Hume shed a great doubt on the cosmological argument and made the work of many philosophers in proving religion a frustrating task. While the arguments against the need for a first cause defuses a priori reasoning in general, such reasoning is shown to be offensive to the pious as well. When wielded by the hand of Hume, this hypothetical argument a priori renders the existence of God not only improbable, but quite contradictory given the ostensible necessity of the existence of (...) the universe. (shrink)

Far from egalitarian, Galileo’s epistemology asserts an uncompromising hierarchy between science and Scripture — an idea he suggests originates with early Christian author Tertullian of Carthage. For Galileo, when the scientific data causes us to disagree with the apparent meaning of scripture, it is not the data that we discard nor is it the scientist whose word is subject to doubt. Rather, whenever a disagreement arises, we always reinterpret the Bible and Holy Fathers such that we can make them agree (...) with what the scientist observes. Galileo states, “[H]aving arrived at any certainties in physics, we ought to utilize these as the most appropriate aids in the true exposition of the Bible […], for these must be concordant with demonstrated truths” (183). In other words, we establish matters of fact first , and then decide what interpretations of scripture will maintain the truth of those facts, second. Given that Galileo’s method stands in radical opposition to the methods of the Church as carried out in the Inquisition following the Council of Trent (1563), it is not hard to understand why the Church felt threatened by him and thereby sought to repress his views. (shrink)

While it may remain difficult for the student of modernity to understand the weight of Paley’s teleological arguments for nineteenth century British scientists, the idea of a design in nature and the implication of a designer nevertheless provided lasting explanatory power amongst competing hypotheses until up to Darwin. As Richard Dawkins points out, it was reasonable for English scientists to maintain telic 'causes' in the explanation of biological origins until the observations of Paley were ascribed to a natural mechanism as (...) evidenced by Charles Darwin. When viewed in the light of contemporary debates on the possibility of evolution by natural selection in opposition to purposeful intervention, it is useful, then, to understand clearly why not long ago scientists moved away from this very line of reasoning to accepting the Darwinian picture of “descent with modification” by natural selection. As Bacon was right to point out, the scientific dialogue is dependent on an agreement on method, and this change in reasoning, it seems fair to say, signifies a most important distinction of biological investigation between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that ought not to be neglected by any thoughtful historian of science. (shrink)

The eugenics movement was not the anomaly of just one country. In its day, it enamoured industrialized nations throughout the Western world. In the end, the eugenics movement ultimately did not recover from the stigma it sustained as a result of the Second World War. However, with the advancement of genetic engineering and the researches into embryonic stem cells, discussions about eugenics are becoming relevant once more, and it will be the responsibility of the informed (and not merely reactionary) to (...) cultivate reasoned argument about eugenics based on a sound knowledge of biology and ethics. The potential to rid humanity of so many hereditary ailments may rest on such a rational dialogue and, as such, we should hope to heed the lessons of history more carefully than perhaps we have. (shrink)