[From Mark Tindall]

St Augustine had no time for those who preferred dogma over reason and evidence. He did not believe that Christians had a monopoly on the truth, and insisted that if there's a clash between dogma and reason, it's the dogma that has to go.

"Usually even a non-Christian knows something about the Earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience," he wrote grudgingly, "Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for a non-believer to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics."

.....

Presumably he actually meant the Book of Genesis; whatever: he was implying that a nation of godly people must also be a scientifically ignorant one. Complete nonsense, of course: many of the greatest scientists, including Newton, Faraday and Maxwell, had religious convictions that helped to propel them towards their discoveries. Indeed, two of the most profound advances in scientific knowledge - the discovery of genetics and the development of the Big Bang model of the universe - were made by ecclesiastics: the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel and the Belgian priest Georges Lemaitre.

....

The origins of Creationism are far more recent, and far more bizarre. During the 1840s, an American teenager in Maine named Ellen White began having visions, including what she took to be a divine revelation concerning the Creation. This led her to become convinced of the literal truth of the Biblical account, and in 1863 she helped to establish a new fundamentalist Christian movement known as the Seventh-day Adventists. By the turn of the century, it had become the driving-force behind the Creationist movement that thrives to this day, especially in the United States.

Ms White's autobiography suggests that her visions were linked to profound psychiatric problems, and possibly also epilepsy - hardly an ideal basis for a new approach to biology, geology and astrophysics. Still, it is barely worse than the literal-minded reading of the Bible of Dr Colic and her ilk, and their belief that evolution is "just another theory".

In the fifth century AD St Augustine called for Christians to stop bringing their faith into disrepute by talking scientific twaddle. More than 1,600 years later, he would be horrified to find that most of those responding to his call are dyed-in-the-wool atheists.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/con­nected/main.jhtml;sessionid=ES­NM0DGMS5E...

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