Kepler was NOT a Creation Scientist
I’ve mentioned before that I think part of my role as a public historian involves correcting errors that people try to foist upon people, involving history. Occasionally, as a freethinker, I also feel I need to intervene when people pushing a relgious worldview alter history. Not when religious folks interpret the past from a religious perspective. But when they deliberately misrepresent.
For example, the Creation Museum has a state of the art planetarium. Several years ago, its director, Dr. Jason Lisle, explained this in a video by saying the problem was, when you went to regular planetariums, “you get some good science, but you also get some evolutionary storytelling. You hear about the big bang and the billions of years…” and then he went on to say his mission was to show how his God had just made it look that way.
I thought, okay that’s kind of funny. But another part of the video stuck with me, and bothered me. Lisle started talking about Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion and how their cool new HD projector could create graphics that illustrate these laws. Then he breathlessly continued: “We can show people how the planets actually orbit. And Kepler of course was a Creation Scientist, and that’s something I didn’t learn about when I was in school but we’re gonna make sure people get that information here, that Kepler was a devout Christian and started from the Bible.”
Wait, what? Kepler was a Creation Scientist? Kepler lived from 1571 to 1630. He taught in Graz Austria until 1600, when he left to avoid being forced to convert to Catholicism (during the Counter Reformation). In 1610, Kepler heard of Galileo’s discoveries and his trouble with the Inquisition, and he published two books confirming Galileo’s telescope observations which were a great support to Galileo, since by this time Kepler was Imperial Mathematician to Emperor Rudolph II.
Why did Galileo need support? Because the church didn’t like his theories. The Inquisition had made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, and Galileo had recanted to avoid the fate of Giordano Bruno (burning at the stake). The Inquisition, you may recall, was free to torture and kill anyone who didn’t say they believed what the church insisted was Biblical truth. Truth you could be tortured until you agreed with “started from the Bible,” just like Dr. Lisle’s.
Yes, Kepler was a Christian. Nearly everybody was a Christian. They didn’t even have a word for western Europe; they called it Christendom. Kepler was an educated man. That means he had been to a seminary, because all the schools belonged to the church. So you’d expect to see some religion in his scientific writing — which was all published in Latin, by the way!
But the question is, do Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion incorporate his religious beliefs? Do they rely on miracles, or are they based on math? While it’s reasonable to suggest that Kepler’s willingness to challenge Biblical accuracy owes something to his religion, since he was living during the Protestant Reformation, the real lesson, I think, is that Kepler was a man of his times who managed to make a scientific discovery that transcended his times.
But he was deeply embedded in his times. In 1613 Kepler published another book analyzing the Bible and proving that based on its own internal chronology, Jesus could not have been born when the church said, but instead must have been born in 4BC. This might not seem like a big leap outside of the orthodox box, for those of us who might not even believe Jesus actually lived. But in its day, it was a pretty earthshaking “proof” of error in official church doctrine. In 1616 Kepler’s mother was accused by the church of being a witch, and held for four years. Kepler defended her at her trial, and she narrowly escaped being burned at the stake.
All of this, I hope, goes to show that Kepler was a complicated character living in a complicated time. Calling him a “Creation Scientist” as if that meant he stands arm in arm with people like Dr. Jason Lisle is absurd. It’s a perversion of history. And it made me wonder, why did they need to do this? Was it just because they never expected anyone would object? Or, can’t they find a single modern, world-class scientist who’s actually made a noteworthy contribution to astronomy or physics, who would consent to being called a Creation Scientist?