Wednesday, June 11, 2014

The Story Of 1543: Why Science Is Better Than Religion


In 1543 two books were written that would later go on to have a significant impact on world history. One was by a Christian motivated by science, the other was by a Christian motivated by religious fanaticism.

Nicolaus Copernicus published his most famous work, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) on his death bed, in which he argued that the Sun, and not the Earth, was the center of our solar system, kicking off what many believe to be the birth of the modern scientific revolution. That same year, Martin Luther, the Protestant reformer wrote one of his best known works, On the Jews and Their Lies, in which he argued, among other things, that European Jews were wicked, shouldn't be allowed to own homes, practice their religion, and should be forced into servitude.

Two very different books motivated by very different things. One helped kick off the modern scientific revolution, which enabled Galileo, Newton and eventually Einstein to lay the foundations of our understanding of the universe. The other helped kick off centuries of anti-semitism based on religious obsession and piety, that culminated in the Holocaust. These two works could not have been more different and had the impact they did on society. One is a prime example of the benefits of what can happen when you devote yourself to science and the use of evidence and reason to understand the world around you, and the other is a prime example of how religious fanaticism and superstition poisons the mind.

1543 stands as a stark reminder of what we in the freethinking community should strive for and what we should be motivated to destroy. We need to emphasize a science based education process and understanding of the world around us that promotes thinking with reason and evidence with a healthy dose of skepticism, and we need to work against living by superstition, assumptions, and dogmatic belief in religious claims. Now interestingly, both Copernicus and Luther were Christians, (you pretty much had to be a Christian in 1543 Europe) but one championed using observation and evidence as his way of coming to his understanding of the world, and the other preferring obedience to an ancient book of superstition (Luther was extremely critical of Copernicus' heliocentricism). Many modern day Protestants are unaware that their founder was a raging anti-semitist in is latter years and set the foundation for the persecution of Jews for centuries afterward. They'd much rather blindly blame the Nazis and the holocaust on evolution, which is bullshit.

Let 1543 be a reminder to us all in the freethinking community.


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