Last edited Sat Feb 22, 2014, 08:22 PM - Edit history (1)

That's silly. For many reasons.

Among others? Italy and the pope benefited from Galileo's many inventions and engineering ability; more than vice-versa. The Pope was not so much the benefactor, but beneficiary.

For the author to proudly, smugly imply that the Church was completely responsible for Galileo's success therefore, is just wrong.

And indeed, much of the greatest work by Galileo was in spite of the churches' attempts to stop him. The church often opposed science in this era. In Padua, the church outlawed the dissection of human bodies that was necessary for the advancement of medical science, for example.

This is a typically patronizing, proud, vain bit of church propaganda. Believers imagining that they themselves are the real source of all that is good. Rather than what they all too frequently were: the enemy of real progress.

... leads to the typically Catholic smug view of everything: the Church is really responsible for all that is good. All rebels and others are just ingrates.

Even the original author caters to a fourth, still-earlier source: the now-popular revisionist propaganda that the Church never opposed science. And/or that Galileo and others were not punished for supporting Science, but for blasphemy.

Worse, all this pro-church revisionism, is smugly announced as the new true knowledge.

The church opposes science a million times a day, when it promises literal "miracles."

Arguably, real religion and science ARE compatible. But not classic Church culture, with its magical promises of explicitly "supernatural" miracles.

Is that a typically smug piece of bigotry from you?

Where "no salvation" is possible except through that Church?

The Church that claims it is responsible for all of science and civilization?

The Church that finally has to be warned about "triumphalism"?

The "infallible" Pope that invites us to kiss his ring?

The Catholics that are absolutely sure they (and possibly only they) are going to Heaven?

The Church that is the true heir of Pharisaic self-satisfaction?

I spent a decade debating self-satisfied, proud, vain, conservative Catholics. Who were absolutely convinced that they and their priests were the word of God, no less.

It is hard to imagine a more vain and proud and self-satisfied people.

vain, conservative catholics.

Would you be willing to share that?

Under various names; including Brettongarcia.

My bad.

You're really doubling down with your bias, aren't you?

Go ahead, I'll give you one more chance to redeem yourself. After all, I'm Catholic.

BTW, pompous, supercilious posturing laced with bigotry is not debate. Not for ten years. Not for ten minutes.

include the lady you claim to have been employed by, Jackie Kennedy? How about her husband, who appears as your avatar?

You need a subscription to read the article. Here's the teaser:

It largely agrees with the article you cited. Bruno was a brilliant at many things, but not very skilled at politics. According to that article, his execution was probably brought about by inadvisedly appealing over the head of the chief inquisitor.

Rug's post ultimately links to a recent, already-infamous semi-academic article. An article which claims that the Catholic Church never opposed Science. Claiming that it silenced Bruno and Galileo not for science, but for simple heresy; disobedience of the Church. I'll be trying to dig up the originating author and article; (through the author "White"?). In fact, I'm taking on that infamous article at length now, around the Internet.

What's wrong with that article? One link to current fallout from it, above, insists that Bruno was opposed not for science, but for an impolitic heresy. When say, he opposed "virgin birth." But I note there that this "heresy" was in turn motivated by science or empirical experience; it was science after all which had suggested that virgin births were unlikely.

So you can't really entirely separate even Bruno's impolitic "heresies" entirely, from the Renaissance's support for Science and Reason. Reason and Science in fact soon lead to conflict with traditional (if not modern) churches. Bruno himself to be sure, was cranky; and he isn't the best example of Church suppression of Science. But the suppression of Galileo was even more serious. And against the infamous recent article, ultimately the Church WAS suppressing these guys for, ultimately, science and reason.

And if the service of science required that they directly confront the Church and its promises of supernatural miracles? Then today even the Church has begun to acknowledge that it might have sinned, itself, now and then. And needed some confrontation. After Bruno and Galileo, eventually Luther and the Protestant Reformation confronted the Church even more directly. And THEIR complaints against Catholicism were taken very, very seriously by much of Europe. As many Europeans finally sent armies in part, against the Church.

To this day you can visit ruined Catholic religious buildings; burned by Protestant England, as it ultimately defended itself against invading Catholic armies and navies (the Spanish Armada and so forth).

And to this day, you will find many news articles dwelling in effect on the irony of the Church that for years, defended child-molesting priests for Jesus.

Please provide the link to the claim you are referring to - you know, the claim that the Catholic Church never opposed science. James Hoskins article does not make that claim - actually it makes a quite different one:

... The trick in this school, is accomplished largely by TONE and RHETORICAL METHOD, not explicit argument.

As you rightly note, in this case technically, the author acknowledges some - even "a lot" - of agreement between religion and science. But then? After all, he is breezing by this very, very hard point, in friendly colloquial language: "Sure" he says breezily, there have been cases of "conflict." Not to say "murder" of dissidents. But after this very brief bow to some very hard conflicts, the author quickly shifts attention to "a lot of agreement." Such a cheerful voice, glossing over the murder of "heretics."

Then the author goes on to make something very much like a categorical claim I alluded to: he implies in effect that Bruno especially was prosecuted almost SOLELY because of conflict with the church on theological or doctrinal grounds; not scientific ones. But as I'm noting here, theological and scientific conflicts mix; often science conflicts with doctrine. For example? The original author notes that Bruno didn't like the "doctrine" of "virgin birth." That's why Bruno was killed, he suggests. But? I'm noting here that after all, it is science that leads most of us to oppose the notion of virgin birth; science and even simple agronomy tell us that virgins don't give birth, generally.

So the author's attempt to distinguish theological from scientific conflicts, just doesn't really work. Science almost inevitably conflicts with doctrine.

I'm still looking for the original article (s) that started this thing. Probably it's not our author at the Pop Culture and Jesus site. (By an employee of Heritage Christian Academy, it seems). Ultimately he suggests there is an allegedly objective "History of Science" anthology on this, debunking the "jailing" of Galileo and so forth. But whoever the ultimate author is, there are a lot of things I don't like about this now very influential school.

Yes, to be sure, there are many agreements between religion and science; finding them is my life's work these days. But? Let's not breeze by the disagreements between the Roman Catholic Church especially, and science. To be sure, the conflict with Bruno is not the strongest case in researching such conflicts; but this school even minimizes the conflict with Galileo. Intimating that it was "not really" based on the conflict between science and church.

Technically, this article/school might seem to barely stay within the margins of acceptability; technically it does mention conflicts. But in its rhetorical minimization of religious attacks on religion, its emphasis at times seems to be breezily pooh-poohing the whole notion. Sugar-coating those conflicts.

Personally, I am deeply committed to outlining the many ties between Science, and Religion. But I don't feel any more that THIS particular approach - simply pooh-poohing the very real historical conflicts - is the right way to do it, in the long run. We need to face those conflicts and work them out explicitly; not simply gloss over them.

Possibly the author never says the Church "never" opposed science. (Or perhaps he does, in the case of Bruno at least).

In any case? Better said, the Church rarely TOTALLY. But often its opposition was extreme enough. Cheerfully glossing over the church's execution of Bruno, the censure of Galileo, and then the many other cases of direct conflicts, is not really the best way to see the fuller truth.

You made an unqualified assertion:

Your assertion is not true.

My original objection in any case was not the later article(s); but Rug's excerpt from V's version.

Rug's excerpt, taken alone, pictures Bruno and Galileo as ingrates; ungratefully biting the Papal hand that fed and nurtured them. While the whole school also minimizes their scientific or rational conflicts. The conflict between science and the church. And though it adamantly denies it, at times this school seems rather strangely ... CONTENT. That Galileo was censured. And Bruno, executed.

"Sure," this school breezily admits, casually, the Catholic Church censured and killed lots of people. But probably not because they were rational or scientific.

Or heck, lots of people, aristocrats, killed folks. So let's just move on. Bruno was a grumpy old guy anyway.

"Science" as such, did not actually exist in Bruno's day. So to say that "science ... suggested that virgin births were unlikely" is silly. Anyway, Bruno was not the scientific martyr legend claims he is. Yes, he was executed for formal heresy, but his heresies were denial of the Trinity, denial of the divinity of Christ, denial of the efficacy of the sacraments and so on; not the idea that there might be multiple worlds in the universe. Nicholas of Cusa, some years previously, had advanced that idea; Nicholas became a bishop, and later a cardinal, and died in his bed.

Galileo ran into trouble because he publicly insulted Pope Urban VIII (who had been his friend for many years), by calling Urban a simpleton in his Dialogue of the Two World Systems. Urban, not surprisingly, took offense.

Galileo also brought trouble on himself in other ways. The Vatican assigned two Jesuits, Christoph Scheiner and Orazio Grassi, to look into Galileo's science. Both had solid credentials as astronomers. However, Galileo had managed to alienate both of them. Schiener was one of the first astronomers to observe sunspots and was, as far as he knew, the first to describe them in a scientific paper. (In fact, the first paper on sunspots was published the previous year by David Fabricius, but his paper was unknown outside of Germany.) Galileo attempted to grab the glory of having first seen sunspots from Scheiner, and compounded this by plagiarizing Scheiner in his own paper.

Grassi and Galileo disagreed on the nature of comets. What made things worse was that Grassi was right and Galileo was wrong. Grassi had observed a comet over a period of time, and had noticed that the moon moved faster in the sky than the comet did; Grassi reasonably (and correctly) assumed that the comet was further from the earth than the moon was. Galileo believed that they were optical illusions in the atmosphere. Galileo wrote an essay, Il Saggiatore -- "The Assayer" -- attacking Grassi and his theory. This essay is still taught in Italian schools as a masterpiece of polemical writing. Naturally, having been held up to ridicule, Grassi was no friend to Galileo.

Both of these men could have helped Galileo. But neither one had the slightest inclination to do so.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monatsbilder_im_Palazzo_Schifanoia
and integrate them into your thinking, just as the Egyptians of old drew down star-daimons ot make their statues move!
your memory theater or palace in fact thinks back AT you

(and some history of his sanctification)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/christandpopculture/2014/02/on-the-anniversary-of-his-execution-what-can-we-learn-from-the-first-martyr-of-science/