltic coast in Poland while Italy was the center of Renaissance art and literature a local priest made Poland the focal point for science Nicholas Copernicus came here in the mid 16th century after studying in Italy and took services at from Bach Cathedral but he spent most of his time watching the sky and studying the movements of planets in this tower in the cathedral grounds Copernicus made an extraordinary discovery that led to science his first major challenge to Christian belief so Margaret what was the standard dogma in astronomy at the time that Copernicus began to study astronomy no Barbara homophobics yet the earth was thought to be surrounded by unchanging stars and Christians believed it was the center of the universe why they thought the Sun and the planets circled around a supposedly stationary earth is one for closure of a goonie but in his study Copernicus wrote a book that argued against this Christian view he claimed that the earth was actually one of the planets orbiting the Sun open canopy cells for Yugi or Copernicus finished his masterpiece in 1533 and he knew his ideas were revolutionary Opelika Vineeta Gogia the Vatican realized that Copernicus his speculations contradicted the biblical view that the earth is stationary at the center of the universe but it was willing to tolerate his ideas for now Co Co Co da get skittish Vilna the Catholic Church was a powerful institution how could it be threatened by one person even if his ideas were revolutionary saying let me bug on them Amazo dijo the Pope was hoping that despite all his research Copernicus's conclusions would be proved wrong about that that's also be the issue there's no doubt that here in from book in the heart of the church Copernicus planted a seed a seed of tension between religious authority and human inquiry which has grown over the following five hundred years it was others who followed Copernicus who invented science to test his rooms who suffered for championing his dangerous idea Copernicus's new theory soon pitted science and christianity against each other in the scientific revolutions darkest hour this was a true tragedy because the church is made of human beings who don't want to admit they're wrong you as a scientist today I'm free to put forward any idea as long as I can back it up with evidence but in Italy 400 years ago I would also needed the approval of the Vatican until the 16th century the papacy tolerated scientific ideas that contradicted the Bible but by the late 1500s the Protestant Reformation had emerged and was accusing the Catholics of forsaking the true Word of God in response the Vatican ruled that anyone who contradicted Catholic doctrine was a heretic and so began Sciences darkness down just a stone's throw from sant peter's this forbidding building is the papal police station it's the notorious Inquisition set up in the 16th century to defend against heresy scholars who speculated about the nature of the world could find themselves branded heretics in the late 1500s one of the most original thinkers was a man named Giordano Bruno while studying for the priesthood Bruna became captivated by Copernicus his theory that the Earth orbits the Sun is it fair to say that reading Copernicus's book set the stage as it were for Bruno's own ideas it must have because the Copernicus in a way opens up a new world for knowledge and Bruno says Copernicus stopped at the sphere of the fake stars and Bruno goes past the eighth ninth tenth and however many spheres you'd like to name he thought there were other Earth's he thought there might be creatures on these other Earth's and that's one of the issues that gets him in trouble with the church because if there are multiple earths how many earths is the Pope Pope of in 1600 the Inquisition had Bruno burnt at the stake he wasn't a real scientist but his death was a huge blow to the emerging scientific movement would it be fair to say that what happened in this Square the execution of Bruno had a very serious impact on Italian science it's devastating I think for both science and for the church one it makes controversial ideas dangerous secondly it makes publication of controversial ideas dangerous I think Bruno's execution marked the beginning of a battle between faith and reason the dangers I faced for my science came from a small group of fanatics but during the Renaissance most threats to scientists had the backing of the mighty Catholic Church this is the Inquisition handbook of torture 1643 it's volume 1 actually you know the Inquisition might not have invented these kinds of horrendous techniques but they certainly adopted them with relish not only to force confessions from those who are accused but quite frankly to put the fear of God into everyone else questioning Catholic dogma could have fatal consequences in Italy fear of the Inquisition forced scientists underground those brave enough to speak out were quickly silenced seems very likely that poor Brunel had a contraption like this clamped on his head just before he was burnt at the stake it's an interesting device really it clamps around the neck like rat and and this thing pushes down on the tongue to stop the victim proclaiming against the church at the moment of death and what is resting on is a papal whipping block knowledge of things like this must surely have terrified people I mean the worst that a scientist could expect these days is they get their paper rejected from the journal they send it to maybe their grant application gets turned down well in poor Bruno's day this is what might have happened to you in the 17th century the Catholic Church still insisted that the earth was the center of a universe that was only a few thousand years old but today scientific evidence has forced it to change its views after a successful academic career guy Consolmagno became a Jesuit brother and is now one of the Vatican's official astronomers so this is the meteorite lab and this is where the working culture is yeah we think these things were made four and a half billion years ago in a solar nebula of gas and dust but what turned the dust into a solid rock nobody knows can just pick you up on one thing you said just a throwaway remark about events that were happening four-and-a-half billion years ago right to say that doesn't raise the slightest concerns in your mind the slightest doubt you're totally aligned with cosmological estimates of the age of the universe absolutely of course the point of the Bible is not the science of the Bible is not a science book I've written science books the one thing you know about a science book is that it goes out of date after about three years Bible's been around for 2,500 years for what it says it's not out of date well though but it's not a science book is it the Word of God it is not the dictated Word of God God whispering this into some scribes hand who's writing it down we're not Muslims it's not the Koran it is a human interpretation of divine inspiration 400 years ago it was another astronomer who'd caught the Vatican's attention Galileo Galilei was one of the most respected scientists in Europe he helped the Vatican set up its first observatory in Rome and taught astronomy at the finest universities in the Catholic world in 1609 he even introduced the church to a new invention the telescope the telescope of course was first really demonstrated to the world by Galileo as an astronomical telescope in January of 1609 and one of the first things he did was to bring it to the Jesuits at the Roman College and Galileo is fated as a great conquering hero what the Vatican didn't realize was that Galileo's new observations of the stars planets and their moons supported the heretical views of Copernicus they confirmed that the earth was not at the center of God's universe Galileo announced his controversial discoveries hoping that his friend the Pope would protect him instead he was tried for heresy by a vote of seven to three Galileo was found guilty he was shown the instruments of torture he was a 69 year old man with severe arthritis and he decided to confess he said I abjure curse and detest my errors Galileo arguably the first true scientist was condemned as a heretic it was a disaster for science the real tragedy of Galileo wasn't just that he was put on trial for something that was not a religious issue but that the church was so slow in accommodating itself to the evidence as it piled up because the church is made of human beings who don't want to admit they're wrong this was a true tragedy the real problem was that Galileo had changed the rules of the game he was the first astronomer to base his theories on evidence the church didn't like that one bit the Catholic Church sponsored and encouraged philosophers and thinkers including Galileo as long as what they delivered was simply ideas but then Galileo arguably the very first scientist discovered a way through experiments of testing ideas and knowing whether they were wrong when science started to produce facts not just ideas the church just didn't know what to do they fought against it while the Inquisition's iron grip was stifling science in Catholic Italy in Protestant Britain scholars were laying foundations for the next phase of the Scientific Revolution the beginning of an explosion of knowledge in 1609 an Englishman made his way to take up an appointment here at some Bartholomew's Hospital in life his name was William Harvey a physician who studied at Padua in Italy where Galileo was a professor you can almost see Harvey carrying the baton of science from Italy yes the tradition of Galileo and so on across to to England yes and of course it was an extremely exciting time for science in this country and we have the birth of the Royal Society in 1660 s it was a time really when people were were looking towards a new way of thinking about the world and you can see Harvey as a sort of a crucial figure at the beginning of this movement the church based its views of biology on the writings of ancient philosophers and the biblical teaching that man was made in God's image but Harvey's revolutionary observations suggested the body was made like a machine there was this concept that the parts of the body didn't necessarily actually have a function but they were simply there because that's the way that God had designed them and you know that was it that was the end of the argument but one of Harvey's genius moments was the discovery and the demonstration that all the parts of the vascular system played a very important mechanical role he was able to show that blood moved around in two closed loops and of course this is the fundamental basis of all cardiovascular physiology ever since william harvey himself was still half a mystic he wrote about the heart as the son of the microcosm as a household god that serves the rest of the body but the techniques that he brought back from italy of making observations drawing conclusions and then testing those conclusions with further observations that was certainly the beginning of the scientific method it helped to fuel the explosion of science that happened in this country in the 17th century giving those early scientists methods to allow them to challenge the written word whether it was the words of Aristotle or the words of Scripture in the 18th century a new movement swept through the Western world thinkers such as Isaac Newton and John Locke realized that the laws of the universe were there to be discovered not read about in Bible it was the age of enlightened democracy freedom and science replaced religion at the heart of society for me the person who epitomizes the Enlightenment is an American Benjamin Franklin he was not only a statesman but also a celebrated scientist who found a rational explanation for the wrath of God thank you very much in 1750 Franklin suggested that lightning was just a form of electricity in a Georgian period churches were always the tallest building around and a lot of them had a lot of wood in them so they when they were struck by lightning they would just burn down and it'll be awful for your community not only because your largest Civic building had you know burnt to the ground but also because it would show that someone in your community had done something pretty bad because God did it exactly exactly so Franklin decided that he would protect churches from this from the electrical fluid so he went on to develop the lightning rods so if I just shot this in I would ask you not to touch the table for reasons that will become apparent very quickly hmm churches weren't always keen to have science mix with religion and quite this level and they did see that it was Franklin trying to circumvent God and God's will Franklin did say that if you really want to circumvent if you don't want to circumvent God's wishes you should actually not have a roof on your church because rain is also a natural phenomenon but obviously now all churches have lightning rods on them so does work I imagine if God wishes to punish you can find it other ways Franklin was also the first scientist to help found a nation with a new form of government his championing of scientific rationality inspired the first country built on Enlightenment principles but in many ways Franklin was was really if not the father of the United States certainly one of the principal thinkers behind the secular state absolutely he was one of the founding fathers he did not want the organized church ticket have anything to do with the running of a nation he thought it was a bad idea to have church estate combined and therefore split it off so creating a secular state in America Ben Franklin was the son of a Puritan immigrant he intended to go into the church himself but here in London at the age of 19 he first wrote his views about conventional religion rejecting the ceremony the pomp the dogma for me Ben Franklin really symbolizes the Enlightenment the age of reason and the free thinking the openness the rejection of authority during that period continued the process of undermining the authority of the church it was scientists brought up on these end like movement principals who pushed Christianity into a retreat which continues to this day Darwin removed the main argument for God's existence you I think that Sciences biggest challenge to Christianity was Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in 1859 Darwin published on the Origin of Species which suggested that life on Earth was not designed by God but had evolved through a process called natural selection my colleague Richard Dawkins has become the best-known critic of religion some would say the Archbishop of atheism for him evolution is the best reason for not believing in God Richard I guess you could say that after Copernicus and Galileo evolutionary theory was the second great challenge to conventional religious belief how did Darwin himself deal with it he was well aware that it was a great challenge and he was appropriately cautious before releasing it he delayed for something like 20 years after writing it out and then some people think the main reason for his delay was caution because of the effect would have on the religious establishment Christians had always believed that human beings were made in God's image but Darwin's theory implied that we are in fact Apes Darwin removed the main argument for God's existence because before before Darwin it looked as though the evident apparent design of living things could only be interpreted as as actual design some people seem to have come to terms with evolution as they did with Copernicanism by saying it's just an illumination of the wonders of God I've had it remarkably unconvincing because the suggestion is that that God in deciding to create life chose to do it in precisely the way that made it look as though he wasn't there well you could say that the difficulty was creating the physics of the universe with all its improbabilities in such a way that it would allow evolution to occur that's a much better way to look at it I mean that's a that there's a certain amount of plausibility about that I find it ultimately implausible because it suggests that an intelligent creator would need an even bigger explanation himself this wonderful University Museum at Oxford exudes Victorian confidence in the special power of human beings it was here in 1860 that Samuel Wilberforce the Bishop of Oxford defended Christianity against the onslaught of thomas henry huxley a great champion of Darwin there's no doubt that Darwin's discovery of a natural mechanism that could explain the origin of all life on earth including human beings without divine intervention was a serious challenge to conventional religious belief Christians are still uncertain and divided about how to respond to evolution the overwhelming evidence for Darwin's theory has led the mainstream churches to concede that humans were not literally made by God but they cling to the idea that God made evolution possible this kind of accommodation has become a familiar pattern it's not a matter of overturning what we fought before it's more a matter of saying that what we were taught when you're seven years old is still true but there's so much more going on that we couldn't possibly have handled when we were seven years old well I mean you seem to be talking about a kind of plasticine God a God that pickins stretched and deform to fit any shape you want to informed by science but stretched still to fit with the changing image of the reality of the world that science is giving us it's no more plasticine than the universe is plasticine as our understanding of it shifts the plasticine is up here yes as I'm older my mind can stretch a little bit closer to the dimensions of the god that was out there all the time mainstream Christianity has been so influenced by the enlightenment that its views are now totally different from those of 400 years ago but the beliefs of some Christians in the United States have hardly changed at all a recent poll found that almost 1/3 of Americans still believe that the biblical story of creation is literally true it's extraordinary to think of the word fundamentalism which we nowadays associate with extreme governments Islamic regimes actually originated here in the United States I'm gonna find out how it could be that in this secular country built on the success of Science and Technology those kinds of fundamental views of Christianity could still survive this is Dayton Tennessee in the heart of the Bible Belt in 1925 a state law was passed that made the teaching of human evolution illegal a local teacher John Scopes was tried for breaking this new law the Chicago defense lawyer Clarence Darrow was pitted against William Jennings Bryan a former presidential candidate the trial took place in this courtroom now you have given considerable study to the Bible how much mr. Brian yes sir I have tried to you claimed it everything in the Bible should be literally interpret I believe everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there how some was illustrative for example ye are the salt of the earth I would not insist that man was actually salt or had flesh of salt but it is used in this sense of salt to saving God's people Scopes was found guilty young his trial marked the start of a battle over the teaching of evolution but still continues in some American states I am simply trying to protect the Word of God the greatest atheist or agnostic in the United States professor Ron numbers who grew up near Dayton was born into a fundamentalist Christian family my father was a fundamentalist preacher here the seventh-day Adventists were the people who gave the world young Earth Creationism young earth means what exactly well that you don't believe there was anything here more than about six thousand years early fundamentalists were appalled by the diluted form of Christianity that had emerged from the Enlightenment it was the influence of Germany German scholarship and some English scholarship especially that scared the bejesus out of evangelicals in America they would send over young scholars and they would come back tainted with this they didn't believe in the virgin birth or the resurrection anymore they didn't believe Moses had written the first five books of the Bible it was knowledge of science that convinced Ron to abandon his beliefs he now lectures on every aspect of fundamentalism including the fundamentalist version of science almost to a person these fundamentalist profess to love science they love sight back in the 1920s at the time of the Scopes trial here the anti evolutionist argued against evolution on the grounds that it didn't deserve the good name of science it was too speculative there wasn't enough evidence and science was something wonderful in the 1970s American fundamentalists came up with their own version of science scientific creationism creationists based their core principles not on observation experiment but on the Bible the Creation Museum in Kentucky was set up in 2007 to give Christians a history of the natural world that fits with a literal interpretation of the Bible amazing to think really about one in 500 Americans have already been to see this exhibition even in its first year could have a lot of influence on opinion the Lord God said the Bible states that God created the universe and all life on Earth in six days so dinosaurs and the Garden of Eden scary if you take the Old Testament literally dinosaurs and humans must have lived at the same time it's amazing really and we've got we've got human beings fully clothed collecting carrots with the friendly dinosaurs in the background and it's a nice kind of Disneyland scene but it really totally contradicts the the fossil record one of the museum's resident scientists Jason Lisle agreed to talk to me I was curious to know how he reconciles his faith in the biblical account of creation with contradictory scientific evidence this beautiful display has lots of dinosaur figures in it and a lot of the implication of the creation story is that dinosaurs and human beings coexisted yes on the earth that's right I don't know of any evidence for that and know of a great deal of evidence against it so why do you believe well ultimately it's because God has told us in his word that God he made all of the land animals dinosaurs rule and animals cuz they walk on our legs they made on they were made on the sixth day the same day as Adam so they definitely lived at the same but you're a scientist yes I am you're an astrophysicist yes and you say you that's your position because you you believe it because you read it what about experiments what about evidence well I would say that you know I believe in experimentation in fact I would expect that that would be possible because God upholds the universe in the consistent logical way and so I would expect that science would be possible because of my faith I'm what if experimentation and observation yielded evidence that appear to can contradict the statements in the scriptures well that can always happen but since so you know our mind isn't perfect and since our observations aren't always perfect if we find some experiment that seems to on the surface disagree with the Word of God we go with the Word of God if you're saying that when science contradicts the scripture is the scripture that you have to turn to what's really correct then why bother with science well the Bible tells us that we need to care for the earth God gave us responsibility for this earth in order to do that we have to know some things about it and therefore I think that the mandate for doing science is scriptural and so I might I might challenge my non-christian colleagues and say what is your basis for doing science I have a reason to do it I have a reason to expect that it that it can yield reliable results because I can tell you why I do science because I want to find out how things work I want to reveal the the beauty of the natural world fair enough fair enough but you know as a Christian I would say the reason I can trust that the methods of science for the most part are reliable is because God has made my mind God has made the universe I would expect those two things would go well together acts a is a pretty weird place really what I found really weird though was that Jason who's an established scientist that's undeniable can hold such extreme views I mean he seemed to be saying that science is fine as long as it generates results and findings that fit the views of the church and when it doesn't they simply can't be right can they because they contradict faith I really wonder whether that reveals a fundamental contradiction between Christianity religion and science it needn't necessarily be that way but it is a real difficulty I mean what is the point of doing science if it's only right when it agrees with the Bible today only a minority of Christians take everything in the Old Testament as the literal truth but for the New Testament it's a different story when it comes to the life of Jesus Christ all bets are off that was a unique moment in human history thanks to the Scientific Revolution most Christians now accept that much of the old testament is metaphorical but science has had little impact on Christian attitudes to the new test when it comes to the life of Jesus Christ all bets are off that was a unique moment in human history where God is inserted into his creation and we can't expect that to ever occur again but you are stating this as an assertion you as a scientist you have no evidence I have no evidence and I suspect you have a good reason to believe that there will never be evidence to disprove what you're saying until we invent nice things it's easy to make those kinds of assertions until we may invent time machine so it's an assertion based on faith but it's also based on the evidence we have the recorded evidence of the people at the time which you have dismissed as the evidence for all the other things that the churches have changed its views on like creation in six days but the church never taught this as central to its faith this is not a core belief of the church this is not something that's in the Creed that's different from the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ but science has led a few Christians to question even these fundamental tenets of Christianity I was brought up in Anglican and there's a lot I still like about churches the hymns contemplation the sense of community I'm here to meet an Anglican priest David Patterson who belongs to a group of Christians called the sea of faith many of them doubt the divinity of Jesus Christ and even whether God really exists so let's just be clear I mean God didn't make literally make the universe no and God didn't engineer the the virgin birth of Jesus and Jesus perhaps didn't really exist as a person at all I think he probably did actually yes yes absolutely I think he did then kind of just explore that a little more I mean what what then is God to you um what I fell in love with what I wanted to give my life to and its ingredients were well a lot about the natural world and a lot about making relationships with people well I mean I empathize with all of those things but I've found the necessity to see God reflected in those things the existence of life is extraordinary but for why any more and is there any more really no there isn't any more there is actually no difference between the theists and the Atheist it's only the terminology that's different some people have this this deep understanding of the spiritual nature of it of reality of everything and they want to personify it and call it God or a God or a particular name of God or something some don't want to do that David thinks that the Bible was never meant to be taken literally all the religious stories are mythological stories we're asking did it happen or where did it happen or what they did it happen is all completely irrelevant it's actually all about this being a story that helps you to understand what life is all about so according to David all those fundamental tenets of Christianity virgin birth the resurrection life after death didn't happen at all it seems to me that David's version of Christianity is virtually atheism science provides the facts about the world religion gives us the music and the pictures and tells us stories about human nature for me it's science not religion that provides our best hope of understanding the workings of our universe professor Albert de Rock has dedicated his life to exploring the scientific equivalent of Genesis the Big Bang Albert practices in this nondescript early 21st century Cathedral to science beneath its foundations lies a crypt containing the most elaborate scientific instrument ever constructed the project cost over eight billion dollars and uses enough electricity to power a small city we're actually now handed meters underground and in the main hall of the experiment and this is it this is CMS how extraordinary inside this particle accelerator particles raced through a circular tunnel 27 kilometers long close to the speed of light and smash together simulating conditions and millionth of a second after the Big Bang one goal is to find evidence for the Higgs boson which some call the god particle because it's thought to have triggered the birth of the units in a world where there would have been the Higgs field we wouldn't think this we wouldn't be there that is why it's like a god pocket it's like God's giving you know not everything is equal anymore but you have diversity and you can create their first base Albert has faith in this machine's ability to find the Higgs boson but if it doesn't another theory will emerge unlike religion science can change its views if the evidence demands it that's the power of science and do we see anything in the process that suggests the intervention by an intelligent being by a garden certainly from the scientific point of view we don't know personally I don't believe that there has to be such an agent at work but as a scientist as I said I work only on data and so far that hypothesis for me is not excluded so I keep it open but it's not a working hypothesis coming over the last 400 years Christianity has been transformed by the power of science during the Renaissance the first scientist showed that the evidence of nature often contradicts the word of the Bible in the 18th century it was scientists who are at the forefront of the Enlightenment making reason not religious authority for driving force in human affairs and Darwin's theory of evolution has divided Christians on how to reconcile science with their faith I believe that science will increasingly make religion redundant and will eventually provide us with an understanding not only of creation but also of ourselves I think that the historical record shows that the power of science to explain what was previously mysterious is enormous personally I think that science will one day give us not just a very satisfactory description of our physical world of how we came to be here but even of how it is that our brains give us this need for religious belief if that happens when that happens what will be left for Christianity you

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Keywords: christianity, god, scientists, religion, vesus, science, divinity, scientific, revolution, jesus, christ, charles, darwin, argument, existence, heretic, curiosity, christian, faith, history, galileo, galilei, renaissance, catholic, church, atheist, enlightenment, religious, dogma, knowledge, truth, orthodox, professor, evolutionary, theory, bible, biblical, astronomy, belief, universe, vatican, giordano, bruno, controversial, fanatics, torture, observatory, william, harvey, physician, tradition, benjamin, franklin, evidence, creationism, atheism

Id: UcZ44kQphlo

Length: 48min 25sec (2905 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 15 2015