Excerpt #76 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
Science is distinguished from theology in its openness.
“Religions are characterized by their relative inviolability; in revealed religions, a difference of interpretation of even a single word in the revealed founding document may lead to the origin of a new religion. This contrasts dramatically with the situation in any active field of science, where one finds different versions of almost any theory. New conjectures are made continuously, earlier ones refuted, and at all times considerable intellectual diversity exists.
“A primary tool used in all scientific activity is testing. Every new fact and every new explanation must be tested again and again, preferably by different investigators using different methods. One of the most characteristic features of science is this openness to challenge. The willingness to abandon a currently accepted belief when a new, better one is proposed is an important demarcation between science and religious dogma. – Ernst Mayr, This Is Biology: The Science of the Living World
Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543), said to be the founder of modern astronomy, completed his great work De Revolutionibus, which asserted that the earth rotated on its axis once daily and traveled around the sun once yearly.
The theory went against the philosophical and religious beliefs during medieval times.
Man, it was believed (and still believed by some) was made by God in His image.
Man was the next thing to God, and, as such, superior to all creatures.
Copernicus’ theories, they feared, might lead men to think they are simply part of nature and not superior to it.
This ran counter to the theories of the politically powerful churchmen of the time.
Copernicus escaped The Inquisition because a friend of his slipped in a preface to his book stating that Copernicus’ model did not represent physical reality and was only intended as a convenient device to calculate the positions of the planets.
Legend has it that he died the same day the book was released.
As people began to accept his model, and ignore the preface, the Church banned his book in 1616.
It was removed from the banned list in the 1820s.