"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?" Augustine, from The Literal Meaning of Genesis
Ironic that this treatise by Augustine, written in the fifth century CE, is (at least in this respect) more sophisticated than an absurd reactionary ideology that came about in the 1930s.
Ironic that this treatise by Augustine, written in the fifth century CE, is (at least in this respect) more sophisticated than an absurd reactionary ideology that came about in the 1930s.
“Society is not a disease, it is a disaster. What a stupid miracle that one can live in it.” ~ E.M. Cioran
