>Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2000 02:05:51 -0700
>From: Brady Hess <brady@coho.net>
>
>Hi all,
> Many of the men who made the most important, foundational discoveries in the
>field of science were Bible beleiving christians, who lived shortly after the
>reformation, whose driving motivation for understanding the world around them
>was their belief in a Creator God, a rational, thinking God, who created an
>orderly universe which could be better understood by thinking, rational people,
>"thinking God's thoughts after him".
> Here is a list of some of these men and their discoveries:
>
>Johann Kepler (1571-1630) Father of modern astronomy
>
>Francis Bacon (1561-1626) Father of the scientific method
>
>Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) Father of modern hydrostatics, hydrodynamics
>
>Robert Boyle (1627-1691) Father of modern chemistry, gas laws
>
>Isaac Newton (1642-1727) Gravitation, 3 laws of motion, calculus, the reflecting
>telescope
>
>Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) Father of modern taxonomy
>
>Michael Faraday (1791-1867) Electromagnetic inductance, electric generator,
>capacitance and measure thereof (farad), many other discoveries
>
>John Dalton (1766-1844) Father if modern atomic theory, recognized color
>blindness
>
>Samuel Morse (1791-1872) Father of modern telecommunications
>
>Matthew Maury (1806-1873) Father of modern hydrography and oceanography. Was
>inspired by the mention of the "paths of the sea", in psalm 8 of the Bible, to
>map the ocean currents.
>
>James Joule (1818-1889) Mechanical equivalent of heat, thermodynamics
>
>Louis Agazziz (1807-1873) Paleontology-built the great museum of comparative
>zoology at Harvard. Began the era of great museums of paleontology.
>
>Rudolph Virchow (1821-1902) Father of modern pathology
>
>Gregor Mendel (1882-1884) Father of genetics. Ignored until years after his
>death because of Darwin's theory.
>
>William Thompson (Lord Kelvin) (1824-1907) First and second laws of
>thermodynamics
>
>Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) Microbiology, pasteurization (never patented), various
>vaccines, improvements in Italian wines. Disproved the theory of spontaneous
>generation of flies and bacteria from non-living matter, under great opposition
>from the scientific community.
>
>Sir Joseph Lister (1831-1879) Father of modern antiseptic surgery. His ideas
>were heavily opposed and scoffed at in Darwinistic England. When tried out in
>Munich, Germany, the death rate frome post-surgical infection dropped from 80%
>to 0% and he became a hero.
>
>James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1875) Electromagnetic field theory, statistical
>physics
>
(truncated for brevity)

Hi,

Not to take us too far afield, but what is known about the actual beliefs of these individuals? Of the two that I know about (Kepler and Newton), both would certainly have been considered heretics had their beliefs been fully known at the time. Kepler's guiding spirits, etc. were not orthodox in any sense (I think he did take some flak about this), and there is a great deal of strong evidence that Newton was an Arian -- denied the Trinity -- (see Westfall's long biography).
I am curious because it seems that these two were not simply "believers", but applied their intellectual abilities and originality to religious as well as physical problems.

Pat Palmer