Creationism and Child Custody

Recently in North Carolina, a mother homeschooling her children was ordered to enroll them in public school. This despite the fact, acknowledged by everyone involved, that they're flourishing and are two grades ahead of their peers. Why? Because she's apparently teaching her children creationism rather than evolution. The article doesn't make clear whether she's teaching them young-earth creationism or old-earth (or even theistic evolution, which is labeled as "creationism" by atheists). But even if they are being taught young-earth creationism, I object to the government deciding that the parents should not be allowed to teach it to their children, and that they (the government) can do a better job educating kids. My time in the Marine Corps taught me that the government can't do anything effectively, and my education in the American public schools taught me that this applies to education in particular. (Via the Volokh Conspiracy. The comments there are worthwhile too.)


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The epistemic virtue of obstinacy in belief

If there's one charge that keeps getting leveled by atheists against Christians (and religious believers in general), it is that they are so darn stubborn. They cling tenaciously to their quaint superstitions, apparently in the teeth of evidence. They seem impervious to the 'devastating' rational challenges to their belief systems. What's more, in their delusion they do not realize that the best proof of the falsity of their own belief system is the existence of other belief systems with adherents equally as intelligent and equally devoted.

The implicit criticism here is that a truly open-minded, critically thinking person should hold to something like Clifford's principle in deciding what to believe: one's beliefs should be strictly proportioned to the evidence for them. If there seem to be equally plausible arguments for and against a certain position, the only rational choice is agnosticism concerning that position. From this point of view it is not only cognitively misguided to hold to one's convictions in spite of serious challenges to it, but morally wrong as well, as Clifford illustrates with the example of a ship-builder who does not know how soundly his ship has been built, but lets people ride on it anyway. If the ship sinks, the blame lies entirely with the ship-builder for basing his decision on inadequate evidence. Applied to religion, this view implies that religious belief is unjustified in the face of evidence against it in the form of counter-arguments, less than convincing empirical or conceptual evidence and the existence of other belief systems with adherents equally as committed and intelligent.

Is this really what we should conclude, though, from religious disagreement? In his book Faith and Criticism, Basil Mitchell argues that, on the contrary, Clifford's principle is actually very bad advice when it comes to making cognitive choices about belief systems. There are two problems with it: first, since human cognition is egocentric (i.e. we can't jump outside our heads to take a 'view from nowhere') we cannot take a totally objective view of the evidence for and against a position. When it comes to applying Clifford's principle, the best one can do is proportion one's beliefs to one's perception of the significance of the available evidence. And here is where the first problem comes in: it will often be the case that one's perception of the evidence does not reflect its true weight. It could be that difficulties with one's belief system which seem at first glance to be fatal, are actually only apparent, or vice versa.

The second problem is a direct consequence of the first: if one concludes that certain difficulties are fatal to one's belief system when in reality they are only apparent, the belief system will be abandoned before its full implications and explanatory power can be laid out. People will propose deep and insightful ideas, only to have them shot down at the first sign of apparent counter-evidence. We see this many times even in the natural sciences, where it would seem Clifford's principle would be most applicable. In physics, chemistry, biology and everywhere else, the only way science progresses is as a result of scientists passionately clinging to their pet theories, trying to answer all possible objections, before eventually giving up when the difficulties really do become fatal, and a rival paradigm of greater explanatory scope (which also provides an account of why the other paradigms were unsuccessful) is widely accepted. Or, alternatively, the scientist sticking to his guns is vindicated by the course of events. This is what happened with Charles Darwin. In the Origin of Species he candidly admits that "A crowd of difficulties will have occurred to the reader. Some of them are so grave that to this day I can never reflect on them without being staggered; but, to the best of my judgment, the greater number are only apparent; and those that are real are not, I think, fatal to my theory." (quoted in Faith and Criticism, p.18) Think of that: Charles Darwin was staggered by the objections raised against his theory, but he obstinately clung to it, convinced that most of the difficulties were merely apparent. He would have been called a religious fundamentalist by some of the posters on DC and other supposed 'champions of reason'!

Obviously, if matters are this complicated in the natural sciences, the most empirical and precise of all disciplines with the most impartial mechanisms for weeding out error, how much more so is this case in the social sciences and humanities, where the discussion is much more qualitative, the criteria for success or failure much less clear and so much more being at stake for individual human beings. For example, think of the rivalry between Keynesians and classical or Austrian economists about the best kind of economic policy for increasing productivity and standards of living. Both are paradigms with eminent scholars, ingenious arguments and access to the same kinds of evidence. Who should one trust in this case? You can hear scholars in both camps calling those in the other 'hacks', 'ignoramuses' and other choice epithets, each denouncing the other for not properly interpreting evidence and allowing theory to influence facts instead of vice versa. But it is only through this kind of vigorous back-and-forth that positions can be refined, evaluated, and then either discarded or embraced. But in the mean-time, it takes obstinate people with courage to stick with the perspective to its ultimate limits.

Paradoxically, then, as John Stuart Mill suggested, "truth is better served by having a variety of systems of belief in vigorous competition with one another than by allowing the expression only of what is currently held to be the truth. This policy favors the optimal development of the rival systems by encouraging creativity and ensuring the exposure of each of them to the most determined criticism." (Faith and Criticism, p.29) So the existence of rival religious traditions, far from providing a reason for agnosticism, is actually a reason to commit oneself all the more passionately to one's own tradition, working out its implications and fearlessly testing it against the most formidable challenges from other traditions.

Of course there is a difference between the obstinacy proper to vigorous rational debate and the dogmatism that keeps the mind trapped in defunct ideologies. But this is a very fine line to draw, so in light of the above considerations it is better in general to err in being conservative with one's beliefs, especially if they come from a long tradition of brilliant thinkers who contributed much to Western civilization and faced many of the same challenges that are still brought up against that tradition. It is my judgment that people like Anthony at Debunking Christianity gave up far too soon, before they could become acquainted with the full richness of the Christian tradition and its resources for making sense of human experience.


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Murderous Cross-Dressing

My favourite passage from Josephus is his colourful description of the likes of John and his Galilean brigands during the Jewish War. Here Josephus highlights their murderous effeminacy in order to demonstrate what he believed to be the rightful end of those who attempt to circumvent the laws of nature, countries and God. It reads:

‘With their insatiable hunger for loot, they ransacked the houses of the wealthy, murdered men and violated women for sport; they guzzled their loot washed down with blood and from mere satiety, they shamefully gave themselves up to effeminate practices, plaiting their hair and putting on women’s clothes, drenching themselves with perfumes and painting their eyelids to make themselves attractive. They copied not merely the dress, but also the passions of women, devising in their excess of licentiousness unlawful pleasures in which they wallowed as in a brothel. Thus they entirely polluted the city with their foul practices. Yet though they wore women’s faces, their hands were murderous. They would approach with mincing steps, and, whipping out their swords from under dyed cloaks, they would impale passers-by.

Flavius Josephus – the Jewish War (iv.ix.10.)

Cross dressing thereby symbolises the nation’s demise and as the Zealots push the boundaries of moral decency the boundaries of gender disintegrate. This image of effeminacy and sexual promiscuity reflected a long and recurring trend within classical historiography, the idea that the ‘bad guys’ in civil conflict and war would inevitably reach a state of moral decadence. We are told by Tactius for example that Fabius Valens acquired a ‘long and luxurious train of harlots and eunuchs, advancing at a pace too sluggish for battle’ (Tacitus, Hist III 39-40), and presumably they weren’t much use when they eventually got there either. Presumably, if Josephus or another Classical author were to script a Bond movie, it would have the main villain depicted as a sinister, limp wristed, cross dresser who sits in his lair preening himself and applying generous quantities of makeup; all the while surrounded by prancing eunuchs and harlots. Sounds less like James Bond and more like ‘Carry on Up the Khyber’.

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The Galileo Affair - (1) The Problem with Heliocentrism

At rest, however, in the middle of everything is the sun. For in this most beautiful temple, who would place this lamp in another or better position than that from which it can light up the whole thing at the same time? For, the sun is not inappropriately called by some people the lantern of the universe, its mind by others, and its ruler by still others. [Hermes] the Thrice Greatest labels it a visible god, and Sophocles' Electra, the all-seeing.

Nicolaus Copernicus

The most wretched and frail of all creatures is man and withal the proudest. he feels and sees himself lodged here in the dirt and filth of the world, nailed and riveted to the worst and deadest part of the universe, in the lowest story of the house, the most remote from the heavenly arch"

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Heliocentrism; It’s pretty obvious isn’t it?. How could anyone have been stupid enough to believe that the earth is the centre of the universe?; it must have been because they were a bunch of ‘sky fairy’ worshipping simpletons, whereas you are a modern, enlightened man of science and reason. Unfortunately what you have just demonstrated is the mode of thought known as ‘patronising historical hindsight’; but don’t worry, you are not in the minority, in fact you find yourself in pretty illustrious company. It is in the nature of man to denigrate his forebears. It could not be otherwise. However, for an honest assessment of the Galileo affair we need to get back into the minds of the protagonists and see things as they saw them. In all likelihood, had you been alive at the time of Copernicus, you would also have rejected the Heliocentric model as an interesting but silly mathematical fiction, for the simple reason that this was the opinion of the overwhelming majority of astronomers at the time.

The traditional geocentric model had been held by astronomers since the very beginning of the discipline. One of the few exceptions to this was Aristarchus of Samos whose work is referenced in Archimedes’s book 'The Sand Reckoner'. His model was thought ridiculous and largely ignored for reasons we will come to. In fact, as Plutarch notes through a character in one of his dialogues, it was so unpopular that:

Cleanthes (a contemporary of Aristarchus and head of the Stoics) thought it was the duty of the Greeks to indict Aristarchus of Samos on the charge of impiety for putting in motion the Hearth of the universe (i.e. the earth), . . . supposing the heaven to remain at rest and the earth to revolve in an oblique circle, while it rotates, at the same time, about its own axis.

And so Aristarchus’s theory was ignored, until in 1543 an obscure Catholic Church administrator by the name of Nicholas Copernicus published a book called ‘De revolutionibus’ in which he defended the heliocentric alternative as true. In his work he created detailed mathematical models which allowed him to predict planetary observations with a high degree of accuracy. Since his calculations worked pretty well, why did almost all of his contemporaries and immediate successors reject the proposal?. The answer is that the evidence in favour of it was indecisive, one might almost say weak.

The sole advantages of the model were in the elusive realms of beauty, theoretical elegance and intelligibility. For example, it eliminated all non uniform motion from Ptolemy’s planetary model by getting rid of the equant, and all motions in Copernicus’s model therefore follow the Aristotelian notion of uniform circular motion. It had important explanatory possibilities; it explained the periodic reversal of the planets against the background of the stars as an optical illusion thus bringing intelligibility to a previous inexplicable feature of the universe. It also explained why mercury and Venus are never seen very far from the sun (they are in small orbits).

Against these there were amassed a series of decisive disadvantages. There was no observation capable of proving the earth was a planet. Predictions using the system were no more accurate than that of the ancient Ptolemaic system. Heliocentrism represented a massive violation of common sense. It destroyed the only coherent system of physics available; the Aristotelian system. Aristotle’s world was built on a stationary earth and a rotating and revolving Earth was deemed an absurdity because the motions would require very large speeds. If this really was the case, how was the earth supposed to be moving?. Where was the physics to explain this movement?.

Hurling the earth into the heavens also destroyed the dichotomy between heavens and earth that had previously been central to European thought for 2000 years. According to the accepted cosmology of the period our miserable sphere was located at the bottom of the celestial hierarchy, considered too unworthy to be part of the heavens due to its imperfect and sinful nature and with hell and purgatory placed at its core. Our planet stood in dismal contrast to the heavenly firmament above, a realm of perfection derived from Plato's Theory of Forms with the realm of God beyond. Out of all celestial bodies our earth was emphatically the Detroit of the Cosmos. Promoting it to the heavens required a vast conceptual leap.

Another question the model raised is if the sun is at the centre of the universe, why doesn’t everything fall into it?. Copernicus’s explanation for this was that ‘earthly things’ tend to fall towards earth; solar things tend to fall towards the sun; Martian things tend to fall towards mars and so on and for forth. What he meant was ‘I haven’t a bloody clue’, thus demonstrating a good scientific theory doesn’t always need to make any sense.

But by far the biggest challenge to heliocentrism was the parallax, the way nearer objects will seem to move relative to more distant objects. Copernicus’s contemporaries argued that if the earth moved around the sun, then there must be some evidence of a parallax effect; in fact the same objection had been raised against Aristarchus centuries earlier. A moving earth would mean that the earth would be on opposite sides of the sun six months apart. And if the earth was on opposite sides of the sun six months apart there should be some visible change in the relative position of the stars during the year. The only way Copernicus could preserve his model was by contending that the stars were so far out that a stellar parallax would not be measurable. Thus the heliocentric universe would have to be massively larger than otherwise necessary; a very ad hoc explanation.

As a result you can count on the fingers of one hand the number of Copernicus’s contemporary astronomers who joined him in espousing heliocentrism. It is not true, as Arthur Koestler maintained in ‘The Sleepwalkers’ that De revolutionibus was ‘the book no-one read’. In fact, as Owen Gingerich has shown, despite being a murderously technical and geometrical treatise it was owned by virtually all of the important figures in the history of astronomy. It was not rejected on the grounds of close-mindedness, biblical literalism or conservatism. It was rejected based on deeply held scientific principles. It was used for calculations but it was thought to be physically impossible.

The Copernican System was complex and unwieldy, requiring a total of 48 epicycles, compared to 40 in the Ptolemaic geocentric system. It did however have a number of minor advantages which would become compelling as time went on. It had a slight edge over the Ptolemaic system in predicting the positions of the planets and it eliminated the clumsy equant. The biggest asset it had was its conceptual simplicity, eliminating many of the contrivances of the geocentric system and the differences in the motion between inferior and superior planets. In time it would become powerful and truly revolutionary.

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Genesis and Geology

With this special attack upon geological science by means of the dogma of Adam’s fall, the more general attack by the literal interpretation of the text was continued. Especially precious were the six days—each "the evening and the morning"—and the exact statements as to the time when each part of creation came into being.... Difficult as it is to realize it now, within the memory of many now living the battle was still raging most fiercely in England, and both kinds of artillery usually brought against a new science were in full play, and filling the civilized world with their roar.

Andrew Dickson White

The story which has worked its way into the public consciousness is that, throughout history, the study of Geology has been hampered, held back and opposed by those who were standing up for the Genesis account; not only with the present day creationist movement, but also in the 18th and 19th centuries. This story has been fostered by the self appointed spokespersons of science and used for ideological purposes.

As the scientific study of the world progressed there was a dawning realisation that human history was but a tiny speck at the end of a long and eventful geo-history of the earth. Something of this was captured during last night’s episode of the Victorians, presented by Jeremy Paxman. The show’s narrative included the painting by William Dyce of Pegwell Bay; a significant location because it was where St Augustine of Canterbury landed in 597 AD. The painting conveys a great sense of unease, an effect created by the looming cliffs and the autumnal light. The focus of attention is drawn to the women collecting seashells in the foreground and the evidence of the great age of the earth all around them, the fossils, the flints and the eroded chalk cliffs. Dyce’s curiously joyless painting is therefore a typically Victorian expression of religious doubt, the gloomy rocks and the comet which traces its course over the sky both dwarfing one’s existence into insignificance.

This is a sentiment we find echoed in Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach, with it's ‘sea of faith’, ‘once full’, but now ‘Retreating, to the breath of the night-wind and naked shingles of the world’. When Alfred Lord Tennyson, consumed by grief for the lost of his friend Arthur Hallum, turns to the rocks for solace he sees only the brutality of mass extinction; ‘ From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, "A thousand types are gone: I care for nothing, all shall go’. No wonder that John Ruskin was moved to comment, in 1851, "If only the Geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses'. Geology then, had an undeniable significance in the Victorian crisis of faith.

It was in the 17th century that the much maligned Archbishop Ussher proposed the night preceding 27 October 4004 BC as the date for the creation of the universe, and interestingly, the beginning of time itself. Usher was a not very distinguished member of a whole science called chronology. This was a discipline of textual scholarship, which wasn’t even primarily biblical. Mainly this was a historical science, a branch of human history, into which the bible naturally fitted because it was one of the oldest historical narratives. The goal of chronology was to construct a world history which would be cross cultural. Usher’s book covers the period from 4004 BC, up till around the time of the fall of Jerusalem, and it primarily is focused on the last few centuries which was where the vast majority of evidence lay.

Somewhat later than Ussher, Bernet’s ‘Sacred Theory of the Earth’ was published. The frontispiece has Christ standing astride over seven successive stages of the earth. Although this is arranged in a circle, it is a linear kind of history with Jesus in charge from the beginning to the end. The position Burnet argues against is Aristotle’s eternalism, the idea that the cosmos has always existed. So the area of conflict at this point of time was between two alternate accounts, neither of which was the modern concept of a very long, but finite, history of the earth. Instead the choice was between a short, but finite, history and on the other hand, Aristotle’s concept of an infinitely long and uncreated kind of history. In this context geology could be used to counter enlightenment deism, in particular the idea of an eternal present summarised by James Hutton (1726-97), ‘we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end’. The development of modernity was to extend the short time scale but specifically to recognise that a great deal of the earth’s history was pre-historical and pre-human. Aristotle was wrong, and not for the first time I might add.

In the 18th century, the relevant natural historians became aware that there was good evidence for a very long time scale. One of the reasons for this was because of the immense piles of sedentary strata we see around us, many of which contain large quantities of marine shells. It therefore became inconceivable that all these layers could be easily fit into a short time scale (Yes, I know! - it is conceivable, Young Earth Creationists try to do it today - but we shall leave that aside). The second reason was volcanoes, specifically the historical records which showed one eruption after another. One could therefore get a pretty good idea of how much of the cones of volcanoes such as Etna and Vesuvius had been accumulated within recorded history; a very small amount as it happened.

By the end of the 18th century therefore, there was a very strong sense of ‘deep time’, as research progressed this would be strengthened and qualified. Comte De Buffon, drawing on his theory that the earth had been a cooling body, estimated that the age of the earth was 75,000 years. The Oxford Geologist William Buckland(1784-1856 - pictured on the right) writing in the early part of the following century, spoke of geological time as amounting to ‘millions and millions of years’. According to the research of Professor Martin J Rudwick, deep time appears to have had no religious implications amongst scientists, the reason being that there was a long standing hermeneutic tradition - going all the way back to the church fathers - by which you could interpret Genesis according to the natural facts. You could for example, say that the days of Genesis were simply long periods of time, or you could say that it was simply a story about human history. The biblical literalism which had been a novelty in the 17th century had yielded in the 18th century to an appreciation of the multi-vocality of the bible and a realisation that taking bible passages at face value might obscure the meaning. A good example is this is the case of Haydn, whose 'Creation' was based on Genesis 1. Having lived in London, Haydn was a friend of a naturalist called John Hunter who knew all about deep time and would presumably have discussed it with him. It doesn’t appear to have made any difference to the composer.

It is only in the 1820's that we find a reversion to literalism in the movement called scriptural geology which emerged in Great Britain. This movement was attacked most vehemently by those geologists who were known as believing Christians. It was a conflict which would find an echo in the twentieth century with the growth of young Earth creationism.

In the 19th century, the flood story was seen to be historical in character in a way which was no longer applied to the creation story. The reason for this was that similar stories were being discovered in non European societies and it appeared to be a cross cultural phenomenon. It was therefore regarded as being part of the earth history and seemed to be a boundary event between the history of humanity and that of the deep time which preceded it. There appeared to be natural documents as well as human records. This led to the theory of the geological deluge which could either be regarded as distinct from, or the same event as the biblical flood.

One can easily understand why this became a serious scientific proposition called the Diluvial theory. One of the biggest problems at the time was that Geologists would find enormous blocks of rock which could be traced back to their source. In many cases was found that they had moved hundreds of kilometers. How had they made this journey?. The explanation at the time was that they had been transported by an enormous current of water, which seemed to need a huge causal origin; a mega tsunami. It was an obvious starting point to link this to the biblical flood and similar events recorded by other civilizations. The account of Noah’s ark does not suggest a worldwide catastrophe, but it was felt by Geologists like Buckland that the story, although garbled, had a core of historicity. Buckland’s description of how material had been transported from Northern England to London therefore drew on the flood for explanation. Diluvial theory was extended by Georges Cuvier into an explanation of the extinction of the large mammal species and the Pleistocene mega fauna in the geologically recent past.

The evidence for a great deluge was dramatically reinterpreted over several years in the light of a new theory, the ice age. Rather than science triumphing over religion, the biblical flood was simply recognized as referring to a local Mesopotamian event and separated from evidence for the proposed geological tsunami, now interpreted as due to the action of glaciers. Buckland soon changed his mind and helped introduce the glacial theories of Jean Louis Agassiz. Geologists returned to earlier hermeneutical methods ( e.g. days as geological periods) and reconciled Genesis and Geology. Buckland , for example, held the view that the first two verses of Genesis covered the immensity of geological time, and this approach was endorsed by leading Anglican theologians. The bible was held to cover the history of mankind, scared chronology, the period of the humanity’s existence.

There was one uncomfortable fact which the rocks established in 1800; the presence of extinct fossilized creatures. How could death be a punishment for man’s sin if it had already occurred so much in pre-human history?, and why would a good creator allow the gratuitous death and destruction of so many creatures?. There were two solutions, one to claim death was a punishment for man, but not for the whole of creation. Utilitarian arguments were applied to show how death could benefit animals by ending the suffering of the young, the weak and the old. There was also the development of the idea of a great chain of being, the theory that what the fossils showed was progress and progressive development; fish to reptiles, mammals to human beings. For Adam Sedgwick and Buckland, the Christian idea of history having a direction and a teleology seemed vindicated against the enlightenment’s cyclical time and eternalism; although to many, it was a little too open ended for comfort. Of course not everyone was very happy about this, with Ruskin, for instance, bemoaning the ‘filthy heraldries which record the relation of humanity to the ascidian and the crocodile’.

The great detractor from this view was Charles Lyell, who felt that the idea of progressive development he had first encountered by reading Lamarck affronted human dignity and turned mankind into a glorified Orang Utang. As a result he stripped the fossil record of any progressive scheme. Man, he thought, had to be special. As it turned out, he was wrong and the progressive creationists would soon have reason to feel vindicated.

What we find in the historical record is the continual reinterpretation of Genesis as the evidence accumulated; the findings of geology occasioned no deep rupture between science and religion and the difficulties which arose were quickly accommodated. Geology was a science which was developed and pursued by Christians; most of whom appear to have been able to reconcile their religious beliefs with the evidence. In fact, the leading English geologists of the early nineteenth century-William Buckland, William Daniel Conybeare, and Adam Sedgwick- were all clergymen, as was the American geologist Edward Hitchcock. As Nicolaas Rupke concludes in ‘Science and Religion’ (Ferngren)

‘By and Large, mainstream Christian geologists and palaeontologists succeeded in coming to terms with the new geology. Their reconciliation schemes provided space for scientific inquiry as well as religious belief. Traditional flood geology, with its tenets of a young earth and a geologically effective cataclysmal deluge, became regarded as incorrect and antiquated’

All the most ironic that it has re-emerged among American fundamentalists.

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Revolutionary Art (and plagiarism)

In March 1770, matters began to turn ugly in Boston. Following three days of provocation against the occupying British troops - including incidents where stones wrapped in snow were thrown at soldiers, a private was attacked with a club and had his arm broken, and another soldier’s face was smashed in - a group of colonists gathered on King Street. Twenty of them surrounded a sentry called Hugh White and accused him of striking at someone who had insulted him. They taunted him as ‘a son of a bitch’ and ‘a scoundrel lobster’, threw snowballs and chased him to the customs house. Here six other soldiers and a corporal came out to rescue him. An angry mob assembled, led by Crispus Attucks, a 27 year old man of mixed Indian and African heritage. According to John Adams's testimony, Attucks:

‘appears to have undertaken to be the hero of the night..with one hand he took hold of a bayonet and with the other knocked the man down. To his mad behaviour, in all probability the dreadful carnage of the night is to be ascribed’

The private who had been struck and fallen was Hugh Montgomery. He fired in response and his shots were joined by other soldiers. The crowd dispersed rapidly, leaving behind three dead, two dying and six wounded. Following a day of rioting, the new governor Thomas Hutchinson received the leader of the rebels, Sam Adams; agreed to try the soldiers and ordered the troops out of the town.

As the anger subsided, Paul Revere, a local goldsmith and engraver, copied some drawings of what became known as ‘The Boston Massacre’ which had been made by the young  Henry Pelham. Pelham appears to have been a bit peeved by this. A letter was found fifty years ago from the young lad to Paul Revere which reads:

'Sir, when I heard that you was cutting a plate of the late murder I thought it impossible, as I knew you were not caperble of doing it unless you copied it from mine and as I thought I had entrusted it in the hands of a person who had more regard to the dictates of honour and justice than to take the undue advantage you have done of the confidence and trust I reposed in you. But I find I was mistaken and after being at the great trouble and expense of making a design paying for paper printing etc.., find myself in the most ungenerous manner, deprived not only of any proposed advantage but even of the expense I have been at, as truly as if you had plundered me on the Highway. If you are insensible of the dishonour you have brought on yourself by this act, the world will not be so. However I leave you to reflect upon and consider of one of the most dishonourable actions you could ever be guilty of.

H Pelham

PS I sent the bearer the prints I borrowed of you. My mother desires you would send the hinges and part of the press, that you had from her. 

The result of Revere's 'theft' became the famous engraving known as ‘Fruits of Arbitrary Power, or The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated by the State’; this image went on sale to the Boston papers three weeks after the incident. It was a masterful piece of political properganda and would do much to increase tensions. In the image the British troops are shown firing an orderly volley at the orders of their commanding officer Captain Preston. Preston has an evil grin on his face and appears to be urging his men on rather than trying to stop them. With irony, the sign over the Customs House has been made to read "Butcher's Hall. The belligerence and violent protests of their colonial assailants has not been depicted, instead they are presented as a peaceful assembly. Crispus Atturks is depicted as a white man and no snow is shown in the picture. The colours, which were chosen by Christian Remick contrast the blue, black and green of the colonists with the red of the hated British lobsterbacks and the blood they have unleashed. Revere’s print would become a powerful influence in provoking an outspoken anti-British public opinion. Many copies of the print would go on to be hung in country kitchens where generations of young children would grow up learning to hate England.

What is less well known is that a poem was written to go underneath. It reads:

Unhappy BOSTON! see thy Sons deplore,
Thy hallowe'd Walks besmear'd with guiltless Gore:
While faithless P--- and his savage Bands,
With murd'rous Rancour stretch their bloody Hands;
Like fierce Barbarians grinning o'er their Prey,
Approve the Carnage, and enjoy the Day.

If scalding drops from Rage from Anguish Wrung
If speechless Sorrows lab' ring for a Tongue,
Or if a weeping World can ought appease
The plaintive Ghosts of Victims such as these;
The Patriot's copious Tears for each are shed,
A glorious Tribute which embalms the Dead.

But know, FATE summons to that awful Goal,
Where JUSTICE strips the Murd'rer of his Soul:
Should venal C-ts the scandal of the Land,
Snatch the relentless Villain from her Hand,
Keen Execrations on this Plate inscrib'd,
Shall reach a JUDGE who never can be brib'd.

The unhappy Sufferers were Messs. SAM. L GRAY, SAM.L MAVERICK, JAM.S CALDWELL , CRISPUS ATTUCKS & PAT.K CARR Killed. Six wounded two of them (CHRIST.R MONK & JOHN CLARK) Mortally

The image of martyrdom (and its lyrical accompaniment) would become familiar motifs as nationalist movements erupted over the course over the next hundred years, one has only to think of La Marseillaise or David’s painting of the martyrdom of Joseph Bara. And yet the writing of poems to accompany massacres is something that has gone out of fashion in the mainstream press. The closest we get nowadays is the odd sombre commentary delivered during news reports on channel 4. I suppose there are only so many things you can get to rhyme with ‘gore’.

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Pope Leo XII and the Vaccination Ban

Whoever allows himself to be vaccinated ceases to be a child of God. Smallpox is a judgement from God : thus vaccination is an affront to Heaven

Quote attributed to Pope Leo XII 1829

He was a ferocious fanatic, whose object was to destroy all the improvements of modern times, and force society back to the government, customs, and ideas of mediaeval days. In his insensate rage against progress he stopped vaccination; consequently, small-pox devastated the Roman provinces during his reign, along with many other curses which his brutal ignorance brought upon the inhabitants of those beautiful and fertile regions.

G. S. Godkin

Annibale della Genga - a sickly 63 year old crippled by chronic haemorrhoids - was elected Pope Leo XII in 1823 and began a stronger, more religious and more conservative regime in the Papal states. As a consequence, he became a much derided figure. The authority of the popes had been much weakened during the enlightenment, the subsequent revolution and the violence which followed. Leo’s appointment by the Zelanti came in reaction to this and to the constant manipulation of papal policy by political prudence. He was pious, puritanical and confrontational; with a habit for shooting birds in the Vatican gardens which shocked the cardinals. In the internal government of the Papal states he took steps to establish his moral authority. Gaol sentences were introduced for people caught playing games on Sundays and feast days, tight fitting dresses were forbidden for women. Encores and ovations in theatres were forbidden and actors and actresses ad libbing lines on current affairs were forbidden. The bars in Rome were forbidden from selling alcohol which had to be bought in the street from grills; this led to a massive increase in public drunkenness. The Jews were ordered back into ghettos and forbidden to own real estate. 300 of them were required to attend Christian services every week and business transactions between Jews and Christians were forbidden. The subsequent exodus of Jews from the Papal States worsened an already fraught economic situation.

Leo’s assistants were no better. Cardinal Ravorolla who was sent as legate to Ravenna became a figure of fun for his tyrannical decrees. He closed inns, banned gambling and required anyone who went out at night to carry a lantern with them. He also installed a great iron bound chest outside his residence into which people could put anonymous denunciations of their neighbors, Cardinal Palotta attempted to deal with the huge numbers of brigands in his provinces, but became so hated he was forced to resign. When he did so the brigands held thanksgiving masses to celebrate.

By far the most damning accusation against Leo XII was that he denounced and banned the practice of vaccination. Paul Badham for instance in his 'Sources of Authority in Christian Ethics' mentions that:

Later the practices of inoculation and vaccination faced fierce theological opposition. Indeed in 1829 Pope Leo XII declared that whoever decided to be vaccinated was no longer a child of God; smallpox was a judgement of God, vaccination was a challenge to heaven.

Others tell a more lurid tale, for instance this site mentions that:

‘He forbid vaccination against smallpox during an epidemic, stating that it was 'against the natural law'.

Other sites go on to mention that thousands died during outbreaks of smallpox, all as a result of the Pope’s obstinacy and theological lunacy. This story, in its various forms has gone on to become frequently cited in the science religion debate as an example of how Christianity has blocked scientific and medical advance.

Vaccination in the 19th century in Italy and the provinces of the Papal States

In 1796 Edward Jenner famously created a method of vaccination which could prevent the spread of smallpox. The disease was greatly feared at the time as one in three of those who contracted smallpox died, and those who survived were often badly disfigured. Jenner discovered that by grafting a little pus produced by a benign disease of cows called cow pox he could successfully inoculate a young boy called James Phipps against the virus. Jenner's process would soon replace the inoculation by variola variolisation where a small amount of live smallpox virus was administered to the patient; this carried the serious risk that the patient would be killed or seriously ill. As Jenner’s discovery was published, the practice of vaccination began to spread gradually through Europe.

The Napoleonic wars actually helped the introduction of vaccination to the Mediterranean region. Two eccentric doctors, Joseph Marshall and John Walker were sent to Gibraltar, Minorca and Malta to assist Britain’s army and navy and to inoculate the inhabitants of allied cities. Marshall ended up in Palermo where 8,000 had recently died from a smallpox outbreak. He decided to set up a vaccination centre in a Jesuit seminary where he treated the poor twice a week. From Palermo, the vaccine was brought to Naples by Michele Troja, physician of the royal family, then to Rome where he was administered in the summer of 1801. Marshall followed in the period of peace from 1802-3, setting up an institute in Naples and travelling through Rome, Genoa and Turin, spreading the benefits of Jennerian Vaccination. It was badly needed, Marshall noting for example that in the slums around Genoa, beggars would parade their pustule covered infants in a bit for charity. Meanwhile in the north, vaccination had arrived in Lombardy, brought by doctors accompanying the march of French armies. Luigi Sacco was appointed director of vaccination for Napoleon’s Cisalpine Republic in 1801 and was able to boast that within 3 years he had eliminated smallpox completely. ‘I flatter myself’, he wrote, ‘that in Italy, I have been the means of promoting vaccination in a degree which no other kingdom of the same population has equalled’.

The response of the Papacy to the arrival of vaccination in Italy has been documented in Pratique de la vaccination antivariolique dans les provinces de l’État pontifical au 19ème siècle, an article written by Yves-Marie Bercé and Jean-Claude Otteni for Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique. When smallpox struck Rome, vaccination was endorsed by Pope Pius VII. At the hospital of the Holy Spirit in the Borgo Santo Spirito between the shore of the Tiber and the Vatican, the papal authority established a vaccination centre which received 800 newborns each year. This was operated by doctors like Dr. Alessandra, who had previously been an ardent propagator of smallpox inoculation, Domenico Moricchini the Neapolitan chemist (1773-1836) and the young Alessandro Flajani. 'Almost all the new born children are vaccinated’ Sacco reported to Baron in 1824 ‘so that we now know no fear of the smallpox’.

The approval of vaccination in Rome is demonstrated by a work by Alessandro Flajani in 1805 which documented his investigation into the medical policies in progress in Berlin, Vienna, London and Paris’; a large part of this work concerned the practice of vaccination. The report was published on his return to Rome. According to the rules of censure, the book was judged conform to the Catholic religion, the faith and manners; it received on June 16, 1807 the approvals of P. Oliveri, Dominican, professor in Archiginnasio of Rome, the professor of medicine Francisco Petraglia and the administration of the ecclesiastic state . The book was then dedicated to the Pope. It is therefore certain that in the beginnings of its circulation in Europe vaccination was officially allowed by the Church in moral theology and that it was practised publicly in the large Roman hospital. Ample precedent for this had already been set by Pope Benedetto XIV (Pope Lambertini) who had tried to introduce smallpox inoculation by the old variolation method into the Papal States in the early eighteenth century.

Did things change later on?. Apparently not. According to Bercé and Otteni, in January 1814, the French evacuated central Italy, to be replaced by the troops of Murat, king of Naples. In the provinces of the North of the State of the Church, Emilie and Romagna, it was the Austrian army which assumed the leading role. Pope Pius VII returned to Rome on May 24 1814 and in May 1815, the pontifical administration recovered its territories to the North. All the measures of the previous leadership were retained and the only changes were titular, which became pontifical rather than imperial. The use of French was removed from public documents, but most notable dignitaries, magistrates, administrative officers were unchanged, with very little prosecution of the beneficiaries of the previous regime. Vaccination initiatives, which had become fewer because of the military events in 1813 and 1814, began again to operate fully at the end of 1815.

In 1821 the Council of Vaccination was founded, which was made up professors of medicine of the Universities of Rome and Bologna. It had under its supervision all of the doctors guaranteed by the communes (the use of municipal doctors, medici di condotta, had been instigated since the 14th century). The doctors could not be considered for these municipal posts without having shown competence in vaccination. Orphanages and old people's homes were routinely inoculated and Gonfaloniers of communes (the equivalent of the mayor) were instructed to enable the activities of vaccinators. Municipal magistrates were ordered to organize a general vaccination of the new-born babies every spring and autumn. There was no official law of obligation to vaccinate, but no newborn could escape vaccination

The authorities of the various Italian States were attentive to the dangers of epidemics. The arrival of the cholera in Rome in 1830 occasioned emergency measures and the reinforcement of the medical commissions. It does not seem that there were any unusual levels of mortality in Rome during the 1820s and 1830s, nor beyond that. An investigation by a French doctor, Hippolyte Combes in 1838, gave very favourable judgements of the Italian medical policies in general. According to its account, the ecclesiastical State was not an exception and had maintained a rate of medicalisation comparable with the remainder of the peninsula. It also singles Leo XII out for praise for subsidising medical education in Rome. The Italian medical press does not make any mention of any ban on vaccination or any unusual rate of death in the ecclesiastical states; nor do the doctor’s professional bodies - although often resolutely critical towards the temporal authority of the pope - criticize the the papacy for being negligent in its medical affairs. In short, no record of a ban or any suggestion of a ban by Leo XII and his administration can be found in the archives.

The Imaginary edict

All this forces us to raise the question, where did this idea that the pope banned vaccination come from?. According to Bercé and Otteni, the biographers and contemporaries of Leo XII do not mention any interdict. The Knight Artaut, the first biographer of Leon XII and of Massimo d' Azeglio, quotes the latter as being a great admirer of Jenner, “a man who has saved many from death, God knows how many million… the day will come when Jenner will be held in dimensions higher than Napoleon”. It is probable that if Leo XII had promulgated one interdict of vaccination, Azeglio who was well informed of the actions of the pope, would have some mentioned it in his Memories relating to the life in Rome during first half of 19th century. In the same way, historians of the 19th century popes do not mention an opposition to vaccination. Philippe Boutry for instance writes:

‘After Consalvi, vaccination continued under Leon XII, who does not seem to have required it to stop, as opposed to what a certain tradition claims’.

Research of the interdict in treaties of ecclesiastical history has also failed to turn up anything.

A Catholic historian Donald Keefe came across the story when it was repeated by Prof. Daniel Maguire of Marquette University. Keefe tried to trace the source of the quote from Leo XII, tracing it from footnote to footnote, from book to book and found it had emanated from a Dr. Pierre Simon in Le Contredes naissances with no authority given at all. It is probable however, that the myth is much older and dates from the 19th century as it can be found in G. S. Godkin’s ‘Life of Victor Emmanuel II’ from 1880.

According to Bercé and Otteni the origin of the mythical vaccination ban of Leo XII is undoubtedly due to the personality of Cardinal Della Genga when he become pope in 1823. His intransigence and piety alienated liberal opinion very quickly. His austere spirituality made him the target of criticisms and mocking remarks. English travelers visiting the peninsula and many of the diplomats established in Rome remarked on the severity of the pontiff. The obscurantism of the Church, the inertia of the pontifical government, the ridiculous superstitions of Italian piety, the idleness and the dirtiness of the Southerners were commonplaces stereotypes from the accounts of travelers to Italy. These rumors would have reached the ears of whig historians such as G. S. Godkin and percolated into their historical narratives.

In conclusion, Leo XII’s alleged ban of vaccination is a whiggish myth which has been repeated and promulgated slavishly ever since, despite having absolutely no basis in fact whatsoever. No doubt in cyberspace it will continue to take on a new lease of life amongst those who will swallow any myth as long as it is anti-catholic or anti-religious.

Thanks to Alfonso Taboada for bringing this to my attention.

Further Reading

‘Tracking a footnote’ – Donald J Keefe

Pratique de la vaccination antivariolique dans les provinces de l’État pontifical au 19ème siècle - Remarques sur le supposé interdit vaccinal de Léon XII - Yves-Marie Bercé1 - Jean-Claude Otteni

‘The life and death of small pox’ Ian Glynn


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Augustine on Ignorant Christians

Here's an old but brilliant quotation from St Augustines Literal Commentary on Genesis (1.19.41):

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens and the other elements of this world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and relative positions… Now it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of the Holy Scriptures, talking nonsense on these topics, and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

Everyone who dabbles in science and religion should remember this.

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Plantinga vs. Dennett

Here. I was going to excerpt a few passages, but you just need to read the whole thing. Wow.

Update (10 Mar): I just noticed in the comments at the link that someone recorded the whole thing and made it available online to download. Here it is, 50 MB worth.


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Columbus and the 'Flat Earth'

Columbus : The earth is not flat, Father, it’s round!
The Prior : Don’t say that!
Columbus : Its the truth; it’s not a mill pond strewn with islands, it’s a sphere
The Prior : Don’t, don’t say that; it’s blasphemy

Dialogue from 'Christopher Columbus', A Play by Joseph Chiari

In a momentous passage from book 2 of ‘On the Heavens’, Aristotle concludes that the earth is spherical:

Either then the earth is spherical or it is at least naturally spherical. And it is right to call anything that which nature intends it to be, and which belongs to it, rather than that which it is by constraint and contrary to nature. The evidence of the senses further corroborates this. How else would eclipses of the moon show segments shaped as we see them? As it is, the shapes which the moon itself each month shows are of every kind straight, gibbous, and concave-but in eclipses the outline is always curved: and, since it is the interposition of the earth that makes the eclipse, the form of this line will be caused by the form of the earth's surface, which is therefore spherical.

Again, our observations of the stars make it evident, not only that the earth is circular, but also that it is a circle of no great size. For quite a small change of position to south or north causes a manifest alteration of the horizon. There is much change, I mean, in the stars which are overhead, and the stars seen are different, as one moves northward or southward. Indeed there are some stars seen in Egypt and in the neighbourhood of Cyprus which are not seen in the northerly regions; and stars, which in the north are never beyond the range of observation, in those regions rise and set.

All of which goes to show not only that the earth is circular in shape, but also that it is a sphere of no great size: for otherwise the effect of so slight a change of place would not be quickly apparent. Hence one should not be too sure of the incredibility of the view of those who conceive that there is continuity between the parts about the pillars of Hercules and the parts about India, and that in this way the ocean is one. As further evidence in favour of this they quote the case of elephants, a species occurring in each of these extreme regions, suggesting that the common characteristic of these extremes is explained by their continuity. Also, those mathematicians who try to calculate the size of the earth's circumference arrive at the figure 400,000 stades. This indicates not only that the earth's mass is spherical in shape, but also that as compared with the stars it is not of great size.

In God and reason in the Middle Ages, Edward Grant writes that:

‘All medieval students who attended a university knew this. In fact any educated person in the Middle Ages knew the earth was spherical, or of a round shape. Medieval commentators on Aristotle’s 'On the Heavens' or in the commentaries on a popular thirteenth century work titled ‘Treatise on the Sphere' by John of Sacrobosco, usually included a question in which they enquired ‘whether the whole earth is spherical’. Scholastics answered this question unanimously: The earth is spherical or round. No university trained author ever thought it was flat’

John of Sacrobosco's book, the ‘Treatise on the Sphere' or 'Tractatus de Sphaera' mentioned by Grant, was published in 1230. This popular work discussed the spherical earth and its place in the universe and was required reading by students in all Western European universities for the next four centuries. If the 'poor benighted medievals' had really believed that the earth was flat as was claimed in the 19th century, they must have been ignoring their own textbooks. Perhaps the heavily annotated copy of 'Treatise on the Sphere' shown on the right has been graffitied by scholasitics claiming 'it's not true!' and 'this is heresy!'; but I highly doubt it.

And yet the popular conception of Columbus’s voyage is that he discovered the world is round, in the process refuting the medieval view. The culprit here was Washington Irving, which conjured an imaginary scene in which Columbus pleads his case for a spherical earth in front of Church dignitaries and professors in Salamanca. In Washington’s imagination, Columbus ‘who was a devoutly religious man’ was assailed ‘with quotes for the Bible and the Testament...such are the specimens of the errors and prejudices, the mingled ignorance and erudition and the pedantic bigotry with which Columbus had to contend’

The truth is that when Columbus was planning his voyage, he gathered evidential support from a scholastic treatise entitled ‘The Image (or representation) of the world (ymango mundi)’ which had been written by the theologian and philosopher Pierre d’ Ailly and was one of the most popular printed books in the later fifteenth , sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Not only did D’Ailly say from the very outset of the treatise that the earth is a sphere, but he also cited Aristotle and Averroes in reporting that the end of the habitable earth towards the east and the end of the habitable earth towards the west are very close with a small sea in between. D’ Ailly reported the earth’s circumference as 56 2/3 miles multiplied by 360 degrees, as measured by Alfraganus (al-Farghani). Edward Grant reports that, in Columbus’s annotated copy of the book, this circumference measurement has been written in the margin and surrounded by boxes to emphasise the point. This was important for Columbus because it made the world seem much smaller than it actually was, so that sailing from Spain to India would require only a few days to cross the small sea. In fact, by going with the smaller estimate Columbus had underestimated the distance he would have to travel to India, and had the Americas not been in his path he would have run out of provisions.

Not only did Columbus not discover that the earth was round – that had been the scholarly consensus since Aristotle, despite the best efforts of the self educated Cosmas Indicopleustes – he gained the information for his voyage from medieval sources.

As Grant concludes in ‘God and reason’:

Although some progress has been made in rectifying the egregious historical error that a flat earth was commonly assumed in the Middle Ages, the error lives on. Perhaps it is because, as Russell plausibly suggests ‘the idea of the dark middle ages is still fixed in the popular consciousnesses and consequently ‘no caricature is too preposterous to be accepted.

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