Could you please cite your sources, Athalsu? I'd like to do some reading.
About what exactly?
Historical revisionismMedieval Science and Religion by David Lindberg covers most of it, almost all historians acknowledge that the science-religion war and the dark ages were complete fabrications.
Galileo, his theory, his trialGalileo in Rome, The Rise and Fall of a Troublesome Genius by William Shea and Marino Artigas,
Essays on the trial of Galileo by Richard Westfall,
The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History by Maurice Finocchiaro. These give a complete historical view of the trial and events surrounding it.
EvolutionI don't know exactly what you are asking for here, but here goes.
How many Christians are creationist?15 Oct 1999
I have long suspected that the creationists are a small minority which by virtue of screaming loudly have been able to exert more influence than their numbers might normally allow. However I have been unable to find any statistics to support that contention, such information would have added considerably to your article about the "typical" creationist couple.
Dick Easton
reply: According to the 1997 World Almanac and the 2000 Global Evangelization Movement, there were about 1 billion Muslims, 1 billion Catholics, 800 million Hindus, 1 billion atheists and non-religious persons, 325 million Buddhists, and another billion plus who also belong to religions which do not require the rejection of evolution as a matter of religion. There are only about 350,000,000 Protestants in the world plus as many again Independents, and not all of them belong to the Christian fundamentalist sects that reject evolution. According to the Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches (1999), there are about 150,000,000 members of various Christian churches in the U.S. The churches that require rejection of evolution do not enlist more than 1/3 of these members. In addition, there are about 40,000,000 atheists and members of non-Christian religions which do not require rejection of evolution as a matter of religious belief. Thus, given the fact that there are about 6 billion people on earth and about 300,000,000 Americans, it is highly likely that militant Christian fundamentalists consist of no more than about 4% of the population worldwide, and no more than about 15% of the population in the United States.
Admittedly this estimate is hopelessly optimistic as ~55% of the US population have said in polls that they believe mankind came from a single mating pair created less then 6 500 years ago. Here we have to acknowledge important things about American society. America is perhaps the most strongly Christian society in the west, more so then any of western Europe or north America (several Slavic states have greater percentages of Christians in their populations, but are not considered fully western, such as Poland (lol)). Also important is the much greater Protestant presence in US society. The father of Protestantism, Martin Luther, argued that Genesis
must be taken literally. Another thing we must consider is that because they already think of themselves as God's gift to earth (American patriotism, etc) they don't feel they need to study the bible because they are already the worlds model citizens. Put all these things together and you have a bunch of people (but not all) who think that Christianity and evolution is an 'a or b' decision, so they go with 'a', the others see no problem with choosing both.
The number of American Catholics who accept evolution is much higher then the American average, because the Catholic Church has never taught it important how the earth was created, only that God created it and that God created man.
With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation.
Since Holy Scripture can be explained in a multiplicity of senses, one should not adhere to a particular explanation, only in such measure as to be ready to abandon it if it be proved with certainty to be false; lest holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers, and obstacles be placed to their believing.
Outside of the US, the vast majority of Protestants accept evolution, as they see no conflict between it and the bible. It may seem strange that Protestants would reject something that Luther argued for, but he was hardly a perfect person, and also argued that Jew's homes should be destroyed, their synagogues burned, money confiscated and liberty curtailed.
So wide-spread creationism in Christianity is an aberration, and exists only in America's Protestant population (particularly the Evangelical and Charismatic denominations).
Are Christianity and the Bible irreconcilable with evolution?Evolution posits that all living things on earth descend from a single life form that existed millions of years ago. None of this disagrees with the bible. Lets read some of Genesis in case you disagree.
The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Notice that? God created man out of dust, out of nature, unlike the universe, which was created out of nothing.
Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air.
So man and animal are from the same source, and share the same substance, the DNA present in all humans, animals, and plants.
Then God said, "Let us make man in our image"
Christians have always understood that God is spiritual, not material. So this similarity must be in the spirit, which in Christianity is the at the core of the mind. Darwin remarked "of all the difference between man and the lower animals, the moral sense or conscience is the most important." Man has the gift of reason, and through it, it conscience.
And none of this contradicts with what early Christians believed, because early Christians believed man to be an animal, the rational animal, who stood between the angels and the animals and could choose to be either.
The gist of my argument against the science-religion war came from Dinesh D'Souza's
What's So Great About ChristianityThere are a lot of books about evolution and Christianity, the head of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins, wrote
The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, which is about him being Christian and an evolutionary biologist.