510 INTRODUCTION TO EVOLUTION 



like a tent or an upturned bowl above the flat earth (Job 37:18; Genesis 

 1:6-8; Isaiah 40:22; Psalm 104:2). They thought that the earth was sta- 

 tionary ( Psalm 93:1; Psalm 1 04 : 5 ) and that the sun, moon, and stars moved 

 through the heavens for the special purpose of illuminating the earth 

 (Genesis 1 : 14-18). They thought that there was a sea above the sky (Gene- 

 sis 1:7; Psalm 148:4) and that there were windows in the sky through which 

 the rain came down (Psalm 78:23; Genesis 7:11). They thought various 

 other things that we know to be incorrect, but this sample will suffice. 



I hope you will take your Bibles and read the references given above. If 

 you do I am sure you will be struck by one thought — that the references to 

 the nature of the universe are purely incidental to the writers' main objec- 

 tives in writing. The fact that the passages reveal something of the writers' 

 ideas of the universe is entirely secondary and of no consequence to the 

 writings themselves. Many of the references are to the great religious 

 poems which we call the Psalms. Their authors were writing of religion; if 

 in doing so they made an inaccurate allusion to the nature of the universe 

 that is a fact of no real importance. Their writing stands or falls on the 

 basis of its worth to religion, not of its worth to science. 



What we have just been saying seems pretty obvious, doesn't it? It seems 

 so obviously true to me that I often wonder how anyone can think other- 

 wise. Yet people have thought otherwise, vehemently; and some people 

 still do. Take the matter of the earth's being stationary, for example. When 

 the Copernican astronomy became established, with its proof that the earth 

 revolves (instead of the sun, moon, and stars revolving around the earth as 

 they seem to do), various religious leaders were extremely upset. Father 

 Inchofer, for example, "went off the deep end" as follows: "The opinion 

 of the earth's motion is of all heresies the most abominable, the most 

 pernicious, the most scandalous; the immovabihty of the earth is thrice 

 sacred; argument against the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, 

 and the incarnation should be tolerated sooner than an argument to prove 

 that the earth moves" (Fosdick, 1926). And even such a generally wise 

 religious leader as Martin Luther attacked Copernicus in these intemper- 

 ate words: "People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show 

 that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the 

 moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, 

 which of all systems is, of course, the very best. This fool wishes to reverse 

 the entire science of astronomy, but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua 

 commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth." 



What was the matter with such people? They failed to make the differ- 



