Comment by oersted
5 hours ago
I don’t know about popes, but many prominent mathematicians, philosophers and early scientists were priests or monks: Mendel, Copernicus, Bayes, Ockham, Bolzano... It was pretty much the only way to get the kind of education, intellectual culture, time and focus required for hundreds of years (at least in Europe), until the upper-middle class widened around the enlightenment and industrial revolution.
The friction between the church and science is a relatively new phenomenon, at least at the current scale. There are always exceptions like Galileo, but it took science a long time to start answering (and contradicting) some of the key questions about our world and where we come from that religion addresses.
> There are always exceptions like Galileo
Well, considering that Galileo basically called Pope a fool, and the punishment he received was home arrest, this affair is not really the best evidence of Church prejudice, backwardness and cruelty.
And if we agree with Feyerabend, Galileo of today would probably has as much difficulty as the original one, for the initial evidence he provided wasn't strong enough to discard knowledge of that time.
> The friction between the church and science is a relatively new phenomenon, at least at the current scale
Current scale? What current friction do you have in mind. I honestly cannot think of anything with the Catholic church. Lots of friction with evangelical Biblical literalists, of course, but the Catholic Church is not literalist.
> There are always exceptions like Galileo
The Galileo case is more about personalities and politics. it is a very good example of why religious authority should be in the same hands as secular power, but it is not really about his beliefs - no one else (including Copernicus) faced opposition for the same ideas.
Just to correct my wording. I mean "persecution" not "opposition". there was plenty of opposition and people were arguing for multiple alternatives to the Ptolemaic model at the time.
> There are always exceptions like Galileo
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
Comapring the assassination of a president by a pro-slaver to a scholarly and political dispute that ended up with house arrest in a villa, where he wrote and published his most important work, is a bit wild. The Church has done much, much worse things than the dispute with Galileo.
The bible is pro slavery.
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