As a Catholic writer noted:
"To the popular mind, the Galileo affair is
prima facie evidence that the free pursuit of truth became possible only after science 'liberated' itself from the theological shackles of the Middle Ages ... the Galileo case is one of the historic bludgeons that are used to beat on the Church — the other two being the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition."
This is my point.
I am not saying it didn't happen, I'm saying what happened is presented in such partisan terms as to be almost fiction. We stand condemned for the errors we have made, and we apologies, but we are not obliged thereby to stand my mute and be subject to every calumny anyone chooses to set against us, in pursuit of their own agenda.
From the article:
In Western Christendom the Inquisition burned the Dominican monk Giordano Bruno at the stake in Rome in 1600 for insisting on a heliocentric (sun-centered) rather than a geocentric (earth- centered) universe.
Flat wrong, a typical propagandist distortion of the facts. And the anti-Catholic implication of the subsequent Bruno-oriented paragraphs are thereby wrong also. I draw short of assuming the author knows he is wrong, and therefore complicit in a lie ... but I am surprised he did not bother to check the accusations laid against Bruno, who was condemned for his Christology and Pneumatology, not for astronomy ... by the way was accused of heresy by the Calvinist Church and the Lutheran Church also. It appears he was a serial church-joiner and trouble-maker ...
The Catholic Church made a public declaration of its theological position on extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) when it clashed with Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) over the movement of the earth some 350 years ago.
Really? Can the author provide reference to Catholic statements of ETI? Or is he asserting that the possibility of ETI rests on heliocentricity?
Galileo exhibited the first telescope in 1609. With it he visually confirmed the 100-year old Copernican (heliocentric) hypothesis that the earth revolves around the sun.
Factually wrong. It provided data to advance the hypothesis, but the theory had still yet to be proven. Galileo made other claims which have been shown to be wrong.
Copernicus and Keppler were condemned by Protestant and Lutheran authorities, but supported by Jesuit scientists. Copernicus' treatise was warmly received by Pope Leo X (1513-1521), who wished to see more work undertaken on the idea — a hundred years before Galileo. His works were published with later papal blessing.
But neither Copernicus nor Keppler published works which claimed that Scripture was wrong.
Galileo's view ran counter to 1300-year old Church dogma which had already adopted the Ptolemaic (geocentric) system.
Wrong. Show me the dogma that insists on the Ptolemaic system.
The disagreement did not come down to a choice between two competing scientific views.
Wrong. The actual argument was Copernicus v Aristotle ... and the large part of the scientific community was Aristotelian. It is a known fact that one of Galileo's long-lasting supporters was Pope Urban III, even when the academic community wanted him silenced.
It was instead Galileo's scientific challenge to a theologically-fixed notion of reality sanctioned by the Church.
Previous scientists had been happy to make their thesis without reference to the Church, and the Church had demonstrated itself to be open and receptive to new theories. But Galileo insisted on dragging the Church into the debate — he insisted the church must accept he is right, and Scripture is wrong.
— he was asked to give the Ptolemaic system a fair hearing in the presentation of his own revised Copernican thesis (simple good science)
Instead he chose to make the
I suggest the error lies with Galileo in assuming that the church would throw up its hands and say 'everything we believe is wrong, you are right'.
The view of an earth- centered universe prevailed in official Church doctrine for the next 350 years--up to 1992--when Pope John Paul II finally acknowledged the Vatican's error in the matter of Galileo's trial.
So does this not undermine the whole ETI argument? We no longer believe the earth is the centre of the Cosmos, so what's your point?
By the way, far from being threatened with torture and death, As noted scientist and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead remarked, in an age that saw a large number of "witches" subjected to torture and execution by Protestants in New England, "the worst that happened to the men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof."
The Catholic Church today acknowledges that Galileo’s condemnation was wrong. The Vatican has even issued two stamps of Galileo as an expression of regret for his mistreatment.
But the myth of Galileo remains, along with the Inquisition and the Crusades, to paraphrase the old journo's saying, "never let the truth get in the way of a cheap shot."
Thomas