If Christianity promoted rational thinking and scientific progress as /his would have you believe...

If Christianity promoted rational thinking and scientific progress as /his would have you believe, why did the Catholic church then try Galileo for heresy when he published he findings? Is there an explanation as to why he was sentenced other than that he supported heliocentrism?

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His book made fun of the pope, which was not a very smart thing to do.

Because he tried to defend his inaccurate calculations with flawed theological reasoning

Idolization of Galileo is just enlightenment propaganda desu

Christianity taught a very specific type of rational and scientific thinking, that is, it taught that the study of nature can serve as a window into the mind of God. This attitude allowed many natural philosophers to make many useful contributions to knowledge, but when these philosophers started finding evidence that the Bible was imperfect, the Christian attitude changed very quickly. It was too late to stop the scientific revolution, but it did manage to destroy its own reputation for being a friend to academia by persecuting the fuck out of many of the pioneers of the scientific method.

But isnt that even worse? That he would be put in court, not because his theories were incompatible with those of christianity, but rather because the pope got insulted? I just find it really hard to defend the church when they would deny his research just becuase he was rude. Isnt that a bit childish?

Are you saying his research and evidence was so flawed, that the curia couldn´t see it was correct? And what were the thelogical reasoning that was bad enough to be branded heretic?

idk read his wikipedia article man lmao

as a rule if a nigga posits a new scientific model he's got to prove it is consistent. Scientific method you know?

The problem is twofold.

The first is that the Vatican itself was not defending geocentricism primarily on religious grounds, but on the grounds of Aristotelian and Ptolemaic physics. It is often a surprise to modern people to realize that, when performing scientific observation on the heavens, heliocentrism is not an intuitive answer. It is not obvious. Astronomers viewed the heavens with no bias in favor of geocentrism for thousands of years and yet consistently came to that conclusion, because from the position of the Earth, it really does appear like the stars and worlds are moving around us. Galileo's book "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems" only had two actual pieces of evidence for Copernicus theory, both of which were later discredited and didn't play a role in later astronomer's establishing Galileo as right.

In other words, from a scientific perspective, the Vatican had the superior position, given they had over two thousand years of astronomical observations to go off of, and a very precise model that predicted the motions of the heavens very accurately, whereas Galileo had very little to overturn that model. The Vatican at first permitted Galileo to teach heliocentrism, but only as a theoretical model. Not because of religious reasons, but because at the time it was still entirely theoretical. It would fall to later astronomers, pointing to among other things eccentricities in the orbit of Mars [its movements didn't fit the epicycles theory] to prove the earth did in fact go around the sun, and not the other way around.

And the second is that Galileo deliberately insulted the Pope, because when Galileo asked for his blessing on the book's publication, the Pope agreed on the terms that his own arguments were included in the text. A semi-reasonable request, which Galileo agreed to.

By putting his words into the mouth of a character [remember this is a Dialogue] named Simplicio, which is to say, Simpleton.

So the centuries of scientific progress furthered by the church to that point, was thanks to a way of combining theological and rational thought? And when the bible was proven not to be always true, they had to choose between correcting their way of thinking and the entire basis of catholosism or fight back? Sorry if im a bit slow, im just curious

I'll add as an aside that I'm not Catholic, and thus don't have a horse in this race so to speak, but if I was judging impartially I'd still come down on the side of the Vatican in this dispute. Galileo was being a dick.

While we know NOW that he was correct, he didn't have the evidence to back it up at the time. Yes, it was THAT flawed. They were more than willing to hear him out, but they weren't going to reorder the whole cosmos (you can imagine how entrenched their view was on the subject) without overwhelming evidence to do so. When he proceeded without providing same, he got into trouble. He wasn't burned at the stake or some barbaric shit. His punishment was largely an academic rebuke.

Thanks man, that makes actually makes it alot clearer. I quite often have to defend Christianities role in Europes history when arguing with my friends and they always bring this up. I appriciate you giving me a solid answer

>Christianity promoted rational thinking and scientific progress

This is a christfag meme, they constantly persecuted anyone that went against their religious dogma.

That is interesting to hear, because history books always make it seem like the pope just ignored irrefutable evidence and wanted to burn an innocent man becuase he didnt agree

Do you have any examples of this, because i learned this in school, but i couldnt find any cases where this would have happend. Tbqh im very lazy as you might understand and didnt look that thourgly

You know absolutely nothing about history.

Who copied basically all the texts of antiquity they could get their hands on?

Who opened schools and universities across Europe?

Who had effectively a monopoly on education during the entire Middle Ages?

Who, upon rediscovering the texts of Aristotle, became such massive whores for his philosophy and science that it arguably negatively effected later scientific developments just because they were such Logiciboos?

What people often forget about the Middle Ages is that they were not entirely a superstitious age, but were in fact obsessed with logic and order. In everything from their view of the cosmos [concentric crystal spheres, each perfectly circular going around the Earth at the center and Heaven and God at the exterior], to their view of society [the feudal pyramid] to their view of nature [teleological], they viewed the cosmos as utterly orderly and comprehensible.

Do you know one of the primary reasons later astronomy had some trouble gaining ground? It wasn't because of Scripture. It was because Medieval scientists were so obsessed with the notion that the heavens had to be perfect [which is to say, circular] like Plato taught, that they invented things like epicycles [circles within circles] to explain the motions of the heavens in more convoluted fashions.

To go back to the OP, this is why heliocentrism was adopted in the end. Because while the Ptolomaic System of the time with its circles and precise clock movements was mostly accurate, certain planets [mostly Mars] didn't move as predicted, whereas they did move as predicted under the heliocentric model. So a few attempted compromises later [such as the Tychnonian System] Copernicus model was adapted to fit observations, and here we are.

This fucking Enlightenment/Modernist meme history pisses me off so fucking much. You people act like brains were invented in the year 1400 [or 1700, depending on who you ask].

>muh vatican did nothing wrong!
>ignore all the people that burned for "scientific" heresy!
>Galileo was only imprisoned until he apologized! it's not like they were that bad!
>lol Galielo sucked anyway so it's okay!

This thread is amazing.

>Ignore all the people that burned for scientific heresy.

Name them. List me 10 people who were burned to death for the crime of doing science.

Did the ancient greeks ever held their philosophers in such a high regard they had trouble ever questioning them?
If they did not i don't see why it's an positive the medieval people did.

How is "Christianity promoted rational thinking and scientific progress as /his would have you believe" and "try Galileo for heresy when he published he findings?" mutually exclusive?

The problem's on your end in your failure to understand how both can happen. Scholasticism did its job very adequately in the epistemological framework of the Middle and Early Modern Era - preserving natural philosophy, "to glorify God". In this way, scientific progress was protected and preserved, that small advances consistently occurred.

The conundrum lies here - the Catholic church was not committed to empiricism, which would then be the means for the next wave of scientific advances. To the Catholic church, reality must've corresponded with dogma, or it was not reality at all. Yet this does not directly deny the fact that Scholasticism preserved classical knowledge from which future natural philosophers would work from.

That being said, your question is good nonetheless. Indeed, the core of Galileo's persecution was his heliocentrism. Here's the thing - even Early Modern era science (natural philosophy) was viewed as a means to complement religion. That's where Galileo changed things.

So, to an extent, Christianity indeed "promoted rational thinking and scientific progress". Yet if the answer you seek is "the Catholic church is a dogmatic hive of political cunts", you have already answered your own question. The great failure of your querying is your false dichotomy that the Church could not be rational for its time and be dogmatic at the same time.

don't be dishonest now
you can easily look it up online yourself

1. Yes, and they also did far more unreasonable things like kill Socrates for the crime of atheism and corrupting the youth.

2. I never claimed it was a positive, only that the Middle Ages were not the mudfarming idiots that pop culture displays them as. The scholars of the Middle Ages were if anything autists. Every movement forward in science since the Schoolmen has met at least some resistance from that faction of scientists who wants the world to make total sense and be easily comprehensible, which is in turn resisted by the scientific drive to ever more complex and unintuitive theories.

When Einstein published his theory of relativity, it wasn't Christ that stood in his way, it was Isaac Newton.

Name me five them. Name me one. Give me some manner of evidence that the Church burned scientists at the stake.

Because I'm telling you now, that any you find will be spectacular exceptions, if they exist at all. The idea that the Vatican was going around burning people for doing science stands utterly at odds with actual history.

>Who had effectively a monopoly on education during the entire Middle Ages?

I don't see how this is a good thing, especially when they were indoctrinating everyone with gospel.

Its a questionable thing. Their monopoly on education can be viewed as indoctrinating, but the fact of the matter is that they were promoters of education.

To claim that the Medieval Catholic Church was anti-intellectual, when they were going around opening schools and painstakingly copying ancient texts by hands, is a very hard position to argue.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno

>Who opened schools and universities across Europe?
Europeans since the Greeks were already doing that shit. Just because said Europeans are wearing cross now doesn't suddenly make Christianity the main reason.

Burning people for heresy, while extremely superstitious, barbaric, and wicked, is not burning people for science.

The person you linked isn't even a scientist, he was a Dominican friar who held to various religious ideas about the plurality of worlds and Hermeticism.

Shall I drag in the Buddhists or the Hindus, who also believe in other worlds, as evidence of their advanced astronomy?
Granted, but the fact that Europeans continued doing it, sans resistance, fights the narrative that the Vatican was anti-intellectual.

>greeks invented universities
>this is the state of the historical board

>mathematician with scientific theories about the cosmos
>not a scientists back then

They weren't scientific theories, they were religious doctrines that happen to correspond to scientific theories. And even then, he wasn't killed for believing in other worlds or infinite space.

Other Catholic writers, such as Nicolas of Cusa and Nicole Oresme wrote on the same subject and were utterly unmolested.

Again, not defending the Vatican for killing him for his religious views, merely pointing out that it was his religious views, not his 'scientific' ones that were their objection.

>mfw I realize geocentrism is egocentrism have the same letters

Essentially yes. Eventually, they chose the "right" side and fell in line with what natural philosophy had proven about reality, and focussed instead on doing good works and to abstract theology, leaving the rest of us to get on with things. Just kidding they are STILL mad about this.

Anyone who know why people of the day were so obessed with burning people anyway?

The church persecuted Galileo because he was an atomist, not because he was a Copernican.

Then the Saudi state must count as intellectuals to you, since they sponsor schools and publish many books to use in those schools. Of course, the books are mostly Korans, but still, schools!

greeks invented the concept of learning in one concentrated place and shit via the Academy. Hell the Libraries (especially that of Alexandria) was also a proto-university

this
there was a greek guy who argued that the earth revolved around a sun over a thousand years earlier but no one payed attention to him

its funny how the father of genetics was a friar and the father of the big bang theory was a priest but fedora fags go on about how jesus set back civilization

>this much of a false equivalency

Are you just acting retarded?

Remember that the Pope was a feudal lord.

Did they? Where did the mesopotamian and egyptian astronomers learn?

>Beginning in 1593, Bruno was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition on charges including denial of several core Catholic doctrines, including eternal damnation, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and transubstantiation. Bruno's pantheism was also a matter of grave concern,[4] as was his teaching of the transmigration of the soul (reincarnation).
How is that not heresy

Purify the body and soul in the hope they reach heaven

>Bruno
>scientist
>killed for "le science"
Bruno was not a scientist by any measure, he was a crazy cult leader and even he was initially given a free pass when he recanted and only sentenced after relapsing for the nth time. He's been rebranded a scientist by the historically illiterate because one of his many insane claims happened to be the existence of aliens (along with claiming that God is Satan and Jesus was an evil sorcerer).
Galileo was not sentenced for "science", but for making unscientific claims (although even that wouldn't have gotten him into any serious trouble if he hadn't personally insulted the Pope at length).
While he is significant for rediscovering the work of 14th century natural philosophers, but he didn't really do any science of his own, beyond making astronomical observations and still failing to prove the Copernican model.

It's really beautiful that Christians believe God is pure Order and act in pure reason and in order.

so if galileo didn't really have enough evidence to back up heliocentrism, why did he believe in heliocentrism at all? what evidence did he have, to defend it against everyone and ruin his career over it?

if I recall correctly, he used the orbit of Jupiter's moon and tides as evidence.

No, assuming there's an order where there's none or another order means you will be unable to accept evidence contrary to that order.

Galileo couldn't into the stellar parallax, which would go unanswered until 1838. The Church gave Galileo the following offer: Copernicanism might be considered a hypothesis, one even superior to the Ptolemaic system, until further proof could be adduced. He refused it. He then tried to prove his hypothesis on theological grounds, which is when he got called into the inquisition. They dropped all charges, he insulted the Pope, kept up his campaign using scripture and got put under house arrest. Most people don't even know that he tried to use theology and scripture when he couldn't provide all the answers. He was basically the "le anti-science guy" in the whole situation.

>Because he tried to defend his inaccurate calculations with flawed theological reasoning

The phases of Venus proved definitively that the sun was not revolving around the Earth.

Up until that point, Christian theologians could still hide behind instrumentalism.

>Idolization of Galileo is just enlightenment propaganda desu

I'm reminded of people who know a little about the Civil war.

what's instrumentalism

Blaming it on your instruments, because you don't have refined metallurgy

10 100 1000 Campo dei Fiori

>Who opened schools and universities across Europe?
don't underestimate schools of law like pavia under the lombards or bologna soon after that. bologna attracted like tens of thousands of students every year from all over europe from the 1000s onward, to the extent that they were recognized as a self-governing body akin to a corporate body/ guild

also, that isn't to undermine your overall argument, which i agree with strongly

>I learned history from assasins creed and my high school science teacher

Bruno was a straight up heretic. His scientific views either conformed with Catholic doctrine or were just weird. Plurality of worlds wasn't heretical.