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Pope Cancels Speech After Scientists Protest
Reservoir Hill writes "Pope Benedict XVI canceled a speech at Rome's La Sapienza university in the face of protests led by scientists opposed to a high-profile visit to a secular setting by the head of the Catholic Church. Sixty-seven professors and researchers of the university's physics department joined in the call for the pope to stay away protesting the planned visit recalled a 1990 speech in which the pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, seemed to justify the Inquisition's verdict against Galileo in 1633. In the speech, Ratzinger quoted an Austrian philosopher who said the ruling was 'rational and just' and concluded with the remark: 'The faith does not grow from resentment and the rejection of rationality, but from its fundamental affirmation, and from being rooted in a still greater form of reason.' The protest against the visit was spearheaded by physicist Marcello Cini who wrote the rector complaining of an 'incredible violation" of the university's autonomy. Cini said of Benedict's cancellation: 'By canceling, he is playing the victim, which is very intelligent. It will be a pretext for accusing us of refusing dialogue.'"
Generally I find when talking with religious types that they do hold rational beliefs, lots of them. It's just that they don't all fit together into a coherent picture of the world; something which usually goes unnoticed.
By the way, you spelt 'frist psot' wrong =)
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I agree. I'm a Catholic and I think it's safe to say that the current papacy is an absolute joke. If it was just this issue, maybe we could give ol' Benedict a pass. But it seems like every month he says something ridiculous, ignorant, or backwards. It's like he just stepped out of the 17c.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWU5ZDk3NGY3OGI4NDY1OTdmNzc2NmEzYjUzZWQxNWE=
The story of Galileo is a tad more complicated than the simplistic version we're used to. I'm no Roman Catholic, but this meme needs to be corrected.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
It's not as simple as that. The pope wanted to come, make a speech and leave. No questions allowed, no debate. The physicists wanted to be able to respond and have a proper debate on his stance on scientific issues in general if he was to come at all. By backing off, the pope paints himself as the victim, avoiding a debate that would make him look like the medieval remain that he is.
This has cause a big stir because, in general, the Italian political system is completely captive to the Vatican. Every day the media reports any move of word of the pope no matter how minor. Any talk show always has at least a priest as a guest. The church has huge properties and pays no taxes. The church get 0.08% of the tax collected unless one goes to great lengths to direct it somewhere else et.c etc.
More than refusing dialogue it looks to many of us as the Pope was forced not to be present under the menace of riots: One of the students stated "THERE IS NO DIALOGUE WITH THAT INDIVIDUAL" and the leader in his speech claimed the presence of many other collective outsiders to participate in the event to make it as much inhospitable as possible to the Pope. Last image is the invasion of the rectorate and a meal served outside the premises.
I am disgusted to be italian in the same university as those.
I'm disgusted as well to be forced to post as AC because they are VIOLENT-RED-FASCISTS supported by squatters in the SanLorenzo suburb next to the university.
Going out and putting a gag on him, or making it illegal for him to speak. Other than that, it's a group of scientists who find his position on Galileo, and how that speaks to his views on science, troubling, and feeling that he really has no place speaking at an institution. The Pope has plenty of places he can say his spiel.
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Theoretically, since most baptisms are done without the consent of the subject.
You can't take the sky from me...
Many scientists are pushing atheism as the new religion and they seem to want to force everyone to accept it.
Atheism is not new, nor is it a religion.
Silencing is the way of Hilter, Stalin, and others.
The Pope has not been silenced, not one bit.
It's exactly what the church did centuries ago to scientists and now its redeveloping on the other side of the coin.
If ever the Pope is burned at the stake with scientists lighting the pyre, you'll have a point.
Edith Keeler Must Die
The public perception in many places is that Richard Dawkins is a spokesperson for scientists (with a position like Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, perhaps the perception is warranted). When such a well-known public figure rags on religion as much as he does, it's no wonder that religious people feel threatened by science. In a very real sense, Dawkins does evangelize for atheism. This is one reason why people have started calling it a "religion."
On the other hand, many extremely accomplished scientists (Stephen Jay Gould, to name one off the top of my head) have a view of religion that is fundamentally different from Dawkin's view, and not nearly as antagonistic.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
No, they are not, except when explicitly claiming that particular power. And this has apparently been done exactly once since that particular dogma was instated in 1870.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility
The story of Galileo is a tad more complicated than the simplistic version we're used to. I'm no Roman Catholic, but this meme needs to be corrected. From your link: "After Galileo went back to Padua, the leading scientific mediocrities started complaining. It was the scientists who said that challenging Aristotle was heresy -- not the Church."
From the Chuch: 1571, Paul IV issues the first formal Index Librorum Prohibitorum, including such works as De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium by Copernicus.
Galileo was 7 when that happened. Stop listening to people who are arguing that it was ok to censor the man's empirical proof of a heretical scientific theory.
You can't take the sky from me...
Then those conclusions weren't rational. They might have been correct, but they weren't rational.
The reality isn't Heliocentrism or Geocentrism, it's arbitrary-centrism. There is no objective "fact" mandating the body you choose as "the center", all the bodies are in motion in a wider context of the universe. It's just simplest (and therefore most conducive to human psychology and conceptualization) to use the system that provides the least-complex description of their respective movements.
Weird that we have scientists actively discarding science that's been clear at least since Einstein's Relativity, for the sole purpose of maintaining a stance that lets them "stick it to religion" over a largely-misrepresented (misrepresented in terms of the sharp "science versus religion" duality that's commonly touted, if you know the actual history--e.g. Galileo had permission to publish, and it only became in issue when he presented his theory in a politically-inflammatory fashion) wrong of history.
Since, I think, many will reject this post out-of-hand in that it fails their criterion of "seems to be being said by a theist", I suggest reading Robert M. Pirsig for a philosophical perspective on this very same question. Good reading there on Euclidian-versus-Riemann geometry, too.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
1. The establishment clause only applies in the USA.
2. The establishment clause only prohibits the government from opposing religion. As long as their actions are otherwise legal, people can criticize the Church all they want.
3. If someone says grass is blue, it is within societal norms to laugh at them. But mysteriously it's not okay to do so if they say the world is 6000 years old.
Saying "Black people are inferior" is bigoted. Saying "Statistically, black people in the USA are more likely to commit robbery" isn't, since it's a statement of fact.
Saying that the Bible is two-thousand year old fiction produced by goat herders is a statement of fact. It is verifiably not true.
Galileo had evidence to support his theory, while the other scientists relied on dogma and tradition as their evidence. I use the term "scientists" loosely because those people were clearly not scientists in any sense we understand today. Making Galileo out to be a crank scientist who turned out to be right is a pretty damaging view of one of the great scientists of his age.
Condemning someone to Hell was not something to take lightly back then. We can say things today like "it'd be pretty bad I guess, if you believe in all that stuff," and think it was nothing much. It was a massive thing, barring Galileo from Heaven for eternity. Since the word of the Pope is infallible, the later apology won't allow Galileo back to Heaven. As an atheist, I can think it was all a bit silly, but back then it was deadly serious and the ramifications were truly terrible in their belief system. Again, I think you're greatly underestimating this.
Lastly, what would a conservative Pope come to a university for? He has many, many venues to speak from should he choose to. Instead he chose a place where he knew he would be challenged by opposition. And be clear - the Pope won't be argued with, he does not debate, so the opposition would not get any 'right of reply' or option to answer claims made by the Pope in that university. The scientists would not have a chance to let their ideas compete with the Pope's (whose are well-known anyway) in this sort of dialogue. They would be told what is right and that's the end of it.
I suspect that the Pope, the political animal that he is, wanted exactly this outcome so that he could put about the idea that science is intolerant of different ideas. His goal is to bring people back to the church, and this will help slightly.
Is disbelief in Zeus mean you're a Hellenic paganist? Does disbelief in witchcraft mean you're an occultist?
Atheism is the disbelief in God. It has no meaningful tenets, no dogma, no holy books, no ceremonies, no rites, no declarations of faith, no churches, no temples, no leaders, no hierarchy and no common moral code. In short, it has none of the hallmarks of a religion.
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Pope John Paul forgave Galileo for what exactly?
He didn't forgive him, he said that Galileo was right. Which seems a little odd, since so far as I can work out, Galileo's last stated position was in support of geocentrism.
Forgave him for being unjustly persecuted and placed under arrest by the Catholic Church?
He was arrested for breaking the law. Maybe you don't believe that heresy should be illegal (I certainly don't), but his arrest was no more unjust than say someone being arrested today for smoking cannabis.
It would seem to me it is the Church that needs to ask for forgiveness from Galileo, not give it.
I think you'll find that's exactly what JPII did. Maybe you shouldn't go off the rails at a third party just because a poster you are responding to has poor expression?
You are obviously aware that the Pope served in the Wehrmacht, his previous employment was as head of the Inquisition (which did in fact kill a few people in its heyday), forbids the use of condoms and family planning resulting in disease and famine, goes around dressed in gold (that's the first vice-boss who dresses better than the boss), that through history the catholic church has in fact persecuted scientists like Galileo, whose trial the current Pope considered "fair", and that exact quotation was the cause for the initial protest, aren't you?
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Atheists *disbelieve*. It may seem a bit of semantics, but it's the nuance that counts.
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Not just any pope either, it was Boniface VIII. Dante hated him and destined him to his hell for simony (with the other damned asking "Is Boniface here yet?"). Since Dante's Inferno is the most read of the three books of the Commedia and compulsory reading for high-school students in Italy, pretty much every Italian connects Boniface VII with corruption, greed, hypocrisy and lust for power. Which brings us back to the current pope...
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For those of you that don't know, The National Review is a conservative magazine that publishes political opinion pieces. It's not exactly a scholarly journal of well researched historical fact.
AccountKiller
You're wrong: this professor and a lot of professors and students asked the cancellation of the invitation to the Pope from the university chancellor to speak without a debate. The invitation wasn't cancelled at all, and now they're trying to portait the Pope as a victim (successfully, judging from a number of apologist comments even here on /.), which is why the professor is complaing.
And they didn't suppress his ideas at all: on the contrary they have on Italian media much, much more space than science, other religions and atheism combined togheter. We see the Pope every day on almost every Italian TV channel, sometimes for hours without interruptions! They simply asked that the university do not give implicit scientific legitimacy to his extremist ideas without a debate, at the most important ceremony of the year!
If you don't live in Italy you may not understand how strong is the offensive from the Vatican against women, gays, lesbians, science, atheists and pretty much anyone who doesn't bow. Please read my previous comment about this. This IS NOT ABOUT RELIGION: is about money, power and the violated rights of actual people in Italy and elsewhere.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
I disagree with your first statement; I believe that Galileo had more proof than the church had. Of course, I can't understand how the model of the solar system is a theological issue either..
I completely agree with your second statement. And that's many years of Catholic school talking. Generally speaking, Catholics don't believe in creationism or its variants. They don't believe in literal interpretation of the bible either.
Saying that the Bible is two-thousand year old fiction produced by goat herders is a statement of fact.
I'm not sure the word 'fact' means what you think it means.
1. There are 66 books in the bible, the oldest of which were written around 1500 BCE (and even those were based on earlier writings). The newest ones were written around 100 CE. Most of the Old Testament is over three thousand years old.
2. There are many references to real places and people in the Bible. The Bible isn't one coherent story. Some books are biographical in nature, about real people. Some are fiction. You can't really discount the entire thing as a work of fiction.
3. The books of the bible were written by many different people. Some of them were goat herders maybe. Most were not.
I get the feeling you don't know much about the history of the Bible. You should read up on it someday to avoid sounding like you don't know what you're talking about. Here's a good link with some relatively impartial information:
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mbible1.html
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Galileo's falling out with the Catholic Church may have been vital - but it sure wasn't about the church accepting a proven point of heliocentricism.
Corpenicus' work proposing the heliocentric hypothesis was after all church sponsored (as was Galileo) and indeed inscribed, IIRC, to the pope of the time.
Galileo had been wrong before, apparently he believed comets to be an atmospheric phenomenon and the great _scientific_ minds of the time were as yet unconvinced. The church was leaving the question of geo- and heliocentricism open rather than making a decree as to the truth of one or other. Galileo by all accounts didn't like that. Despite being called in to the vatican he went ahead and published non-latin work to tell the masses that his theory was the truth - this shows he wasn't trying to convince the learned scholars, incidentally. Kepler had already published on much of the stuff Galileo worked on anyway so the papacy was hardly keeping things in the bag. Possibly the church was wary of following Kepler's hypotheses which appear to have been founded on a sort of Platonic helio-mysticism (eg http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/kepler.html).
Fine, the papacy over-reacted to Galileo. We got it.
Incidentally - was Galileo right? Is the sun "fixed". I don't think so. Indeed I'm happy with both geocentric and heliocentric descriptions; but in a "sol" centred frame of reference I'm happier with heliocentric maths (though one of the problems with heliocentricism apparently was that it failed to be as accurate as Ptolemy's tables).
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Some comparative sources:
http://galileo.rice.edu/bio/narrative_7.html
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06342b.htm
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Really? Where in your pantheon do the philosophers who developed the idea of empiricism fit?
Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.