[Photo from the Manga Bible]Humans have always stood awestruck before the power of nature. Mostly they have attributed storms, and thunder and lightning to the whims of a god or multiple gods.
In ancient Greece and Rome, however, there were those who strove to interpret nature's tempests via observation and human reason. Plato and Aristotle, as well as a number of others, noted that thunder and lightning were natural occurences and it was not necessary to attribute them to divinities.
In Rome, Lucretius and Seneca and Pliny came to similar conclusions, and although none of these ancient sages devised a theory that would be acceptable today, their work represents the beginnings of scientific thought.
That all ended, however, when the Christian church was enthroned as the religion of the Roman empire, one of the most tragic events in human history. Think about all the wonderful discoveries that would have been made by men of science if the Church had not shut down scientific study in favor of a "sacred science based upon the letter of Scripture and on theology?" Where might we be now in terms of medicine, cosmology, psychology, biology, anthropology, etc., if men had been able to observe and reason and create working hypotheses without having to rearrange truth to conform to Biblical mythologies and Churchly doctrines?
It was the church father, St. Augustine, who laid out the basic principle with which all theoretical suppositions must agree:
"Nothing is to be accepted save on the authority of Scripture, since greater is that authority than all the powers of the human mind." [My emphasis]
A self-proclaimed infidel said that, because of Augustine "there were developed, in every field, theological views of science which have never led to a single truth--which, without exception, have forced mankind away from the truth, and have caused Christendom to stumble for centuries into abysses of error and sorrow."
Thus, Tertullian, an early father of the church, introduced the biblical "truth" that lightning was the same as the fires of hell. For years the Church taught this as truth, and pointed to the sulpherous smell that sometimes accompanied thunderstorms as proof.
St. Ambrose insisted that thunder is caused by the winds breaking through the solid firmament [heavens], and cited as his "proof" this sentence from Amos: "Him that establisheth the thunders."
In the sixth century, Cosmas Indicopleustes concluded from his reading of the ninth chapter of Hebrews that "the earth is a flat parallelogram, and that from its outer edges rise immense walls supporting the firmament."
He also believed that because the Psalms speak of "waters that be above the heavens," there are solid arches bearing a vault "over the terrestrial universe" and that vault contains "the waters." The vault has windows which are the "windows of heaven" in Genesis, and they are opened and closed by angels when God feels like sending or withholding rain upon the earth.
The Church thought this to be a tremendous contribution to human knowledge and it served as orthodox doctrine for many years.
Another theological man of science was Bede the Venerable. He developed an understanding of the earth, the firmament, angels, waters, ice and fire from the Bible. His theory surmises that the air in the lower heavens is filled with "humid exhalations ... sent off from the earth and that in this are lightning, hail, Snow, ice, and tempests, finding proof of this in the one hundred and forty-eighth Psalm, where these are commanded to 'praise the Lord from the earth.'"
Many would-be scholars used Bede as a point of origin. One such claimed that earthquakes and tides derive from the leviathan mentioned in the Bible. The leviathan holds his tail in such a way that it is burnt by the sun. He gets angry and tries to grab the sun and the motion of his indignation shakes the earth. The tides are caused by the leviathan drinking huge masses of waves and then belching them forth creating an alternating suction and belching motion.
By the beginning of the ninth century, the theory that the firmament [heaven or sky] was made of ice had become widely accepted. That's how the heavens can hold up the "waters above the heavens." This notion was par for the course for centuries and taught in various manual and catechisms.
In the 12th century, scholarship had evolved but had not improved. One father of the Church attempted to understand the Psalmists "arrows of the thunder" as being derived from a dry vapour coming up from the earth where it meets the heat of the upper air, and then colliding with a cloud, turns into rain, which becomes like flour that's turned into dough but being too hot to be extinguished is sharpened at the lower end "and so blazing arrows, cleaving and burning everything they touch."
Albert the Great, said the thunderbolt is not merely fire, but derives from black clouds that contain a lot of mud. When the mud is baked by intense heat, it forms a fiery red or black stone that falls from the sky, tearing beams and crushing walls. Albert said he had seen that happen with his own eyes.
The situation does not get better in later centuries. Theological scientists began to speak of God's divine wrath as causing lightning, hailstorms, hurricanes, etc. This was not really new, as churchly authority had always insisted that God was the cause of all natural events (and unnatural events!).
Some specifics: Villani, a Florentine historian, said that the floods and fires which wracked the city of Florence resulted from the pride the citizens felt for Florence, and their lack of gratitude for what God had given them, the latter referring probably to the fact they didn't really care much for religious ritual.
Cesarius, a Cistercian monk, told of a number of ways that God brandishes his powers. He claimed that a steward of his monastery was threatened by a robber, but the steward prayed and there came a clap of thunder that sent the bandit fleeing in fright. Cesarius relates also how 20 men in a Saxon theater were struck down because of their perfidy, but a priest was spared, not because he was better, but because God respected his profession. In another example, Cesarius says that the priest of Treves went to ring the bell to announce a storm when a bolt of lightning hit him, tearing his clothes off and consuming parts of his body, showing as a result that he was being punished for the sins of vanity and unchastity.
Divine interference in the affairs of humans was a staple of orthodox thought. The English reformer, Tyndale, noted that it thundered and rained when God gave Israel a king. A religious soul in Germany, angry about the new Gregorian calendar claimed that God was against it because "violent storms raged over almost all Germany during the very ten days which the Pope had taken out for the correction of the year, and that great floods began with the first days of the corrected year."
Many Catholic and Protestant theologians expounded on how the thunderbolt was one of God's favorite weapons to chastise or punish the disobedient and the ungodly. For example, Pastor Georg Nuber in Protestant Swabia wrote a book of "weather sermons" in which he proclaimed that storms, floods, droughts, lightning, and hail are direct punishments from God for human sins. There are five sins that God especially hates, says Nuber, and he punishes these with lightning and hail: impenitence, incredulity, neglect of the repair of churches, fraud in the payment of tithes to the clergy, and oppression of subordinates."
Time moved on, but again, not much changed. At the dawn of the 18th century, a famous Swiss mathematician said that the elements are without a doubt the voice of God. Increase Mather in New England preached about "The Voice of God in Stormy Winds." He said he knew several blasphemers who had been struck by lightning.
In 1870, the Bishop of Verdun bemoaned the fact that the drought which had so devastated his diocese was due to the fact that the people had broken the Sabbath.
All of the above is prelude. In the 21st century millions of the minions of the churches, temples and mosques still believe that the tempests and their acompanying miseries are related in some way to the god in which they believe.
There has been one major change, however. Religious believers today are less certain that God sends the thunderbolt, or the lightning or the tornado, or the hurricane as punishment for sins - either of commission or omission. While they may still refer to them as "acts of God," the majority clearly think of them in more natural terms, as acts of "Mother Nature," this cosmological creature being god-like, but not god herself.
What is truly fascinating, however, is that when a tempest touches down to wreak death and destruction upon a community or an area, the survivors tend to talk about how god saved them; how the deity somehow invaded the tornadic space to reach out a saving hand and pull them free of danger. They have absolutely no evidence of this, except for the fact that they're still alive. I've heard preachers, too, speak in those terms - thanking God that he spared the people who were spared.
The question that seldom, if ever, gets addresssed, however, is why God spared the ones he did and not all the people? Were the other folks greater sinners? Were they so old they didn't matter anymore? Were they of the wrong religion? And the related, perhaps more important question, is simply this: Why did god reign down all that death and destruction in the first place?
There have always been ministerial or priestly quacks. It is our particular misfortune to have so many in this great land. I'm speaking now of the likes of John Hagee, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and others who follow in the 2000-year old churchly tradition where ignorance is preached as truth, and where the mantle of Biblical inerrancy defiles both science and reason.
In some basic ways, these preachers have never left the dark or the middle ages. They would be right at home in the 6th or the 12th century. And while they are accepting of the numerous technological benefits that science has provided our modern age [note their cars, homes and toys], they decry the substance of scientific thought that made such things possible, and impose upon their followers a theological "science" more at home in the dark ages or the middle ages than the 21st century. They seek answers to our problems in ancient theological writings, which may be of historical interest, and even have great value as literature, but have no value whatsoever in understanding the world in which we live.
Thus John Hagee claims Hurricane Katrina was punishment for the sins (mostly homosexual) of the people of New Orleans. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell both spoke of 9/11 as being God's wrath wreaked upon the United States for such perceived ills as homosexuality, and abortion. Robertson has also threatened Disney World with God's elemental destruction because of its openness toward gays.
What's extremely disturbing is that there are thousands of others walking in their footsteps; fundamentalist preachers who read the Bible through the lens of a perverted and twisted theology, who exhibit no knowledge of either the biblical writings or human history, yet proclaim god's will for our nation and the world.
It gets worse. John Hagee, captive to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, thinks he can turn to a monstrous piece of ancient scribbling, The Revelation of John in the New Testament, and through a tortured, incomprehensible and nonsensical exegisis conclude that we are living in the "last days," that the so-called "armageddon" is just around the corner, and that we must attack Iran in order to bring about the so-called "rapture."
This kind of "theological science" was wrong in the 3rd century, the 6th century, the 9th century, the 12 century...and it is wrong today.
It is literally insane for someone to not only actually believe these things but urge our political leaders to act upon them! We can only conclude that John Hagee is mad.
Hagee and the others promote all their perversions in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish person of the first century of the Common Era who most assuredly would have had nothing to do with any of these people, but rather would cast them from his presence, with words similar to these: "Be gone, I never knew you!"
(Thanks to Andrew White for much of this information.)
