Apr 10 2025 67 mins 4
Many people think that the church burned scientists and their books during the Dark Ages; they would be wrong …. and here’s why
We’re still discussing the book Of Popes and Unicorns: Science, Christianity, and how the Conflict Thesis fooled the world.
Last week, we spoke to one of the authors of that book — an academic historian (James C. Ungureanu) — about what this Conflict Thesis is (“the church and science are inherently at war … always have been, always will be”) and who it was that originated the idea (two 19th century American scholars: John William Draper and Andrew Dixon White).
This week, we’re talking to his co-author (David Hutchings) about how and why the Conflict Thesis is so embedded in the 21st century Western zeitgeist. As a testament to how embedded that is, Luke talked to a dozen non-experts (friends, family, neighbors) and asked them straightforward questions that give glimpses of this underlying Conflict Thesis thinking.
In particular, we talked about Galileo’s story, Bruno’s story, stories of the Church burning science books and even whole libraries, and the period in human history commonly referred to as the Dark Ages when the church is said to have suppressed science forcefully and brutally. In each case, we explored:
- what my polling group have heard and seem to remember about those stories
- how they’ve received those versions of the stories through science textbooks (high school, college, university), documentaries, TV shows (Family Guy), popular books and movies (Dan Brown’s series of books — Da Vinci Code; Angels & Demons; Origin; Inferno — have sold over 250 million copies worldwide and are published in 56 languages), and popular influencers (Carl Sagan; Neil DeGrasse Tyson; Richard Dawkins; the late Christopher Hitchens; Sam Harris; Joe Rogan; and others)
- and how the version of those stories held by academic historians does not at all involve martyrdom, book burning, or suppression of science for theological reasons, and that the period of time which non-experts label “the Dark Ages” were actually a period of prolific scientific discovery, development of technology, and the active pursuit of such knowledge through logic, reason and wide-spread publication …. all largely at the hands of monks, priests, Christian thinkers, and the Church!
As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …
Click here for more information about David Hutchings’ books, including the one we discussed today: Of Popes and Unicorns.
If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like our mini-series of episodes on:
- a Christian response to Evolution (11 episodes)
- Young Earth Creationism (9 episodes)
- Intelligent Design (8 episodes)
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