FRQ: Scientific Rev. Impacted Religion and Philosophy

The Scientific Revolution led to many great minds questioning early theories and philosophies. Thinkers of the time, like Simon and Spinoza, questioned the supernatural events in the Bible, while great minds like Simon questioned the actual credibility of the Bible itself,

• Witchcraft panic 1450-1650
• Witches blamed for all types of natural disasters and personal tragedies
• Executions are curbed because people reason that confessions that come out of torture aren’t honest, people will say whatever someone else wants to hear just to escape pain
• Descartes:
• Discourse on Method
• Adopts “I think, therefore, I am”, from this he deduces the existence of God and much else
• Cartesian dualism- God has created two kinds of fundamental reality in the universe: thinking substance, and extended substance
• The study of the universe
• Pythagoras and Plato: the doctrine of numbers might be the final key to the mysteries of nature
• The simpler the mathematical formulation was better than a more complex one
• Copernicus- heliocentric solar system, suggests that the Earth is NOT the center of the universe
• The heliocentric formula was simpler than the earth-centered formula
• Kepler- supports Copernicus’ theory by showing the elliptical orbits of the planets
• Galileo: challenges previous theories that only the sun and moon had any dimension, and that stars and planets were only points of light
• 1609, Galileo constructs a telescope
• Concludes the moon is not a luminous object, might be made from Earth-like substance
• The difference between Earth and the heavens was rapidly vanishing
• Strikes a terrible blow to earlier philosophy and theology
• Galileo was condemned and forced to an ostensible recantation by his church
• Richard Simon, and the questioning of traditional beliefs
• Critical History of the Old Testament
• Old Testament rested on medieval manuscripts which were of doubtable origin
• Monkish copyists and introduced errors and corruptions
• Books by Moses couldn’t have been written by him since they contained events after his death
• People begin to deny that miracles had ever occurred and looked upon oracles and prophets with a dubious eye
• Baruch Spinoza: states that God had no existence apart from the world, and that everything was itself an aspect of god (called Pantheism)
• Denied inspiration of the Bible