Matter, Theories of

Introduction

The conflict between religion and science is a result of disagreement between religious leaders and social scientists on the issue whether God exists or not. The Christian Church initially rejected Dalton’s atomic theory that proposed that all matters were composed of indivisible and indestructible atomic building blocks. The Church believed that Dalton’s progressive views were heretic as they were associated with an atheistic philosophy. However, at the present time they are considered as the foundational principle of Chemistry. Long ago before Dalton, ancient Greek philosophers such as Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus are credited for originating, developing, and elaborating the theory of atomism, respectively. According to the atomists, the natural world is composed of individual physical bodies or atoms and void, i.e., empty space between atoms.

Theories of Matter: Christianity

Epicurus was among the first philosophers who developed the theory of materialism; he...