Posted on 01/25/2009 2:49:18 PM PST by NYer
We find this war advertised in many of the leading atheist tracts such as those by Richard Dawkins, Victor Stenger, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Every few months one of the leading newsweeklies does a story on this subject. Little do the peddlers of this paradigm realize that they are victims of nineteenth-century atheist propaganda.
About a hundred years ago, two anti-religious bigots named John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White wrote books promoting the idea of an irreconcilable conflict between science and God. The books were full of facts that have now been totally discredited by scholars. But the myths produced by Draper and Dickson continue to be recycled. They are believed by many who consider themselves educated, and they even find their way into the textbooks. In this article I expose several of these myths, focusing especially on the Galileo case, since Galileo is routinely portrayed as a victim of religious persecution and a martyr to the cause of science.
The Flat Earth Fallacy: According to the atheist narrative, the medieval Christians all believed that the earth was flat until the brilliant scientists showed up in the modern era to prove that it was round. In reality, educated people in the Middle Ages knew that the earth was round. In fact, the ancient Greeks in the fifth century B.C. knew the earth was a globe. They didn’t need modern science to point out the obvious. They could see that when a ship went over the horizon, the hull and the mast disappear at different times. Even more telling, during an eclipse they could see the earth’s shadow on the moon. Look fellas, it’s round!
Huxley’s Mythical Put-Down: We read in various books about the great debate between Darwin’s defender Thomas Henry Huxley and poor Bishop Wilberforce. As the story goes, Wilberforce inquired of Huxley whether he was descended from an ape on his father or mother’s side, and Huxley winningly responded that he would rather be descended from an ape than from an ignorant bishop who was misled people about the findings of science. A dramatic denouement, to be sure, but the only problem is that it never happened. There is no record of it in the proceedings of the society that held the debate, and Darwin’s friend Joseph Hooker who informed him about the debate said that Huxley made no rejoinder to Wilberforce’s arguments.
Darwin Against the Christians: As myth would have it, when Darwin’s published his Origin of Species, the scientists lined up on one side and the Christians lined up on the other side. In reality, there were good scientific arguments made both in favor of Darwin and against him. The British naturalist Richard Owen, the Harvard zoologist Louis Agassiz, and the renowned physicist Lord Kelvin all had serious reservations about Darwin’s theory. Historian Gertrude Himmelfarb points out that while some Christians found evolution inconsistent with the Bible, many Christians rallied to Darwin’s side. Typical was the influential Catholic journal Dublin Review which extravagantly praised Darwin’s book while registering only minor objections.
The Experiment Galileo Didn’t Do: We read in textbooks about how Galileo went to the Tower of Pisa and dropped light and heavy bodies to the ground. He discovered that they hit the ground at the same time, thus refuting centuries of idle medieval theorizing. Actually Galileo didn’t do any such experiments; one of his students did. The student discovered what we all can discover by doing similar experiments ourselves: the heavy bodies hit the ground first! As historian of science Thomas Kuhn points out, it is only in the absence of air resistance that all bodies hit the ground at the same time.
Galileo Was the First to Prove Heliocentrism: Actually, Copernicus advanced the heliocentric theory that the sun, not the earth, is at the center, and that the earth goes around the sun. He did this more than half a century before Galileo. But Copernicus had no direct evidence, and he admitted that there were serious obstacles from experience that told against his theory. For instance, if the earth is moving rapidly, why don’t objects thrown up into the air land a considerable distance away from their starting point? Galileo defended heliocentrism, but one of his most prominent arguments was wrong. Galileo argued that the earth’s regular motion sloshes around the water in the oceans and explains the tides. In reality, tides have more to do with the moon’s gravitational force acting upon the earth.
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In reality, the Church was the leading sponsor of the new science and Galileo himself was funded by the church. The leading astronomers of the time were Jesuit priests. |
The Church Dogmatically Opposed the New Science: In reality, the Church was the leading sponsor of the new science and Galileo himself was funded by the church. The leading astronomers of the time were Jesuit priests. They were open to Galileo’s theory but told him the evidence for it was inconclusive. This was the view of the greatest astronomer of the age, Tyco Brahe. The Church’s view of heliocentrism was hardly a dogmatic one. When Cardinal Bellarmine met with Galileo he said, “While experience tells us plainly that the earth is standing still, if there were a real proof that the sun is in the center of the universe…and that the sun goes 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 rather admit that we did not understand them than declare an opinion to be false which is proved to be true. But this is not a thing to be done in haste, and as for myself, I shall not believe that there are such proofs until they are shown to me.” Galileo had no such proofs.
Galileo Was A Victim of Torture and Abuse: This is perhaps the most recurring motif, and yet it is entirely untrue. Galileo was treated by the church as a celebrity. When summoned by the Inquisition, he was housed in the grand Medici Villa in Rome. He attended receptions with the Pope and leading cardinals. Even after he was found guilty, he was first housed in a magnificent Episcopal palace and then placed under “house arrest” although he was permitted to visit his daughters in a nearby convent and to continue publishing scientific papers.
The Church Was Wrong To Convict Galileo of Heresy: But Galileo was neither charged nor convicted of heresy. He was charged with teaching heliocentrism in specific contravention of his own pledge not to do so. This is a charge on which Galileo was guilty. He had assured Cardinal Bellarmine that given the sensitivity of the issue, he would not publicly promote heliocentrism. Yet when a new pope was named, Galileo decided on his own to go back on his word. Asked about this in court, he said his Dialogue on the Two World Systems did not advocate heliocentrism. This is a flat-out untruth as anyone who reads Galileo’s book can plainly see. Even Galileo’s supporters, and there were many, found it difficult to defend him at this point.
What can we conclude from all this? Galileo was right about heliocentrism, but we know that only in retrospect because of evidence that emerged after Galileo’s death. The Church should not have tried him at all, although Galileo’s reckless conduct contributed to his fate. Even so, his fate was not so terrible. Historian Gary Ferngren concludes that “the traditional picture of Galileo as a martyr to intellectual freedom and as a victim of the church’s opposition to science has been demonstrated to be little more than a caricature.” Remember this the next time you hear some half-educated atheist rambling on about “the war between religion and science.”
bookmark for later.
The Inquisition is misunderstood. In particular the confusion between the Roman and the Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish Inquistion, whose reality is more like the legend, behaved brutally for the first twenty years of its existence, and then became largely a bullying operation, trying to separate out Jews and then Muslims from authentic Christians. Neither played much a role during the Reformation. Witches were the more common victims of both relgious and civil courts in both Catholic and Protestant countries for a period of several hundred years.
LOL, you couldn't be more wrong. Just ask the folks at one of the oldest observatories in the world:
The 2008 Templeton Prize was awarded to Fr. Heller with the Vatican Observatory.
Thanks for the ping!
Around 240 B.C. Eratosthenes used the angle of elevation of the sun at noon on the summer solstice in Alexandria and on the Elephantine Island near Syene to calculate the circumference of the earth. He was pretty close.
One might perhaps he surprised that at the end of the Academy’s study week on the theme of the emergence of complexity in the various sciences, I am returning to the Galileo case. Has not this case long been shelved and have not the errors committed been recognized?
That is certainly true. However, the underlying problems of this case concern both the nature of science and the message of faith. It is therefore not to be excluded that one day we shall find ourselves in a similar situation, one which will require both sides to have an informed awareness of the field and of the limits of their own competencies. The approach provided by the theme of complexity could provide an illustration of this.
5. A twofold question is at the heart of the debate of which Galileo was the centre.
The first is of the epistemological order and concerns biblical hermeneutics. In this regard, two points must again be raised. In the first place, like most of his adversaries, Galileo made no distinction between the scientific approach to natural phenomena and a reflection on nature, of the philosophical order, which that approach generally calls for. That is why he rejected the suggestion made to him to present the Copernican system as a hypothesis, inasmuch as it had not been confirmed by irrefutable proof. Such, however, was an exigency of the experimental method of which he was the inspired founder. [468]
Secondly, the geocentric representation of the world was commonly admitted in the culture of the time as fully agreeing with the teaching of the Bible, of which certain expressions taken literally, seemed to affirm geocentrism. The problem posed by the theologians of that age was, therefore, that of the compatibility between heliocentrism and Scripture.
Thus the new science with its methods and the freedom of research which they implied, obliged the theologians to examine their own criteria of scriptural interpretation. Most of them did not know how to do so.
Paradoxically, Galileo, a sincere believer, showed himself to be more perceptive in this regard than the theologians who opposed him. “If Scripture cannot err”, he wrote to Benedetto Castelli, “certain of its interpreters and commentators can and do so in many ways”.[2] We also know of his letter to Christine de Lorraine (1615) which is like a short treatise on biblical hermeneutics.[3]
6. From this we can now draw our first conclusion. The birth of a new way of approaching the study of natural phenomena demands a clarification on the part of all disciplines of knowledge. It obliges them to define more clearly their own field, their approach, their methods, as well as the precise import of their conclusions. In other words, this new way requires each discipline to become more rigorously aware of its own nature.
The upset caused by the Copernican system thus demanded epistemological reflection on the biblical sciences, an effort which later would produce abundant fruit in modern exegetical works and which has found sanction and a new stimulus in the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum of the Second Vatican Council.
7. The crisis that I have just recalled is not the only factor to have had repercussions on biblical interpretation. Here we are concerned with the second aspect of the problem, its pastoral dimension.
By virtue of her own mission, the Church has the duty to be attentive to the pastoral consequences of her teaching. Before all else, let it be clear that this teaching must correspond to the truth. But it is a question of knowing how to judge a new scientific datum when it seems to contradict the truths of faith. The pastoral judgement which the Copernican theory required was difficult to make, in so far as geocentrism seemed to be a part of scriptural [469] teaching itself. It would have been necessary all at once to overcome habits of thought and to devise a way of teaching capable of enlightening the people of God. Let us say, in a general way, that the pastor ought to show a genuine boldness, avoiding the double trap of a hesitant attitude and of hasty judgement, both of which can cause considerable harm.
Excerpt from the speech of Pope John Paul II before the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 1992
**For some reason the Church believes science and religion cannot co exist. **
I think the Catholic Church has changed here.
When it comes to abortion vs. life, the Catholic Church is basically the first and only one standing saying that life begins at conception (as science proves.)
Who woulda thunk it?
**I cannot find the term “Mother of God” in the Bible.**
Oh, you are so wrong. Elizabeth says to Mary at the Visitation, “And how is this that the Mother of my Lord, should come to me?”
Lord — was used as the Jewsih people at that time as a reference to God.
**I cannot find the term “Annunciation Day” in the Bible.**
Again, you are wrong. An Annunciation is a beginning. Read Luke 1: 26-38. It is the announcement of the Angel Gabriel to Mary that she is to be the Mother of God through the Holy Spirit.
I think that the actual experiment was with balls the same shape but of different weights, so air resistance would be the same, but even so; you are correct, a 10 lb weight and a 50 lb weight are going to hit at (approximately) the same time.
I think this is indicative of the general scholarship level of this article.
Congratulations on getting the ignorant bigot post into the top ten.
Number of people put to death by the Catholic church during the Spanish inquisition? Zero!, Number put to death by civil governments? about 1000.
While we are at it which inquisition are YOU talking about?
You see there have been about a dozen or so, ten of which involved catholics being put to death by Pagan and Protestant groups. Might want to look up Diocletian.
Great book, and a great series on ewtn
>> Most of the folks claiming there is a war between religion and science are fundamentalists. <<
Almost 20 years ago, when I attended state university, my fellow biology majors frequently puzzled over how a Christian could study science.
>> While we are all upset about Liberals misquoting facts let us not start becoming DENIERS who deny historical truth. I myself went to Catholic school in the early 70s and let me tell you even then the Church was very anti science. <<
Outrageously prepostrous. So far from believable, you might as well have declared Reagan was a communist and Clinton was a celibate victim of an ultra-conservative news media. Even the pedophilia problem was exacerbated by the Church relying on secular psychologists telling them what to do.
If you went to a Catholic school run by one of the precious few nuns who didn’t go all lefty-goofy, and was so shell-shocked by the outrageous excesses of modernism that she over-reacted against science, certainly you could’ve noticed by now that she was a lone wolf, couldn’t you?
>> For some reason the Church believes science and religion cannot co exist. <<
Tell that the symposia of all the world’s greatest scientists who regularly met at Castile Gandolfo to discuss science with Pope John Paul II.
Tell that Steven Hawkings, who wrote about how the pope brilliantly understood everything Hawkings taught him about the creation of the universe, and stated in reply, “See, we told you so.” (Hawkings was so shaken at the pope’s insight taht he’s spent so much of the rest of his career working feverishly to refute the big bang.)
Tell that to all the Protestant critics of Catholicism, who can’t fathom why the church hasn’t plainly renounced evolution or the big bang and instead are baffled how church leaders explain how they are consistent with the truthfulness of the bible. (The objection of the Catholic Church amounts merely to the nihilist reductio ad absurdum
faslely attached to such scientific theories by propagandists like Dawkins.)
The explanation is perfectly correct.
>> Drop a 10-pound weight and a 50-pound weight at the same time and both hit at the same time. If both objects have the same shape but different weights, they will hit at the same time because the air will affect both the same way. <<
No. In the absence of air, both accelerate at the same rate, but the heavier object is experiencing a greater force apon it to move it at the same rate. If the two objects are the equal size and shape but different weights, the heavier object will fall faster.
Suppose object 1 experieces 10 (kg*m)/s of gravity and at a given speed, it encounters 1 kg*m/s of resistance falling. The net force is 9 kg*m/s, or Newtons. Such an object would accelerate quickly. (These values are for easy math, and are not realistic on earth.) Suppose a 1kg object encountered the same gravity. If it were falling at the same rate as the first object, it would also experience a resistance of 1 kg*m/s. The net force, however, would be 0, and the object would not accelerate.
Thus, the heavier object travels faster than the lighter object.
>> Here’s a name that Dinesh D’Souza apparently doesn’t know: Giordano Bruno. A philosopher and a scientist, Bruno was burned at the stake in February of 1600 by the Roman Inquisition <<
Here’s what your source says:
“He is often considered an early martyr for modern scientific ideas, in part because he was burned at the stake as a heretic by the Roman Inquisition. However, others argue that his actual heresy was his pantheist beliefs about God,[1] not any idea we would today characterize as scientific.[2]”
Here’s what he was tried for (still YOUR source):
* Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic Faith and speaking against it and its ministers.
What were those opinions contrary to Catholic Faith?
1. Holding erroneous opinions about the Trinity, about Christ’s divinity and Incarnation.
2. Holding erroneous opinions about Christ.
3. Holding erroneous opinions about Transubstantiation and Mass.
4. Claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity.
5. Believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes.
6. Dealing in magics and divination.
7. Denying the Virginity of Mary.
(numbers added by me.)
“Well, isn’t at least #4 is sort of Copernican, isn’t it?” you might ask. Don’t attach a modern understanding of the meaning of those words; Bruno was advocating something more similar to the goofy notions of Mormonism and Scientology.
And just so we’re all clear: Dinesh isn’t arguing the church never burned heretics, only that the church didn’t oppose science. Although your source tries to remain neutral in its conclusions, it provides very clear evidence that the notion that he was a martyr for science is mere legend.
A note: if Kuhn believes the results favored Aristotle, he *is* wrong on that point. If it’s that Galileo’s physics are, he is wrong on that point, although I don’t think that is his point. I think he points out the experiment wouldn’t work only to say that the experiment never happened, not that Galileo was wrong in principle. I think the larger point is that Galileo only ever proposed a thought exercise; the supposed demostration is a legend, as Galileo’s comments demonstrate.
Read Galileo’s quote; it sounds like everyone acknowledges that objects don’t fall at speeds proportional to their masses. But what is Galileo’s point? If he’s arguing that empiricism is superior to rationalism, he’s using a straw man, the same one that got him in trouble.
Aristotle opposed empiricism; the Church rejected empiricism on matters of revealed faith (the scripture), and syllogisms based on that revealed faith. Some in the church (Aquinas) tried to use syllogisms on matters far beyond the expertise of the scripture (locating Eden, for instance, in central Asia), and other Catholics regarded certain Aristotelian concepts as supportive of the faith. In a sense, they reasoned, because Aristotle helped prepare the Greek world for the logic that Paul would use to promote Christianity, Aristotle prepared the world for Christianity. Therefore, they saw the hand of God behind certain of Aristotle’s teachings.
The Church did not, however, assert that Aristotle’s thoughts was absolutely valid, nor was its faith dependent on Aristotle, nor were any Christians obliged to defend Aristotle. (Hadn’t the Pharoah also prepared Israel for Mosaic law in a sense?) Bellarmine clearly saw that Galileo was using Aristotle’s limitations as straw man to attack Christianity and he blunted the attack by clearly annunicating that the Church was ready to accept Galileo’s empiricism, just that they weren’t ready to overturn previously held notions until Galileo had actually empirically proven his notions; Copernicus was the model scientist to Bellarmine’s way of thought: he put forth interesting ideas, allowing people the opportunity to find support for them in case they were ture, without ever insisting that they were true.
But Gallileo perceived the Church’s “Aristotelian-by-default” positions as obstacles to the rapid progress of his science. And so he trained his attack on the institutions of the church itself, using Aristotle as a straw man against the entire notion of preserved knowledge.
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