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To: ronnietherocket3
If you want examples of Protestant intolerance, feel free to examine Protestant reactions to Copernicus and Darwin.

Let's don't go there. Remember Galileo? The one who by studying the planets found out about heliocentrism? (That's where the planets go around the sun.) Well the Catholic Church beat the poop out of the old man and put him under house arrest. Scared the daylights out of him for being correct. Real tolerance there. The One True Church was wrong and behaved with cruelty.

19 posted on 07/27/2013 4:31:42 PM PDT by BipolarBob
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To: BipolarBob
1. Nobody in the Church laid a glove on Galileo. "Beat the poop out of him" is evidently unsourced.

2. At the outset, the Church (meaning, in this instance, Card. Robert Bellarmine) said Galileo could teach any concept of the sun, planets and stars he wanted, as long as he presented it as a hypothesis supported by mathematical evidence; he was not to make claims of absolute philosophic truth.

Since Galileo was teaching that the sun was the center of the Universe (not just of our solar system, but of the Universe) and that the ocean tides were caused by the rotation of the earth on its axis (tides are in fact caused by the gravitational pull of the Moon).

Bellarmine knew, and said --- as did others in the Roman Cauria -- that the Church actually didn't have a "dogma" on the relative positions of the sun, the moon, the earth, and the planets, and therefore it was just a matter of getting Galileo to stick to the scientific method with its necessarily modest and limited claims. Bellarmine actually had the better of the argument, from a scientific point of view.

Unfortunately, Bellarmine died, and new Roman authorities, and a weak pope (Urban VIII) nevertheless permitted a verdict that Galileo was "vehemently suspected" of heresy. (This was a stupid conclusion and unjust ruling, very much the product of academic rivalries and clerical factions, plus the fact that Galileo and Urban were both "vehemently" cranky.) The result was that Galileo was put under "house arrest" and permitted to stay in the houses of friends, always comfortable and usually luxurious.

Galileo continued both his work and his correspondence, enjoying both popularity and notoriety, and eventually Urban VIII sent Galileo his special blessing, a reconciliation of the two old men. When he passed away just before his 80 birthday, Galileo was interred not only in consecrated ground, but within the church of Santa Croce at Florence.

Not exactly canonization (for either Urban or Galileo!) but neither was it the melodramatic myth of "dogma" vs "science" as distorted by people who don't know jack chick about either.

29 posted on 07/27/2013 6:06:09 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o ("See something, say something.")
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To: BipolarBob

Galileo did not start Heliocentrism; Copernicus did. There were several scientific objections raised by scientists. One is that the moon goes around the Earth; if the Earth were to go around the Sun, the moon could not go around the Earth. Another was parallax, that the apparent position of the stars should shift. There were others.

Galileo was able to disprove the first objection, by noting that Jupiter had moons. He was not able to answer the second objection. He like many others at the time assumed that the stars were not as far away as they actually are. He was able to answer the other objections. However, Galileo could provide no ACTUAL evidence that he was right. He could only provide evidence that he might be right. Cardinal Bellarmine said that if there were proof that the Earth revolved around the Sun, Scripture passages to the contrary would need careful explanation. Galileo continued to teach the idea as fact and not a hypothesis as demanded by the RC Church. Because he repeatedly taught it as fact, when he had no proof, he was convicted on SUSPICION of heresy. He was not convicted of heresy.

Sola Scriptura is a doctrine promoted by Protestantism. At the time the Reformation was in high gear, with Protestants accusing the Catholic Church (which they still do today) of not paying enough attention to the Bible. The RC Church was willing to consider science that appeared to contradict scripture; however, there needed to be proof to teach it as fact, not as a hypothesis.


33 posted on 07/27/2013 6:41:45 PM PDT by ronnietherocket3
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