Posted on 05/18/2009 9:12:37 PM PDT by bdeaner
Ok,, you are way out of the mainstream of Christianity now, so its silly to continue. But Jesus didnt come to set up an earthly kingdom and clearly rejected such suggestions.
You would clearly be happy in a full theocracy. Your choice, but not christian, american, or conservative in any way.
BTW, it might be 2am where you are,, but theres this thing called time zones. Try that out sport.
Again, to command that the very professors of astronomy themselves see to the refutation of their own observations and proofs as mere fallacies and sophisms is to enjoin something that lies beyond any possibility of accomplishment. For this would amount to commanding that they must not see what they see and must not understand what they know, and that in searching they must find the opposite of what they actually encounter.
- Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina
So in your world,, monarchs ruled by divine right?? Wow, thats nutty. You might want to read a book called “Common Sense”. It pretty much annihilates the idea that Monarchy comes from God.
The only divinely inspired government in human history was crafted by Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Adams, etc,,,
Once you look at the moon through a telescope, there’s no going back. Have you read Galileo’s writings?
Ah, if only the Enlightenment had come in 32 A. D.
Anachronistic.
You wrote:
“They were deathly afraid of anything that might threaten their theology, and thereby, their temporal power.”
That’s nothing but psychobabble. What evidence do you have? You are expressing a marxist view of religion and don’t even have the sense to know it. It is absoultely illogical - in fact it is IRRATIONAL - to believe one tribunal either sums up the Church’s official views, or its “fears” seen from some marxist armchair 300 years later.
Give up the marxist view of religion as a quest for power and you might actually begin to understand what motivates genuinely religious people. Don’t be suckered!
You wrote:
“Who in the hell is the Pope to have anybody ARRESTED?”
He was the governing authority. Did that not occur to you?
If a common citizen - a complete nobody - can execute a citizen’s arrest in our country would it really surprise you that the most important ruler in Italy could execute an arrest in the 17th century?
You wrote:
“The medieval papacy is about as far from the teachings of Christ as you can get.”
No, actually it’s much closer than you realize. It still recognized Christ as king. It still considered its job to teach, preach and aid souls in getting to heaven.
You wrote to campaignPete R-CT,
“But Jesus didnt come to set up an earthly kingdom and clearly rejected such suggestions.”
He didn’t set up a kingdom as people expected Him to do. He set up a Church instead. He gave it authority (that is, if you believe scripture). The problem is, when the Church has authority over all Christian souls on earth - and that’s clearly how Christ wanted it - then how does that avoid entanglements with secular powers? That’s always been an issue. Those who want the Church to exercise her God-given authority are not anti-science nor are they clamoring for a theocracy. They are merely denying the propriety of an all out secular society. The Church has a place in society - and if you look at the Bible - it’s a pretty big one.
You wrote:
“Have you read Galileo’s writings?”
Some, but not all. And once you have read his writings, you realize why he got into trouble with the tribunal. He sought to interpret scripture in a way that suited him and his theories. As someone who claimed to be Catholic, that was bound to get him in trouble sooner or later.
Bump for later reference
It’s not really a mathematical leap. It’s a conceptual leap. Same with Tycho. In Ptolemy you have a system which tries to explain what things look like with the assumptions of earth at the center and “regular [constant velocity] circular motion.” Appearances differ so much that epicycles and equants (centers which are not the earth but around which the planets maintain regular angular velocity.) Then if you look at the resulting account, you see that a lot could be simplified if you stopped assuming the earth at the center.
Copernicus still assumed regular circular motion. The world had to wait for Kepler for ellipses and a system which realy “saved the appearances.”
The REAL problem, and the reason Tycho was attractive, was parallax. If the earth moved, the “fixed stars” should have apparent motion. And they do, but the instruments at the time (I’m told) weren’t precise enough to detect it. And it didn’t seem to occur to folks that the fixed stars were far enough away to make the motion so small, so the absence of apparent motion was considered, as it should have been, a powerful refutation of the moving earth theory.
(We did Ptolemy, that is the general system and then the details of one “inner planet” - between us and the sun, and one “outer planet” at my college.)
Some of 'em, and when I read the Dialogue the impression that I got was that he was baiting the Church, and I got that impression when I was not only not Catholic but pretty anti-Catholic.
AND I've read the Timaeus, and some Copernicus and some Tycho Brahe -- and some Newton and some Einstein.
So?
Without measurable parallax, the heliocentric system had a problem. It could be no more than hypothesis -- though to my mind an elegant one -- until it coped with that problem.
Let's remember the honors heaped on Galileo before his condemnation. The idea that the Church was anti-science is attractive to some, but no more "saves the appearances" than an equant does.
How did Protestants respond to heliocentric theories? Is there any data?
That’s funny, because I could have sword I read in the article precisely that. Hmm. Go figure.
I think the record of his condemnation that I cited should be enough to give anyone pause.
Okay. I paused.
Then I noticed the straw man. This article does NOT promote or state or imply that the actions of the Church were consistent with a scientifically "enlightened" point of view. It DOES argue that the Church did not have on the science faculty the bunch of evil, mindless, superstitious paranoids that the "enlightened" like to think she had.
Then I went back to the record. And the record is that in 1624 Urban VIII gave Galileo gifts and honors and urged him to continue his researches. In 1612 Galileo's Letters on the Sunspots espoused the Copernican hypothesis and Cardinal Maffeo Barberini (later Urban VIII) wrote him to congratulate him.
Without measurements of parallax, heliocentrism must remain a hypothesis. Galileo was urged to write about it as a hypothesis. To this day, astronomers treat the Copernican system as a hypothesis, a discredited hypothesis at that.
Reviewing the data, data acquired with the use of sensitive instruments discredits geocentrism. Data available at the time discredited regular circular motion of the planets around either the earth or the sun.
So NO data confirmed or could confirm the Copernican System or even heliocentrism without regular circular motion. Available data pointed out flaws in Copernicus. But the comparative elegance of heliocentrism meant that despite Galileo's condemnation other religious scientists, e.g. Fr. Boscovic (100 years later), continued to use the hypothesis of a moving earth in their work and continued to look for data to support the hypothesis.
When what somebody says is false, revisionism is a good thing. Kepler revised Copernicus. Newton revised Kepler. Einstein revised Newton. Lobachevsky revised Euclid. Descartes revised Apollonius. I LIKE revisionism
The next time you want to go on a Catholics vs. Science field trip, check out the Jesuits and seismology or Nicolaus Steno (a convert from Lutheranism) and geology.
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Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment
Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”
There's a big difference however. Charles and his mother Queen E. do not claim any sort of infallibility, (be it ex cathedra or whatever) or lack of change in their powers, or the powers of the English monarchy, from ol' Henry VIII. There's been a revolution (and restoration--and then moderation) of change of the English crown since then which is huge--and is there for anyone to see. No one worries about the "divine right of kings" anymore, as even the most loyal English subject to the monarchy does not believe it.... However, not so with Rome. The same sorts of claims about papal authority are made today--by many on this thread, as were made 400 years ago about, and by, despotic popes. It would be as if folks in Parliment today were taking very seriously Charles' divine "right" to behead whomever he wants... Conservative Roman Catholics still say the Council of Trent degrees (which actually formally curse to hell all conservative Protestants) are in effect, as the Church, supposedly in council, cannot make mistakes. Oddly, when Vatican II says Muslims may go to Heaven... (and also retracts the condemnation of Protestants) nobody goes to the mat defending THAT particular infallible decree. Gallileo WAS condemned for his scientific work, precisely because the Church mistakenly believed certain things about the nature of the universe from scripture and tradition. The pope and the Church (shock of SHOCKS!) erred...and to do so is human. All Christians should be more concerned about the one human Being who does not err, namely our God Jesus Christ, Lord of the Church--knowing it is He alone who saves, while yes, still using a poor weak, and often erring, Mother Church to bring people into His mercy.
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