God's use of natural laws & the Western scientific tradition

No, it’s not a contradiction. Let’s look at the two statements.

  1. The Galileo affair remains an excellent example of the Catholic Church doing what Ken Ham does today; privileging human interpretation of Scripture over scientific evidence.

  2. They didn’t pursue Copernicus, and they didn’t pursue the scientists who agreed with Galileo. Heliocentrism rapidly gained acceptance in the scientific community, and was increasingly written about. But the Church didn’t pursue the scientists who did that either. They didn’t pursue Maestlin, Rothmann, Kepler, Harriott, Digges, Gilbert, Rheticus, Stevin, Castelli, Cavalieri, Zuniga, or Ward. Galileo’s persecution was the exception.

These two sentences do not contradict each other.

For all the reasons discussed at length in the literature. Galileo had political enemies (including Urban VIII), who wanted to use his scientific findings to discredit him. This was not difficult given the fact that the Catholic Church was so ready to privilege its human interpretation of Scripture over scientific evidence. They weren’t sufficiently motivated to go after other individuals, especially those outside Italy. However, they did place Copernican books on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. This proves they still believed heliocentrism was dangerous to the faith (a theological objection), though they didn’t take steps to prosecute all heliocentrists (which quickly became impractical anyway, due to their rapidly growing numbers), or forbid further astronomical investigation.

John Paul II put it well when he said “The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world’s structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture”.

[quote=“Jonathan_Burke, post:249, topic:4380”]
No, it’s not a contradiction. Let’s look at the two statements.

The Galileo affair remains an excellent example of the Catholic Church doing what Ken Ham does today; privileging human interpretation of Scripture over scientific evidence.
They didn’t pursue Copernicus, and they didn’t pursue the scientists who agreed with Galileo. Heliocentrism rapidly gained acceptance in the scientific community, and was increasingly written about. But the Church didn’t pursue the scientists who did that either. They didn’t pursue Maestlin, Rothmann, Kepler, Harriott, Digges, Gilbert, Rheticus, Stevin, Castelli, Cavalieri, Zuniga, or Ward. Galileo’s persecution was the exception.

These two sentences do not contradict each other.[/quote]

There’s an obvious implied contradiction. They persecuted Galileo. They did not persecute the other heliocentrists. So it is obviously not just about interpretation.

There is a further problem:

Your accusation is that the Church “privileg[ed] human interpretation of Scripture over scientific evidence.”

Um…as opposed to what? Any interpretation is “human interpretation.” Further, scientific evidence itself is subject to “human interpretation.” Evidence is interpreted; it doesn’t “speak.” Scripture itself doesn’t “speak,” although arguably God’s Spirit speaks through scripture.

It seems as if you are suggesting that the human interpretation of scientific evidence should always trump the human interpretation of scripture.

[quote=“fmiddel, post:250, topic:4380”]
There’s an obvious implied contradiction. They persecuted Galileo. They did not persecute the other heliocentrists.[/quote]

Where is the contradiction?

The persecution of Galileo was not simply about interpretation. That has never been in dispute. But the Church’s position that heliocentrism was heresy and was destructive to the faith and was incompatible with Scripture, was all about interpretation.

As opposed to divinely inspired interpretation.

All non-inspired interpretation is human interpretation.

Agreed.

Previously I said “You have expressed concern about Christians accepting scientific conclusions very readily, despite this necessitating a change of their interpretation of Scripture”. You said you hadn’t. So I guess you’re not doing it now?

No I am not suggesting that the human interpretation of scientific evidence should always trump the human interpretation of Scripture. I am arguing that human interpretation of Scripture should not be privileged above human interpretation of scientific evidence, and that the human interpretation of Scripture should be informed by reliably validated conclusions about scientific evidence.

You don’t believe the earth is flat. Why not? You don’t believe the sun orbits the earth. Why not? You don’t believe rain falls through windows in the firmament. Why not? You don’t believe there’s a solid firmament above the earth. Why not? You don’t believe the kidneys are the seat of emotion and the heart is the organ of thought. Why not?

I’ll say it again. Modern science can and should inform our interpretation of what the Bible says about the cosmos and the earth, and life on earth. If modern Christians who oppose evolution can’t learn from the Galileo affair, then they’ll simply repeat the same mistake the Catholic Church made.

I agree. My issue with you has never been about the mutual roles of science and theology but about your anachronistic and simplistic critique of the medieval Church vis-à-vis the case against Galileo.

I explained this previously. See here.

This doesn’t change the fact that the Church objected specifically to heliocentrism as a heresy, and tried to suppress it by placing Copernican books on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. This proves they still believed heliocentrism was dangerous to the faith (a theological objection).

[quote=“fmiddel, post:252, topic:4380”]Tell me how you differentiate between divinely inspired interpretation and “human interpretation.”
[/quote]

When I read an inspired writer in the Bible giving an interpretation, I consider that inspired unless they indicate otherwise (Paul differentiates between what he received “from the Lord”, and what he gives as his own judgement).

Both of them always trump the other on subjects concerning which the other is silent. The Bible trumps science on theology; we don’t get our theology from science. Science trumps the Bible on scientific matters; the Bible wasn’t written to teach us science. This has been recognized by Christian commentators since at least the fifth century.

I’m surprised you’re even asking this question. This is precisely why I asked you these questions previously.

You don’t believe the earth is flat. Why not? You don’t believe the sun orbits the earth. Why not? You don’t believe rain falls through windows in the firmament. Why not? You don’t believe there’s a solid firmament above the earth. Why not? You don’t believe the kidneys are the seat of emotion and the heart is the organ of thought. Why not?

Once you answer those questions, you’ve answered your own.

There’s no need to “hold in tension” matters which one of them has settled. We don’t hold the resurrection “in tension” with the scientific evidence that people don’t come back from the dead. We recognize that the resurrection is a miracle which is outside the realm of scientific investigation; consequently we recognize the resurrection as a fact. Likewise we don’t “hold in tension” the Bible’s description of geocentrism, with the scientific evidence for heliocentrism. We recognize that the Bible’s geocentrism is a phenomenological description resulting from the knowledge limitations of the original audience, and was not included in the Bible to teach us the scientific truth about the solar system; consequently we recognize heliocentrism as a fact.

What’s anachronistic and simplistic about it?

Re-read the whole conversation from the beginning. It was not about “they didn’t like his interpretation because it contradicted theirs.”

There were other heliocentrists who didn’t seem to arouse the ire of the Church. And (I have argued) the Church was not acting out of pettiness; there were may other implications whether or not they were stated by the Church (and it would be foolish to presume that whatever they said was only what they were concerned with).

Just to be clear, I have said this several times previously.

We have been through this over and over again. I quoted Bellarmine several times explaining why he thought it was dangerous.

[quote=“fmiddel, post:254, topic:4380”]
Okay, but what about non-biblical writers? You’re being evasive. You implicitly claim that the medieval Church’s interpretation is “not inspired.”[/quote]

I am not being evasive at all, I’m telling you exactly what I believe. I don’t believe non-biblical writers are inspired. I don’t think people are still writing additional books of the Bible today, or still receiving inspired revelations. Of course I claim that the medieval Church’s interpretation is not inspired. If it had been inspired it would have been accurate. Instead it was just fantasy, the bungling product of tradition-laden theologians who didn’t understand the text or its relationship with reality, and who clearly didn’t take heed of Augustine’s warning that Christians should not make fools of themselves by speaking ignorantly on scientific matters and then pointing to the Bible as authority for their opinions. Consequently, they made fools of themselves with their silly blundering and their ignorant floundering around in a book they didn’t understand properly. Galileo was a better expositor of Scripture than those “Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture”, to use Augustine’s words.

The Biblical writers.

They’re identified as inspired in the Bible.

So what?

No it isn’t. It’s a demonstration that what I’m saying isn’t novel. An appeal to authority takes the form “Authority figure said X, therefore X is true”.

Sorry, where is this “significant debate” taking place? Not in the scientific literature. That’s like saying there’s “significant debate” about whether the earth is round. So what?

I have already said this. But heliocentrism itself did. That’s why all heliocentrist books were placed on the Index.

Re-read what I wrote. I didn’t say it was about “they didn’t like his interpretation because it contradicted theirs”.

Nor have I. It was acting out of ignorance. You keep wanting to deflect attention from the fact that the charge against Galileo was heresy, that heliocentrism was identified as heresy, that heliocentrist books were placed on the Index, and that the Church’s arguments against Galileo were theological, based on a flawed interpretation of Scripture. That’s what makes them just like Ken Ham today. Trying to change the subject won’t make these facts go away.

So…they liked their own interpretation better than his? Like Ken Ham?

I have never said it was for no other reason. I

I have explained this at least a dozen times. I have not been remotely evasive. I have said repeatedly that it was considered theologically dangerous because it contradicted Scripture and therefore undermined inspiration, threatening the authority of Scripture. In addition, it challenged the Church’s authority.

No, not just accuracy. I have already explained what makes an interpretation inspired.

I have already explained this. You demonstrate that you understand my answer when you ask this.

No we aren’t. I don’t believe we need to be “spirit-inspired” in order to interpret the Bible correctly.

I have not criticized the medieval Church for lacking inspired inspiration. I have criticized them for confusing fallible uninspired interpretation with divinely inspired inspiration.

Perhaps a course on hermeneutics would help you. I recommend this.

On the issue of whether or not evolution is true, of course it is. Evolution is a fact. Simple.

I agree. That wasn’t my point. My point was that the Church should have known this. Many people knew this. It wasn’t a novelty. Galileo knew it. Augustine warned about it. The Church just plain blundered.

The scientific community is a more reliable guide to scientific facts than the non-scientific community. Especially those in the non-scientific community who are uneducated and untrained in science and whose worldview is challenged by scientific facts. Here’s Augustine again.

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

Do you think that’s wrong? Would you trust Ken Ham to teach you about science?

Of course. I have said this several times, and I have explained why.

I don’t know why they were so ignorant. As I’ve pointed out, many previous writers weren’t ignorant about this. Galileo wasn’t. He was a better expositor of Scripture than they were. It amazes me that they could be so ignorant while so many other people knew this stuff.

It mattered because the result of their ignorance in this case was the prosecution of Galileo for an imaginary crime, and the attempted suppression of an incredibly valuable scientific fact. It matters when people prosecute other people wrongly on the basis of their ignorant blundering.

Of course they did, but they didn’t see it as their interpretation. Like Ken Ham, they saw it as what Scripture actually said. They didn’t believe it was their interpretation, they believed it was the actual word of God. They didn’t prefer their interpretation because it was their interpretation. They didn’t even think of it as their interpretation. They preferred it because they thought it was divinely inspired truth revealed in the Bible. Just like Ken Ham.

This, once again, is the lesson we learn from the Galileo affair: “The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world’s structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture”. That’s what Ken Ham does. He’s wrong too.

Sure. But they had reasons. And those reasons are never just about who gets to determine opinion. Never. Not ever.

Were they wrong? Absolutely. Did they believe they were doing the right thing? Absolutely.

Any one of us can fall into that trap. Nobody is immune.

@fmiddel

This is a fine sentiment…

But does that mean you would reject the testimony of your eyes if Science (aka “a convincing durable pattern of test results”) if this Science contradicted a portion of Biblical text?

It should be noted that the modern stance of the Catholic Church is that there can be NO CONFLICT between observable science and God’s cosmos. And the Evangelical community has borrowed and adopted a stance more similar to the Roman Catholic stance from the 1600’s !!!

There should be no conflict between God as revealed through nature and God as revealed through scripture. I don’t know what “observable science” means (nitpicking, I know), because science itself is human interpretation that is sometimes wrong.

Well, as the Catholic Church views this criteria, when Human Science seems to have convincingly established a new understanding of the Cosmos, the Church interprets scripture to be consistent with the new Understanding.

And, if 50 years later, there is yet ANOTHER Understanding … the Catholic Church calmly and sincerely explains how the earlier interpretation was flawed.

It’s very simple - - and I have to admit, I admire the Catholic Church’s position !

No. But given the Reformation had already happened, and there was already plenty of fallout from that, I doubt that the Church was more concerned with that than the idea that heliocentrism contradicted what they thought Scripture said.

Yes I did. I said what makes an interpretation inspired is that it is given by an individual who is inspired. This is pretty simple stuff. The question of how we interpret those authors correctly is a separate issue.

Great, so you agree with me.

I am not saying anything new, I am saying what I have always said. As I have pointed out, there was nothing stopping the medieval Church from coming to a harmonization of heliocentrism and Scripture. It had already been done before Galileo, and Galileo himself was one of several people who proposed such a harmonization. The exegetical incompetence on the part of the Church (especially Bellarmine), is actually surprising. They didn’t need to “read the right book” or “take the right course”. Even if they had just taken the advice of Augustine over 1,000 years earlier, they could have saved themselves the embarrassment and shame of idiotic blundering and a couple of centuries of attempting to deny what many other people already knew.

That’s like saying not everyone agrees that the earth is round. Where we go for the final authority is evidence based science. Not me. Definitely not you. The scientific consensus is a far more reliable guide. Evolution has not been a matter of serious scientific debate for decades. It was settled a long time ago. It is not “a theory in crisis”, and it has proved to have enormous explanatory and predictive power.

This isn’t in dispute, and doesn’t affect the argument I have been making. What is extraordinary is that the Church didn’t make the scientific arguments against Galileo that would have strengthened its case significantly. Instead it just waved the Bible and said “You’re wrong, it says so here”, just like Ken Ham.

That it wasn’t a novelty is relevant, because it proves the Church didn’t have to set science against Scripture in the way that it did. There was already a lengthy Christian tradition of harmonizing science and Scripture, using the very same argument that Galileo used. But the Church did not make use of that tradition, and Bellarmine explicitly rejected that argument. As I said, the Church should have known this. Many people knew this. It wasn’t a novelty. Galileo knew it. Augustine warned about it. The Church just plain blundered. You haven’t addressed this yet.

Yes, especially on matters where the Bible is silent.

No. That’s nonsense. Firstly science had not established that the universe was infinite. On the contrary, 100 years ago science was just discovering evidence that the universe was not infinite, and this was a shock because scientists realized they had previously simply assumed this without any evidence; it was one of the last holdovers of Aristotelian cosmology. Ironically this idea had already been dismantled comprehensively by John Philoponus in the sixth century, using both science and Scripture.

In other words, when scientists actually did science, they came to a reliable conclusion.

You’re conflating established science with philosophical claims.

That’s why it isn’t established science.

Yes. Not the idiotic gibbering of people like Ken Ham, or the spittle flecked raving of people like Robert Sungenis.

Are you saying that they knew the correct method of harmonizing science and Scripture in this case, but deliberately chose not to exercise it because they wanted to enforce an interpretation of the Bible and uphold their authority? Where is the evidence that their claim Galileo was wrong, was “based on what was then the best established science”?

Well yes. I argue on the basis of the available evidence.

No. This is a false analogy. It is false firstly because I have never said there were no other reasons for their persecution of Galileo. On the contrary I have said several times that political intrigue and personal malice were factors contributing to Galileo’s persecution. But those were not contributing factors to the Church’s objection to heliocenrism. It is also false because there is no reason to doubt that the Church held theological objections to heliocentrism. It had held to a geocentric interpretation of Scripture and the cosmos for over 1,000 years previously, and had objected explicitly to heliocentrism when it was raised earlier. So to claim that when Bellarmine objected to heliocentrism “he didn’t really mean it”, or that when the Church placed all heliocentric books on the Index “it didn’t really object to heliocentrism, this was just a ruse” is irrational.

There is no data which contradicts the conclusion that the Church held to a geocentric interpretation of Scripture and the cosmos, and there is no data which contradicts the conclusion that the Church viewed heliocentrism as heresy.

No. I have already answered this many times. It mattered to them because in their view Galileo was contradicting the word of God, which was to them was heresy and damaging to the faith.

Of course nobody holds to an interpretation they believe to be false. But you’re not addressing what I wrote. The point I made was that they did not separate their interpretation of what Scripture says, from what Scripture says. Not everybody does this. Careful exegetes avoid this blunder. People like Augustine had previously warned about this blunder. He had even warned about it specifically on the subject of science.

I did not say their reasons were “just about who gets to determine opinion”. Ironically you’ve come the closest to saying that.

[quote=“fmiddel, post:258, topic:4380”]
Were they wrong? Absolutely. Did they believe they were doing the right thing? Absolutely. Any one of us can fall into that trap. Nobody is immune.[/quote]

Exactly. So to return to the original point, when Christians object to evolution they need to prove they are not making the same silly mistake as the Catholic Church did over heliocentrism.

[quote=“Jonathan_Burke, post:262, topic:4380”]
No. But given the Reformation had already happened, and there was already plenty of fallout from that, I doubt that the Church was more concerned with that than the idea that heliocentrism contradicted what they thought Scripture said.[/quote]

So…feeling threatened and digging in their heels?

You’re not really answering the question. You’re just pushing it back.

Who is inspired and how do you know?

Well, it seems to me that your criticism of the medieval Church was that its interpretation was not “inspired” implying that it should have been (and could have been). Are you now saying that “inspired interpretation” only means “using the right hermeneutical rules”? Because if so, why use the word “inspired”?

All you’re saying is that you disagree with their interpretation and hermeneutic. That has nothing to do with what interpretations are “inspired or not.”

Scientific consensus has been wrong many times in the past. I don’t know if you’re aware of Sir Roger Penrose’s criticisms of today’s pursuit in physics for a TOE being dominated by superstring theory…

And again, your criticism is anachronistic. There was no justification in their minds for scientific interpretation of physical data trumping correct interpretation of scripture (which, of course, they believed their own interpretation to be–because, again, insanity to believe your own interpretation is wrong).

You seem to imply that the Church’s perspective and position was in the minority. I’m pretty sure this wasn’t the case.

I’m pretty sure that the Greek-informed interpretations of scripture didn’t see the Bible as being silent on these issues.

Obviously.

Just like today we impose our mindsets like individualism on our interpretations, so the Church imposed it’s Ptolemaic views on their interpretations.

And again, it’s historically anachronistic to assume that they just “should have known better.”

But…that was the consensus.

I’m talking about scientific consensus. There are still flat-earthers today. There are YEC scientists today. Consensus doesn’t mean unanimity, does it? We don’t have to quibble about definitions of “consensus,” do we?

Because just a little over 100 years ago, the scientific consensus was that the universe was infinite in time and space.

See above. Stay with me. Prior to this reliable conclusions, achieved through the “doing of science,” scientific consensus (which should trump our theology…?) relegated God to non-existence.

Right?

Or is it only today’s scientific consensus that trumps theology when it comes to understanding the universe?

Not at all. An infinite universe is a non-created universe. This is so evident I did not feel it needed to be explicit.

[quote]That’s why it isn’t established science.

Yes. Not the idiotic gibbering of people like Ken Ham, or the spittle flecked raving of people like Robert Sungenis.[/quote]

When does something move from “consensus” to “established”?

I’m suspecting that you didn’t really read the link (and subsequent pages) that I posted initially. It outlines this in significant detail…

See above. Available evidence was not on the side of Galileo, in spite of his correctness.

And yet you have consistently said that the primary or principal error of the Church was their interpretation whereas I have said that interpretation of scripture was not the only reason they attacked him. I have also said that “I’m right and your wrong” was not their motivation. There has to be a reason that “I am right” is important enough to act on.

For reasons. My point from the beginning. It’s never just about “I’m right.” We can disagree about all kinds of theological ideas, but I don’t go around killing people for disagreeing. There are reasons.

Damaging to the faith. How? Why? That’s where you get to the crux of things. It’s never just about “we disagree.”

Actually, I believe you’re just wrong here. Everybody believes that his interpretation is what it says. An interpretation explains meaning; it does not add data.

Actually, no. My argument from the very beginning has been that your criticism was simplistic. My argument from the beginning has been that by making it “just about interpretive opinion,” you are being anachronistic in your argument. My argument from the beginning has been that the Church was concerned about far more than opinions of interpretation, but that they saw larger implications inherent in heliocentrism and geocentrism–implications that threatened their own place of power and, by extension, the spiritual and social well-being of the western world.

@Jonathan_Burke
@fmiddel

You guys realize there is no prize for, say, the fiftieth iteration of the same basic content.

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7 posts were split to a new topic: Does BioLogos Believe that “Science Trumps Theology”?

I have already answered this. Since I’m a cessationist I believe the only people who have been inspired are those identified in Scripture, and I know that from Scripture itself, which I trust as a reliable record on this point on the basis of many lines of evidence. But this entire discussion of inspiration is irrelevant to the topic at hand.

No. As I told you previously, I have never criticized the medieval Church on the basis that its interpretation was not inspired. On the contrary, I have pointed out that no one needed to be inspired in order to interpret the Bible correctly on this point. The Church just plain blundered through exegetical incompetence.

No.

I’m not just saying I disagree with their interpretation and hermeneutic. I am pointing out that Christians for centuries before Galileo’s time had recognized that interpretation of what Scripture appeared to say about the natural world needed to be tempered with demonstrable facts about the natural world gathered through a process of investigation and testing. With this lengthy background, taking into account the “two books” of God’s revelation, people like Galileo interpreted Scripture correctly when it appeared to contradict scientific findings. People like Bellarmine did not. Galileo was the better exegete, as well as knowing more about the natural world.

I agree. The issue of which interpretations are inspired or not is irrelevant to this topic.

So what? Christians have been hopelessly wrong about the interpretation of Scripture countless times in the past.

Let me know when evolution has been proved false. In the meantime you’ll need to address the fact that over 100 years of research and experimentation have demonstrated its explanatory power, its predictive power, and its real world application to a wide range of sciences.

Yes, but so what?

It is not anachronistic. Augustine had already warned Christians that interpretation of what Scripture says about the natural world, must be tempered by scientific interpretation of physical data. That was over 1,000 years before Galileo, so you can’t possibly say it’s anachronistic. Not only that, but people like Galileo and Foscarini correctly pointed out how in this case the scientifically interpreted physical data necessitated a re-interpretation of Scripture, and demonstrated how to harmonize the two. You can’t say this was anachronistic, because they were contemporaries with the very Church officials who criticized them, like Bellarmine. The hermeneutic applied by Galileo and Foscarini is the same applied to those very passages of Scripture by most modern exegetes today. There’s nothing anachronistic about this at all.

As for your claim “insanity to believe your own interpretation is wrong”,of course no one deliberately holds an interpretation they believe to be wrong. But it is not insanity to believe your own interpretation is wrong and then change your interpretation. Mentally healthy, open minded, rationally thinking individuals do this. People who aren’t thinking properly start with the premise that they are right and can’t be proved wrong. That’s when the problem starts.

No I am not implying it was in the minority. But you haven’t addressed my point. There was already a lengthy Christian tradition of harmonizing science and Scripture, using the very same argument that Galileo used. But the Church did not make use of that tradition, and Bellarmine explicitly rejected that argument. As I said, the Church should have known this. Many people knew this. It wasn’t a novelty and it wasn’t an anachronism. Galileo knew it. Augustine warned about it. The Church just plain blundered.

Of course not, because they didn’t take Augustine’s advice.

They didn’t impose anything on the text. The text was written from the geocentric perspective of the original audience. What the Church lacked was the hermeneutical sophistication to understand that the text could legitimately be read in any way other than teaching that the sun orbits the earth. Contemporaries like Galileo and Foscarini knew better.

No it isn’t, because there were earlier Christians before them who knew better, and there were Christians living at the same time as them who also knew better (such as Galileo and Foscarini). So it’s not historically anachronistic at all. The fact is they were wrong when some of their contemporaries were right.

But it wasn’t established through science. As I pointed out, it was an unsubstantiated claim left over from Aristotle. There was nothing scientific about it.

I agree consensus doesn’t mean unanimity. But you’re missing the point. Unlike evolution, the idea that the universe was infinite in time and space was not a scientifically established conclusion. And just over 100 years ago it was already under challenge on the basis of several scientific arguments which actually argued on the basis of evidence (this began in the eighteenth century). So the consensus had no scientific basis, had not been arrived at through the scientific method, had never been scientifically tested, and had no scientific evidence supporting it. This is completely different to evolution. It’s not remotely a true analogy.

Please show me evidence that there was a scientific consensus that God did not exist. All those peer reviewed scientific papers in professional scientific journals saying “God has been relegated to non-existence”. And I note you keep repeating that irrelevant mantra that science “should trump our theology”. As you have been told by several people in this thread (including myself), that isn’t what is being argued. What is being argued is that our interpretation of Scripture should be tempered by scientifically established facts. And please remember that this excellent advice is not new; Augustine said this around 1,500 years ago.

That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the claim that God does not exist. That is a philosophical claim not a scientific claim.

In science it has to be established before it becomes consensus. Any time a scientific theory becomes consensus before it is established, there’s a serious problem and it will probably turn out to be wrong. In the case of the universe, the idea that it was infinite in space and time was never established through the scientific method, and the very first time it was tested scientifically it failed.

I did read it. The link was an apologetic article which used the typical bait and switch.

  1. Galileo didn’t have conclusive proof of his theory (true).
  2. Other scientists raised valid scientific objections to his theory (true).
  3. Therefore (and here’s the switch), the Church’s rejection of his theory was valid (false).

The reason why the conclusion is false is because, as I have explained previously, the Church’s rejection of his theory was not based on valid scientific objections, it was based on a flawed interpretation of Scripture. The Church’s objections were theological, not scientific.

Look at what that article claims.

When it comes to the debate between heliocentrism (the Earth goes around sun) versus geocentrism (the Sun goes around Earth), the Church was not the primary opponent to Galileo and Copernicus. The chief opponents of heliocentrism were the secular Aristotelean scientists. The Church simply subscribed to what was the reigning scientific paradigm at the time.

Sorry, “secular Aristotelean scientists”? Which scientists were secular in that day and age? They were all religious. And the Church did not simply subscribe to “what was the reigning scientific paradigm at the time”, it raised specific theological objections to Galileo’s theory. That was the motivation for charging him with heresy and placing all heliocentric works on the Index.

The site also says this.

Who was it that really opposed the idea of heliocentrism?

Both scientists (for scientific reasons), and the Church (for theological reasons). Of course that’s not the answer the site gives. The site says this.

Galileo’s fight was with other scientists, not the Church.

This tries to avoid the fact that the Church’s fight was with Galileo; it not only charged him with heresy, it placed heliocentric works on the Index.

What you said and what I said are perfectly compatible. I have never said interpretation of Scripture was the only reason they attacked him.

I have agreed with this. I have never said that was their motivation.

I have explained this several times, including using Bellarmine’s own explanation.

No. Informed and intelligent readers know that their interpretation is not simply “what it says”. That’s the kind of mistake which people like Ken Ham and Eddie make; they claim that their interpretation isn’t simply an interpretation, it is what the Bible actually says.

OldTimer has helpfully explained how he used to think this way too.

People like OldTimer and I (not to mention professional scholars), understand the difference between “My interpretation of the Bible” (which is “What I think the Bible is saying based on evidence X and reasoning Y to arrive at conclusion Z”), and “What the Bible is actually saying” (which may indeed be different to what I think the Bible is saying).

So to return to the original point, when Christians object to evolution they need to prove they are not making the same silly mistake as the Catholic Church did over heliocentrism. How do you propose to do that?

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Hindsight is 20/20. It’s painfully easy to critique four centuries after the fact. That said, I’m sure “we all would make the right decisions and interpretations given the same circumstances…”

Yeah, right.

A moderator has already stepped in. I’m done with this thread.

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