In 1755, a Boston clergyman, the Rev. Thomas Prince, claimed that the destruction wreaked by a Boston-area earthquake was a divine reaction to the invention of the lightning rod: So says author Scott Liell in an op-ed piece in today’s NY Times, noting that “Lightning rods meddled with God’s usual mode of reprimand, went this line of thinking, causing God to reach for another, more terrible weapon in his arsenal.” Liell comments:
At the end of the day, it was never faith per se that stood in opposition to science; Franklin was ultimately as much a believer as Thomas Prince. . . . It is the specific brand of faith that devalues reason and confers the mantle of infallible, absolute authority upon a leader or a book. It is only the priests of these sects, as Jefferson said, who “dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight.”
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