Page:The Necessity of Atheism (Brooks).djvu/159

 The human race has suffered three grave humiliations: when Copernicus showed that the earth was not the center of the universe; when Darwin proved that man's origin was not the result of direct creation; when Freud explained that man was not the master of his own thoughts or actions. Author:Llewelyn Powys

the writings of the Greek and Roman philosophers are found the germinal concepts of geological truths. But as Christianity took control of the world instead of a steady progression of knowledge in this field there was a distinct retrogression. According to the prevailing belief the earth was soon to be destroyed and the collecting of knowledge was futile and any study of its nature was vain.

St. Jerome stated that the broken and twisted crust of the earth exhibited the wrath of God against sin. Tertullian asserted that fossils resulted from the flood of Noah. A scientific explanation of fossil remains was attempted by De Clave, Bitaud, and De Villon in the seventeenth century. The theological faculty of Paris protested against the scientific doctrine as unscriptural, destroyed their treatises, and banished their authors-from Paris.

In the middle pf the eighteenth century Buffon, in France, produced a thesis attempting to state simple geological truths. The theological faculty of the Sorbonne i57