Posted on 02/04/2006 1:27:38 PM PST by Lorianne
In a column late last month in the Catholic Church's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, Italian biologist Fiorenzo Facchini scolded intelligent design advocates for "pretending to do science." It was the Vatican's signal that the church had jumped ship on ID. That will no doubt rankle creationists who hoped for a potential ally in Rome. But there's a bright side for them: The church's rejection could help the ID-ers identify with their favorite scientist, Galileo Galilei.
In opinion pieces, speeches, and interviews, ID advocates commonly cite the 17th-century Italian astronomer and physicist as a forebear. It's not his views on biology they want a piece of, but rather his plight as a man before his time. "In my opinion, we must train students in the 21st century to do exactly as Galileo did … think outside the box," says William Harris, one of the key players in Kansas' rebellion against evolution last year. In his 1996 book Darwin's Black Box, leading ID-er Michael Behe calls the idea of a heliocentric universe, proposed by Copernicus and backed by Galileo, a prescient "assault on the senses."
Last fall, an interviewer for the British newspaper the Guardian asked Behe if the criticism of ID he faces brings Galileo to mind. The self-appointed science rebel had a simple answer: "Yeah. In a way it's flattery."
Welcome to creationism's absurdist history of science. During the inquisition, the Catholic Church put Galileo on trial in 1633 and forced him under threat of torture to recant his belief, presented unapologetically in the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, that the earth revolved around the sun. Galileo's story has nuances—Pope Urban VIII tolerated his ideas more than hard-line cardinals—but it is unquestionably a tale of science squelched by organized religion.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
We agree on some facts, but I don't know about the rest. I'm sure the churchmen who forced Galileo to renounce the solar system and confess heresy had what they felt were sufficient reasons for their actions. But it doesn't matter if he had dropped trou and mooned the entire College of Cardinals; I don't believe what they did to him can ever be justified. I have no interest in any attempt to whitewash the affair. Whatever their motivations -- the result speaks for itself: The Crime of Galileo: Indictment and Abjuration of 1633.
You're conflating two seperate issues, I think.
The frist is whether what they did to him was wrong. On this, I don't think it's possible to argue otherwise. What was done was wrong, period, and there's no whitewashing. In this regard, their motives are irrelevent.
The second is whether they were dogmatically comitted to geocentrism. This is a seperate question with a more nuanced answer. The facts, I think, indicate the following: they were not dogmatically committed to it, but they were reluctant to abandon it and would not do it without more evidence.
I know we are in full agreement on the first issue. To what extent do you agree with me about the second?
C> COPY ANCESTOR.EXE CHILD.EXE
Very uncommon DOS commands. At least anymore, because few use the DOS command line. Under Windows you just drag and drop. And don't forget DVD and CD burners! What school did you go to, btw?
Word 6.0 is an imperfect copy of Word 5.5. And yes, any sysop can write a script that causes a system to self-replicate, and even do so with variants -- say to handle the differences between a teacher's workstation and that of a students.
And just as running program code never sees nor senses the programmers and sysops, so we biologicals never see our designer -- yet we can infer design and designer.
Yes.
To what extent do you agree with me about the second? [whether they were dogmatically comitted to geocentrism]
It wasn't Church dogma (a core doctrine of the faith), but it was the traditional worldview. It appears that they were rather casual about it earlier (pre Galileo) because the traditional interpretation of scripture had no serious competitor. Copernicus could be ignored, as his was only a mathematical model. Bruno got torched (by Bellarmine, by the way), but he had multiple issues so we won't dwell on him.
I'm not an expert on the history of that period, but I suspect that the Galileo affair was really the first time they took a formal position that deviating from the geocentric view was heresy. (Presumably, heresy can involve scriptural disputes that go beyond rejection of an article of dogma; but you'd have to ask an expert on canon law.) Because geocentricism isn't central to the mission of the Church, it could have been ignored; but they went out of their way to get involved in a purely optional issue. They decided to make the solar system heretical -- a blunder of historic significance. Galileo's martyrdom is a consequence of their foolishness, rather than his crankiness. That's the key to my view.
All they had to do was sit back and ignore the thing, letting science do what science does. But they felt, for what must have seemed good reasons to them at the time, that they had to draw a line in the sand. So they did.
Actually, they didn't. From your link:
"The proposition that the earth is not the center of the world, nor immovable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal action, is also absurd, philosophically false, and, theologically considered, at least erroneous in faith."
"Erroneous in faith" is a fancy way of saying contrary to the eccelsiastical consensus opinion. It's quite a different thing from heresy. It's an important difference because ecclesiastical consensus opinion is not irreformable, and often does change. On the other hand, heresy is a doctrine that is contrary to irreformable dogma.
Of course, they did declare as heresy the proposition that the sun is the center of the universe, but on this they were absolutely correct.
This discussion is descending into trivia. Yes, the sun isn't the center of the universe; but they "knew" this from scripture, which implies that it moves around the earth, and we know it for very different reasons. You get no points for that.
The sentence you quoted was quoted correctly: "The proposition that the earth is not the center of the world, nor immovable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal action, is also absurd, philosophically false, and, theologically considered, at least erroneous in faith."
However, the indictment goes on to say this:
... We pronounce, judge, and declare, that you, the said Galileo . . . have rendered yourself vehemently suspected by this Holy Office of heresy, that is, of having believed and held the doctrine (which is false and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures) that the sun is the center of the world, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the earth does move, and is not the center of the world; also, that an opinion can be held and supported as probable, after it has been declared and finally decreed contrary to the Holy Scripture, and, consequently, that you have incurred all the censures and penalties ...So it looks like the heliocentric model was heresy, and it's quibbling to say whether it was Galileo's opinion on the motion of the earth or the immobility of the sun that did him in. It seems to be the whole package.
LOL! Speak for yourself and you do.
This is completely false. If you knew anything about the features found in DNA, you'd know better than to say something this naively incorrect.
The characteristic similarities *and* differences in DNA are entirely unlike the kinds of similarities and differences seen between "versions" of design things. They are instead exactly like the kinds of similarities and differences which evolutionary descent from a common ancestor would produce. There are a great many features in DNA which, contrary to your claim that "can equally be explained by intentional design", actually make no sense whatsoever from a design standpoint, but make perfect sense from an evolutionary origin. Conversely, there are no DNA features which have been found that don't match the expectations of evolutionary origins, but which make sense from a solely design standpoint.
Furthermore, no one with any familiarity with computer programming and genetic algorithms would have any trouble distinguishing an evolved program from a written ("designed") one. The same is true of DNA -- it has all the hallmarks of an evolved "program", and not the hallmarks of a "designed" one.
Try to learn more about DNA analysis before you attempt to (incorrectly) critique it again.
And just as running program code never sees nor senses the programmers and sysops, so we biologicals never see our designer -- yet we can infer design and designer.
Nonsense: The advantages of theft over toil: the design inference and arguing from ignorance.
What is the most appropriate model for observing, for classifying observations? When one encounters systems that seem designed, a model for observation and classifications is suggested by that design.
In observations what one observes is always colored and filtered by the model one has of what is observable, what one wants to observe on the basis of that model, and what becomes interesting.
What was the model set in Darwin's mind at the time he landed on Galapagos? What about it was interesting to him and why? For that preset mind has colored and filtered so much of science and social forces since. What that model was was obviously resonant. If not had by Darwin, then by someone else in nearly the same years, and just as resonant.
The reverse-engineering of design, btw, does not eliminate any pathways for observations and analysis, nor short-cut them.
All this time I thought Ich was:
A) a Rastafarian with German roots who was proclaiming he was reborn.
or
B) A fan of a family of Wasps
or
C) A fan of a type of Mongoose, but not enough of a fan to put up with the derivations of the first part of its name.
But now you're saying that Ich's paying homage to a branch of paleontology?
How terribly confusing this is all becoming.
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