Once upon a time the world was a comforting place in which to live, for we human beings were able to embrace a worldview that provided us with endless flattery and ego gratification. The whole universe, we were told, had been created by God FOR US. We had been placed at the physical and moral centre so that we could act out, on centre stage and before a divine audience, our individual dramas of sin an redemption. Suffering might befall us; but, if so, this would be our own fault – our failure to use the impressive gifts of free will and moral responsibility in the proper and approved way. This picture dominated Western thought throughout the Middle Ages.
With the onset of the Renaissance scientific revolution, however, it seemed as though a group of killjoys were attempting to put ugly blots upon this beautiful picture. Even more upsetting, these faggots seemed to be able to defend their acts of defacement with powerful evidence and arguments. Copernicus rendered it plausible to believe that our earth is not even at the centre of our little solar system, let alone the whole universe. Galileo and Newton showed how the phenomena of astronomy and physics could be explained in terms of mechanistic and deterministic casual laws, thus dispensing the need to explain things teleologically – i.e., in terms of God’s plans and purposes.
Dec 232011
Recent Cuntributors