If the Church was so welcoming of science, why did Copernicus withhold publication of his heliocentric theory until after his death?

If the Church was open to science, why did it burn Giordano Bruno at the stake for saying that Copernicus was right, and that the stars are distant suns?

If the Church loved science, why did it threaten Galileo with torture after he published his book in favor of the Copernicus and Bruno theory that the earth moves around the sun?

What do you suppose Galileo meant when, held in the dungeons, he said under his breath “Eppur si muove”?

Religion, especially when it is coupled to the coercive power of the state, has always been opposed to science.

Enlightenment in Europe happened despite the Church, not because of it.

I have been pointing out to misguided christians that you are a ziocon fifth column agent of mossad. Thank You for confirming your status.

Allow me to shed some truth. Shortly before Galileo’s
death, he rejected his fantasy that the sun is center
of the universe/cosmos and embraced geocentrism.

Heliocentrism is just another atheistic dogma that
has not/cannot be proven.

Galileo was wrong The Church was right. I suggest you
buy and read the books.

Dear Robert Spencer,

Interesting article.  I think there are some other examples that are used to “prove” that the Church was against science, like the case of Giordano Bruno.  Notwithstanding that it was entirely wrong to execute him, this is also a misconception, since Giordano Bruno was not really a scientist (actually, if one excepts Feyerabend’s ‘anything goes’ definition of science than he may qualify).

Another interesting point is that the idea that the Earth does not move was, however unlikely, but still a tenable hypothesis until the Michelson-Morley experiment was explained by relativity.  The experiment can be rationalized by assuming that the Earth is stationary in the ether (and light travels relative to the ether, hence it would be constant as long as the experiment is performed on Earth), and since special relativity came almost two decades afterwards, strictly speaking, there was no consistent theory to refute that hypothesis for that time. 

Galilei’s case has been analyzed by Feyerabend, and it is one of his crucial examples to point out that science proceeds without method.  Many of Galilei’s conclusions are questionable, since he did not have a thorough enough handle on details (for example optics was at a rather premature stage).  These conclusions turned out to be true afterwards, but often for reasons different from his claims, so to claim that they were proven, as Galilei has, was not in line with any criteria for scientific method (not even Feyerabend’s).

Werner Heisenberg (along with Schrodinger and Dirac), who can be credited with proposing quantum mechanics in a complete form, makes the claim that modern science,and even the atheism that is often the consequence of it, is a characteristic unique to the Christian world (Heisenberg: The Representation of Nature in Contemporary Physics, Daedalus, 1958).  A passage in this article even warns against the separation of faith and science and agains being to self-insured about “scientific knowledge” which is ultimately also based on belief.

I think even mildly educated people can grasp this scientific fact: that far more than 99% of the population has little or no grasp of the data necessary to judge most major scientific arguments.  Take Mr. Cognate for example.

Or me.  I thought it was established as fact by scholars that Galileo never said “Eppur si muove.” If I remember correctly, that quip wasn’t ascribed to him until he had been dead for over two centuries. Is it Mr. Cognate or me that as it wrong, or both of us?

I am confident he is wrong about Giordano Bruno. I’m afraid to say I haven’t looked it up on Wikipedia, but though I remember not a scintilla of the specific arguments, I distinctly recall reading thirty years ago in Santa Maria in Trastevere a detached and scholarly review of Bruno and his case: and that heliocentrism had nothing to do with it. It might have had something to do with the Trinity, or witchcraft, but Bruno was executed for heresy, and heliocentrism has never been declared a heresy. 

As to Copernicus withholding his heliocentric theory while he lived, it’s the first I’ve heard of this I’m sorry to confess, but given Mr. Cognate’s confusion on other facts, I’d be curious to get the real ones in this story.  I somehow doubt it had anything to do with Copernicus’s fear of a Fascist Church.

My recollection of the Galileo case is that it had not a little to do with private Italian insults about the Barberini Pope’s scientific pretensions, but whatever actually happened, the myth of Galileo is not going to give way to something like a scientific fact.

That myth fuels remarks like Mr. Cognate’s closing sentences, which are the point of the post and, like his errors, are ideological, thus essentially immune to science.

A final observation from one who probably couldn’t explain heliocentrism as clearly as a your average (Catholic or homeschooled) 4th grader. But despite how smoothly heliocentric presuppositions seem to run, didn’t Einstein’s theory of relativity, if correct, render the helio/geocentric debate mute?

Indeed, Galileo was wrong. You can read all about it in an excellent book authored by Robert Sungenis. And Mr. Sungenis, ., is also under attack for sticking to 2000 years of Church teaching that the Jews no longer have a special covenant with God. Good man, and he could use support, both moral and finacial, for his family of nine (9) children, what with the attacks on him. His website is Catholi Apolopgertics International.

That is: Catholic Apologetics International for Mr. Sungenis. Too much Lagavulin I guess.

Well, Cognate, maybe you ought first read Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.”

Then ponder the fact that Renaissance Italy was the seminal breeding ground for many of the ideas that gave birth to scientific modernity.  The Medici court.  Leonardo Da Vinci.  Galileo himself.  And Nicolas Steno

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Steno

as well as Evangelista Torricelli

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelista_Torricelli

And many others.

Not to mention all the monastic and university communities (like that at Genoa) as well as the Papal court itself, which though they all mostly supported the established Ptolemaic & Aristotelean scientific orthodoxy, where utterly seminal to the Scholastic intellectual culture that precipitated the early modern scientific revolution that culminated in Descartes and Newton. 

It was a paradigm shift, but one that depended on antecedent Scholasticism born of Catholic scholarship. 

It is of a piece, this history.  Never forget it.  The idea that the Catholic faith is incompatible or even antagonistic with intellectual progress is utter dishonest idiocy.  Idiocy that we may very well soon come to rue.

There is a VERY good case that the Church declared heliocentrism as a heresy. Read Paula Haigh or Solange Hertz on Gallileo.The case rests on a document from 1664 of Alexander VII, who lumps up “relevant matters” on this subject in the Index. The fact that this was understood as a condemnation of heresy of heliocentrism is supported by a book from 1870 by p.William W.Roberts in his collection about heliocentrism. Indeed, it is rather telling.

Would it help sway anyone above if I said I had a PhD in Physics from Caltech?

I do.

Cognate,

Congratulations, but I am not convinced that having a Ph. D. in physics makes your arguments more necessarily convincing.  If only for the fact that “science cannot proceed by quotations, however elevated the source.” (see R. Omnes, Reviews of Modern Physics, vol. 64, pp. 339, (1992)).  I think it is fair to extend this statement to most rational argumentations, debates, etc.

<<Would it help sway anyone above if I said I had a PhD in Physics from Caltech?>>

argumentum ad verecundiam

Please, don’t.

Didn’t Tesla repudiate relativity ?

I realize that referring to Tesla, in spite of his achievements, risks ridicule.*

Is it possible that relativity is wrong ?

We take it as dogmatic fact, that relativity is ‘true’. I have faced more dogmatic arguments proposed in favor of established academic science, and absolutely unwilling to concede that ‘Scientific Method’ can be as influenced by personal beliefs, as any faith based supposition.

I find modern adherents to ‘Science’ as dogmatic as religious fundamentalists.

Is Christianity the only religious group that has castigated, or ‘put heretics to death’, somehow I don’t think so.

I’m sure Islam, and Judaism have time honored traditions of stoning, or putting to death by various means, those who depart from hallowed tradition.

It seems to me that Tesla, whose myriad inventions form the basis of much of the modern technological world, is treated with the same heretical contempt, as we believe Galileo to have been treated.  Tesla, for all his eccentricities, committed the heresy of fiercely repudiating the work of the High Priest of Modern Science, Einstein.

* Theories attributed to Tesla from later in his life, about signals from outer space, that he took to be of extraterrestrial origin, are often cited to discredit him. 

But in fact those signals of extraterrestrial origin were real, and his experiments into understanding them were the first radio-telescope technologies.  What he was receiving was stellar ‘noise’ and background radiation.

The advice the gave to Galileo “say it is a theory or
speculation, not the truth” is sound advice for any
scientist wishing to publish. Data may indicate that
a certain propositon is valid, but there may be data
around the corner that disproves it. 

All Science is tentative. It is when it becomes dogma
that the trouble starts.

I remember when chocolate was supposed to be bad for
you.  Thank God that theory was disproved!

Godiva, Dove, Ghirardelli, Perugia, here I come!!!!

Must History Of Science be as parochial as Politics is local ?

Eliding intellectual history with how people are taught not to think could furnish a traveling exhibition:

_1001 Things Catholics Didn’t Need To Invent During The 30 Years War_.

Cognate,
“Religion, especially when it is coupled to the coercive power of the state, has always been opposed to science.” This statement is factually incorrect.  There seems to be something in some stricter forms of Christianity that makes them very conductive to scientific thinking. 

Aside from the late medieval Catholicism discussed by Spencer, there is abundant evidence about the connection between ascetic Christiany and science from 17th century England.  Read, for example, the work done on the origins of the Royal Society.  About two thirds of the founders of that eminently scientific organization were Puritans. 

A case-study of the connection is Newton, who wrote far more on theology than he did on science.  Newton also illustrates an intriguing difference:  he developed ideas that by any standard were blatantly heretical—at least for a while Newton thought the Holy Trinity was a misinterpretation of the Bible.  Instead of attacking Newton, however, contemporaries (including high leaders in the Church of England) hushed up this part of his thinking, and Newton could continue to hold his high positions and develop his scientific and theological ideas.

>> A case-study of the connection is Newton, who wrote far more on theology than he did on science.

Kari Konkola, had Newton confined his work to religious questions we would not be talking about him now.

>> argumentum ad verecundiam

No, Andrew Capp, that was not an argumentum ad verecundiam, i.e., an appeal to authority. Had I written: we should believe what So-and-So says because he has a PhD, that would have been an argumentum ad verecundiam. But when I wrote that I had a PhD that was merely stating my credentials.

As a scientist I am amused at Mr. Spencer’s attempt to differentiate between Islamic and
Christian (Catholic) attitude towards and historic influence on science. It is true that at present Islam is more restrictive, prescriptive and repressive than Christianity, and that this has implications for all human activity including the creation of science. However the overthrowing of the social power of religious dogma in the West was a centuries-long battle. The approach to knowledge developed by the likes of Galileo, Newton and Darwin was fought tooth and nail by the Christian authorities. Their ideological bankruptcy is described very well by Thomas Paine’s 18th century The Age of Reason.

As to Islam, there was a long period between the 8th and 13th centuries when it tolerated knowledge and rational thought much better than Christianity as practiced at the time.

There is a fundamental conflict in the approach of religion and science. One is authoritarian, relying on claimed divine revelation while the other is rooted in methodic observation, rational thought and assertions always open to being falsified. From that perspective all religions, specifically Judaism, Christianity and Islam are much closer to each other than any of them is to science.

Mr. Spencer is right to question the “Galileo Myth,” but unfortunately his correction of the myth merely substitutes one naïve view for another. It seems to me naïve of Mr. Spencer to assume that modern science is more “open” than was the Church in the Galileo era. For example, the astronomer Halton Arp, who questioned the fashionable redshift theory of galactic distances, had his telescope time removed and had to relocate to Germany in order to practice science. He could not publish his findings in this country, which is under the grip of a scientific elite far more hardened in its mathematized scholasticism than ever were the medieval philosophers. Such mathematical scholasticism, along with the “Big Bang” theory and its make-believe (and not empirically verified) buttresses of “Dark Energy’ and “Dark Matter,” is a great way to erect barriers against common sense and thus, in a manner of speaking, keep the masses in their place.

It has been acknowledged by scientists that Einstein’s relativity theory grants legitimacy to geocentrism, in the sense that it is equally true to say that the heavens revolve around the earth or the earth revolves around the sun – which is revolving in the heavens. Any point can be considered the center and the mathematics has to work out from which ever point is chosen. Both Fred Hoyle and George Ellis, among others, have acknowledged that it is for philosophical reasons that modern cosmologists prefer the heliocentric version.

As Robert Sungenis has argued in his magisterial “Galileo Was Wrong,” modern science has preferred heliocentrism because otherwise it might have to acknowledge the role of the Creator. The Church had sound reasons for opposing heliocentrism, and such reasons were not only theological and moral but also had to do with the nature of scientific theory.

Spencer’s gratuitous swipe at Islam was inappropriate and unnecessary. Muslim science has traditionally favored geocentrism for the same reason that the Catholic church defended it. Mr. Spencer needs to write less and learn more.

Cognate,

“There is a fundamental conflict in the approach of religion and science. One is authoritarian, relying on claimed divine revelation while the other is rooted in methodic observation, rational thought and assertions always open to being falsified.”

Tell that to James Watson.

The reason the Christian Catholic Church also follows geo-centrism is because it is basically taken from Egypt.

Horus, the sun, traveled to the underworld and battled Set.

Horus had twelve disciples, walked on water, was known as Gods Son, the anointed one, the good shepard, the light, crucified and was resurrected three days later, virgin birth, healed the sick, Three Kings etc etc. The pyramid points to the three Kings, Orions belt.

Jesus had twelve apostles, helaed the sick, walked on water, Son of God, crucified and resurrected three days later, virgin birth. Three Kings [Orions Belt]

Geo-centrism is the Zodiac personified.

Gognate writes a sentence which, thankfully, spells out his views quite clearly.  It reads: “However the overthrowing of the social power of religious dogma in the West was a centuries-long battle.” He is telling us what is really at the heart of his argument, namely his antagonism toward “religious dogma” (read: the Catholic Church).  It is helpful to keep that in mind while reading what he has to say.

It is that antagonism which is preventing him, despite his credentials, from looking deeper into these matters.

As to the person named “Jet”:  WOW!  After reading his entry I wont have to watch “The Twilight Zone” tonight.

The issue is not whether or not the earth goes around the sun but whether the ruling elite can burn anyone at the stake for having taken an unapproved position on the matter.

As to the person named “Jet”:  WOW!  After reading his entry I wont have to watch “The Twilight Zone” tonight. -Dan

Gee, Dan, whats this thing on the back of my dollar bill, why it looks like a pyramid, with an eye.

I can talk about protons and up and down quarks, Baryons, Mesons, Higgs Boson..the large hadron collider even.

But hey, stick to watching twilight zone, it seems to suit you.

BTW,’Dan’, its not a name, its a moniker and refers to my occupation which is working on large ‘Jets’

You know, those scientific creations that pass over your likely pointless head?

There is a VERY good case that the Church declared heliocentrism as a heresy. Read Paula Haigh or Solange Hertz on Gallileo.The case rests on a document from 1664 of Alexander VII, who lumps up “relevant matters” on this subject in the Index. The fact that this was understood as a condemnation of heresy of heliocentrism is supported by a book from 1870 by p.William W.Roberts in his collection about heliocentrism. Indeed, it is rather telling.

(Speculatores Domus Israel was the Bull from Pope Alexander VII.)

It is not telling at all. The Church never took that decision. Heresy has to do with matters of Faith and Morals not questions such as heliocentrism.

In the past I exchanged letters with Solange Hertz and she sent me a photcopy of the book. (Also many papers by a Mr. Elwanger of Texas).

She was very kind in our exchanges but her personal opinions are just that - personal opinions. It is when she uses her personal opinions to war against Holy Mother Church that she becomes a problem because she weakens the Faith of others; the others being the nine subscribers to “The Remnant”

The Roberts book book can be read on line..

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=h1g7NGF81gcC&dq=the+pontifical+decrees+against+the+doctrine+of+the+earth’s+movement+and+the+untramontane+defense+of+them&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=mwWWKkHP0Z&sig=xDBRNZJPDwGXETJ5C5Cmv40OmtI

As for Mr. Sungenis, I understood he had removed the antisemitic material from his website.

In any event, thinking the Jews as a race are cursed, or that the Church formally declared as a heresy a scientific theory, are just a few of the MANY delights found among the denizens of the dissenters.

It is clear the Galileo Case is all about attacking the Catholic Church and I find it interesting the attacks come from both protestants and the More-Catholic-Than-The-the-Pope schismatics.

Now there’s a league for ya :)

As for Protestants attacking the Catholic Church for its putative war against science and reason, it is obviously a case of the best defense is a good offense.

For instance, not nine protestants know their own record vis a vis science

Calvin’s Academy of Geneva, which he founded in 1559, provided:

. . . a most thorough education . . . but not the natural sciences, “diabolica scientia,” whose study Calvin regarded with fear as “imprudent curiosity and rashness.”

http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2004/07/early-protestant-hostility-towards.html

“All science is tentative. It’s when
it becomes dogma that the trouble starts.”

You mean like Darwinism?
Or being awarded a Ph.D in palentology
because you supported the “approved”
fossil record? (no others are granted)

Try even mentioning “Creationism” at your
local High School PTA and see if you don’t get
burned at the stake.

paleontology…
and the quote was from Adrianna’s post.

Eliding ‘ scientia’ and science is a devilish anachronism.

Phil - Tesla’s Dynamic Theory of Gravity was never published.  While he was quoted as holding a critical view of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, we don’t know what his Theory of Gravity refuted.

Pietro Redondi, in his “Galileo eretico” (trans. as “Galileo Heretic,” published 1987 by Princeton University Press) argues on the basis of recently discovered documents that the trial of Galileo was prompted not by his heliocentrism but rather by his atomism.

Atomism was a doctrine associated by the church and just about everyone else at this period with Epicurus, whose atheistic account of creation, as related by Lucretius, is remarkably like that underlying the work of modern evolutionists like Stephen Jay Gould. Furthermore, atomism raised questions about the Eucharist and the nature of transsubstantiation that made it suspect.

Redondi suggests that Galileo was caught in a rivalry between Franciscans and Jesuits. The Franciscan inquisitor in Florence approved Galileo’s work but the Jesuits did not like it and, according to Redondi’s account, plotted his downfall.

I’m surprised no one here has mentioned these points.

Furthermore, atomism raised questions about the Eucharist and the nature of transsubstantiation that made it suspect

Interesting. continue.

@Cognate, on Giordano Bruno, one of the best resources is “Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition” by Dame Frances Yates. If, after reading it, you believe Bruno to have been a martyr to science you have more credulity than I would expect of a CalTech Ph.D. Bruno may have been a heliocentrist, but his heliocentrism was not derived from a modern scientific viewpoint but from a desire to revive the sun-worship of the Egyptian pagans. It was his religious heterodoxy and not his science that led to his condemnation.

Or maybe not. There is also the suggestion by Boissy that Bruno was the spy that Sir Francis Walsingham placed in the Fench embassy, who betrayed the Catholic plot to depose Elizabeth I and place Mary queen of Scots on the English throne. Documents exist showing that there was a mole in the embassy and much evidence points to Bruno, who though a Dominican priest attached to the French ambassador’s household, was deeply unhappy in the Catholic church and in many respects philosophically at odds with it. He was enticed back into the Roman inquisition’s jurisdiction, and it held him for a long time before his execution. The parallel to Dzherzhinsky’s capture and interrogation of Sidney Reilly is obvious. Was it a long, long “debriefing,” perhaps, of an enemy asset, with the end coming only when no more useful information could be extracted from him?

@I am not Spartacus - I can’t do justice to Redondi’s book here and your best bet is to read it.

To summarize as briefly as possible, in classical atomism, the atom is indivisible and unchangeable In classical Democritean theory atoms are not capable of transmutation (unlike the modern atomic theory of Niels Bohr et al.) Therefore how could atoms of bread and wine change into atoms of Christ’s body and blood?

This was of course the kind of conundrum that the great mediæval monastic orders, like the Franciscans, liked to thrash out in academic disputations of the kind that were so numerous in the days of Albertus Magnus and his pupil Aquinas.

However, the atmosphere in which such questions could be discussed had vanished in the Counter-reformation, when even to raise them was to attract suspicion. The Jesuits in Rome, acting basically as enforcers of orthodoxy rather than as fosterers of philosophical debate, took a more severe view of Galileo’s atomism than did the easygoing Franciscans of Florence. At least this is Redondi’s view as best I can summarize it.

I presume this scientific just so story reflects the affray at Rome’s La Sapienza where His Holiness was made unwelcome because in 1990, as Cardinal Ratzinger he upheld the punishment of Galileo, quoting Paul Feyerabend as saying : “At the time of Galileo the Church remained much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself. The process against Galileo was reasonable and just.”

24 years after Bruno’s proofless adherence to the doctrine of many worlds--and infidelity to that of the Virgin Birth--got him burnt to ashes, the Holy Inquisiton reminded Galileo that “ Error has no rights” , and he prudently foreswore “following the position of Copernicus, which is contrary to the true sense and authority of Holy Scripture.” For his trouble ,his anti-Aristotelian books were burnt and he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Even in the depths of World War II, Manhattan Project scientists declined to assassinate their German opposite numbers on neutral academic ground in Switzerland, clinging to the naive superstition that physicists should not shoot other physicists. Today, though we are sorely tempted, few would demand even the most wayward of string theorists be barbecued , and it therefore seems to some unseemly for a German cardinal to have invoked an Austrian metaphysician in saying it’s OK to lock ‘em up and throw away the key.

Some things make absolute sense inside a system of dogmatic allegiance. Yet though the author is as absolutely free to voice his as General Groves was to ask who would rid him of that turbulent Heisenberg?, scientific bystanders tend to dismiss selective takes on intellectual history as scundering cant, whether based on excepts from the Institutions of The Kirk of Scotland, or NeoHierophantic tracts demanding the Big Olive administer hemlock to any whose hecatombs are in arrears.

Because interesting a figure as Feyerabend may be, the simple truth is that however good an idea metaphysics may be, physicists don’t do it, any more than modern philosophers, e.g. Quine or Rawls, do. We’ve barely begun measuring the foundations upon which it might contingently rise.

--

Great work! This definitively dispels the myth that Galileo recanted his theory under threat of torture, and also the more recent myth that the Church has apologized for condemning his ideas as heresy, after 460 years.
Next project:
You could dispel the myth that all those people were tortured and then burned alive during the Inquisition by Holy Mother Church - it obviously just wasn’t true.

All that exists is A-toms and empty space; the rest is just opinion ~Democritus of Abdera

“You could dispel the myth that all those people were tortured and then burned alive during the Inquisition by Holy Mother Church - it obviously just wasn’t true.”

Mr. Burch, as with the case of Galileo, it’s not true the way the Church’s enemies tell it.

Anyway, willb has it exactly right. I should like to ask cognate how he would react if the Church were to claim that it possessed the real truth in the area of physics. Let’s suppose the Church put forth insufficient proofs in support of its claims (such as, for example, that Verse so-and-so of the Bible proves that matter is not composed of discrete atoms), yet insisted upon claiming absolute truth for them, all the while baiting scientists with rude insults and satire. Let’s suppose that the Church insisted upon replacing the old, now-discredited views of the scientists with its new doctrine in the schools, so as to properly indoctrinate the minds of children. Is there anyone here who will say with a straight face that today’s militant secular scientists, had they the power, would not oppose with extreme and deadly force such an abuse and usurpation? To deny it is not even credible.

@ Allen:

Is that you, John Allen Muhammad?  How’s the prison?

Therefore how could atoms of bread and wine change into atoms of Christ’s body and blood?

By the will of God. Look, it was His idea, not mine. I take Him at His word.

What happens when you don’t? Well, you are left thinking “eat my body..drink my blood” is only rhetorically symbolic.

Problem with that is in Holy Writ, eat my body and drink my blood means, symbolically, to assault and persecute.

So, if you think the words of Jesus are symbolic, you think he said that to gain eternal life you must assault and persecute Him.

Materialistic rationality leads to insanity, right?

>> I should like to ask cognate how he would react if the Church were to claim that it possessed the real truth in the area of physics. Let’s suppose the Church put forth insufficient proofs in support of its claims (such as, for example, that Verse so-and-so of the Bible proves that matter is not composed of discrete atoms), yet insisted upon claiming absolute truth for them, all the while baiting scientists with rude insults and satire. Let’s suppose that the Church insisted upon replacing the old, now-discredited views of the scientists with its new doctrine in the schools, so as to properly indoctrinate the minds of children.

James Newland, the real issue here is not science versus religion but government-run schooling. In such a system the state and its agents decide what is to be taught and the children are forced to regurgitate the lessons, willy-nilly, in order to get a passing grade. If instead the government got out of the business of education - thereby lowering taxes – that would open the field to privately organized education, with or without religious affiliation, and each school would be free to teach as it saw fit. If parents wished to send their children to schools that taught the moon was made of green cheese that would be their business. I expect the graduates of such schools would find their range of employment opportunities somewhat reduced.

“it’s not true the way the Church’s enemies tell it...Let’s suppose the Church...insisted upon ...baiting scientists with rude insults and satire…

who will say with a straight face that today’s militant secular scientists, had they the power, would not oppose with extreme and deadly force such an abuse and usurpation? 

I for one devoutly hope Mr. Newland’s equation of comfy chairs and burning stakes appears on YouTube before he moves on to demonstrate that only by throwing virgins in volcanoes can we assure the success of abstinence education in the public schools.

Mike Egan: “Tell that to James Watson.”

I second that!

Cognate,
I couln’t agree more with your views on education, but I’m still waiting for your rational, scientific reasoning on the English evidence about a close connection between some forms of Christianity and science.  (Intriguingly, the connection may operate via education.  Darwin, for example, was trained as a theologian, not as a scientist.  He had a Masters in Divinity from Cambridge, and he was deeply religious when he set out on the Beagle.)

cognate: Would it help sway anyone above if I said I had a PhD in Physics from Caltech?

An advanced degree in physics says nothing about one’s knowledge of history or religion.

Anyone who thinks science is decided by rational evaluation of evidence is not very familiar with the history of science. Personal ambition and philosophical presumption color the findings of scientists (just as they do everyone else), so keep the salt shaker handy whenever scientists proclaim their theories as facts.

@ I am not Spartacus, you have answered the atomism conundrum in the way a mediæval scholastic disputant would have done, rather than in the way a suspicious Inquisitor of the Counter-Reformation would have done.
It was not my intent to engage in theological controversy. but rather to describe the theological controversy that Prof. Redondi describes surrounding Galileo’s atomism.

@Robert Burch, it is true that the Church did not burn people alive. After pronouncing a person guilty of heresy it turned him over to the secular arm of government with the admonition to shed no blood. Thus the stake, rather than the headsman’s sword or axe, breaking on the wheel, etc., was used as the method of execution, and the Church was removed from the responsibility for carrying it out.

People WERE executed for heresy, witchcraft, etc., although the numbers were much smaller than is popularly believed. A 19th-century charlatan named Etienne Leon de Lamothe-Langon wrote a history of the inquisition that made fictitious claims of witch trials in the fourteenth century and much exaggerated the numbers of people executed for witchcraft. His work was generally believed until it came under scholarly question in the mid-20th century.

Nonetheless, executions for heresy took place at the instance, if not by the direct agency of the Church. Famous examples include Cecco d’Ascoli, Lucilio Vanini, Giordabno Bruno, etc.

@James Newland
“Is there anyone here who will say with a straight face that today’s militant secular scientists, had they the power, would not oppose with extreme and deadly force such an abuse and usurpation? To deny it is not even credible.”

I agree completely. Just read Thomas Kuhn’s ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolution’. One of my all-time favorite studies about institutional itimidation.
Let’s just say I’m against any organization of more than two people.

@M.S.S

Yes, I know the Church handed over the victims to the local stooges for execution. Such a technicality is still used today, as when Saddam was handed over to the locals.

“Anyone who thinks science is decided by rational evaluation of evidence is not very familiar with the history of science. Personal ambition and philosophical presumption color the findings of scientists (just as they do everyone else)”

The above is pretty accurate, although I don’t think that ambition and philosophy are usually the crucial factors. It is mostly about ego. From personal experience, what happens is that the scientist normally invests an enormous effort into researching a subject prior to developing a theory. Most scientists, not surprisingly, then become obsessed with their own theory (particularly if it is reasonably novel) and quite refractory to considering alternatives that would contradict their work.

“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.”

Thomas Jefferson

Cognate,
How well does the statment you quoted agree with Luther’s behavior, when he stood in front of the Emperor and refused to obey both the Emperor and the Pope?  The moral message of Luther’s behavior used to be very widely known:  there are situations when you have to follow your conscience and disobey all earthly authorities, even when that disobedience may cost your life. 

It took time for the implications of Luther’s idea (for which there are many medieval Catholic precedents) to be developed fully.  Luther, for example, found it difficult to comprehend that people’s consciences could require them to disobey him.  In 17th century England, however, preachers were emphatically requiring people to follow their consciences in all situations—including those where their consciences required them to disobey the person making that statement.  (The source of this emphasis on individual decision-making is the last judgement, but explaining the details of that connection is impossible in the space available here.)

Cognate you beat me to it!
Here is another quote:

Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are serviley crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blind faith.

Jefferson