A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology, Vol. 1 of 2 V

A HISTORY OF THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE WITH THEOLOGY IN CHRISTENDOM, Vol. 1 of 2 Vols., by Andrew Dickson White. Prof. White was perhaps the leading scholar and Statesman at the turn of the Twentieth Century, his was the brains that created Cornell University - Cornell provided financing and Andrew D. White did the rest. He was President of the American Delegation at the Peace Conference of the Hague, and OH!, so much more. But here we are concerned with his battle with the clergy to keep superstition out of Cornell University that was what started Prof. White to research the extensive history of the ongoing battle of religion against every science and every attempt to move the world forward toward peace and progress. In the Introduction to his book Prof. White candidly writes of his purpose in writing this book: "I simply try to aid in letting the light of historical truth into that decaying mass of outworn thought which attaches the modern world to medieval conceptions of Christianity, and which still lingers among us - a most serious barrier to religion and morals, and a menace to the whole normal evolution of society. For behind this barrier also the flood is rapidly rising - the flood of increased knowledge and new thought; and this barrier also, though honeycombed and in many places thin, creates a danger - danger of a sudden breaking away, distressing and calamitous, sweeping before it not only outworn creeds and noxious dogmas, but cherished principles and ideals, and even wrenching out most precious religious and moral foundations of the whole social and political fabric. My hope is to aid - even if it be but a little - in the gradual and healthful dissolving away of this mass of unreason, that the stream of “religion pure and undefiled” may flow on broad and clear, a blessing to humanity." I personally have given up any hope that there is, has ever been, or can be a religion that will be a blessing to humanity. The evil and horror revealed in the true and unvarnished History of powerful churches and supernatural religions has so befouled the very word "religion" that I see not reason to retain it at all.
Emmett F. Fields