Statue of Galileo Planned for Vatican

Reservoir Hill writes "Four hundred years after it put Galileo on trial for heresy the Vatican is to complete its rehabilitation of the scientist by erecting a statue of him inside Vatican walls. The planned statue is to stand in the Vatican gardens near the apartment in which Galileo was incarcerated. He was held there while awaiting trial in 1633 for advocating heliocentrism, the Copernican doctrine that the Earth revolves around the Sun. The move coincides with a series of celebrations in the run-up to next year's 400th anniversary of Galileo's development of the telescope. In January Pope Benedict XVI called off a visit to Sapienza University, Rome, after staff and students accused him of defending the Inquisition's condemnation of Galileo. The Vatican said that the Pope had been misquoted and since the episode, several of the professors have retracted their protest."

Comments

cool

[someone1234]

We won't live to see Darwin's statue, but this is a start!

Re:cool

[bunratty]

Well, certainly there are lots of people who individually take issue with evolution. There are also lots of people who individually believe they've been abducted by aliens. That doesn't mean there's any controversy over alien abductions.

Re:cool

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we narrow it to scientific circles that have anything at all to do with evolution? Everyone else (like an Astronomy profesor) is just the general public as far as evolution in science is concerned, pure apeal to (false) authority.

Re:cool

[bunratty]

It seems to be your assertion that there exists a legitimate scientific controversy over how the species of life that exist today came into being. What is the hypothesis that is proposed as the serious scientific alternative to evolution? What predictions does it make? How would we test whether that hypothesis is incorrect? What sort of evidence would prove that the hypothesis is wrong?

Re:cool

[RodgerDodger]

The fact that the Discovery Institute is full of scientists with Ph.Ds does not mean that there is a controversy in scientific circles about evolution. Case in point: "Guillermo Gonzalez was a professor of Astronomy" - an astronomer doesn't get to weigh in on how biological evolution does or does not work; he lacks the credentials. (Though he could weigh in on star formation theories, and other astronomical phenomenon).

IIRC the Discovery Institute has, like, 2 biologists on staff, one of whom deliberately went into the field of biology in order to challenge evolution. The other had an interesting write up in the NYTimes, I think, where he said that his biology education forced him to have a crisis of faith - everything he was learning as a scientist was contradicting his faith, and in the end he decided to ditch his belief in science and evidence to keep to his faith beliefs. Contrawise, there are numerous examples of biologists who had similar crisis's of faith and came down on the side of a less fundamentalist belief.

Being a "scientist" isn't enough to weigh in to the scientific debate - your field of research must be relevant.

They've got to be kidding

[ccguy]

Well, if the Church wants to give the impression that they want to fix their mistakes and apologize for them, I think it would be better if they apologized for supporting dictatorships and benefiting from them (as they did in Spain for 40 years, for example).

They could also get rid of child molesters and stop paying (lots of) money to keep things under wraps, which obviously is not the best way to solve the problem.

These kind of news really pisses me off. A statue to Galileo 400 years late? WTF?

Re:They've got to be kidding

[jcr]

I think it would be better if they apologized for supporting dictatorships

Like the papacy? ;-)

-jcr

Re:They've got to be kidding

[Himring]

Well, if the Church wants to give the impression that they want to fix their mistakes and apologize for them, I think it would be better if they apologized for supporting dictatorships and benefiting from them (as they did in Spain for 40 years, for example).

It ain't perfect, ain't ever gonna be, was never and won't happen. It's chocked-full of bad history, yet it's done tons of good. Calvin put it best (not "and Hobbs" dude), "The church spans all time from the first man until now, has no walls, cannot be put in a building..." etc. The church is like your family. Can't stand 'em, can't get rid of 'em, gotta have 'em. I think "Little Miss Sunshine" best illustrates this when the kid finds out he's color blind and can't become a fighter pilot as he dreamed. He yells at his family: "I hate you people! You're all losers!" Then he reluctantly gets up and continues on the journey with them. I think this applies to anyone who finds themselves a member of anything important to them whether family, marriage, church, etc....

They could also get rid of child molesters and stop paying (lots of) money to keep things under wraps, which obviously is not the best way to solve the problem.

This was actually one of Martin Luther's points in his 99 thesis. He felt priests should be married. Obviously, celibacy hasn't boded very well for the church....

These kind of news really pisses me off. A statue to Galileo 400 years late? WTF?

Ironically, Christ made the same point to the religious leaders of his day, "Your fathers killed the prophets, and now you make monuments to these same prophets affirming the deeds!" Or something to that affect....

Re:They've got to be kidding

[Dusty00]

In similar news Al Capone was imprisoned for tax evasion. He wasn't imprisoned for nefarious gangster activities as is commonly believed, and in fact the government fully endorsed such activities.

Point acknowledged but there's often a big difference between the official and actual reason things are done.

I'm a little bothered

[psychodelicacy]

It's one thing for the Vatican to apologise for its past mistreatment of a figure like Galileo, but erecting a statue of him? I don't know - it seems almost sensationalist. If I'd been tortured and mistreated by an institution, I wouldn't want them to have a statue of me as a tourist attraction! Faith will always be against certain types of scientific enquiry, and I think the Vatican should be honest enough to admit so rather than making an almost-martyr of this one famous figure in order to garner public approval.

Re:I'm a little bothered

[alexgieg]

If I'd been tortured and mistreated by an institution, I wouldn't want them to have a statue of me as a tourist attraction!

Galileo wasn't tortured.

He was a personal friend of the then Pope, and got prosecuted not because he divulged Heliocentrism itself. Other Heliocentrists at the time didn't have any problem with the Church, and in fact some of them were funded by the Church itself. He was prosecuted:

a) Because he insisted that all the details of his theory, such as that, despite Kepler, whose works he read but dismissed, planetary orbits are perfectly circular since circles are "perfect" and ellipses aren't, were absolute certainties, even though he couldn't prove any of them (the first actual proof of any version of Heliocentrism appeared only in the 19th century, 200+ years after Galileo's time);

b) Because he thought that everyone should accept his hypothesis just because, no matter the lack of proofs;

c) And because he did make the point clear by adding a character to his book, named "Simpleton", who "defended" Geocentrism by mocking actual speeches of his friend the Pope, what Galileo cluelessly hoped he would find funny, not offensive. Obviously, it didn't happen.

Considering that at the time people were tortured and burned for doing much less, being held in his own house was a very soft punishment. The Church really wasn't harsh on him. It's only by comparing what Galileo was subjected to with 20th century style freedom of speech that one finds it "evil". But comparing it to what was the standard practices in the 17th century puts things in a very different light.

Re:I'm a little bothered

[alexgieg]

The phases of the Moon, mountains on the Moon, sunspots, and the four "Galilean" moons of Jupiter, ALL OF WHICH were observed by Galileo, *DO* constitute hard evidence of the Heliocentric theory.

No, not really. Tycho Brahe was of the opinion that the Earth was fixed in the middle, the Sun and the Moon rotated around the Earth as its two satellites, and the other planets rotated around the Sun as its satellites. Thus, a Geocentrist might as well take Jupiter's moons as good evidence for Brahe's system, since satellites orbiting other satellites made it much more reasonable to consider the many planets as de facto orbiting around that bright satellite of ours. How do you disprove Tycho's theory with Galilean tools? Answer: you don't.

Besides, the standard Geocentric system of Ptolemy with its many epicycles, which Galileo adapted in an Heliocentric fashion, already had the planets doing crazily convoluted orbits around orbits around orbits around empty points in the sky which themselves orbited around the Earth. Satellites of satellites would at worst add one more epicycle to the system. Nothing special about it.

Vatican, Church....

[buanzo]

They should just shut up and read Small Gods by Terry Pratchett:

"Gods on the Discworld exist as long as people believe in them and their power grows as their followers increase. This is a philosophy echoing the real-world politics of the power of religion and is most detailed in the novel Small Gods. If people should cease believing in a particular god (say, if the religion becomes more important than faith) the god begins to fade and, eventually, will "die", becoming little more than a faded wispy echo."

Re:Vatican, Church....

[Foggerty]

True.
And the universe in Animal Farm was fictional, and therefore had nothing of value to say.

Re:Vatican, Church....

[Lanarion]

Well, I certainly wouldn't turn to it for vetinary studies. The difference between Small Gods and Animal farm is that animal farm is concerning a historical political entity, whereas the philosophy of small gods is simply postulation on something that inherently can't be proved, because it is outside the scientific sphere. Chalk and cheese, really.

Re:Vatican, Church....

[shutdown -p now]

whereas the philosophy of small gods is simply postulation on something that inherently can't be proved, because it is outside the scientific sphere.

Quite appropriate when discussing religions, then. But seriously, have you considered that Small Gods can be taken metaphorically as well? Nietzsche has also used the phrase "God is dead", but it was not meant to be interpreted literally. In this case it's a bit more complicated than that, but should still be easy to follow.

The church IS a dictatorship

[Viol8]

Last time I looked the catholic church didn't take votes on This Years Beliefs. What the pope says goes and all the religious sheep believe whatever he says. This applies to almost all religious unfortunately , substitute pope for mullah/rabbi etc

Re:Today Galileo, Tomorrow Condoms?

[TFGeditor]

Uh, you do know the Catholic church condemns all forms of birth control, right? Including condoms.

Maybe I am too sleepy to get the sarcasm.

Re:Breath of fresh air - addemdum

[jfbilodeau]

In addendum to the above post, I'd like to point out that the Catholic church represent about half of the Christian population and 1/6th of the world's population (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_church), so I'd like to consider it major, but not exclusive.

For those that I've offended: s/the only major Christian church/a Christian church/.

Thanks for pointing out other (mostly European?) churches that consolidate instead of bending science. Forgive my ignorance. Since I live north of what seems to be the biggest hive of creationism fundamentalist, it sometimes sound like every religion is science bashing. Usually, their statements are hilarious but I absolutely abhor the tone of the fundamentalist bible-blabber.

For anybody that cares, I'm curious to hear what other churches/religions have a position similar to the Vatican on science.

Re:It's even funnier than that

[Scrameustache]

All the pope did ask for, was that Galileo presents both points of view fairly -- his _and_ the Aristotelian one -- and, basically, explains exactly what his own system explains better than the old one. Which is IMHO very much in line even with the modern scientific method. No, the pope asked that he present both point of view as equal even though one point of view had empirical evidence to support it and the other did not.

This is not in line with modern science, this is in line with modern "teach the controversy" creationist shenanigans.