Talya wrote:
No, the church destroyed far more knowledge than it preserved. Anything that threatened it's dogma was wiped out.
This is, quite frankly, sheer nonsense since the vast majority of the knowledge available had nothing to do with church dogma at all, and even when it did, the church typically didn't destroy it, although they sometimes hid it. They usually couldn't destroy it; there was no way to know where copies might be with no modern libraries or communications.
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And not just science..."Holy Writings" that contradicted church dogma were excluded from bible canon (even if they seemed written by disciples of Jesus, such as Thomas or Mary Magdelene) and hunted down and wiped out.
No, they weren't hunted down and wiped out, which is why they were known today, and as for those Gospels, just because they had those names attached did not mean they belonged in canon or were written by the names attached. In any case, it's hardly a valid cricticism of the Church to decide which writings were canonical and which were not. Jesus gave no guidance on the subject, but He did give authority to decide such things to the Church.
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Cultural traditions and religions that were supplanted (usually by violence) with church doctrines were eradicated, to the point where we no longer have a lot of detail on many pre-christian cultures.
Ok, we no longer have a lot of detail. That's got a lot to do with the sheer amount of time, not to mention this nasty entity that was pretty damn aggressive towards other cultures around the same time - it was called the Roman Empire, and it wasn't Christian at all until late in its life cycle.
You're just making vague allusions to the fact that Christian doctrine supplanted paganism in a lot of places and implying that this was done by extensive violence when in fact the violence was generally just the usual wars and some of the participants happened to be Christian.
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The church wanted to ensure their satanic religions were never heard from again.
What the church wanted isn't relevant; there's nothing wrong with wanting opposing ideas to be discarded and yours adopted. I'd be perfectly happy if no one ever heard from communists again.
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But it's science where we were slowed down the most...the others were of historical interest, but nothing more. You even paint Galileo Galilei, as if he somehow did something wrong by proving that the earth revolved around the sun. Then you claim you have no bias.
Wow, you really can strawman can't you? I said no such thing. First of all, Galileo didn't prove it; although he came very close. However, a theory that includes such major discrepancies as not accounting for easily observed tidal behavior is definitely not proof. Proof happened just a little bit later when other people made needed corrections.
What I did say Galileo was wrong about were comets (which he was) and that he intruded himself onto theological matters, and that he was an ******* about it, and brought a lot of his problems on himself.
This didn't appreciably slow down science, nor did anything else the church did since all the science in this areas was dependant on telescopes being invented and I don't think you'll be able to find any church objection to optics as a science.
In other words, while the Church was certainly not fair or well-advised to do what it did to Galileo, the fact remains that the matter was anything but suppression of science for conflicting with dogma. The church had said "We'll re-look at the dogma if you resolve problems X, Y, and Z, and while you're at it, leave the theology to us". Galileo evidently was as concerned with his own prominence and attacking people who proved him wrong on issues like comets as he was with science, and so his affair is hardly the travesty of justice that the Protestant propaganda since the affair would have us believe (Yeah, I'm biased all right! I'm a protestant, cricticising protestants for anticatholic distortion of an issue! That's bias for you!)
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The church has done nothing beneficial for human society. They are ultimately nothing but parasites.
This is sheer nonsense. Churches of all kinds have done charitable work throughout history. Then of course there has been actual scientific advancement within the Church, but I guess
Gregor Mendel was just a parasite, eh?
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No, Galileo was tried for heresy because he stated the Earth revolved around the Sun. Now, to be fair, the church had decided that that was a theological matter, stating a source of Psalm 104:5 ("The Earth...can never be moved.") The church was also wrong. The pope, while allowing him to write both sides of the issue, insisted Galileo not advocate Heliocentrism. That's like asking a scientist to present a balanced argument between a flat earth and a spherical one. Facts are facts, and Galileo had already definitively proven that the Earth revolves around the sun. Much like creationists demanding science not to advocate evolution, the church was stifling advancement.
No, it wasn't because Galileo had not proven this. His theories were too full of problems he hadn't been able to rsolve yet. He advocated circular planetray orbits, and it was already known that if heliocentrism were correct, they must be elliptical, and there was the tidal problem.
The church had
not decided that the helicentrism question was theological; it had decided it wasn't going to revise its doctrine until Galileo could fix his issues. Galileo had shown evidence, but it was insufficient. Claiming he had definitively proven anything with his theory is like claiming HIGCC is "definitiviely proven."
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You're honestly saying that Galileo is at fault because he hadn't created a complete model yet? Because he didn't take his heresy far enough, he was at fault? If the church disliked the Sun being at the center of the universe rather than the earth, can you imagine how much they'd have disliked the actual truth that while the earth revolves around the Sun, the sun is actually just one of hundreds of billions of stars orbiting in the galaxy, and the galaxy is just one of hundreds of billions moving out from a central point...no, I don't think that would have improved his situation. (All this despite the existing models of an earth at the center of the universe not working either.) Your capacity to make excuses for church actions is nothing short of amazing.
What's astonishing is your capacity to strawman my argument. Yes, Galileo was at fault for publishing a model, but not because it was incomplete, because it was
wrong. His model included wrong tidal predictions and wrong orbital predictions. The church didn't "dislike" his model at all, and they wouldn't have liked what we've discovered since any less. What they were was unwilling to change theological interpretations to fit a hypothesis that was inadequately supported.
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Galileo began his telescopic observations in the later part of 1609, and by March of 1610 was able to publish a small book, The Starry Messenger (Sidereus Nuncius), relating some discoveries that had not been dreamed of in the philosophy of the time: mountains on the Moon, lesser moons in orbit around Jupiter, and the resolution of what had been thought cloudy masses in the sky (nebulae) into collections of stars too faint to see individually without a telescope. Other observations followed, including the phases of Venus and the existence of sunspots.
None of these findings, that were difficult at first for other astronomers to verify, proved that the Earth moved, or directly contradicted Christian doctrine. However, they caused difficulties for theologians and for natural philosophers (the name given to scientists at the time, before the modern scientific method was developed), as they contradicted the scientific and philosophical ideas of the time, which were based on those of Aristotle and Ptolemy, whose teachings were closely associated with the Catholic Church of the time (despite their work being pagan writings). In particular, the geocentric model was contradicted by the phases of Venus, which indicated it was both inside and outside the theorized "celestial sphere" of the sun, and the observation of moons orbiting Jupiter instead of the Earth.
Jesuit astronomers, experts both in Church teachings, science, and in natural philosophy, were at first skeptical and hostile to the new ideas, however, within a year or two the availability of good telescopes enabled them to repeat the observations. In 1611 Galileo visited the Collegium Romanum in Rome, where the Jesuit astronomers by that time had repeated his observations.
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Bellarmine found no problem with heliocentrism so long as it was treated as a purely hypothetical calculating device and not as a physically real phenomenon, but he did not regard it as permissible to advocate the latter unless it could be conclusively proved. This put Galileo in a difficult position, because he believed that the available evidence strongly favoured heliocentrism, and he wished to be able to publish his arguments, but he did not have the necessary conclusive proof.
Do you get that? Is that in sufficiently clear English for you?
GALILEO DID NOT HAVE PROOF.Quote:
Moreover, while the topic was not inherently a matter of faith, the statements about it in Scripture were so by virtue of who said them—namely, the Holy Spirit. He [Cardinal Ballarmine] conceded that if there were conclusive proof, "then one would have to proceed with great care in explaining the Scriptures that appear contrary; and say rather that we do not understand them than that what is demonstrated is false."
The head of the Inquisition itself explcitly said that if Galileo could prove his ideas, then Scripture would need to be reinterpreted because it had been clearly misunderstood. The fact of the matter, however, is that nothing was proven. Period. This claim that Galileo had conclusively proved hsi theory is utter bullshit fabrication.
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No, I've proven my point, over and over again. Every time I do you backtrack and take a new revisionist position. You can't support your arguments with a single fact, yet I present only fact which you just brush aside, claiming your position is proven and everybody who disagrees with you is wrong.
Reminds me of someone else, actually.
The sheer hilarity of you posting this after your ranting, screaming, temper-tantrum posting and your "proven" arguments that are based on facts you've evidently just made up and hoped no one would check is hilarious.
All you're doing at this point is revising the history of the thread. It's quite plain that you're simply hoping to score points by claiming to have proven things, or that I'm somehow revising things, or that I'm "brushing things aside" by addressing ALL of your points in detail, including links that show where you're simply making up history to suit your view. This despite the fact that you've chosen to rant and scream rather than actualy make or address a point at all in at least 50% of your responses here.
Really, I hate to break it to you, but most people here are just as intelligent as you are and are not going to be fooled by such desperation.
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First of all, they are historically called crusades. Those aren't my words.
By whom exactly?
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Secondly, the fact that the King of France organized it doesn't matter since he did so with the blessing and support of the church in France.
Yes it does matter, since them "blessing it and supporting it" doesn't make it a church action, a religious one, or give them any real responsibility for it. Occitania wasn't even a nation, just a region with a conglomeration of feudal lords, and territorial conquest was accepted and normal for the day.
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I did not deny that the actions in portugal and spain were against muslims. I listed actions against muslims as well as christians.
I know you didn't, and I didn't say that. I said they were against muslims that had attacked those areas in the first place.
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Just because it was against muslims, doesn't make it acceptable, nor does the argument "Well, they conquered that area first, decades to centuries earlier. We're in the right!" (But mommy, she hit me first! Tu quoque.)
It's very much acceptable. Territorial conquest is only acceptable in modern terms; at the time it was quite normal. As for the Tu quoque, that's equally absurd. Someone can come into your territory, take it over, dismantle your churches, and make your people second-class citizens, but if you kick them out you're equally wrong? I guess the Allies were just as wrong as the Germans and the Chinese just as wrong as the Japanese.
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Excommunicating rebellioius serfs was normal for the time excuses it? THAT MAKES IT WORSE.
No it doesn't. "Worse" according to who? You? Ok, Taly's personal morality is offended. That's nice.
It is nice to note, however, that "objective morality is nonsense" goes by the wayside in favor of moral outrage when you can cricticize the church.
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And it was called a crusade, both by history and by the perpetrators, with the full blessing of the church.
Who called it a crusade? You've shown nowhere that the church called the action a crusade, and even if they did, so what? You're just saying "Crusades are bad cause I say so!"
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And we weren't talking about the crusades specifically, but rather Xequecal's comment about the tendency of the medieval church to encourage war on the known world, wherever it could expand its power, and the general bloodguilt of the church.
Actually it was his comment that the early church did those things (which they didn't), something you've brushed aside repeatedly. Then there's the fact that the chruch never "encouraged war on the known world" at all; it sanctioned specific wars at specific times for specific reasons. In view of the tendancy of that "known world" to be populated by violent barbarians that attacked pretty much everything in sight and Muslims who spread their own faith by the sword from its founding, pretty much any of that is at least partly a matter of survival.
In any case, there is no such thing as bloodguilt. It's a nonsense concept.
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I suppose you would try to justify the Inquisition, if brought up, too.
Which one? The Spoanish Inquisition was the Spanish crown using the church in Spain as its own tool. As for the regular Inquisition, the church certianly had the right to regulate the doctrine of its membership. We find the idea of allowing them secular power over such members today, but it was the accepted norm for the time. Ill-advised and hardly to be returned to, but "justified" would be relative to our own standards. It was justifiable by theirs; it isn't by ours.