Heresy: Its Utility And Morality. A Plea And A JustificationBradlaugh, Charles
Religion
Heresy: Its Utility And Morality. A Plea And A Justification
Bradlaugh, Charles
Free thought; Heresy
Geological science has a crowd of heretics amongst its professors, men
who deny the sudden origin of fauna and flora; who trace the gradual
development of the vegetable and animal kingdoms through vast periods of
time; and who find no resting place in a beginning of existence, but
are obliged to halt in face of a measureless past, inconceivable in
its grandeur. Geology, to quote the words of Dr. Kalisch, declares "the
utter impossibility of a creation of even the earth alone in six days."
Mr. Goodwin says in the "Essays and Reviews:" "The school-books of the
present day, while they teach the child that the earth moves, yet assure
him that it is a little less than six thousand years old, and that it
was made in six days. On the other hand, geologists of all religious
creeds are agreed that the earth has existed for an immense series of
years--to be counted by millions rather than by thousands; and that
indubitably more than six days elapsed from its first creation to the
appearance of man upon its surface."
Astronomy has in the ranks of its professors many of its most able minds
who do not believe in the sun and moon as two great lights, who cannot
accept the myriad stars as fixed in the firmament solely to give light
upon the earth, who refuse to believe in the heaven as a fixed firmament
to divide the waters above from the waters beneath, who cannot by their
telescopes discover the local heaven above or the local hell beneath,
although their science marks each faint nebulosity crossing, or
crossed by the range of the watcher's vision. To quote again from Mr.
Goodwin:--"On the revival of science in the sixteenth century, some of
the earliest conclusions at which philosophers arrived, were found to
be at variance with popular and long established belief. The Ptolemaic
system of astronomy, which had then full possession of the minds of men,
contemplated the whole visible universe from the earth as the immovable
centre of things. Copernicus changed the point of view, and placing
the beholder in the sun, at once reduced the earth to an inconspicuous
globule, a merely subordinate member of a family of planets; which the
terrestrials had, until then, fondly imagined to be but pendants and
ornaments of their own habitation. The Church, naturally, took a lively
interest in the disputes which arose between the philosophers ot the
new school, and those who adhered to the old doctrines, inasmuch as the
Hebrew records, the basis of religious faith, manifestly countenanced
the opinion of the earth's immobility, and certain other views of the
universe, very incompatible with those propounded by Copernicus. Hence
arose the official proceedings against Galileo, in consequence of which
he submitted to sign his celebrated recantation, acknowledging that 'the
proposition that the sun is the centre of the world and immovable from
its place, is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical,
because it is expressly contrary to the Scripture;' and that 'the
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