for some weird reason, when you look at the history of scientists, especially revolutionary ones, you will find a bizarre common treat. which is the huge amount of hatred and anger they faced. when one takes a look at the history of other professions, one cant find the same amount of historical persecution that scientists had to face. Today, scientists are admired and respected. they can even turn to famous celebrities, like Bill Nye or Bill De Grass Tyson. but that was not the case hundreds and even tens of years ago. in this post I will give a few brief examples of how scientists were persecuted and try to explain why at the end.
Einstien does not need an introduction, his genius and innovation was rejected in Adolf Hitler’s Germany. being Jewish, Hitler believed him to be of a lesser race than himself. Hitler’s forces siezed his home in Berlin, and publicly torched his books as a symbolic rejection of a Jew scientists findings, no matter how revolutionary they were. We are lucky that Hitler did not embrace Einstein, as maybe if that happened, Hitler would have developed an atomic bomb to his Nazi state.
Galelio, who lived in the 1600’s, said the earth revolves around the sun. a shocking finding at the time, He was mercilessly targeted by the Catholic Church. which designated him an “apostate” or a “heretic” for going against the teachings of the scripture that contradicted his theory. his scientific research was banned, and he remained in house arrest until he died.
Rhazes lived in the late 800’s. he was a Muslim scientist who specialized in many numerous areas of medicine especially urology, his medical contributions were priceless at the time. until a preacher ordered a hit-man to smack him in the head for “apostasy”. he was blind since then and was not able to further pursue his studies.
All of the examples I gave prove that the persecution of scientists all happened due to religious reasons. most preachers and “snake oil” salesmen despise science and fight it aggressively, is it because science often proved their teachings wrong ? is it because science enjoyed the logic and reason they did not? we will never know, but the fact that scientists were on the run -historically- only makes me trust them more!
Source:
http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/533/copernicus-galileo-and-the-church-science-in-a-religious-world
Thought your post is interesting, your examples do not “prove” anything. Yes, maybe all these famous scientists died from religious persecution, but maybe they didn’t, maybe it was chance, maybe it was for some other correlation. But correlation need not equal causation. There are not any studies on this direct question/thought, therefore has little evidence to actually show the effects of science within histories churches. But this post is relevant to our class lecture on prayer, as this post can dwell deeper into how prayer works and if it works better than modern medicine, which is something comparable to science and a church. This article mentions many studies used to question the power of prayer: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html . You mention a lot of history but blogs could use more relevant and supported information.