Science, Religion, and Saying Goodbye to the 19th Century

I think the notion that someone can either be a Christian or appreciate the cosmic scale and wonders of God’s creation is fading.

Sincerely believing in a conflict where champions of science and reason opposed the dark forces of religion didn’t, arguably, start in the 19th century.

But that’s when the idea got traction. In England and America, at any rate.

Even so, fallout from the 19th century could be worse. I could be living in a culture where religiously earnest folks insisted that diamagnetism is diabolical.

This week I’ll be talking about faith, reason, cultural baggage, and why using my brain is a good idea.

• “The Watch-Dog of Science” and Cultural Baggage
  • Agnosticism, Diamagnetism — and Levitating Frogs
  • Checking Our Cultural Baggage
  • Remembering the Freethought Road
  • Protecting Their Country From People Like Me
  • Darwin, Divinity, and Letter From an English Priest
• Thinking is Not a Sin
• Punctured Pride?
• Perspectives

---

“The Watch-Dog of Science” and Cultural Baggage

That cartoon’s big watch-dog is Herbert “survival of the fittest” Spencer, English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, and a big fan of Darwin.

The caption is a quote from “Tel. London”, which may or may not be the Daily Telegraph & Courier (London).

“An appalling attempt to muzzle the watch-dog of science“
Puck magazine (March 14, 1883)

“‘The Society for the Suppression of Blasphemous Literature proposes to get up cases against Professors Huxley and Tyndall, Herbert Spencer, and others who, by their writings, have sown widespread unbelief, and in some cases rank atheism.’ — Tel. London, March 5, 1883″
(via Public Domain Media, Library of Congress) [emphasis mine]

Agnosticism, Diamagnetism — and Levitating Frogs

Huxley, Tyndall, and Spencer, don’t have all that much name recognition these days, so here’s a quick introduction:

• Thomas Huxley: English biologist, anthropologist; nicknamed “Darwin’s Bulldog”; coined “agnosticism”
• Herbert Spencer: English philosopher, anthropologist, biologist, psychologist, sociologist; coined “survival of the fittest”; agnostic
• John Tyndall: Irish physicist; often seen as agnostic

Agnosticism, very briefly, is the idea that we can’t know whether or not God exists. I can see how that might make sense in the late 19th century. Particularly in England.

All three — Huxley, Spencer, and Tyndall — had a reputation for being agnostic. Huxley and Spencer were pretty clear about being agnostic.

My guess is that John Tyndall got pegged as an agnostic because he was a physicist; and, despite being Irish, known for being pretty smart.

Tyndall probably realized that, smart as we humans are, God-level understanding is beyond us.

“…If you ask him [the materialist] whence is this ‘Matter’ of which we have been discoursing–who or what divided it into molecules, who or what impressed upon them this necessity of running into organic forms–he has no answer. Science is mute in reply to these questions. But if the materialist is confounded and science rendered dumb, who else is prepared with a solution? To whom has this arm of the Lord been revealed? Let us lower our heads, and acknowledge our ignorance, priest and philosopher, one and all….

“…I compare the mind of man to a musical instrument with a certain range of notes, beyond which in both directions exists infinite silence. The phenomena of matter and force come within our intellectual range; but behind, and above, and around us the real mystery of the universe lies unsolved, and, as far as we are concerned, is incapable of solution….”
(“Fragments of Science: A Series of Detached Essays, Addresses, and Reviews“, V. 1-2, John Tyndall (1879) via Gutenberg.org)

John Tyndall’s reputation as an agnostic may be due to his being one of the few high-profile British physicists of his day who weren’t insisting that science and religion were, if not on the same page, at least in same book.

I’m not sure what accounts for Tyndall’s lack of infamy these days.

Or why diamagnetism hasn’t been denounced something fierce. Not the way Darwin’s ideas about evolution were.

At any rate, Tyndall’s early research involved diamagnetism.

Diamagnetism is a bit of natural weirdness that’s been studied since 1778, when someone noticed that magnets repel bismuth.

Since Tyndall’s day, we’ve learned that it’s a quantum mechanical effect. And that, given enough power, we can use it to levitate frogs.¹

It’s probably just as well that John Tyndale’s interest in diamagnetism remained mostly a nerdy science topic.

Checking Our Cultural Baggage

I talked about Victorian politics, the Church of England, and England’s educational establishment last month.

Basically, folks who liked the status quo thought that Henry VIII’s national church should keep its tight grip on England’s education system. Folks who thought maybe they weren’t living in the best of all possible Englands — didn’t.

Vastly oversimplified? Yes.

Essentially accurate? I think so.

Among the reasons I am profoundly glad that “the good old days” are not returning? Definitely.

An example of how cultural baggage — beliefs, customs, folklore, laws, social behavior and norms; everything a person grows up with — can get in the way of common sense?

I think so.

But that doesn’t mean I see either Huxley and company or the Society for the Suppression of Blasphemous Literature (SSBL hereafter) as ‘good guys’ or ‘bad guys’.

I suspect Huxley, Spencer, and all, sincerely felt that they were struggling for truth and freedom of thought. And that the SSBL sincerely believed they were defending the British public against blasphemy and atheism.

Being calm and collected about the SSBL, Huxley, and political satire of the 1880s is easy.

Particularly since we’ve had our own brouhahas: including analogs of the SSBL vs. Huxley embarrassment. Repetition reduces their shock value.

It’s been nearly a century since William Jennings “Cross of Gold” Bryan — unintentionally, I think — helped establish the idea that someone could either be scientifically literate, or be a Christian.²

The 1925 Scopes trial is now part of my country’s cultural baggage. I can’t change that, but I can suggest that unconscious assumptions aren’t necessarily a good match with current realities.

Remembering the Freethought Road

Backing up a bit: sincerity is nice, but it won’t make something real.

For example, I could sincerely believe that anything I do is right: because I’m one of the ‘good guys’.

That would make me delusional, or a flaming hypocrite. Now I’ve probably insulted someone, and that’s another topic.

Presenting religion, particularly Christianity, as the cause of hypocrisy — “the Vale of Tears” leading to ignorance, cruelty, and superstition — was arguably an easy sell in 1896, when The Truth Seeker Company published “The Freethinkers’ Pictorial Text-book”.³

Back then, an American version of Christianity was widely accepted.

I’m reasonably sure that finding someone who identified as Christian, but didn’t act the part, was easy. Maybe even unavoidable. Contrasting that unpleasant reality with the unrealized promises of Watson Heston’s Freethought Road could feel good.

About waypoints on Freethought Road, and its ultimate goal: they sound good.

I have no problem with reason, education, humanity — good grief, I am human; of course I’m okay with humanity — justice, science, virtue, love, liberty, and truth.

That was true before I became a Catholic. What’s changed is that now using my brain, acting as if I love my neighbors, and seeking truth, are obligations.

Another obligation is keeping my priorities straight. Putting anything or anyone ahead of God is a bad idea and I shouldn’t do it. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2112-2114)

Valuing truth, though, isn’t a problem. Or shouldn’t be.

That’s because God is the source of all truth, and I’m expected to “live in truth”. (Catechism, 2464-2503)

Protecting Their Country From People Like Me

“The Freethinkers’ Pictorial Text-book” reminded me of today’s Chick tracts. Mainly because of the book’s tone, and effective use of illustrations.

“…Pictorial Text-book” had more text, fewer pictures, the usual anti-Catholic attitude, plus noting that other Christians didn’t act like Christians either. With, of course, a Freethinker’s view of those religious people.

“The Church and Slavery”, for example, on pages 270-271, discusses “The Ghost in the Methodist Church-Yard”. And that’s yet another topic. Topics.

So: how can I reasonably be a Christian, and a Catholic, in a world where Christians and Catholics aren’t all perfectly perfect people?

Let’s put it this way. I’m not a perfectly perfect person. Complaining because the Church lets people like me be Catholics doesn’t make sense. Although a similar thought did make a good joke.

“I sent the club a wire stating, ‘PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON’T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT PEOPLE LIKE ME AS A MEMBER’.”
(Groucho Marx, Telegram to the Friar’s Club of Beverly Hills to which he belonged, as recounted in Groucho and Me (1959) via Wikiquote)

If that gag seems familiar, it should. I used it three weeks ago.⁴

Since I’m one of those “ignorant followers” of “privileged characters”, I could hardly blame freethinkers from wanting to protect their country from people like me.

But I do not think their fears were justified.

Partly because I know there’s more to Christianity than folks desperately trying to stop the publication of scientific research. Granted, folks like the 20th century Anti-Evolution League of America tend to get attention. I talked about them last month.⁵

Darwin, Divinity, and Letter From an English Priest

St. John Henry Newman — the English John Newman, not the Bohemian-American St. John Neumann — was not your typical 19th century Catholic.

For one thing, he was a cardinal. And a convert to Catholicism.

Cardinals are next step down in the Church hierarchy from pope. I won’t try summarizing who does what, from laity like me up to the servant of the servants of God. Not this week. We’ve been around for two millennia and — it’s complicated.

The point of that ramble is that John Henry Newman was a Catholic priest when he wrote a letter to J. Walker of Scarborough, but wouldn’t be a cardinal for another 11 years. Here’s an excerpt from that letter:

“…If Mr Darwin in this or that point of his theory comes into collision with revealed truth, that is another matter — but I do not see that the principle of development, or what I have called construction, does. As to the Divine Design, is it not an instance of incomprehensibly and infinitely marvellous Wisdom and Design to have given certain laws to matter millions of ages ago, which have surely and precisely worked out, in the long course of those ages, those effects which He from the first proposed. Mr Darwin’s theory need not then to be atheistical, be it true or not; it may simply be suggesting a larger idea of Divine Prescience and Skill. Perhaps your friend has got a surer clue to guide him than I have, who have never studied the question, and I do not [see] that ‘the accidental evolution of organic beings’ is inconsistent with divine design — It is accidental to us, not to God….”
(John Henry Newman to J. Walker of Scarborough on Darwin’s Theory of Evolution (May 22, 1868) via Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion & Science [emphasis in original text])

Maybe St. John Henry Newman’s “accidental” in the last sentence has the word’s philosophical meaning: a property that doesn’t necessarily connect to an item’s essence.

A chair, for example, might “accidentally” be made of wood or plastic. But either way, it would would be “essentially” a chair.⁶

Or maybe he was playing with words and ideas, and meant that we don’t have a God’s-eye view of reality. Which is something I’m comfortable with.

I like knowing things and understanding stuff. But I’m okay with knowing that God’s God and I’m not.

That brings me to a counter-cultural idea.

---

Thinking is Not a Sin

Before talking about sin and thinking, a quick overview of how I should act.

I should love God, love my neighbor, and see everybody as my neighbor. Everybody. (Matthew 5:43–44, 22:36–40; Mark 12:28–31; Luke 6:31, 10:25–37; Catechism, 1789)

When I don’t love God and my neighbors: that’s sin. Sin gets in the way of healthy relationships. It’s an offense against reason, truth, “right conscience”, and God. (Catechism, 1849-1851)

Since I’m a Catholic, I think faith and reason get along. (Catechism, 35, 50, 154-159)

My faith is a willing and conscious decision to embrace God’s truth. All of God’s truth, including what we can see in this universe. Studying God’s work makes sense, since I think God creates everything. (Genesis 1:1–31, 2:4–25; Catechism, 31-35, 142-155, 325-349)

I also think each of us is made “in the image of God”, with body AND soul. And that because I’m human, I’m “an animal endowed with reason”. (Catechism, 355-373, 1951)

But I have free will. So using reason, thinking, is an option: not a hardwired response. It’s also an obligation, and vital when I’m deciding what I’ll do or not do. (Catechism, 1730, 1749ff)

Truth matters, both in science and in faith. (Catechism, 31, 159, and more)

God is the source of all truth. (Catechism, 2465)

Since all truth points toward God, both studying God’s creation and taking God seriously isn’t a problem. (Catechism, 27, 31-35, 41, 74, 282-289, 293-294, 341, 1723, 2294, 2500)

“The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man. These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers. With Solomon they can say: ‘It is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists, to know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements. . . for wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me.'”
(Catechism of the Catholic Church, 283) [emphasis mine]

“…The order and harmony of the created world results from the diversity of beings and from the relationships which exist among them. Man discovers them progressively as the laws of nature. They call forth the admiration of scholars. The beauty of creation reflects the infinite beauty of the Creator and ought to inspire the respect and submission of man’s intellect and will.”
(Catechism, 341) [emphasis mine]

Again: thinking is part of being human, or should be. It’s what I’m supposed to do.

I keep saying that. A lot. Mostly because the notion that science and religion can’t mix has been so deeply embedded in my culture.

---

Punctured Pride?

I don’t know why anti-evolution books often had their own section in “Christian” bookstores, while anti-physics tomes — now that I think about it, I can’t remember seeing any.

Maybe it’s because most proper English gentleman-physicists of a bygone era weren’t upsetting applecarts.

While, in sharp contrast, folks like Huxley were openly agnostic: and actually said that humans weren’t utterly separate and distinct from — shudder — animals. The very idea!!!

I suspect — strongly — that anti-evolution sentiments are at least partly rooted in punctured pride.

I’ve got my share of self-esteem above and beyond the call of reason. But I’ve looked in a mirror, and have seen apes in Como Zoo.

In any case, I don’t have a problem with thinking that we’re made “in the image of God” and from the stuff of this world. I’ve read Genesis 1:27 and 2:7, don’t think Sacred Scriptures were written by English-speaking literalists, and that’s yet again more topics.⁷

---

Perspectives

“Indeed, before you the whole universe is like a grain from a balance,
or a drop of morning dew come down upon the earth.
“But you have mercy on all, because you can do all things;
and you overlook sins for the sake of repentance.”
(Wisdom 11:22–23)

I do, at times, miss the old panegyrics of progress, proclaiming that science, technology, and electric hair clippers would lead us into a shining utopia.

We’ll be cleaning up the mess left by mass-produced kitsch and throwaway durables for generations — but at least the era’s attitude was occasionally cheerful.

I don’t miss the triumphalist tone of articles contrasting science and high ideals with superstition, ignorance, and other (alleged) manifestations of religious beliefs.

And I emphatically don’t miss loudly-religious folks who seemed determined to demonstrate that freethinkers and their successors were right about religious people.

That sort of thing seems to be going out of fashion.⁸

I don’t mind a bit.

I think it’s high time we acknowledge that the 19th century is over.

Finally, a few of my favorite quotes about truth, science, not knowing everything — and studying God’s universe.

“…It’s something too many of us forget, that reality has layers. Occasionally people ask me how I can be Catholic and a science journalist. The answer is simple: Truth does not contradict truth. Both science and religion are pursuit of truth. They’re after different aspects of truth, different layers of reality, but they’re still both fundamentally about truth.…”
(Camille M. Carlisle, Sky and Telescope (June 2017)) [emphasis mine]

“…Religion and natural science are fighting a joint battle in an incessant, never relaxing crusade against scepticism and against dogmatism, against disbelief and against superstition, and the rallying cry in this crusade has always been, and always will be: ‘On to God!’”
(Religion and Natural Science, a lecture delivered in May, 1937, originally titled Religion und Naturwissenschaft. Complete translation into English: “Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers“, Max Planck (1968); via archive.org) [emphasis mine]

“…God, the Creator and Ruler of all things, is also the Author of the Scriptures — and that therefore nothing can be proved either by physical science or archaeology which can really contradict the Scriptures. … Even if the difficulty is after all not cleared up and the discrepancy seems to remain, the contest must not be abandoned; truth cannot contradict truth.…”
(“Providentissimus Deus“, Pope Leo XIII (November 18, 1893)) [emphasis mine]

“Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air…. They all answer you, ‘Here we are, look; we’re beautiful.’…
“…So in this way they arrived at a knowledge of the god who made things, through the things which he made”.
(Sermon 241, St. Augustine of Hippo (ca. 411))

More of my take on faith, reason, and using our brains:

• “Medieval Monkish Medicine: Scientific Before Science was a Thing”
  (November 14, 2023)
• “Curiosity and Science, Intent and Wisdom 11:22”
  (June 4, 2022)
• “Secondary Causes: Both/And, not Either/Or”
  (August 21, 2021)
• “Florida Indoor Fish Farm: An Aquaculture Alternative”
  (May 8, 2021)
• “Religion and Science: Different Paths to Reality”
  (November 14, 2020)

---

¹ Science, and a cultural context:

• Wikipedia
  • Agnosticism
  • Bismuth
  • Conflict thesis
  • Cultural baggage
  • Diamagnetism
    • Levitation (levitating a frog: it’s the frog’s water, in a ca. 16 Tesla field)
  • Hans Lipperhey
  • Herbert Spencer
  • John Tyndall (physicist: studied diamagnetism, infrared radiation, and more)
  • Magnetic levitation
    • Diamagnetic levitation
  • Puck (magazine)
  • Quantum mechanics
  • Thomas Henry Huxley
  • Victorian era
• Daily Telegraph & Courier (London) (March 5, 1883)
  The British Newspaper Archive

² Cultural baggage —

• Wikipedia
  • Cross of Gold speech (not one of my country’s better moments)
  • Cultural baggage
  • Culture
  • Folklore
  • Scopes trial
  • William Jennings Bryan
• — and making sense anyway:
  • “Evolution and a Gene Expression Code Library” (April 20, 2024)
    • “Truth Cannot Contradict Truth”
    • English Politics and All-too-Familiar Attitudes
    • Using my Brain, Admiring God’s Universe
  • “Doom, Gloom, and Dystopias: But Hope is an Option” (January 20, 2024)
    • Science, Religion, Progress, and — Maybe — Mything the Point
    • Truth, Facts, Science: and Hope
• The Society for the Suppression of Blasphemous Literature — it really existed
  • A review: “Incedent Modernism: British Modernism and Censorship.”
    Celia Marshik, Cambridge University Press (2006) via The Free Library by Farlex

³ Viewpoints:

• Wikipedia
  • Chick tract (“This article needs additional citations for verification….)
  • Free Thought and Official Propaganda
  • Freethought
  • Freethought Day
  • Watson Heston
• “The Freethinkers’ Pictorial Text-book”
  “showing the absurdity and untruthfulness of the Church’s claim to be a divine and beneficent institution….”
  Designs by Watson Heston, The Truth Seeker Company (1896) via Internet Archive

⁴ Art, life, and a few good ideas:

• “Venice Biennale Holy See Pavilion: Art and Cities of Refuge” (May 4, 2024)
  • Groucho Marx, Samuel Clemens, and “The Whole Law and the Prophets”
  • Living in Isaiah’s World

⁵ Some Christians are alternatively-reasonable —

• Wikipedia
  • Anti-Evolution League of America
• — But we’re not all like that
  • “Evolution and a Gene Expression Code Library” (April 20, 2024)
    • English Politics and All-too-Familiar Attitudes
    • Using my Brain, Admiring God’s Universe

⁶ Three Catholics, and a little background:

• Wikipedia
  • Accidental (philosophy)
  • Anti-Catholicism in the United Kingdom
  • Anti-Catholicism in the United States
  • Cardinal (Catholic Church)
  • Hierarchy of the Catholic Church
  • John Neumann (Bohemian-born American, Bishop of Philadelphia 1852-1860)
  • John Henry Newman (English theologian, academic, philosopher, historian, writer, poet; and, starting in 1845, a Catholic)
  • Servant of the servants of God
  • Pope Leo XIII
• John Henry Newman
  The Catholic Encyclopedia (1911) via newadvent.org

⁷ Ideas, old and new:

• Wikipedia
  • Man’s Place in Nature (by Thomas Henry Huxley, discussing human evolution)
  • Thomas Henry Huxley
• Knowledge, truth, and admiring God’s universe
  • “Evolution: Science, Religion, Opinions and Me” (August 28, 2021)
    • Origins
    • Appreciating Sacred Scripture
  • “An Exomoon, Science and Truth” (October 18, 2018)
    • Science and Faith — Pursuing Truth
    • Studying God’s Work
  • “Gnosticism” (April 21, 2018)
  • “God Doesn’t Make Junk” (January 14, 2018)

⁸ Faith, reason, science, religion, and a bit of the 20th century American experience:

• Wikipedia
  • Christine Frederick (promoted planned product obsolescence; but on the up side, she also pioneered efficient kitchens and standardized countertops)
  • Progressive Era (1896-1917, but leaving lasting echoes)
• Why I’m okay with pursuing truth
  • “Evolution: Science, Religion, Opinions and Me” (August 28, 2021)
    • Ideology, Evolution and Demographics
    • Seeking Knowledge, Appreciating God’s Work
  • “Religion and Science: Different Paths to Reality” (November 14, 2020)
    • Truth, God and Priorities
    • Faith, Reason and Metaphorical Wings