DIJ - The Myths of Science and Creation Reaction

When I started reading The Myths of Science - Creation in Dreams and Inward Journeys, I didn't know which angle the author Marcelo Gleiser was going to come from. Was he more religious? Or more scientific minded? I found out quickly that the answer was neither. He was writing from a perspective which was very neutral. He believes that one aspect could not be without the other.

He goes on to write about past philosophers such as Aristotle, and Copernicus who were both very religious men, who felt that science was simply a way to better understand their God's creations. This sort of view carried on throughout history with men such as Plato, Bruno, Kepler, Galileo, and Issac Newton. They all believed in something other worldly, and often used this as motivation to research different aspects of how our world and astronomy work.

It wasn't until the Einsteinian era that atheist scientists became to be the more popular combination. By this time many scientists and philosophers had time to go over all other works by past scientific minds, and felt it was silly to maintain a faith in something that had little evidence. It seems that Marcelo Gleiser believes that instead of the two sides being separated and black and white, they should be talked about together more because history shows that they weren't mutually exclusive, but instead aided the past scientific mind to work hard to come up with different theories.

I must say I never thought about it this way, and didn't really realize that all those scientists back in early history were so religious. This put some things into perspective for me. I am an atheist by definition, but I don't like to call myself that, because there are so many negative connotations attached to that term. I always thought that without people who didn't believe in a deity, but instead wanted to find things out for themselves that we would never find anything out scientifically, but from this passage I see that without religion, we wouldn't have had many of the theories we have today. I don't feel it is necessary to be religious anymore, but back in those days, it seemed very important as motivation for their great work.