Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 LordofHats wrote:
[Because the Dominicans sucked at math, and like bad elementary school students, decided it was stupid. And if you'd really read my post, you'd know the answer to this. I even named the specific chapters of Pslams. Also because the Domincans pretty much ran the Inquisition, so when they came across Galileo's letter which mixed mathematical proofs and theology, they didn't have a hard time getting him put on trial for publishing subversive philosophy. It helps that they always stacked the Jury in their favor.

I feel like you're missing my point. If there was no special conflict between religion and science, how were the Dominicans able to trump up charges against him? Of what nature were those charges? What institution gave entertained those charge? What institution are the Dominicans a part of?

What institution produced this: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/condemnation.html ?

 LordofHats wrote:
[Now, you could easily argue the Dominicans were anti-science Right after they finished with Galileo they went on to go after Kepler who'd committed a similar blunder (and as a Lutheran, Kepler didn't get any help).

The Dominicans and the Inquisition are and were at the time a sanctioned, recognized part of the Catholic Church. Sounds like this qualifies as a special conflict between religion and science to me.

 LordofHats wrote:
as one. Another was proximity to Crusader Kingdoms who had direct contact to the Islamic world which had been steadily advancing mathematics, astronomy, and medicine for some time (the Italians were the primary financial backers behind the Crusades and controlled the ports and trade routes along the Mediterranean and after the weakening of Byzantium, the Black Sea). A third was the concentration of clergy in Italy, which produced a higher concentration of people capable of reading. The Jesuits were also located in Italy for a time, though I forget where they went after they were thrown out of Venice and the Jesuits were the opposite of the Dominicans. They actually really liked math.

Sounds good to me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:
Which doesn't even remotely begin to explain the Galileo Affair, consisting of two trials, a letter, a book, some monks who didn't like math, some monks who did like math, and some bad decision making.

Its a nice story. In the end, this was issued: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/condemnation.html

This is an official record. Whatever the motives people had, etc. if there was no special conflict between science and religion, this document would never have been produced, because the following is nonsensical without a special conflict between science and religion.

The proposition that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture.

So we can all agree that the US government, and it's people as a whole, is as anti-science as the Catholic Church was during the Middle Ages?

 d-usa wrote:
So we can all agree that the US government, and it's people as a whole, is as anti-science as the Catholic Church was during the Middle Ages?

No not at all. At this point, I (at least) have gone off on numerous tangents from my original point.

 Kain wrote:
I'm a very laidback atheist.

If it makes people happy and they're not hurting anyone with it they should be free to worship whatever they wish. I personally don't count myself as a believer as I don't see any convincing evidence for the supernatural or believe that any conception of it that humanity has produced would be at all accurate, but it's generally harmless enough.

What I am against however, is fanatacism. Be it militant atheism or fundamentalist religions. If people are killing and dying for it that's generally not a good thing.

Best post in the thread.

 dæl wrote:
Nuclear weapons are neither good nor evil, how they are used is what defines that, be it to murder millions or to prevent a country from engaging in an invasion thus saving millions.

That isn't the same as being morally neutral though, same as science. It will either morally good or bad depending on use, though often it will be both, the same as science. You can't divorce them from their use, the same as you can't divorce yourself from your shadow on a sunny day; it isn't that it is neutral, it is nothing until it is acted upon. Creating a context where a human device is separate from humans is a bit of a cop out, which is why I said that it science doesn't exist in a vacuum.

I also disagree that religion never changes. Religion changes all the time as people interpret, discuss, and have dialogues about it. Religion today is different from religion 40 years ago, 100 years ago, 200 years ago, ad infinitum.

 jasper76 wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So we can all agree that the US government, and it's people as a whole, is as anti-science as the Catholic Church was during the Middle Ages?

No not at all. This is the product of probably multiple tangents by now.

There are, right now, certain things that are not allowed to be studied by government agencies or independent agencies using government funds.

So that makes Americans and the US anti-science by the same standards as applied to the church.

 d-usa wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So we can all agree that the US government, and it's people as a whole, is as anti-science as the Catholic Church was during the Middle Ages?

No not at all. This is the product of probably multiple tangents by now.

There are, right now, certain things that are not allowed to be studied by government agencies or independent agencies using government funds.

So that makes Americans and the US anti-science by the same standards as applied to the church.

I don't think so. Not allowing use of funds for certain things is a whole different ballpark than criminalizing scientific publications.

 jasper76 wrote:
If there was no special conflict between religion and science, how were the Dominicans able to trump up charges against him?

A number of ways. One was that science didn't exist in the 17th century. As in the word science. What we call science, they called philosophy, and philosophy at that time was very broad, pretty much encompassing all academic pursuits (including theology, astronomy, and math). Because there was so much overlap between scientists and clergy at the time, this meant that the two were typically viewed as complimentary. To understand the Galileo Affair, we have to recognize that a distinction between science and religion was very vague and ambiguous.

To give more explanation to this, in the Catholic Church was a body called the College of Mathematics. It was home to some of the leading mathematicians of the era and was run by our friendly math lovers, the Jesuits.

Galileo himself, seems to have foreseen the eventually split of the two as he treats the world of natural philosophy as distinct from the matters of the faith in his work (a discussion of this matter is how he initially met Robert Bellarmine), though in his letter to Christina, he speaks at length that his science couldn't contradict the faith. The problem he ran into was many clergy took issue with his arguments over how scripture should be read. Galileo's fellow astronomers who didn't support the Copernican model got involved after the Dominicans began moving against his philosophical outlook, and end up conflating the scientific and religious issues together so that when the Inquisition's decision was made it wasn't about Galileo so much anymore as it was about the Heliocentric model.

What institution are the Dominicans a part of?

As an order they were primarily evangelist preachers. I'm not sure how it happened as the events probably go much further back than the Galileo Affair. By the time of Galileo's trial the Dominicans had a controlling share of the Inquisition.

A pet theory I entertain is that the Dominicans recognized Galileo's argument as stemming from Augustinian theology. They might have taken this as an insult, as their order was bound by the Rule of St. Augustine. When they found Galileo's work contradictory to their faith, they possibly viewed his arguments as an affront to the memory of St. Augustine and taken it very personally.

Sounds like this qualifies as a special conflict between religion and science to me.

And as I've explained, that's too simplistic a view. No one even paid attention to the Heliocentric debate until Galileo produced an theological argument in its favor. Numerous members of the church had supported him and advised caution on his part before he began advocating his theory. Given the nature of academics in his time, a sufficiently convincing mathematical model would lilkely have sufficed to prove the heliocentric model correct and the Church would have been unlikely to oppose it at that time. Galileo did not heed the warnings given to him however and pushed before he had strong enough evidencel. At his trial, it was easy for his detractors to tear open his science as insufficient and then accuse him of preaching matters counter to Church doctrine.

His first trial was the precise outcome numerous clergymen and associates had warned Galileo about. His greatest flaw seems to have either a significant lack of caution or being so far ahead of everyone else he lost track of what time he was living in.

 jasper76 wrote:


OK, so you won't provide citations. I have provided the source material of the Papal Condemnation itself. It stands on its own. Lets move on. I'm sorry if I am being closed-minded. I'm not trying to be, I just don't agree with you.

P.S. sorry for so many edits, I'm noit trying to be a moving target, I just I have dyslexia

The catholic Church has been a huge supporter of science and held the view for almost 1000 years that science is the HOW and faith is the WHY.

In his 1893 encyclical, Pope Leo XIII wrote "no real disagreement can exist between the theologian and the scientist provided each keeps within his own limits. . . . If nevertheless there is a disagreement . . . it should be remembered that the sacred writers, or more truly ‘the Spirit of God who spoke through them, did not wish to teach men such truths (as the inner structure of visible objects) which do not help anyone to salvation’; and that, for this reason, rather than trying to provide a scientific exposition of nature, they sometimes describe and treat these matters either in a somewhat figurative language or as the common manner of speech those times required, and indeed still requires nowadays in everyday life, even amongst most learned people"

More recently, Thomas E. Woods, Jr. asserts that, despite the widely held conception of the Catholic Church as being anti-science, this conventional wisdom has been the subject of "drastic revision" by historians of science over the last 50 years. Woods asserts that the mainstream view now is that the "Church [has] played a positive role in the development of science ... even if this new consensus has not yet managed to trickle down to the general public". Science historian Ronald L. Numbers corroborates this view, writing that “Historians of science have known for years that White’s and Draper’s accounts are more propaganda than history…Yet the message has rarely escaped the ivory tower.

The Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) has "maintained that evolutionary theory, properly understood, is not incompatible with belief in a Divine Creator, nor with the first 2 chapters of Genesis." The current belief in the Jewish faith is is that science doesn't disprove that 'natural law' wasn't god's intended framework.

There is a lot of science historians which disprove your idea that "church hates science" and for the most part, almost all the versions of western religion bow to science in the sense that religious texts are figurative and our interpretation bends to fit what we find from science. The only people who don't are the evangelical Christians who have adopted a 'literal' old testament which is not even supported by the catholic church and is a US only phenomenon and is not supported by pretty much anything in the bible. Literal old testament or 'young earth' is a fairly new phenomonom as while they have done the theological calculations, the church has long held that the 'days' in genesis were allegorical and not solar days, and the debated 'estimations' were never taken seriously until the 20th century.

If anyone has been traditionally supportive of science, it has been the catholic church and the Jewish faith and there is tons of historical evidence to prove it and debunk the revisionists accounts. Evangelical protestants who are old-testament literalists are the faction within the US who has been traditionally anti-science and are currently the ones stonewalling against modern science today.

nkelsch wrote:
There is a lot of science historians which disprove your idea that "church hates science" and for the most part, almost all the versions of western religion bow to science in the sense that religious texts are figurative and our interpretation bends to fit what we find from science.

Please don't put words in my mouth, if you please. I never said that the "church hates science".

 jasper76 wrote:

nkelsch wrote:
There is a lot of science historians which disprove your idea that "church hates science" and for the most part, almost all the versions of western religion bow to science in the sense that religious texts are figurative and our interpretation bends to fit what we find from science.

Please don't put words in my mouth, if you please. I never said that the "church hates science".

Oh? so "anti-science" is a different position? please explain it to me because both "anti-science" and "church hates science" are both demonstrably false and have been proven not to be as history records the catholic church being a huge force in promoting science into what it is today.

You have to remember, just because people had theories about how the universe worked... even real scientists resisted adopting those views until the evidence backed it up. This meant observable phenomenons were often dismissed until a mathematical formula could be proven. This happened in science and people who were 'right but couldn't prove it' often had their discoveries ignored for hundreds of years. This was not a 'religious' position, a lot of it was scientific method. One needed to prove your theories to both scientists and the church. In the face of scientific evidence, the church has adapted and changed.

You can say most scientists were 'anti-science' by dismissing early unprovable theories which we now know are true but were yet to be proven at the time.

@LordsofHat

Galileo's claim was determined to be heretical based on contradiction to scripture.

he proposition that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture.

This sentence would make absolutely no sense if there was no conflict bewteen a scientific proposition (science) and scripture (religion)...this is the actual resolution of that conflict. Propagated and disseminated. As a result, astronomy was slowed in its advancement.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nkelsch wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

nkelsch wrote:
There is a lot of science historians which disprove your idea that "church hates science" and for the most part, almost all the versions of western religion bow to science in the sense that religious texts are figurative and our interpretation bends to fit what we find from science.

Please don't put words in my mouth, if you please. I never said that the "church hates science".

Oh? so "anti-science" is a different position? please explain it to me because both "anti-science" and "church hates science" are both demonstrably false and have been proven not to be as history records the catholic church being a huge force in promoting science into what it is today.

I'm sorry, I also never used the phrase "anti-science". I believe now you are confusing me with our comrade, LordsofHats.

Once again, please don't put words in my mouth.

 jasper76 wrote:
@LordsofHat

Galileo's claim was determined to be heretical based on contradiction to scripture.

he proposition that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture.

This sentence would make absolutely no sense if there was no conflict bewteen a scientific proposition and scripture...this is the actual resolution of that conflict. Propagated and disseminated. As a result, astronomy was slowed in its advancement.

you mean:
"If there were a real proof that the Sun is in the center of the universe, that the Earth is in the third sphere, and that the Sun does not go round the Earth but the Earth round the Sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of Scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and we should rather have to say that we did not understand them than declare an opinion false which has been proved to be true. But I do not think there is any such proof since none has been shown to me."

You do know that Galileo was accused of heresy not because of this incident, but due to forged documents and insulting officials, not due to his scientific positions. Galileo simply was on the front edge of an observable, unprovable event at the time and the churches position said "you show proof, we will adapt." which is the exact same response by scientists and the scientific method.

It wasn't until gravity was quantified and Newton close to 70 years later that the evidence for Heliocentric was scientifically sound and not just an observable but not quantifiable phenomenon. And guess what? that is how scientists operate...

nkelsch wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
@LordsofHat

Galileo's claim was determined to be heretical based on contradiction to scripture.

he proposition that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture.

This sentence would make absolutely no sense if there was no conflict bewteen a scientific proposition and scripture...this is the actual resolution of that conflict. Propagated and disseminated. As a result, astronomy was slowed in its advancement.

you mean:
"If there were a real proof that the Sun is in the center of the universe, that the Earth is in the third sphere, and that the Sun does not go round the Earth but the Earth round the Sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of Scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and we should rather have to say that we did not understand them than declare an opinion false which has been proved to be true. But I do not think there is any such proof since none has been shown to me."

You do know that Galileo was accused of heresy not because of this incident, but due to forged documents and insulting officials, not due to his scientific positions. Galielo simply was ont he front edge of an observable, unprovable event at the time and the churches position said "you show proof, we will adapt." which is the exact same response by scientists and the scientific method.

I'm not focused on Galileo's punishment or crime.

I am pointing out that the scientific proposition itself was deemed heretical due to contradiction to Scripture. The proposition was made earlier to me by LordsofHats that there is no evidence of any special conflict between science and religion, and I am just providing source evidence to the contrary.

For your viewing pleasure: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/condemnation.html

 jasper76 wrote:

I am pointing out that the scientific proposition itself was deemed heretical due to contradiction to Scripture. The proposition was made earlier to me by LordsofHats that there is no evidence of any special conflict between science and religion, and I am just providing source evidence to the contrary.

The Scientific view of a Heliocentric Universe was not heretical.
The Theological view of a Heliocentric Universe was.

The church had no beef until he got scripture into the mix and started to piss of officials.

 d-usa wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

I am pointing out that the scientific proposition itself was deemed heretical due to contradiction to Scripture. The proposition was made earlier to me by LordsofHats that there is no evidence of any special conflict between science and religion, and I am just providing source evidence to the contrary.

The Scientific view of a Heliocentric Universe was not heretical.
The Theological view of a Heliocentric Universe was.

The church had no beef until he got scripture into the mix and started to piss of officials.

Nope. The very proposition itself was deemed heretical. You can't skate by the source.

The proposition that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture.

And further...

And in order that a doctrine so pernicious might be wholly rooted out and not insinuate itself further to the grave prejudice of Catholic truth, a decree was issued by the Holy Congregation of the Index prohibiting the books which treat of this doctrine and declaring the doctrine itself to be false and wholly contrary to the sacred and divine Scripture.

If you want to ignore years of facts leading up to a case and just use the final paper issued as your argument, then that is your issue and you are free to go "nananananana nothing matters because this one ruling kinda says what I want it to say".

But in support of "theological heresy" vs "scientific heresy":

And in order that a doctrine so pernicious might be wholly rooted out and not insinuate itself further to the grave prejudice of Catholic truth, a decree was issued by the Holy Congregation of the Index prohibiting the books which treat of this doctrine and declaring the doctrine itself to be false and wholly contrary to the sacred and divine Scripture.

 d-usa wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

I am pointing out that the scientific proposition itself was deemed heretical due to contradiction to Scripture. The proposition was made earlier to me by LordsofHats that there is no evidence of any special conflict between science and religion, and I am just providing source evidence to the contrary.

The Scientific view of a Heliocentric Universe was not heretical.
The Theological view of a Heliocentric Universe was.

The church had no beef until he got scripture into the mix and started to piss of officials.

The church had no problem with the discussion of a Heliocentric universe... and if there was evidence, they were happy to accept it.

Galileo had no evidence, but his 1624 book did two things... basically "Heliocentric universe is proven fact" and "everyone who doesn't agree with me is an idiot".

The issue wasn't his research or bowing to science, but stating unproven things as scientific fact and insulting everyone was enough to justify the church to move. And guess what? Saying science is fact without evidence would have had him rejected by other scientists at the time. The issue was vanity and not the pursuit of science because he lacked the mathematical skills to quantify his theories.

If anything, the issue wasn't with science, it was with 'man's ego' and people challenging authority which is a phenomenon totally unconnected to religion. There are dozens of examples where scientists had guessed right via observation but didn't have the skills to do the math to prove their physics. They were rejected often until someone later did the math and proved the science. This model happens independent of religion and is an attitude of mankind.

Robert Hooke is a perfect example... and the reason Newton gets all the credit is because Newton did the math. Hooke was not able to prove his ideas but knew his ideas to be on the right track. If he were to present his findings as indisputable fact without the evidence he would have been (and was) discounted and ridiculed by his peers.

Funny how having actual evidence helps your case out when being a scientist and declaring how the natural laws of the universe work.

 d-usa wrote:
If you want to ignore years of facts leading up to a case and just use the final paper issued as your argument, then that is your issue and you are free to go "nananananana nothing matters because this one ruling kinda says what I want it to say".

But in support of "theological heresy" vs "scientific heresy":

And in order that a doctrine so pernicious might be wholly rooted out and not insinuate itself further to the grave prejudice of Catholic truth, a decree was issued by the Holy Congregation of the Index prohibiting the books which treat of this doctrine and declaring the doctrine itself to be false and wholly contrary to the sacred and divine Scripture.

The proposition that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture.

You're missing my point. The facts leading up to the case seem very very interesting. Just like Roe v. Wade, Brown vs. Board of E or something. But the case itself is of less importance than the actual verdict, and how that changes society.

The result of the Galileo case was that Galileo's proposition (science) came into conflict with Holy Scripture (religion), and Holy Scripture won. As a direct result, Heliocentrism was officialy banned, not just as being false, but even criminalized.

It is one piece of evidence of a special conflict between science and religion, to counter LordsofHats claim that there was no evidence of such a conflict.

 jasper76 wrote:

But the result of the case was that Galileo's proposition (science) came into conflict with Holy Scripture (religion), and Holy Scripture won. As a direct result, Heliocentrism was officialy banned, not just as being false, but even criminalized.

It is one piece of evidence of a special conflict between science and religion, to counter LordsofHats claim that there was no evidence of such a conflict.

Teaching it as scientific fact without evidence was banned... the research into it was not... hence why it was officially proven relatively soon after such a decree. For something that was 'criminalized' there seems to be a suspiciously large number of scientists researching it throughout Europe openly and unobstructed during the 1600s.

Come on man. I am not making this stuff up.

The proposition that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture....and in order that a doctrine so pernicious might be wholly rooted out and not insinuate itself further to the grave prejudice of Catholic truth, a decree was issued by the Holy Congregation of the Index prohibiting the books which treat of this doctrine and declaring the doctrine itself to be false and wholly contrary to the sacred and divine Scripture.

All this nitpicking over precise forms of heresy is ignoring the major issue here: the entire concept of heresy being a crime is fundamentally opposed to science. One of the core principles of science is that ideas are judged on their own merits, and without arbitrary rules about what is allowed. Criminal heresy, on the other hand, declares that certain ideas are not allowed and threatens punishment for expressing them, regardless of their merits. That kind of restriction on the free and open exchange of ideas is the exact opposite of what science requires. And if you oppose the fundamental principles of science then you're anti-science, regardless of whether or not you accept a specific scientific fact or persecute a specific scientist for "good" reasons.

 Orlanth wrote:
Why single out the religious buildings, why not the barracks, or the munitions factories, or the banking infrastructure. Or maybe the gambling halls.
And why do those who wish to attack institutions always compare to how much health care or education could be bought witb the money, as if that was what redirected money naturally goes to.

Exactly. And why not look at personal spending. Why not suggest that we imagine a world in which instead of buying big screen TVs, we should put that money into education? And then suggest that if they really hold to that opinion, they should sell their own TVs and donate the money to a school.

And then maybe they'll realise how douchey it is to lecture other people about the money they spend on things they choose to spend their own money on, like churches.

Its a one sided ideal, linked to a policy of cultural annihilation.
as a rule of thumb when someone wants to utterly eradicate part of society, and promise nice benefits from it, they tend to be up to no good.

Well that's going a bit far. You're now giving atheism some kind of real political power which simply doesn't exist. Address this problem as it actually is, a small minority of atheists being jerks who just can't let other people hold a different opinion than their own, and you're half way to solving the problem.

But by instead assuming that they harbour some kind of conspiracy to dismantle church and faith and odds are you're just taking up the opposite side of the fight, and contributing equally to the problem.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jasper76 wrote:
Yep. In light of the well-documented persecution by the Roman Church against its detractors, I think that claims to be religious from this era are by default suspect. Not that you should assume that they aren't true, only that they are suspect.

If the only evidence we had was that when directly challenged they stated they were religious, then it would be reasonable to assume they were lying. But instead we have whole essays on treatises on religion and science, as the two went hand in hand and informed each other (the seperation of religion and science is old by our standards, but in terms of history it slowly grew out of the rise of the empirical method). It was thought for much of history that study of the natural world was an inherently religious pursuit, as you were looking to learn about God's creation.

Come on man. I am not making this stuff up.

No one said you were, but as I stated a page ago, you can quote that document over and over and it still won't say what you're saying it says. Why is it that for nearly a century, the heliocentric universe was openly discusse, and then when Galileo wrote a theological argument in its favor was it shut down? Further, the Church was ready to allow a hypothetical discussion of the concept in 1632, but didn't want anyone advocating the issue. That's a rather nuanced position to be taking for a body that is against science.

All this nitpicking over precise forms of heresy is ignoring the major issue here: the entire concept of heresy being a crime is fundamentally opposed to science. One of the core principles of science is that ideas are judged on their own merits, and without arbitrary rules about what is allowed. Criminal heresy, on the other hand, declares that certain ideas are not allowed and threatens punishment for expressing them, regardless of their merits. That kind of restriction on the free and open exchange of ideas is the exact opposite of what science requires. And if you oppose the fundamental principles of science then you're anti-science, regardless of whether or not you accept a specific scientific fact or persecute a specific scientist for "good" reasons.

To the development of the Heliocentric universe, yeah. I ended up stifling progress on that, but that's not the argument anyone's making. Again, it's impossible to claim the Church was anti-science while at the same time knowing that great progress was made within its sphere. If we examine the claim that the church stifled science as a whole, we find it to be false because the Church did not make a habit of going after science for science. Galileo is the most famous example of a scientist being silenced by the church, but he wasn't silenced for science he was silenced for religion in a time and place where the difference wasn't a clear one.

Further it can be shown that many scientists were religious officials and that in Galileo's trial (the first one anyway) he was defended by clergy and had students who were clergy.

Calling the church detrimental to science in this light is thus inaccurate. It doesn't account for the history as we know it. That's not an argument that Galileo deserved it or that the Church was a reasonable body by our standards, merely that the perception as presented isn't true.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 -Shrike- wrote:
Ever heard of a metaphor?

Yeah. I guess we must be speaking about some goddamn sustained metaphor here :
(stuff)
Maybe this is a metaphor of how caterpillars turn into butterfly rather than some very specific set of rules about inheritance.

 -Shrike- wrote:
Don't take the Bible (or Quran, I think, but as I have never read it, I'll defer to you for that) too seriously; early Christian scholars certainly didn't.

Not taking it too seriously? Sure, I will not. I think you meant literally, though. So, God is not supposed to actually exist, He is just a metaphor. Is that what I was supposed to understand?
A whole freaking lot of religious people need to be made aware that when the Bible or the Quran says God exists, it is just a metaphor rather than some definite answer.

Maybe I should have been more clear what I was talking about. My response was about you talking about the "nonsensical stories", not about the existence of God or the various rules laid out in the holy books. EDIT: Yes, I did mean literally.

 -Shrike- wrote:
By "actual truth", I assume you mean empirical truth?

I am talking about genuinely and honestly trying to find the truth, as opposed to looking for a convenient substitute.

Right, so what if there is no empirical answer to a question?

 -Shrike- wrote:
Except... science can't answer every question to which there is an empirical answer.

So? What is your point exactly?

In science, the goal is to get the best possible model. It is pretty easy to see how a good model can be pretty useful (technology!), and how a model can be rated as good or not (accurately predict the result of experiments, and is as tractable as possible).
Specific goals, specific ways to attain those goals, and the end result is that those goals are attained.

Just nitpicking. Science can't always achieve all of the goals it sets.

 -Shrike- wrote:
Maybe I should have been more clear what I was talking about. My response was about you talking about the "nonsensical stories", not about the existence of God or the various rules laid out in the holy books.

So my point still stand even if some of those stories are metaphors.

 -Shrike- wrote:
Right, so what if there is no empirical answer to a question?

If we have no way to answer a question, then just admit that we do not know the answer, rather than make up some silly answer and pretend for it to be true. Yeah, that mean facing the fact we do not know some things.

 -Shrike- wrote:
Just nitpicking. Science can't always achieve all of the goals it sets.

Well, it does constantly improve and refine itself, and already give us models good enough for pretty amazing feats like setting up a GPS, sending man to the moon and robots all over space, finding tons of cures, …
I would say that this is already pretty impressive

No religion is an outdated and failed experiment at describing nature and Cosmos around us aswell a failure as a method of Control of societies as most of them allows and activly protects corrupt and hypocritical behaviour of the upper echelon...

*Note, I've skimmed a lot of this thread, my lunchbreak is short and precious*

jasper76 wrote:
Do you really believe that the Romans were stagnant in their technological development?

concrete, irrigation, architecture, fortification, plumbing, engineering, mining, etc.

Didn't have the concept of 0, fractions or negative numbers though, which, as it turns out, is incredibly important when it comes to technological advancement, which supposedly held them back quite a bit in terms of technology.
It's a maths thing, if you can't do the maths properly, the only way to advance is through the painfully slow process of trial and error, civilisations that can crunch the numbers tend to move faster than those that can't.

Gitzbitah wrote:

 Leigen_Zero wrote:
Personally I'm atheist, mainly because I find it incredibly hard to reconcile religion with reality, but I always sum up 'is religion good?' into a single comparison.

Religion is like the internet, it's not inherently good or bad, and generally most of the people involved are nice.

However, it's the small number of total frellin' morons who shout really really loudly all the time that ruin it for the rest of us...

You know, that is a remarkably apt assessment. Exalt from a Catholic turned Baptist turned witch!

Why thank you kind sir


In remarks to technological advancement in any modern civilisation, I would say that the largest thing that slows the progress of the 'new' technology, is the people who are making a lot of money off the 'old' technology

 Peregrine wrote:
And if you oppose the fundamental principles of science then you're anti-science, regardless of whether or not you accept a specific scientific fact or persecute a specific scientist for "good" reasons.

Then a majority of scientists, even up to the recent times were anti-science as well. There was a lot of scientists who suppressed scientific process and discovery out of arrogance, bigotry or wanting to maintain control. They restricted the free and open exchange of ideas throughout history by dismissing evidence and discoveries of women, ignoring discoveries of those who were not formally educated and some even selling their soul to corporations and defending science with an agenda and crushing opposing views.

One could say that it is human nature to resist the open discussion of ideas even in the absence of religion simply because knowledge is power, and the more you control knowledge, the more power you have.

To discount all the achievements of the catholic church in regards to science because of the Galileo incident is like discounting all scientists everywhere because Michael Faraday was abused and discounted due to his lack of math skills, Or the discoveries of females at Harvard in the early 1900s were discounted because they were women, or that Lead was good and those who researched it was harmful should be ignored which was argued by Robert Kehoe in front of congress after decades of scientific suppression by 'all leading scientists'. All just as bad, if not worse examples of establishments which claimed to be for science squashing the free exchange of ideas and putting down scientific discoveries for personal power but yet all claim to be 'pro-science'.

Boils down to institutions of history, religious or not had people who were anti-science, but the institutions still as a whole made great contributions to science and did amazing works in promoting science even though specific people were using their positions within government and scientific institutions to stop it or slow it down. You would hardly call 'harvard' anti science...

Well its not like free and open exchange was something that existed prior to the church or alongside with it either. Not very many bastions of Free Speech in 17th century Earth, if any.

It's mockable to us today, but they didn't have our tools. Geocentrism wasn't chosen just because it happened to coincide with some Bible passages, there was mathematical evidence to support it in their time, and the convergence of scripture with that theory created a crossroad that Galileo became trapped in.

Roger Bacon was a Franciscan Friar and is one of the key founders of the Scientific Method. Thomas Aquinas was a significant figure in the development of rationalism and one of the Church's most crucial founding fathers. Gregor Mendel was a Augustinian Monk and is cited as the father of genetics. The Big Bang Theory was created by Georges Lemaitre, a Catholic Priest. The Church funded the first of Europe's universities (including Oxford and Cambridge) and hosted numerous key scientific bodies across its lifetime, many of which are still with us today (the Pontifical Academy of Sciences).

To dismiss everything the Church did because of a false notion of Galileo's trial* is bad science (for those of us who consider History a science anyway ).

*It's also kind of funny. Galileo is best remembered for the Galileo Affair and Heliocentricism, yet his greatest contribution to Astronomy was blundering and getting Heliocentricism banned. His work was completely derivative of Copernicus' and some guy from Denmark whose name I forget. His greatest contributions were to Physics, a field where he's completely overshadowed by Kepler and Newton (rather unjustly overshadowed as well. Kepler is overblown ).