Christians: Why are scientists more likely to be non-believers?

Great Debates
241

Sufficient that Copernicus’ theory could be given an instrumental reading, as a useful mathematical tool for predicting planetary motions rather than a literal description of the motions of the planets. It did not take very much. It did not take very much. There are only a handful of passages in the original version that imply otherwise, and most of Copernicus’s readers already understood him in this way anyway. (It was quite traditional to read, and write, mathematical astronomy in this way. Geocentric mathematical astronomy generally presented itself as a mere instrumental mathematical tool also, rather than a literal physical description. They thought the Sun really went round the Earth, yes, but they didn’t mostly think all the epicycles and things were real. Incidentally, Copernicus’ theory was full of epicycles too. Until Kepler came up with ellipses, it was the only way to bring teh theory into line with actual measurement.)

No it fucking well isn’t! Get a clue. It means, for practical purposes, someone who has a degree in history or history of science, and who holds a post in such a subject at a university. (That is a sufficient, but not a necessary condition. I am sure there are some well informed histories of the Galileo affair written by non-academics. Actually almost any book or article that bothers at all about historical fact and evidence, will tell you the same thing.)

Now why don’t you go find and read one of the many books (or even articles) about Galileo written by such people and actually educate yourself about this topic that you so like to ignorantly bloviate about.

For a while, and at the time of his trial, heliocentrism, construed as literal, physical truth, was considered “formally heretical”. Note also, however, that it was not until 16 years after it was so ruled, and after Galileo had indulged in significant further provocations, that he was actually put on trial. Even after having been pushed into ruling it “formally” heretical, the powers that were in the Church really did not much care about the issue, and it is pretty clear that when Galileo did make his further provocations he did so in the confident expectations that this ruling would be ignored or reversed. He thought (and had some pretty good reasons to think) that pope Urban was actually on his side.

In any case, the doctrine that heliocentrism is heretical did not last very long. At the time of Galileo’s trial the case for heliocentrism was still very weak (despite Galileo’s own contributions to it), and very few astronomers (perhaps no-one but Galileo and Kepler) actually fully accepted it. However, in a generation or so, due to the further work of people such as Kepler and Newton, the evidence was overwhelming, the scientific consensus was solid, and the Church had to reverse itself. I do not know the exact date when that happened, but it can’t have been all that long.

242

I am an atheist, so the latter. It is a myth in which Christians believe.

243

What I wonder about is how such a scientist would deal with remarks in passing, such as a neighbor kid who tells him about what they learned in Sunday School.
The scientists says (perhaps in a more tactful manner) “You’re wasting your time, child; there is no God.”
The child is first confused, then starts to cry and runs home. This is followed by an angry parent approaching the scientist and castigating him (or even threatening him physically) for what he said to the child. Somehow I think that scientists who have that attitude toward religion would not be particularly considerate when addressing strangers, including children.

244

But it might itch a little.

245

You would have to ask a Christian (preferably one with some actual knowledge of Augustinian theology) about that.

At a guess, I would say that someone like Augustine would have said that the New Testament miracles (and perhaps some Old Testament ones) were rare and exceptional interventions by God in the natural order. Certainly he did not think that the science of his time ruled out the existence of a God with very great powers. (Indeed, I am pretty sure even the science of our time does not rule out the possibility of God’s existence. It just makes the hypothesis of a God a lot less compelling than it once seemed.) If that is so, miracles really do not fly in the face of science. The fact that you don’t know how to give a scientific account of some event does not necessarily imply that your science is wrong, just that it is incomplete. (And science is incomplete even today, let alone in the 4th century.)

What he meant about not contradicting science was not denying that there might have been miracles, on a few special occasions, that the then current scientific theories could not explain: what he meant was if there was some well supported scientific theory about something, Christians would be foolish (and it would be detrimental to Christianity) to deny it solely on the basis of some Biblical passage that seems superficially, to imply some alternative theory. It would be better, instead, to seek for some alternative interpretation of the Biblical passage that did not bring it into conflict with the science. This was precisely the form of argument used by Galileo (with acknowledgement to Augustine) to rebut objections to heliocentrism based on the passage from Joshua that I discussed above.

246

So the following is true or untrue:

“Following the Inquisition’s injunction against Galileo, the papal Master of the Sacred Palace ordered that Foscarini’s Letter be banned, and Copernicus’ De revolutionibus suspended until corrected. The papal Congregation of the Index preferred a stricter prohibition, and so with the Pope’s approval, on March 5 the Congregation banned all books advocating the Copernican system, which it called “the false Pythagorean doctrine, altogether contrary to Holy Scripture.”[29]”

Sorry you just sound like you are parroting Dinesh.

I read Bertrand Russel talking about the incident, which read a lot more like the wikipedia on the subject…

…than did your’s or captainamazing’s characterizations.

Just a century, give or take.

247

So in other words Augustine was a literalist so long as he thought the church could get away with it. That’s very profound.:dubious:

248

Out of curiosity, are there any pro-scientific justifications for the burning of Giordano Bruno?

249

I have never even read fucking Dinesh D’Souza, and from what I know of his reputation I would despise his politics. It does not follow however, that he gets his facts on everything wrong. If what he says squares with what I and Captain America have been saying, that is because it is the truth, or at the very least the accepted scholarly consensus.

I have however, read numerous scholarly books and articles about the Galileo affair (not to mention having taught a university course largely about it for many years).

Bertrand Russel was not a historian (even his History Of Western Philosophy, which is history only in a loose sense, and which IIRC does not deal with the relevant matters, is notoriously inaccurate). When he wrote about matters like this, he was writing as a polemicist, a cheerleader for science, not a historian. Furthermore his views were formed before the modern scholarly view of Galileo (based on close attention to historical evidence) emerged, at a time when the myth of Galileo as persecuted hero going up against a Church implacably opposed to progress was still believed even by the well educated.

You need to educate yourself on this subject, and stop relying on the likes of Bertrand Russell and Wikipedia for your history. (Not that I agree with your characterization of the Wikipedia entry. If you have read it at all carefully, I think you must be being blinded by confirmation bias. Nobody denies that Galileo was tried and imprisoned, ostensibly for promoting heliocentrism. Wikipedia sets out those facts and circumstances reasonably accurately. What is at issue is the motivations behind his prosecution.)

250

Just saying you sound just like him is all.

You know all that but didn’t know how long heliocentrism was considered heretical?

How so?

Why?

251

He was a unitarian, a pantheist, and he believed in reincarnation. That was what got him in trouble.

252

So Catholics burned him at the stake for not taking the Bible literal enough?

253

A great number of people were put to death by the various Powers That Be during 1600, many for “crimes” we consider less offensive than that.

254

Again, the issues about the Catholic church and Galileo are discussed considerably better in the following thread than in this one:

255

OK, so you agree that Catholics tortured and killed people for not taking the right things in the Bible literal enough? You just think that’s justifiable because of the times?

256

From here. I find it very hard to justify any “justice” dispensed more than three hundred years ago. I just don’t see where the Catholic Church deserves any more censure than any other power of the time.

257

Yeah they just burned a guy at the stake for saying what he believed. Why heap censure upon that?

258

Historical context. If I recall correctly, at about the same time there were hundreds of people being convicted of, and executed for, witchcraft by secular courts throughout Europe. (By the way, I do not support the witchhunters either.)

259

How secular were the courts?

260

They were government, not church courts (mostly) after about 1500. We have gotten a bit better in regards to seperation of Church and State in the centuries since then.