Over the past several days I have been reading a book my better half bought for me at the Natural History Museum in London - “The Map That Changed the World”. It’s the story of William “Strata” Smith, who you might now term the first professional geologist. Wikipedia has the following to say about him;
He is known as the “Father of English Geology”, however recognition was slow in coming. At the time his map was first published he was overlooked by the scientific community; his relatively humble education and family connections preventing him from mixing easily in learned society. Consequently his work was plagiarised, he was financially ruined, and he spent time in debtors’ prison. It was only much later in his life that Smith received recognition for his accomplishments.
While eating dinner last night we were swapping the stories of our days, and conversation turned to the book.
“It’s amazing really, isn’t it”, I said. “That the majority of people in the world still believe that a ‘God’ created all the forms of life as we know it, and that evolution is just a theory”.
W nods wisely while eating. She has a much stronger belief in some sort of deity than me, although not perhaps the mainstream beardy chap in a white robes that issues lightning from his fingers and thunder from his backside.
I carry on - baked beans must be brain food or something - “What seems more amazing, is that the majority of people believe in the most implausible explanation for the world’s existence. It’s also kind of a contradiction that some people term themselves ‘Theologians’, isn’t it - how can you study the unknowable?”.
I recounted an observation from the book that I hadn’t really thought about before. Although fossils had been found for many years before Williams Smith started studying the strata, nobody had supposed that fossils could possibly be the remains of ancient creatures (Robert Hooke eventually did that, to the consternation of the church) - and nobody had questioned how they ended up on hillsides, mountains and half way up cliffs - often embedded in rock.
The view for many years was that God had built the fossils as precise simulcra of living creatures and had placed them randomly in order to both confuse us and to reinforce the wonder of his/her/it’s work.
Of course those studying the fossils started asking why some of the creatures they were finding no longer seemed to exist in the natural world (or at least, had not been discovered yet). Again, the church responded with the same answer - that their existence was just further proof of the unfathomable wonder of God.
It strikes me that when the Church tries to answer questions of a scientific nature, it’s stock answer may as well be “Because that’s magic”.