steady-state universe Reference library
The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science
...XII suggested in 1952 that big-bang cosmology agreed with the notion of a transcendental creator, and was in harmony with Christian dogma—an extrapolation for which he was later criticized at the Second Vatican Council. Steady-state theory may thus have been too tainted with atheism. Soviet astronomers rejected both steady-state and big-bang cosmologies as idealistic and unsound. Hoyle associated steady-state theory with personal freedom and anti-Communism. Observational challenges to steady-state theory came from the new science of radio astronomy. Martin...
natural theology Reference library
The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science
...species to perish. Despite this and other difficulties, natural theology continued to be relevant to the promotion of the sciences in the English-speaking world. It provided a vocabulary in which scientific knowledge could be presented as spiritually edifying, destructive of atheism, and above suspicion. Cambridge geologist Adam Sedgwick could still argue in the 1830s that the repeated introduction of new species, apparent from the fossil record, indicated a deity with a continuing interest in the world. Precisely because the sciences were purposed to...
religion and science Reference library
The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science
...and integrity of God's creation they also functioned as a creative aesthetic. Many people who would not otherwise have known much science studied it in popular natural theology texts. Following the French Revolution fear of a popular uprising was fuelled by the materialism and atheism associated with such leading French scientists as Pierre-Simon de Laplace , Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck , and Georges-Louis LeClerc , Comte de Buffon . Over the next few decades the “The March of the Mind,” as manifested by Mechanics' Institutes, popular science lectures, and...
Religion And Science Reference library
Ronald L. Numbers
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the History of American Science, Medicine, and Technology
...pirated. “The Vestiges has been all the rage for a time,” exclaimed a Princeton student in 1847 . Although Chambers denied dispensing with the Creator, critics thought otherwise. The teaching of Vestiges , fumed one American critic, is nothing but “atheism—blank atheism, cold, cheerless, heartless, atheism,” an outburst that led one reader to complain that “a more rabid tirade can scarcely be found this side of the Middle Ages, & the smell of roast heretic is truly overpowering throughout.” More than any other work antedating Darwin’s Origin of Species,...
Creationism Reference library
Ronald L. Numbers
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the History of American Science, Medicine, and Technology
...through the mollusk, the lobster, the bird, the quadruped, and the monkey.” Even more pointed was Charles Hodge ( 1797–1878 ), the leading Calvinist theologian in America, who devoted a small book to answering the question What Is Darwinism? ( 1874 ). The answer: “It is Atheism.” The issue of human evolution understandably provoked the greatest outrage. One conservative Protestant, H. L. Hastings, wrote a tract called Was Moses Mistaken? or, Creation and Evolution ( 1896 ), in which he addressed this “delicate” topic: I do not wish to meddle with any...
