John Adams, Harvard graduate, mentioned in his diary an earthquake he felt in Braintree in 1755 -- it was a few days after the Lisbon earthquake, but before Boston knew about the Lisbon earthquake. I forget how many days after, I think a couple of weeks. Adams mentioned chimneys being damaged, among other things. I think it is an interesting tale to recount, because I think it shows just how little things have changed in 250 years.
Benjamin Franklin had conducted experiments, famous not only in America but also in Europe, demonstrating that lightning was electrical current seeking grounding to earth. He had recommended placing lightning rods on houses, church steeples, chimneys, et cetera, to intercept and channel the electricity to ground without actually hitting and destroying the houses, steeples, chimneys, and so forth. This was seen by some as a rather brazen attempt to insert human action as a mitigating effect on God's wrath, and of course caused great consternation among a certain segment of God's chosen, in this case a fundamentalist Boston preacher named John Prince. Fundamentalist is a more modern coinage -- he was just a Puritan, a spiritual descendant of Increase and Cotton Mather, famous Harvard grads and Puritan preachers, father and son on different sides of the Salem witchcraft trials. (Yes, even in the late 17th century there were autobiographies and self-serving spin, after the fact, about what one really thought of witches and the trials.)
John Prince railed against the placement of these iron points as being against God's plan. Earthquakes were God's direct intervention in the affairs of man, being sent to, a., warn us of our sinfulness and lack of adherence to God's laws, or, b., punishment for our sinfulness and lack of adherence to God's laws, or both. If you've ever listened to Pat Robertson or James Dobson, you understand John Prince. (Katrina as response to gays in New Orleans, anyone?)
John Winthrop, Harvard professor and one of John Adams more influential professors, motivated by ensuring using scientific discoveries to promote the public good, was moved to give the scientific response to Prince's sermons. (Condoms and Dr. Joycelyn Elders, anyone?) They alternated publishing pamphlets on the subject, and frankly I don't know how it all played out. I see lightning rods still, though. News of the Lisbon earthquake would have arrived during the pendency of this great lightning rod debate; maybe it ended it or intensified it. I don't know. Most likely, then as now, people went on believing what they believed, despite any sort of outside evidence.
The conflict between science and religion goes on, of course, and it is sad sometimes to realize the silliness of the arguments. Some of them take on a sort of Greek mythology aura, gods struggling with humans, with other gods, with the natural world. Sort of like John Prince. I mean, if he believed in an omnipotent God who sent earthquakes to warn and/or punish sinners, what possible shield could a lightning rod be? But people do get worked up about it.
For his part, John Adams and the major founding fathers tended to Deism; basically that God created the universe according to natural law and rules, within which we operate. You've heard it described as God winding up the clock and letting the universe play out. The founders believed it, as did Voltaire, a contemporary, whose Candide was prompted by the Lisbon earthquake. (These things have a life of their own -- Leonard Bernstein's Candide, to a libretto by Lillian Hellman, is a modern classic). Candide was about an eponymous man, Candide, whose saga contradicts the prevailing outlook of mid-18th Century Europe that the world and all that happens therein is a result of God's beneficence and master plan. Events like the Lisbon earthquake caused thinking people to question if that could really be true; and if it was true, what was the purpose of 100,000 dead Portugese (and more in other places in Portugal and Africa) Christians sitting in church? I have no way of knowing, but later in life John Adams mentioned in a slightly self-congratulatory way that he hadn't attended a church service in over 50 years, and I can't help but think (wishful thinking?) that the Lisbon earthquake weighed on his mind. Two hundred and fifty years of soul searching, from Schliermacher to Tillich and Niebuhr(s) and we're still grappling with the issue of why bad things happen to good people.
Here is a frivolous question, but one you can grapple with yourself: If the whole earth flooded (enough flood to cover Mt. Everest, we presume), notwithstanding where the water came from, where would it recede to?
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