Religion is of no use to science.

[S.A.M.]

Just look at the list of people I nominated. You are free to add to those the ones you think were not religious and should be included. If a curmudgeon like Galileo could find the means to do science after insulting the Pope, what kept the others back? There were, for example, plenty of anti-Catholic scientists in Italy. Anyone you care to nominate? Where are these guys who thought they were so much smarter and better than the unfrocked priest?

But these inaccuracies point to the rampant anti-Catholic, misogynistic sentiments of many in the Italian scientific circle at the time, Wilding says. "For them, it was, 'Bad priest! Stupid women!'"

 

[spidergoat]

Gregor Mendel didn't show much interest in the religious side of his career. Furthermore, what science has religion sponsored or inspired these days?

 

[S.A.M.]

All of it. Most taxpayers are theists. I bet athiests avoid paying taxes too <mine...aaaalll mine....grrrrrrrrr>

Although he read Darwin, he [Mendel] did not accept many of his [Darwin's] theories, believing that God had created the world and blind chance could not be responsible for the outcome...

Mendel's last battle was with the government. IN 1875 a tax law that singled out religious establishments was passed. Mendel stubbornly resisted this encroachment on religious freedom. Those who joined in the fight soon lost heart, and they fell away when the Moravian government confiscated monastic lands. The government offered compromises, but Mendel remained firm.

 

[spidergoat]

Show causation, not just correlation. I pay taxes too. Religious people seem to have influenced the USA to limit federal spending on stem cell research, just to name one thing.

 

[S.A.M.]

No need to show correlation, he took the vows of monkhood and was a good priest/teacher. He was also a creationist and rejected Darwin [oops I forgot Darwin in my list!edit: never mind, he turned agnostic in later life]

 

[spidergoat]

Imagine what he could have done if he didn't have to be a priest! I admit, the church as an institution used to be good for science (with some exceptions). It was almost as rich as the royal families, and they didn't used to think science would contradict their faith. Their prohibition on translation of the Bible into common speech gave them a monopoly on saving people from hell. They also did a great business in indulgences.

 

[S.A.M.]

Imagine what he could have done if he didn't have to be a priest!

Been a nobleman or a peasant? Or a soldier? Maybe an ironmonger who repaired hooves? Lived in poverty?

Btw, all his work was also rejected by the scientific community in his lifetime. So without the church, like Galileo, he would have been a nobody.

 

[Captain Kremmen]

How does Savonarola fit into your theory, Sam?

 

[swarm]

Metaphysics means things which come after Physics.

No it doesn't.

1. The word ‘metaphysics’ and the concept of metaphysics.

The word ‘metaphysics’ is notoriously hard to define. Twentieth-century coinages like ‘meta-language’ and ‘metaphilosophy’ encourage the impression that metaphysics is a study that somehow “goes beyond” physics, a study devoted to matters that transcend the mundane concerns of Newton and Einstein and Heisenberg. This impression is mistaken. The word ‘metaphysics’ is derived from a collective title of the fourteen books by Aristotle that we currently think of as making up “Aristotle's Metaphysics.” Aristotle himself did not know the word. (He had four names for the branch of philosophy that is the subject-matter of Metaphysics: ‘first philosophy’, ‘first science’, ‘wisdom’, and ‘theology’.) At least one hundred years after Aristotle's death, an editor of his works (in all probability, Andronicus of Rhodes) entitled those fourteen books “Ta meta ta phusika”—“the after the physicals” or “the ones after the physical ones”—, the “physical ones” being the books contained in what we now call Aristotle's Physics. The title was probably meant to warn students of Aristotle's philosophy that they should attempt Metaphysics only after they had mastered “the physical ones,” the books about nature or the natural world—that is to say, about change, for change is the defining feature of the natural world.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/

Personally I have noticed metaphysics is more about how we talk about and think about reality than it is actually about reality and its under pinnings.

 

[James R]

Galileo was an interesting character, I think. He was a devout Catholic till he died...

Was he? May I ask what your source for that statement is?

Because he refused to marry his lover, his daughters were illegitimate and could not get married. So they were forced to live in a convent all their lives.

I'm not sure about this, either. At the time, it was a quite legitimate occupation for a girl to join a convent. I'm not sure that they would have been prohibited from marrying because they were illegitimate.

Again, could you please cite your source for that claim?

Galileo for example, was debt ridden all his life and only lived and worked on the charity of the church.

I also doubt this. Galileo was a great self-promoter and had several rich patrons. He had a series of high-paying jobs and I do not believe he was overburdened with debt.

I mean... would the pope have sponsored galileo if he wasn't a professed christian?

The issue would have been unlikely to arise. Virtually everybody in the society was a professed Christian. To not be one would have been considered strange at the very least, and probably blasphemous.

The Pope under whom Galileo was prosecuted was actually a friend of Galileo's before he became pope. The Pope himself was bound to his persecution of Galileo to some extent by others in the church heirarchy.

It would appear though that the Italian scientific community was anti-Catholic and clung tenaciously to Aristotle's models.

No. If anything, the Church itself was a dedicated Aristotlean.

Which brings me to the point that it takes a theist to think creatively.

Not being a theist, as I said, was not really an option in Galileo's time and place.

 

[swarm]

The interesting thing about Mendel is that while he generally had the right idea, he had the specifics wrong. Genetics and inheritance are not so neat and tidy.

Like most gentleman gardeners he had a real gardener to do the actual work and not understanding the nature of the experiment, but knowing what the desired result was supposed to be, the real gardener planted what was supposed to be found.

If you try to recreate Mendel's experiment, you'll fail and instead you'll get a bunch of hybrids.

 

[S.A.M.]

Was he? May I ask what your source for that statement is?

Its common knowledge?

Galileo is often remembered for his conflict with the Roman Catholic Church. His controversial work on the solar system was published in 1633. It had no proofs of a sun-centered system (Galileo's telescope discoveries did not indicate a moving earth) and his one "proof" based upon the tides was invalid. It ignored the correct elliptical orbits of planets published twenty five years earlier by Kepler. Since his work finished by putting the Pope's favorite argument in the mouth of the simpleton in the dialogue, the Pope (an old friend of Galileo's) was very offended. After the "trial" and being forbidden to teach the sun-centered system, Galileo did his most useful theoretical work, which was on dynamics. Galileo expressly said that the Bible cannot err, he saw his system as concerning the issue of how the Bible should be interpreted.

[Sources:] Annibale Fantoli, Galileo: For Copernicanism and for the Church (1994), M. Sharratt, Galileo (1994), M. A. Finnochiaro, The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History (1989)

...Galileo, it might be noted, was a deeply religious man. Despite his trial and conviction, he did not reject either religion or the church, but only the attempt of Church authoritie to stifle investigation of scientific matters.

http://www.adherents.com/people/pg/Galileo_Galilei.html

I'm not sure about this, either. At the time, it was a quite legitimate occupation for a girl to join a convent. I'm not sure that they would have been prohibited from marrying because they were illegitimate.

Again, could you please cite your source for that claim?

I read it in a biographical essay, you can check it out, he would have to pay a hefty dowry to get them married since they were illegitimate [Catholics], which he refused to do.

I also doubt this. Galileo was a great self-promoter and had several rich patrons. He had a series of high-paying jobs and I do not believe he was overburdened with debt.

He had patrons, but he was a difficult person and very few people liked him, luckily one of the people who did like him was the Pope. Which is why he was able to move to Florence and be near his doctors even under house arrest. Remember he held no "job" after his university contract was not renewed. He was supported only by his patrons.

The issue would have been unlikely to arise. Virtually everybody in the society was a professed Christian. To not be one would have been considered strange at the very least, and probably blasphemous.

Not at all. Italian society at the time is known to be anti-Catholic

The Pope under whom Galileo was prosecuted was actually a friend of Galileo's before he became pope. The Pope himself was bound to his persecution of Galileo to some extent by others in the church heirarchy.

According to the Smithsonian, there is some evidence that he did it to put pressure on the Duke of Medici to support him in his ambitions.

No. If anything, the Church itself was a dedicated Aristotlean.

It would be like a scientist questionining the evolutionary theory today. Copernicus' work had already been around for ages

Not being a theist, as I said, was not really an option in Galileo's time and place.

But being anti-Catholic and anti-Church was.

 

[swarm]

The Pope under whom Galileo was prosecuted was actually a friend of Galileo's before he became pope. The Pope himself was bound to his persecution of Galileo to some extent by others in the church heirarchy.

This would be the first prosecution. This was brought about because Galileo was making unsupported claims and generally causing trouble. It should be noted that several notable Jesuits also supported Copernican ideas, but at the time there were two issues: a lack of collaborating evidence and the fact that Copernicus was actually wrong. Kepler is the one who actually got it right.

The second prosecution was by a hostile pope. It was technically about Galileo reneging on the agreements from the first prosecution, but in reality it was because Galileo wrote a popular book making the pope out as a fool.

The notion that Galileo was a debtor is silly. Galileo had several noted and powerful allies both inside and outside the church and his skill with telescopes had significant military appeal. In both prosecutions he got off astoundingly light for the day considering the charges. He could have easily been tortured and/or killed either time.

In particular the second punishment, house arrest with visitors allowed, speaks of the respect with which he was held at the time. To be found guilty of relapsing and just be confined to a rich apartment is unbelievable for the day.

There are a number of books on the subject which use original source materials instead of the legends which have grown up about the matter.

 

[S.A.M.]

James:

On Galileo's debt:

In Padua, Galileo formed a long-term relationship with Marina Gamba who bore him three children. They never married, perhaps because Galileo had incurred so much debt providing his sisters' dowries that he thought he could never take on the financial obligations of a wife. But it was also true the he had to pay for his experiments from his own pocket and he always seemed to find the money for his pursuit of science.

http://duendedrama.org/pstarrymessenger_history.htm

I remember reading elsewhere that he also had an improvident brother who was also in debt and frequently expected Galileo to bail him out. I'm sure his conditions improved later on, but teachers were not well paid in those days and he did not have the temperament to get along with people.

 

[(Q)]

All of it. Most taxpayers are theists. I bet athiests avoid paying taxes too <mine...aaaalll mine....grrrrrrrrr>

Unfortunately, atheists are forced to pay taxes for churches, temples and mosques which are allowed to operate tax free.

 

[S.A.M.]

Unfortunately, atheists are forced to pay taxes for churches, temples and mosques which are allowed to operate tax free.

There you go. You give to Dawkins tax free foundation too? Send him some teddy bears maybe?

 

[Michael]

The obvious answer would be that there was a renaissance. Art and Music and Plays and many other things including science prosper during such times. That said, theocracy seems to actual crush creativity. Look at the loss of Art in the Muslim world. Look at the loss of Music and Dance in strict religous societies, there so many instances of Theocracy inhibiting science they are too numerous to count, Galileo comes to mind.

 

[Balerion]

The obvious answer would be that there was a renaissance. Art and Music and Plays and many other things including science prosper during such times. That said, theocracy seems to actual crush creativity. Look at the loss of Art in the Muslim world. Look at the loss of Music and Dance in strict religous societies, there so many instances of Theocracy inhibiting science they are too numerous to count, Galileo comes to mind.

Bravo. Well said.

But, was it not the Muslims who preserves so much ancient knowledge during times when it was disappearing for one reason or another? If that is true (and I've only heard this from others, I have no idea if it's actually true or not) then could it not just be that some theocracies have crushed creativity?

 

[GeoffP]

Islamic society did preserve such knowledge I believe - but I don't know about advancing it. Some theocracies have crushed creativity, others have kept it static. I think islam falls into the latter in some respects, the former in others, as other state religion has done.

 

[spidergoat]

Did they preserve these documents because of their religion? Or because their culture recognized the power of knowledge?