I would like to comment on some of the statements in Pinsky's "USA Today" article. He wrote "The pioneering work of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler all came into conflict with church authorities and doctrines, although these astronomers and cosmologists insisted they were sincere believers." While this statement is true, it should be pointed out that the conflict existed simply because the Church adopted the Ptolemaic system as on a par with the Scriptures. The Church was defending Ptolemy, not the Bible. They merely used surface reading and proof texting of the Bible to support Ptolemy. Galileo recognized this. In his letter to the Grand Duchess Christina he wrote "With regard to this argument, I think in the first place that it is very pious to say and prudent to affirm that the holy Bible can never speak untruth-whenever its true meaning is understood. But I believe nobody will deny that it is often very abstruse, and may say things which are quite different from what its bare words signify. Hence in expounding the Bible if one were always to confine oneself to the unadorned grammatical meaning, one might fall into error. Not only contradictions and propositions far from true might thus be made to appear in the Bible, but even grave heresies and follies. Thus it would be necessary to assign to God feet, hands and eyes, as well as corporeal and human affections, such as anger, repentance, hatred, and sometimes even the forgetting of things past and ignorance of those to come. These propositions uttered by the Holy Ghost were set down in that manner by the sacred scribes in order to accommodate them to the capacities, Of the common people, who are rude and unlearned. For the sake of those who deserve to be separated from the herd, it is necessary that wise expositors should produce the true senses of such passages, together with the special reasons for which they were set down in these words. This doctrine is so widespread and so definite with all theologians that it would be superfluous to adduce evidence for it."
He further expounded on this for another paragraph and then wrote that sentence that is so often only partially quoted: "This being granted, I think that in discussions of physical problems we ought to begin not from the authority of scriptural passages but from sense experiences and necessary demonstrations; for the holy Bible and the phenomena of nature proceed alike from the divine Word the former as the dictate of the Holy Ghost and the latter as the observant executrix of God's commands."
Neither Galileo nor Copernicus were in conflict with the Scriptures. They were in conflict with those who took Ptolemy as authoritative over the Scriptures. Galileo had a very high regard for the Bible.
Pinsky then wrote in the next paragraph, "Even so, among contemporary American scientists, many — perhaps a majority — have declared themselves skeptics, secularists, agnostics and atheists." It seems obvious, from recent articles, lawsuits, and Stein's movie 'Expelled...', that such a declaration is considered a requirement to work and teach in the secular fields of Science, at least in the US. To take these scientists' statements at face value and not ask why they are made, in light of this, appears to me to be disingenuous.
Two paragraphs later Pinsky had this to say: "While impossible to quantify, a surprising number of prominent British researchers at the pinnacle of their fields, with worldwide reputations in the physical and biological sciences, proclaim their evangelical Christian faith. And they are not perfunctory adherents, merely showing up for Sunday worship; they believe in acting on their beliefs. Some have taken up weekend pulpits."
As we find out later in this article, these "prominent British researchers" give intellectual assent to Darwin. They merely disagree on who started life at the beginning. The scientific community is perfectly willing to accept that difference, as long as Darwin is bowed to.
And that is the difference with evangelical US scientists with which Pinsky struggles. The US evangelical scientists do not bow to Darwin. And through his article we seem to hear the question 'How can a person claim to be a reputable scientist and not accept Darwininsm?'
About halfway through his article Pinsky noted about US evangelical scientists, "They bash mainstream scientific conclusions in papers such as "Evolution Exposed," and they also seem to challenge the scientific method itself. " But we need to ask Pinsky what his definition of the scientific method is. If it is to follow the empirical evidence no matter where it leads, then he would find no conflict with these evangelical US scientists. But if it is to follow it unless it points to God, as Darwinists demand, then we can understand why Pinsky is so puzzled by the stand of the US scientists and why he so admires the British scientists.
Quotes for Galileo were taken from The Galilean Library (www.galilean-library.org)