(reposted from Agent Intellect)

It is well-known that people who lived before the Enlightenment were hopelessly superstitious. They believed, for example, that "odd" occurrences in the sky were omens signifying that odd occurrences would soon happen down here on Earth. The most blatant example of this took place when Halley's Comet appeared in 1456. While it was still visible, the siege of Belgrade by the Turks began; thus it was feared that this portent in the heavens had some relevance to the battle. Halley's Comet so upset Pope Callistus III that he resorted to drastic measures: he excommunicated it.

For years, this story was repeated as an example of how absurd and superstitious religion is, especially when contrasted with science. Carl Sagan referred to it in his book on comets. But of course, you know where I'm going with this: it didn't really happen. The story appears to have been popularized by Pierre-Simon Laplace at the end of the 18th century; Laplace, in turn, apparently got it from Vitæ Pontificum, a 15th century work, by Bartolomeo Platina. The Catholic Encyclopedia article on Platina dutifully translates the relevant text as follows:

Plantinga on Naturalism

I recently read Warranted Christian Belief by philosopher Alvin Plantinga. It's philosophy rather than science and religion, but in the last section of the book, he addressed several alleged "defeaters" of Christian belief. One of those he mentioned was historical-critical Bible scholarship. One type of such scholarship is Troeltschian biblical scholarship, which models itself on the physical sciences.

Size Doesn't Matter

One of the claims often made to illustrate how science has refuted Christianity is the size of the universe. The Bible teaches that the human race is so important to God that he sent his Son to Earth to die for us. But modern astronomy has shown us that the Earth is just an infinitely small speck in an infinitely large cosmos. How can we think we have any importance in light of this?

God and the Astronomers

In the Easter Sunday sermon, Phil mentioned Robert Jastrow, an agnostic physicist, and his book God and the Astronomers. Jastrow wrote this book in the late 1970s to summarize the reaction of astronomers and astrophysicists in the 20th century to the theological ramifications of Einstein's relativity equations and the subsequent Big Bang cosmologies...

The Conflict Thesis

The idea that science and Christianity are at war with each other was very popular at the end of the 19th century. This position is called "the conflict thesis", ...

Journey Toward Creation

There is an excellent video which deals with how astronomy, astrophysics, particle physics, and cosmology are pointing to God entitled, "Journey Toward Creation"...