(June 9, 2014 at 1:37 pm)mickiel Wrote: THATS what I been screaming, it DID BIRTH IT!I think you're missing the point: even with the considerable bias that would have come from being a god-fearing supporter of the church, scientists started us down the road that would overturn those closely-held beliefs. Even with the advantage that would come from being able to influence their work, the church couldn't stop science from pushing its teachings aside once it got a head of steam.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
