Regarding AIDS, I believe that condoms do help to spread AIDS. The current estimated rate of condom ineffectiveness in first world countries due to human error (note that this says nothing at all about how good the condoms are) is about 15-20 percent. So, how do you combat AIDS in the third world countries where education is much lower (so ineffectiveness due to human error goes up) and promiscuity is higher? Well, Ugands cut their rate of infection of AIDS to a third over 10 years by heavily promoting chastity as the main part of their AIDS programme. The conclusions from this are pretty hard to escape.
If you are referring to the 'persecution of Galileo', then you have fallen prey to a common misconception.
Galileo contributed a lot to the fields of mechanics and dynamics. His efforts in the area of astronomy were fairly puny in comparison (and quite wrong in some respects - for example, his proof that the moon could not be reasponsible for tides). While it is true that he rejected the prevalent authoritarian and sristotelian views, he did not support the Copernican views (to which you seem to refer) until after his astronomical observations, because he did not want to suffer the ridicule that Copernicus himself suffered for his views (and by the way, Copernicus was a Catholic who got a Papal dedication for his theories that he eventually only published due to pressure from a Catholic Cardinal and a Catholic Bishop - you can see Copernicus' original theories in the Vatican library today)
So, why did the Catholic church of the time object to Galileo's views? Well, they didn't object to his views... they objected to him using the bible to support his views! Think of the irony of this... Galileo was rejecting the notion that things are best learned by appealing to authority, and here he was doing the very thing he accused others of doing (of being unscientific by appealing to 'authority').
I guess he can be excused from this, because other fundamentalist theorists of the time were actually using the bible at the time to disprove his theories, maybe because the aristotelian views were so strongly held (and the aristotelian view was pervasive amongst most people at the time - not just the 'fundies'). However, for him to resort to the bible as an authority is rather funny in a way, don't you think?
The other facts you mention are also similarly part of the mythconception cloud that informs much of public knowledge.
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Regarding AIDS, I believe that condoms do help to spread AIDS. The current estimated rate of condom ineffectiveness in first world countries due to human error (note that this says nothing at all about how good the condoms are) is about 15-20 percent. So, how do you combat AIDS in the third world countries where education is much lower (so ineffectiveness due to human error goes up) and promiscuity is higher? Well, Ugands cut their rate of infection of AIDS to a third over 10 years by heavily promoting chastity as the main part of their AIDS programme. The conclusions from this are pretty hard to escape.
If you are referring to the 'persecution of Galileo', then you have fallen prey to a common misconception.
Galileo contributed a lot to the fields of mechanics and dynamics. His efforts in the area of astronomy were fairly puny in comparison (and quite wrong in some respects - for example, his proof that the moon could not be reasponsible for tides). While it is true that he rejected the prevalent authoritarian and sristotelian views, he did not support the Copernican views (to which you seem to refer) until after his astronomical observations, because he did not want to suffer the ridicule that Copernicus himself suffered for his views (and by the way, Copernicus was a Catholic who got a Papal dedication for his theories that he eventually only published due to pressure from a Catholic Cardinal and a Catholic Bishop - you can see Copernicus' original theories in the Vatican library today)
So, why did the Catholic church of the time object to Galileo's views? Well, they didn't object to his views ... they objected to him using the bible to support his views! Think of the irony of this ... Galileo was rejecting the notion that things are best learned by appealing to authority, and here he was doing the very thing he accused others of doing (of being unscientific by appealing to 'authority').
I guess he can be excused from this, because other fundamentalist theorists of the time were actually using the bible at the time to disprove his theories, maybe because the aristotelian views were so strongly held (and the aristotelian view was pervasive amongst most people at the time - not just the 'fundies'). However, for him to resort to the bible as an authority is rather funny in a way, don't you think?
The other facts you mention are also similarly part of the mythconception cloud that informs much of public knowledge.