OK. I just went through my copy of Sagans book published by Ballantine Books by arrangement with Random House, Copyright 1996. No mention of Galileo in the index. No militant atheism that I can find. If this basic assertion is demonstrably false how much credence do the rest of the OP’s “facts” deserve.
What we have is a myth that is not a myth told by atheists and non atheists alike, not because it promotes some atheist agenda but because it comports with historical fact. If the point the OP is trying to make is that Galileo was not physically tortured he needs to establish that anyone said he was. If he is trying to say the church of Galileo’s time was open to the idea of a heliocentric solar system or that Galileo was not threatened with torture and possibly death FOR HIS VIEWS then he is full of shit. If he thinks that atheists believe and repeat the story of Galileo’s treatment in order to make the church look bad he is also wrong. Some people may do it for that reason but most thinking atheists won’t buy that argument any more than they will buy the OP’s.
Most non-believers do not need to try to hold the modern church accountable for the actions of the past. If we want to cast aspersions on the church we need look no further than the present day pedophile scandals. Or it’s refusal to permit condom use despite AIDS and poverty being one of the primary causes of suffering to the poor. Forcing them to abstain or have many children is not exactly a recipe for alleviating suffering. Or the fact that while the Vatican decries poverty it is still one of the wealthiest institutions in the world. Or we can look on and smile as the church advocates a more metaphorical and less literal interpretation of scripture in the face of advancing scientific knowledge that makes a literal interpretation increasingly hard to endorse with a straight face.
He’s essentially asking atheists to stop recounting a famous (if often over-simplilfied) story about the church deliberately standing in the way of scientific progress, by some heavy-handed uses of its authority, not because it’s false in any sense, other than a nit-picking one, but because it tells a terrible and damning truth about the church as an impediment to knowledge. I understand completely why the OP feels that we should shut up permanently about it asap.
Much of the OP has been shredded by this point, but I would challenge the claim that Galileo’s work
The Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems never mentions Urban. Rather it hammers the unscientific philosophy Urban and others promoted, often using Urban’s own words. The fact that Galileo had been prohibited from promoting heliocentrism was certainly reason enough for this critique. Galileo did not intend for this to be a personal attack on the Pope and he was surprised by the reaction when the book was published.
Does anyone other than me find it ironic that the same thing that happened to Galileo–being contradicted by someone who happened to be completely incorrect–is what the OP is trying to accomplish with people who want to recount Galileo’s story?
“Shut up about that, it didn’t happen like you say it did, and even if it did so what, but it didn’t so shut up already” sort of thing. Maybe this irony is just so obvious that it’s assumed in this thread without specifically noting its presence.
Try Arthur Koestler’s The Sleepwalkers, then. The account he gives of Galileo’s “persecution” and trial pretty much agrees with the OP’s. Galileo was a vain, quarrelsome man with a rare talent for making enemies unnecessarily. Galileo continually resorted to abuse and personal attacks in his writings and stepped on an awful lot of toes that didn’t need to be stepped on. What’s more, he had considerable support among the Church’s scholars and intellectuals, and it is simply a plain falsehood that the entire Church heirarchy was against Galileo and heliocentrism. His troubles with the Church would never have happened if he had only shown a decent respect for his peers.
This is pretty much an atheist myth. It’s the sort of thing that your average garden variety, superficially educated atheist reaches for when he wants to “prove” that religion is oppressive.
It never has to be the entire Church hierarchy. I personally don’t think the Church has ever been sufficiently organized in its history for the entire Church hierarchy to agree on anything. Rather, the power of the Church was such that it only took a schmuck buttinski or two, operating under the cloak of its authority, to cause harm in areas the Church doesn’t or shouldn’t belong. It’s rather like the local Party Commissar who uses his authority to send people he doesn’t like to Siberia.
Granting all that for the sake of argument, the central truth of the “myth” remains that the Church used its authority in an oppressive, repressive and suppressive manner to silence one of the great men of science, would be true whether or not Galileo relaxed by biting the heads of live kittens and punting babies into the river Po. It’s somewhat disturbing to see intelligent people defend the Church’s actions by attacking the character of its victim. and this
But that’s the way the myth is presented: a monolithic Church condemns Galileo for heresy without a peep from any dissenters. The point of the myth is to make the Galileo affair sound like one of Stalin’s show trials, which it wasn’t. The affair is distorted and misrepresented to make it seem that the Church was using an absolute, totalitarian power to suppress all intellectual inquiry and all freedom of speech. Everything you’ve said about the subject in this thread sounds like a half-baked, ad hoc rationalization.
I’ve heard before that Galileo was quarrelsome, picked fights, was an ornery so-and-so. Heck, it’s probably true. Nonetheless, this argument boils down to saying that the Church–or at any rate, the Congregation of the Index, an important body in the central bureaucracy of the church–let Galileo get their goat and goad them into saying this:
Which if you ask me makes them look kind of stupid. Stupid on a historical scale, in fact.
And you can say “myth” all you want, but the basics of the true story–and quite regardless of whether or not Galileo was any good at winning friends and influencing Princes of the Church–are quite legitimately a cautionary tale about what the relationship should not be between the church and the state (or religion and political power). Or between the church and science. Or between authority in general and freedom of inquiry and freedom of thought.
Yes the popular view of Galileo vs the facts is probably overly critical of the handling of church of this matter and/or easy on Galileo (who appears to be at least a dick), but
this is not in any way an exclusively atheist myth.
being a dick does not warrant a life-time house arrest.
And I’m disregarding the fact that Galileo was right.
Well of course we reach for that. After all, it’s not as if religion had done things like torturing and burning people alive for having different opinions, declaring crusades that turned into bloodbaths, depriving women of access to contraception even when pregnancy could endanger their lives, having people like Margaret Sanger imprisoned and lobbying to make birth control illegal, telling people condoms cause AIDS, covering up molestation of children by their priests, denying gays access to civil marriage, backing fascist dictators like Franco and Musolinni, etc. etc.
If they had ever done things like that we would not have to resort to myths to prove that religion is oppressive.
I disagree with your impression of everything I’ve said in this thread, and I invite everyone with an interest to read up on the actual course of events. It’ll still turn out to be abuse of power by the Church because Galileo made them uncomfortable. It doesn’t matter if he was jerk. It doesn’t even matter that he was right. The Church, ostensibly an organization of mercy and justice, threatened a man with torture. No amount of verbal gymnastics from ITR will change that and all he’s done is taken his own credibility to Golgotha and crucified it and it sure ain’t coming back in three days.
What does it tell is about the OP that he dumps this glurge of a thread that goes on for multiple pages and days but he himself bowed out about an hour after posting it with no meaningful rebuttal of the many refutations? Tells me he just wants to witness.
Shameful how this guy feels justified in criticizing the Church’s behavior just because he’s chief astronomer at the Vatican. On the other hand, it’s refreshing that the Vatican of today feels comfortable enough to bestow formal organizational positions and clerical titles on atheists like this fellow.
[ Nitpick ]
This was originally a Protestant attack on the Catholic Church, (much as the similar idiotic claim that Columbus was trying to prove the world was round was a Protestant attack on the RCC, with it author being even more dishonest than the various commentators on Galileo in that the authorities of the church who debated Columbus were actually right).
Now, it is true that among people who have a grudge against the RCC–Protestant, Atheist, or just grumpy–the Galileo story is one that gets trotted out with a certain number of inaccuracies on a semi-regular basis, but it is hardly the exclusive province of atheists.
Well, I’m not making excuses for the OP. I, for one, would like to see ITR Champion come back, but…
To be fair, he hasn’t posted in any other thread since his last post in this one AND it is a pretty busy time of year for a lot of people. For the time being, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
So, don’t forget to address my question (post #32), ITR!
Got any links where a modern Church official admits to torture taking place during the Inquisition? I’d like some rebuttals handy for ITR’s next thread.
