'...early in the fifth century, Saint Augustine noted that perceptive non-Christians really did know a great deal about 'the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth'. Given such able observers, he held that it was 'a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics''. -Noll, Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind, p. 100.