The purpose of this Mytake is to discuss how religious inspiration has been used to discover amazing scientific discoveries. I find this interesting not because religion can be grounded in fact but it can be useful to test a hypothesis, and gain greater in site about the natural world, and if you are a believer get closer to god.
So the case study is William Buckland, who was a 19th century theologian, priest, geologist, and paleontologist. Buckland is attributed to several serious scientific discoveries, I'm going to discuss two important ones, firstly the first scientific documented dinosaur remains and the lady of paviland.
The dinosaur that buckland describes is a a robust carnivores therapod, like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. He called it a prehistoric reptile, and a Megalosaurus. Strangely enough when Buckland set out on many of his scientific endeavors, he was looking for proof of the universal flood, in the story of Noah's Ark. Discovering a dinosaur was probably the last thing he was expecting, and subsequently lead him to question the factual truth of the timeframes for the planet, god creation according to the book of genesis, it was instrumental in aiding many of the scientists of the time to scrap the idea of a great flood event and assess the likely hood of glaciation have a powerful affect on the geology of Britain, it was obvious that in the past existed previously unknown now extinct species of animals and humans probably were not around when these animals thrived on the planet.
The lady of Paviland was discovered in a limestone cave on the coast of south wales, Buckland went to excavate the cave complex because he had herd rumours that elephant remains had been found inside the caves, he also wanted to see if this site could provide proof for a universal flood event.
To get to this cave Buckland had to abseil down a cliff face, when inside he made detailed drawings of the cave site and discovered the human remains of what he called the lady of paviland, it was a complete specimen covered in a red ochre type paint with the body he discovered jewelry made out of sea shells and ivory.
He incorrectly assumed that the remains were of a female possibly from the times of Roman conquest of Britain she was buried in the cave because she was either a prostitute or a witch. Knowing at the time the the elephant remains were prehistoric, he incorrectly thought that the dates for both these specimens was of totally different ages.
Unfortunately for Buckland radio carbon dating was not available for another 100 years, so he had no way of knowing that what he had actually discovered was the oldest recorded skeleton of prehistoric man found in English, and based on other similar findings the burial is the first known ceremonial funeral rites of early man, now known to date back to 33,000 years ago.
So in conclusion, religion can be inspiration for great minds to discover new things about the world, unfortunately for William Buckland none of his findings came anywhere close to explaining the great flood that is talked about in the bible but possibly the scientific evidence that he did find is far more incredible anyway.
Thanks for reading.
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