Online Course Explores History of Science and Christianity
Did Christianity help or hinder the rise of science? On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid speaks with Dr. Melissa Cain Travis about her latest online course Science & Christianity: An Historical Exploration. The live 6-week course offered this spring gives a small cohort of students the opportunity to dive into the historical relationship between science and Christianity and the skill to address the distorted historical narratives that persist in the contemporary conversation.
In this conversation, Dr. Travis gives a sneak peak of the content covered in the course, which ranges from ancient cosmologies and early Christian attitudes towards natural philosophy to the impact of the scientific revolution, the pre-Darwin heyday of natural theology, the rise of Darwinism in America, and the twentieth century physics revolution.
Dr. Travis explains why her course gives special attention to the “warfare thesis,” a late-19th century idea championed by materialists that claims science and Christianity are mortal enemies and have always been at odds. A closer look at the history reveals a very different picture. Judeo-Christian assumptions about the world actually fueled the rise of modern science, and many of the most notable figures of the scientific revolution were inspired because of their religious beliefs, not in spite of them.
Dig Deeper
- You’re invited: sign up for Dr. Travis’s course today!