Is Christianity opposed to science?

[Xeno.of.athens]

Ten minutes of video provide a basic answer to the thread's question. The answer is no. Here is the video.

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Transcript:
The Catholic Church and Science have had a… tumultuous history,
as the Church is generally afraid of science and persecutes anyone who challenges the
Bible with science. It did so with Hypatia, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno, to name a few.
Or… so the story goes. There’s just one problem: these stories are myths.
While there have definitely been conflicts between individual scientists and the
Church over the years, with some of them experiencing harsh punishments for their work,
the idea that the Church has ever had anything wrong with science in itself is completely false.
What actually happened with these three,
and what can we say about the Church and science today? This is Catholicism in Focus
———
We begin with Hypatia, a fifth century woman known for her work as a neoplatonist philosopher,
astronomer, and mathematician. Although not the first female professor in Alexandria,
she is the earliest for which we have any reasonably well-kept records of her life.
It’s no wonder, then, that modern people have held her up,
not only as a scientist, but as a strong feminist icon.
It’s no wonder that her brutal, unjust death would be remembered so many centuries later.
As the story goes, she was attacked by a mob of Christians, incited by Cyril,
the bishop of Alexandria, because of her philosophical teachings against Christianity.
She was torn limb from limb, scraped to the bone, and then burned. A martyr for philosophy,
the last of the Hellenes, a symbol of Catholic oppression of free thinking.
At least, these are things that were attributed to her in the 19th century,
1500 years after her death. The reality is that she was never perceived as a martyr in her
time because her death had nothing to do with science or religion.
Although a pagan and a philosopher, there appears to be no conflict between
her teaching in Alexandria and Christians prior to this moment. She was well regarded
for her tolerance towards Christians, and even taught them in her school.
There was also nothing fundamentally problematic about her branch of philosophy—neoplatonism was
actually a preferable branch of philosophy at the time for Christians, taken up by key
figures like Origen, Psuedo-Dionysius, and most notably, Augustine of Hippo.
When you’re a pagan on the side of Augustine, the Church is going to like you.
The problem, and what ultimately led to a mob violently ending her life,
was her politics. Historians say that she was well-connected in the political
world and often found herself in league with ambitious and ruthless men. This
would ultimately lead to her demise when she crossed paths with Cyril.
Although canonized a saint, he bears the mark of a very flawed, very violent man,
fraught with controversies. He used force against the Jews in retaliation for persecution,
fought nasty theological battles against the heretic Nestorius, and engaged in a
violent feud against with Prefect Orestes, who represented the moderate camp of Christians.
According to Neoplatonist historian Damascius, this is what led to Hypatia’s demise,
as she was his close friend. Cyril incited a mob against her and she was brutally killed.
Meaning, that her death had nothing to do with science. She was not persecuted for any of her
scientific beliefs—she died because her politics conflicted with a violent man.
Was this man a bishop? Yes. Is that a good thing for the Church? Absolutely not. But
it doesn’t provide a drop of evidence that there is a conflict between the Church and
science. It just shows that some of the people who led the Church were bad men.
In her time, she was not seen as a martyr for science or as someone
in conflict with the Church. This did not appear until the 18th and 19th centuries,
when her story was revived as a powerful symbol of an anti-Catholic scientific movement.
The same can be said about the Giordano Bruno,
the Dominican Friar and priest often regarded as the first martyr for science.
Born in 1548, he was ordained a priest at the age of 24, and spent a number of years studying,
wandering Europe, and publishing works. He was interested not only in science,
but in mathematics, philosophy, poetry, and theories regarding the cosmos. He was
among the first to defend the then-controversial Copernican
model of the Universe, and wrote about his belief in the plurality of worlds.
In 1593, his beliefs caught the attention of the Roman Inquisition,
and he was arrested. After convicted in trial in 1600 he was burnt at the stake as a heretic.
A man supporting a scientific principle we now know to be true
is killed by the Church. Obviously, this is a problem for the Church.
Except, his support of heliocentrism was hardly his biggest concern. Bruno was also a major
advocate against the virgin birth, denied transubstantiation, questioned the miracles
of Jesus, supported pantheism, and possibly even believed in reincarnation and Hermetic occultism.
That is quite the rap sheet for a priest.
Although his support of heliocentrism and plurality of worlds were mentioned at his
trial and certainly played a part in why he was initially questioned,
they were by no means the primary reason he was convicted. He was
condemned for his LONG list of heretical theological beliefs.
It can certainly be argued that the Church used excessive force in punishing heretics—a topic
for another video—but there is simply no argument that Bruno was condemned for being a scientist.
But what about Galileo, the grandaddy of them all, you ask? This was not a priest with unorthodox
beliefs. He didn’t get wrapped up in politics with the wrong people. He was just a scientist
who was condemned, jailed, and tortured for boldly contradicting the Bible, right?
Yes… and no. Galileo’s story is by far the most complicated.
For one thing, the image of Galileo heroically standing up to the Church
in defense of science is just untrue. At no point did he publicly reject Church teaching,
nor did he categorically defend heliocentrism. What brought him before the inquisition was a
book entitled “Dialogue on the Two World Systems” in which three characters discuss
the theories of the universe. One of the characters does defend heliocentrism,
but it is unclear whether Galileo held that position at the time.
In all likelihood, Galileo DID side with heliocentrism but because of the threat
of punishment, he remained silent on the matter. It’s also important
to remember that the best scientists of his day all disagreed with heliocentrism.
Not for biblical reasons, but for scientific ones. The science of the day didn’t support
Galileo, and Galileo didn’t have the evidence to defend his new claims.
It’s also difficult to be a martyr when little was done to him besides censure.
While the story for many years was that he was tortured and jailed by the Inquisition,
the evidence says otherwise. During his trial, he was lodged at the Tuscan
Embassy. After convicted of suspicion of heresy, he was placed under house arrest
at the Archbishop’s residence in Siena, a personal friend. After a few months,
he moved back to his villa near Florence where he spent his remaining years.
With the exception of the three days of interrogation, June 21-24, 1633,
he was housed in luxury. It is not known where he stayed during those days, and it is possible that
he was put in a jail cell, but much more likely that he was lodged in the prosecutor’s apartment.
The likelihood of torture seems even more remote. Court records show that the pope
decreed against torture in his case, and that he was interrogated merely with the
threat of torture on June 21. No record remains of any methods used upon him,
a requirement of inquisitors, and given the fact that he appeared in court on the 22nd,
at an advanced age, strongly suggests that he was not maltreated.
Contrary to common knowledge, Galileo never heroically stood up to the Church
nor was he jailed and tortured for his beliefs. He was silenced,
forced to give up teaching and publishing.
Which, is not insignificant, and the Church has since recognized this. In 1992,
Pope John Paul II praised Galileo’s work and admitted the error of his
contemporary scientists. For a time, their improper elevation of Aristotle’s
philosophy and literal interpretation of scripture clouded their judgment.
Both Church and scientists were simply wrong in the case of Galileo. We unfairly
censured a brilliant scientist, and for that we must do penance.
But notice what we’ve done here in this video. In unpacking these three situations,
we have not exonerated the Church from any wrong doing. Not at all. We have acted harshly along
the way—a bishop incited a mob against someone, a man was burned alive for his theological beliefs,
another was put under house arrest for our mistake. This is not great.
But it’s also not evidence that the Church has a vendetta against science. While each of these
cases involved scientists, the fact that they were scientists had nothing to do with what happened to
them. During Hypatia’s time, Augustine was supporting the same philosophy; during the
time of Giordano and Galileo, the Church was the leading supporter of research in astronomy
and was educating thousands of people in its universities in natural philosophy and physics.
Throughout our history, the Church has not only tolerated the sciences,
it has kept them alive and allowed them to flourish. We can thank Catholic priest Marin
Mersenne for founding the science of acoustics; Bl. Nicolas Steno for the field of geology;
Jesuit priest Angelo Secchi who pioneered the use of spectroscopy
to study stars and developed the first systematic classification; Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel
for his experiments on plant hybridization, earning him the title “Father of Genetics”;
Fr. Georges Lemaître for his proposition of, wait for it, The Big Bang Theory.
You simply can’t have martyrs for science if the Church has never been inherently against science.
Rather, what you have are three people who were the unfortunate victims of powerful,
ill-formed men. You have examples of the Church overstepping her authority and acting
very un-Christ-like. You have individuals, in particular times, acting on their own accord,
against the overall tradition of the Church. We must atone for sins we’ve committed against
Hypatia, Bruno, and Galileo… but calling them what they’re not won’t help anyone. The Church
may have a problem with power, but it does not have a problem with science.

 

[BobRyan]

Transcript:
The Catholic Church and Science have had a… tumultuous history,
as the Church is generally afraid of science and persecutes anyone who challenges the
Bible with science

false.

All the major branches of science - were started by Christians.

=======================

Most scientific and technical innovations prior to the Scientific Revolution were achieved by societies organized by religious traditions. Ancient Christian scholars pioneered individual elements of the scientific method. Historically, Christianity has been and still is a patron of sciences.[1] It has been prolific in the foundation of schools, universities and hospitals,[2][3][4][5][6] and many Christian clergy have been active in the sciences and have made significant contributions to the development of science.[7]

Christian "mathematicians and philosophers such as John Buridan, Nicole Oresme and Roger Bacon as the founders of modern science.[8] Duhem concluded that "the mechanics and physics of which modern times are justifiably proud to proceed, by an uninterrupted series of scarcely perceptible improvements, from doctrines professed in the heart of the medieval schools".[9] Many of the most distinguished classical scholars in the Byzantine Empire held high office in the Eastern Orthodox Church.[10] Protestantism has had an important influence on science, according to the Merton Thesis, there was a positive correlation between the rise of English Puritanism and German Pietism on the one hand, and early experimental science on the other.[11]

Christian scholars and scientists have made noted contributions to science and technology fields,[12][13][14] as well as medicine,[15] both historically and in modern times.[16] Some scholars state that Christianity contributed to the rise of the Scientific Revolution.[17][18][19][20] Between 1901 and 2001, about 56.5% of Nobel prize laureates in scientific fields were Christians,[21] and 26% were of Jewish descent (including Jewish atheists).[21]

"While the conflict thesis (between Christianity and science) remains popular in atheistic and antireligious circles, it has lost favor among most contemporary historians of science.[22][23][24] Most contemporary historians of science believe the Galileo affair is an exception in the overall relationship between science and Christianity and have also corrected numerous false interpretations of this event.[25][26][27][28]

"Some scholars have noted a direct tie between "particular aspects of traditional Christianity" and the rise of science.[70] Other scholars and historians have credited Christianity with laying the foundation for the Scientific Revolution.[71] According to Robert K. Merton, the values of English Puritanism and German Pietism led to the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries. (The Merton Thesis is both widely accepted and disputed.) Merton explained that the connection between religious affiliation and interest in science was the result of a significant synergy between the ascetic Protestant values and those of modern science.[72][73]

================== next
"If you were asked to give a short biography on the life, works, and faith of Isaac Newton, what would you say? Would you remember his work on calculus? The three Laws of Motion? The four Rules of Scientific Reasoning? What about his tenure with the Royal Mint?"

Top 5 Events In Isaac Newton’s Life​

1. After earning his Master of Arts degree, Newton became Cambridge’s Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1669.



2. A group of scholars signed the charter to found the Royal Society on July 15, 1662. After the demonstration of Newton’s telescope, the members elected him to membership in 1672. Later, he served as the president of the society.

3. When Queen Anne of England visited the Trinity of College in Cambridge on April 17, 1705, she gave Newton a knighthood. Before receiving this honor, Newton had served two terms as a member of parliament. His involvement in politics and his association with King William III and philosopher John Locke aided his receiving the knighthood.

4. Newton became Warden of the Royal Mint in 1696. This required a move to London, where he oversaw the production of England’s coin currency. Newton’s additional duties included bringing counterfeiters to justice. He also developed new English coins by recalling all the old coins, melting them down, and remaking them into high-quality coins. Today, when you hold a quarter in your hand, feel the milled edges and realize it was Newton who introduced this technique to prevent clipping.



5. Never marrying, Newton stayed with a niece at Cranbury Park near Winchester, England, in his final years. He was 74 years old when he died on March 31, 1727.

What Were Isaac Newton’s Most Important Discoveries? ​

Newton reportedly said, “If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent.” His patient attention brought forth many discoveries, including:

1. The Laws of Motion

2. The Law of Gravitation

3. The Nature of Light

4. The Law of Cooling

5. The Binomial Theorem

6. The Reflecting Telescope

"What Did Isaac Newton Write about Christianity?​

"Newton is quoted as saying “I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by men who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.” Researchers have found that Newton wrote and researched the subject of theology more than all his works related to science and math

You simply can’t have martyrs for science if the Church has never been inherently against science.
Rather, what you have are three people who were the unfortunate victims of powerful,
ill-formed men. You have examples of the Church overstepping her authority and acting
very un-Christ-like. You have individuals, in particular times, acting on their own accord,
against the overall tradition of the Church. We must atone for sins we’ve committed against
Hypatia, Bruno, and Galileo… but calling them what they’re not won’t help anyone. The Church
may have a problem with power, but it does not have a problem with science.

Indeed - the problem of the church "overstepping" goes all through the dark ages and beyond.

 

[BobRyan]

34 Great Scientists Who Were Committed Christians

Here are some of the greatest scientists in history who were also deeply committed to their Christian faiths.

Robert Boyle 1627 – 1691.
Said that a deeper understanding of science was a higher glorification of God. Defined elements, compounds, and mixtures. Discovered the first gas law – Boyle’s Law.

Antoine Lavoisier 1743 – 1794.
A Roman Catholic believer in the authenticity of the Holy Scriptures. A founder of modern chemistry; discovered oxygen’s role in combustion and respiration; discovered that water is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen;

Leonhard Euler 1707 – 1783.
The son of a Calvinist pastor. Wrote religious texts and is commemorated by the Lutheran Church on their Calendar of Saints. Published more mathematics than any other single mathematician in history, much of it brilliant and groundbreaking.

Michael Faraday 1791 – 1867.
A devout member and elder of the Sandemanian Church. Discovered electromagnetic induction; discovered the first experimental link between light and magnetism; carried out the first room-temperature liquefaction of a gas.

James Clerk Maxwell 1831 – 1879.
An evangelical Protestant who learned the Bible by heart at age 14. Transformed our understanding of nature: his famous equations unified the forces of electricity and magnetism, indicating that light is an electromagnetic wave. His kinetic theory established that temperature is entirely dependent on the speeds of particles.

Gregor Mendel 1822 – 1884.
A Roman Catholic Augustinian abbot. Founded the science of genetics; identified many of the mathematical rules of heredity; identified recessive and dominant traits.

Arthur Compton 1892 – 1962.
A deacon in the Baptist Church. Discovered that light can behave as a particle as well as a wave, and coined the word photon to describe a particle of light.

Ronald Fisher 1890 – 1962.
A devout Anglican: made religious broadcasts, and wrote religious articles. Unified evolution by natural selection with Mendel’s rules of inheritance, so defining the new field of population genetics. Invented experimental design; devised the statistical concept of variance.

Bernhard Riemann 1826 – 1866.
Son of a Lutheran pastor. A devout Christian who died reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Transformed geometry providing the foundation of Einstein’s theory of general relativity; the Riemann hypothesis has become the most famous unresolved problem in mathematics.

Georges Lemaître 1894 – 1966.
Roman Catholic priest. Discovered that space and the universe are expanding; discovered Hubble’s law; proposed the universe began with the explosion of a ‘primeval atom’ whose matter spread and evolved to form the galaxies and stars we observe today.

Isaac Newton 1643 to 1727.
Passionate dissenting Protestant who spent more time on Bible study than math and physics. Profoundly changed our understanding of nature with his law of universal gravitation and his laws of motion; invented calculus; built the first ever reflecting telescope; showed sunlight is made of all the colors of the rainbow.

Charles Townes 1915 – 2015.
A member of the United Church of Christ. Prayed daily. Wrote books linking science and religion; believed religion more important than science. Invented the laser and maser. Established that the Milky Way has a supermassive black hole at its center.

Mary Anning 1799 – 1847.
A devoted Anglican, spent her spare time reading the Bible. Discovered the first complete specimen of a plesiosaur; deduced the diets of dinosaurs.

Willard Gibbs 1839 – 1903.
Member of the Congregational Church who attended services every week. Invented vector analysis and founded the sciences of modern statistical mechanics and chemical thermodynamics.

John Dalton 1766 – 1844.
A faithful Quaker who lived modestly. Dalton’s Atomic Theory is the basis of chemistry; discovered Gay-Lussac’s Law relating temperature, volume, and pressure of gases; discovered the law of partial gas pressures.

Carl Friedrich Gauss 1777 – 1855.
A Lutheran Protestant who believed science revealed the immortal human soul and that there is complete unity between science and God. Gauss revolutionized number theory and invented the method of least squares and the fast Fourier transform. His profound contributions to the physical sciences include Gauss’s Law & Gauss’s Law for Magnetism.

Charles Barkla 1877 – 1944.
A Methodist who believed science was part of his quest for God. Discovered that atoms have the same number of electrons as their atomic number and that X-rays emitted by excited atoms are ‘fingerprints’ for the atom.

George Washington Carver 1864 – 1943.
A Protestant Evangelist and Bible class leader whose faith in Jesus was the mechanism through which he carried out his scientific work. Improved the agricultural economy of the USA by promoting nitrogen providing peanuts as an alternative crop to cotton to prevent soil depletion.

Francis Collins 1950 – present.
Atheist turned devout Christian. Invented positional cloning. Took part in discovery of the genes for cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s disease, and neurofibromatosis. Directed National Human Genome Research Institute for 15 years.

Ernest Walton 1903 – 1995.
A devout Methodist, who said science was a way of knowing more about God. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics after he artificially split the atom and proved that E = mc2.

Florence Nightingale 1820 – 1910.
An Anglican who believed God spoke to her, calling her to her work. Transformed nursing into a respected, highly trained profession; used statistics to analyze wider health outcomes; advocated sanitary reforms largely credited with adding 20 years to life expectancy between 1871 and 1935.

J. J. Thomson 1856 – 1940.
A practicing Anglican who prayed and read the Bible daily. Discovered the electron; invented one of the most powerful tools in analytical chemistry – the mass spectrometer; obtained the first evidence for isotopes of stable elements.

Alessandro Volta 1745 – 1827.
A Roman Catholic who declared that he had never wavered in his faith. Invented the electric battery; wrote the first electromotive series; isolated methane for the first time.

Blaise Pascal 1623 – 1662.
A Roman Catholic theologian. Pascal’s wager justifies belief in God. Devised Pascal’s triangle for the binomial coefficients and co-founded probability theory. Invented the hydraulic press and the mechanical calculator.

William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) 1824 – 1907.
An elder of the Free Church of Scotland. Codified the first two laws of thermodynamics, deduced the absolute zero of temperature is -273.15 °C. On the Kelvin scale, absolute zero is found at 0 kelvin. Invented the signalling equipment used in the first transatlantic telegraph via an undersea cable.

Charles Babbage 1791 – 1871.
A Protestant devotee who devoted a chapter of his autobiography to a discussion of his faith. The father of the computer, invented the Analytical Engine, a Turing Complete computer in 1837 – the first general purpose computer.

Werner Heisenberg 1901 – 1976.
A Lutheran with deep Christian convictions. One of the primary creators of quantum mechanics. Formulated the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Albrecht von Haller 1708 – 1777.
A Protestant, wrote religious texts and helped organize the construction of the Reformed Church in Göttingen. The father of modern physiology.

Nicolas Steno 1638 – 1686.
Born a Lutheran, converted to Catholicism and became a bishop. Beatified in 1988, the third of four steps needed to be declared a saint. One of the founders of modern geology and stratigraphy.

Humphry Davy 1778 – 1829.
Said that God’s design was revealed by chemical investigations. Discovered the electrical nature of chemical bonding. Used electricity to split several substances into their basic building blocks for the first time, discovering chlorine and iodine; produced the first ever samples of the elements barium, boron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, and strontium. Invented the safety lamp.

Arthur Eddington 1882 – 1944.
A Quaker, who believed the hand that made us is Divine. He was the first scientist to propose stars obtain their energy from nuclear fusion. Experimentally verified Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

John Ambrose Fleming 1849 – 1945.
A devout Christian who preached about the Resurrection and founded the creationist Evolution Protest Movement. Founded the electronic age with his invention of the vacuum tube (thermionic valve); devised the hand rules for electric motors and generators.

Samuel Morse 1791 – 1872.
A Calvinist with Unitarian sympathies who funded a lectureship considering the relation of the Bible to the Sciences. Took part in the invention of a single-wire telegraph and patented it. Developed the Morse code.


John Eccles 1903 – 1997. Christian and sometimes practicing Roman Catholic. Believed in a Divine Providence operating over and above the materialistic happenings of biological evolution. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the physiology of synapses.

 

[Palmfever]

Science is the study of Creation.

 

[BobRyan]

The same can be said about the Giordano Bruno,

the Dominican Friar and priest often regarded as the first martyr for science.
Born in 1548, he was ordained a priest at the age of 24, and spent a number of years studying,
wandering Europe, and publishing works. He was interested not only in science,
but in mathematics, philosophy, poetry, and theories regarding the cosmos.

good for him

He was
among the first to defend the then-controversial Copernican
model of the Universe, and wrote about his belief in the plurality of worlds.

Reminds us of Hebrews 1 and Hebrews 11

Heb 1 - NKJV
God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, 2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds

Heb 11: NKJV
3 By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.

In 1593, his beliefs caught the attention of the Roman Inquisition,
and he was arrested. After convicted in trial in 1600 he was burnt at the stake as a heretic.

"but the Roman inquistion..." is a starting point as the lead in to a lot of bad crimes in history - that part is true.

 

[awstar]

It’s also important
to remember that the best scientists of his day all disagreed with heliocentrism.
Not for biblical reasons, but for scientific ones. The science of the day didn’t support
Galileo, and Galileo didn’t have the evidence to defend his new claims.

The scientists that followed couldn’t defend his claims either.

“A great deal of research has been carried out concerning the influence of the Earth’s movement. The results were always negative.” - Henri Poincare, earlier than 1912

“all masses, all motion, indeed all forces are relative. There is no way to discern relative from absolute motion when we encounter them ... Whenever modern writers infer an imaginary distinction between relative and absolute motion from a Newtonian framework, they do not stop to think that the Ptolemaic and Copernican are both equally true.” — Ernst Mach, 1921.

“Briefly, everything occurs as if the Earth were at rest…” — Hendrik Lorentz, earlier than 1929

“There was just one alternative [to the Michelson-Morley experiment]; the earth’s true velocity through space might happen to have been nil... — Arthur Eddington , 1929

The two sentences: “the sun is at rest and the earth moves” or “the sun moves and the earth is at rest” would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS [coordinate systems].” — Albert Einstein 1938

“No physical experiment has ever proved that the Earth actually is in motion.” - Lincoln Barnett [Historian Lincoln Barnett – “The Universe and Dr. Einstein”]

“Redshifts would imply that we occupy a unique position in the universe, analogous, in a sense, to the ancient conception of a central Earth…” “This hypothesis (of a central Earth) cannot be disproved, but it is unwelcome and would only be accepted as a last resort.” “We disregard this possibility. The unwelcome position of a favored location must be avoided at all costs.” “Such a favored position is intolerable.” - Edwin Hubble ~ 1937

"Obviously, it doesn’t matter if we think of the Earth as turning round on its axis, or at rest while the fixed stars revolve round it. Geometrically these are exactly the same case of a relative rotation of the Earth and the fixed stars with respect to one another. " — Dennis Sciama’s 1959

“Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is ‘right’ and the Ptolemaic theory ‘wrong’ in any meaningful physical sense.” — Fred Hoyle, 1973

"We know that the difference between a heliocentric theory and a geocentric theory is one of relative motion only, and that such a difference has no physical significance."
— Sir Fred Hoyle, 1975

‘our observations of the heavens can be explained by assuming either the earth or the sun to be at rest.,,, the real advantage of the Copernican system is simply that the equations of motion are much simpler in the frame of reference in which the sun is at rest.’ — Stephen Hawking ?

“I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations… You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds…” — George Ellis, (a former close colleague of Hawking) October 1995

“Red shift in the spectra of quasars leads to yet another paradoxical result: namely, that the Earth is the center of the Universe.” — Y.P. Varshni , earlier than 1997

“The pendulum has swung all the way and started to come back on the Copernican principle.” — Max Tegmark, 2003+

"The new results are either telling us that all of science is wrong and we're the center of the universe, or maybe the data is simply incorrect" - Lawrence Krauss, 2006

“If the Earth were at the center of the universe, the attraction of the surrounding mass of stars would also produce redshifts wherever we looked! This theory seems quite consistent with our astronomical observations.” — Paul Davies, earlier than 2006?

People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations. For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations. You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my view there is absolutely nothing wrong in that. What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that.” -George Ellis, “Thinking Globally, Acting Universally”

 

[rturner76]

Some Christians, mainly Fundamentalist Evangelicals, do put their belief before evidence. On this forum, I have seen Christians who believe the Earth is flat when we have all seen GPS real-time imagery. There are other things like calling an embryo a child when even in the Bible it says that life is given by by God when he grants us the breath of life.

Sometimes there also seems to be a general disregard for proven scientific facts in order to believe something that has no scientific proof.

 

[RandyPNW]

Science is the study of Creation.

We might say so, as Christians, but many have done Science with no eye to the belief that there had to be a Creator. It is a methodology designed to learn Nature's laws so that we can use them in a profitable, useful way.

But to see Science with the faith that there is design in Creation is helpful, I should think? Not only would God be more willing to aid in the research, but ideas would be based on the assumption that it is all for Man and designed to communicate principles of knowledge made available for Man. And knowledge is replete with building blocks, and not just miracles.

 

[AlexB23]

Ten minutes of video provide a basic answer to the thread's question. The answer is no. Here is the video.

---

Transcript:
The Catholic Church and Science have had a… tumultuous history,
as the Church is generally afraid of science and persecutes anyone who challenges the
Bible with science. It did so with Hypatia, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno, to name a few.
Or… so the story goes. There’s just one problem: these stories are myths.
While there have definitely been conflicts between individual scientists and the
Church over the years, with some of them experiencing harsh punishments for their work,
the idea that the Church has ever had anything wrong with science in itself is completely false.
What actually happened with these three,
and what can we say about the Church and science today? This is Catholicism in Focus
———
We begin with Hypatia, a fifth century woman known for her work as a neoplatonist philosopher,
astronomer, and mathematician. Although not the first female professor in Alexandria,
she is the earliest for which we have any reasonably well-kept records of her life.
It’s no wonder, then, that modern people have held her up,
not only as a scientist, but as a strong feminist icon.
It’s no wonder that her brutal, unjust death would be remembered so many centuries later.
As the story goes, she was attacked by a mob of Christians, incited by Cyril,
the bishop of Alexandria, because of her philosophical teachings against Christianity.
She was torn limb from limb, scraped to the bone, and then burned. A martyr for philosophy,
the last of the Hellenes, a symbol of Catholic oppression of free thinking.
At least, these are things that were attributed to her in the 19th century,
1500 years after her death. The reality is that she was never perceived as a martyr in her
time because her death had nothing to do with science or religion.
Although a pagan and a philosopher, there appears to be no conflict between
her teaching in Alexandria and Christians prior to this moment. She was well regarded
for her tolerance towards Christians, and even taught them in her school.
There was also nothing fundamentally problematic about her branch of philosophy—neoplatonism was
actually a preferable branch of philosophy at the time for Christians, taken up by key
figures like Origen, Psuedo-Dionysius, and most notably, Augustine of Hippo.
When you’re a pagan on the side of Augustine, the Church is going to like you.
The problem, and what ultimately led to a mob violently ending her life,
was her politics. Historians say that she was well-connected in the political
world and often found herself in league with ambitious and ruthless men. This
would ultimately lead to her demise when she crossed paths with Cyril.
Although canonized a saint, he bears the mark of a very flawed, very violent man,
fraught with controversies. He used force against the Jews in retaliation for persecution,
fought nasty theological battles against the heretic Nestorius, and engaged in a
violent feud against with Prefect Orestes, who represented the moderate camp of Christians.
According to Neoplatonist historian Damascius, this is what led to Hypatia’s demise,
as she was his close friend. Cyril incited a mob against her and she was brutally killed.
Meaning, that her death had nothing to do with science. She was not persecuted for any of her
scientific beliefs—she died because her politics conflicted with a violent man.
Was this man a bishop? Yes. Is that a good thing for the Church? Absolutely not. But
it doesn’t provide a drop of evidence that there is a conflict between the Church and
science. It just shows that some of the people who led the Church were bad men.
In her time, she was not seen as a martyr for science or as someone
in conflict with the Church. This did not appear until the 18th and 19th centuries,
when her story was revived as a powerful symbol of an anti-Catholic scientific movement.
The same can be said about the Giordano Bruno,
the Dominican Friar and priest often regarded as the first martyr for science.
Born in 1548, he was ordained a priest at the age of 24, and spent a number of years studying,
wandering Europe, and publishing works. He was interested not only in science,
but in mathematics, philosophy, poetry, and theories regarding the cosmos. He was
among the first to defend the then-controversial Copernican
model of the Universe, and wrote about his belief in the plurality of worlds.
In 1593, his beliefs caught the attention of the Roman Inquisition,
and he was arrested. After convicted in trial in 1600 he was burnt at the stake as a heretic.
A man supporting a scientific principle we now know to be true
is killed by the Church. Obviously, this is a problem for the Church.
Except, his support of heliocentrism was hardly his biggest concern. Bruno was also a major
advocate against the virgin birth, denied transubstantiation, questioned the miracles
of Jesus, supported pantheism, and possibly even believed in reincarnation and Hermetic occultism.
That is quite the rap sheet for a priest.
Although his support of heliocentrism and plurality of worlds were mentioned at his
trial and certainly played a part in why he was initially questioned,
they were by no means the primary reason he was convicted. He was
condemned for his LONG list of heretical theological beliefs.
It can certainly be argued that the Church used excessive force in punishing heretics—a topic
for another video—but there is simply no argument that Bruno was condemned for being a scientist.
But what about Galileo, the grandaddy of them all, you ask? This was not a priest with unorthodox
beliefs. He didn’t get wrapped up in politics with the wrong people. He was just a scientist
who was condemned, jailed, and tortured for boldly contradicting the Bible, right?
Yes… and no. Galileo’s story is by far the most complicated.
For one thing, the image of Galileo heroically standing up to the Church
in defense of science is just untrue. At no point did he publicly reject Church teaching,
nor did he categorically defend heliocentrism. What brought him before the inquisition was a
book entitled “Dialogue on the Two World Systems” in which three characters discuss
the theories of the universe. One of the characters does defend heliocentrism,
but it is unclear whether Galileo held that position at the time.
In all likelihood, Galileo DID side with heliocentrism but because of the threat
of punishment, he remained silent on the matter. It’s also important
to remember that the best scientists of his day all disagreed with heliocentrism.
Not for biblical reasons, but for scientific ones. The science of the day didn’t support
Galileo, and Galileo didn’t have the evidence to defend his new claims.
It’s also difficult to be a martyr when little was done to him besides censure.
While the story for many years was that he was tortured and jailed by the Inquisition,
the evidence says otherwise. During his trial, he was lodged at the Tuscan
Embassy. After convicted of suspicion of heresy, he was placed under house arrest
at the Archbishop’s residence in Siena, a personal friend. After a few months,
he moved back to his villa near Florence where he spent his remaining years.
With the exception of the three days of interrogation, June 21-24, 1633,
he was housed in luxury. It is not known where he stayed during those days, and it is possible that
he was put in a jail cell, but much more likely that he was lodged in the prosecutor’s apartment.
The likelihood of torture seems even more remote. Court records show that the pope
decreed against torture in his case, and that he was interrogated merely with the
threat of torture on June 21. No record remains of any methods used upon him,
a requirement of inquisitors, and given the fact that he appeared in court on the 22nd,
at an advanced age, strongly suggests that he was not maltreated.
Contrary to common knowledge, Galileo never heroically stood up to the Church
nor was he jailed and tortured for his beliefs. He was silenced,
forced to give up teaching and publishing.
Which, is not insignificant, and the Church has since recognized this. In 1992,
Pope John Paul II praised Galileo’s work and admitted the error of his
contemporary scientists. For a time, their improper elevation of Aristotle’s
philosophy and literal interpretation of scripture clouded their judgment.
Both Church and scientists were simply wrong in the case of Galileo. We unfairly
censured a brilliant scientist, and for that we must do penance.
But notice what we’ve done here in this video. In unpacking these three situations,
we have not exonerated the Church from any wrong doing. Not at all. We have acted harshly along
the way—a bishop incited a mob against someone, a man was burned alive for his theological beliefs,
another was put under house arrest for our mistake. This is not great.
But it’s also not evidence that the Church has a vendetta against science. While each of these
cases involved scientists, the fact that they were scientists had nothing to do with what happened to
them. During Hypatia’s time, Augustine was supporting the same philosophy; during the
time of Giordano and Galileo, the Church was the leading supporter of research in astronomy
and was educating thousands of people in its universities in natural philosophy and physics.
Throughout our history, the Church has not only tolerated the sciences,
it has kept them alive and allowed them to flourish. We can thank Catholic priest Marin
Mersenne for founding the science of acoustics; Bl. Nicolas Steno for the field of geology;
Jesuit priest Angelo Secchi who pioneered the use of spectroscopy
to study stars and developed the first systematic classification; Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel
for his experiments on plant hybridization, earning him the title “Father of Genetics”;
Fr. Georges Lemaître for his proposition of, wait for it, The Big Bang Theory.
You simply can’t have martyrs for science if the Church has never been inherently against science.
Rather, what you have are three people who were the unfortunate victims of powerful,
ill-formed men. You have examples of the Church overstepping her authority and acting
very un-Christ-like. You have individuals, in particular times, acting on their own accord,
against the overall tradition of the Church. We must atone for sins we’ve committed against
Hypatia, Bruno, and Galileo… but calling them what they’re not won’t help anyone. The Church
may have a problem with power, but it does not have a problem with science.

Christianity and science are compatible, cos of Psalm 111:2, and scientists studying Eucharistic miracles. My Protestant brothers and sisters may question the divine nature of the Eucharist, but scientists have tested Eucharistic miracles, and all of them show human blood and heart tissue.

 

[AlexB23]

34 Great Scientists Who Were Committed Christians

Here are some of the greatest scientists in history who were also deeply committed to their Christian faiths.

Robert Boyle 1627 – 1691.
Said that a deeper understanding of science was a higher glorification of God. Defined elements, compounds, and mixtures. Discovered the first gas law – Boyle’s Law.

Antoine Lavoisier 1743 – 1794.
A Roman Catholic believer in the authenticity of the Holy Scriptures. A founder of modern chemistry; discovered oxygen’s role in combustion and respiration; discovered that water is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen;

Leonhard Euler 1707 – 1783.
The son of a Calvinist pastor. Wrote religious texts and is commemorated by the Lutheran Church on their Calendar of Saints. Published more mathematics than any other single mathematician in history, much of it brilliant and groundbreaking.

Michael Faraday 1791 – 1867.
A devout member and elder of the Sandemanian Church. Discovered electromagnetic induction; discovered the first experimental link between light and magnetism; carried out the first room-temperature liquefaction of a gas.

James Clerk Maxwell 1831 – 1879.
An evangelical Protestant who learned the Bible by heart at age 14. Transformed our understanding of nature: his famous equations unified the forces of electricity and magnetism, indicating that light is an electromagnetic wave. His kinetic theory established that temperature is entirely dependent on the speeds of particles.

Gregor Mendel 1822 – 1884.
A Roman Catholic Augustinian abbot. Founded the science of genetics; identified many of the mathematical rules of heredity; identified recessive and dominant traits.

Arthur Compton 1892 – 1962.
A deacon in the Baptist Church. Discovered that light can behave as a particle as well as a wave, and coined the word photon to describe a particle of light.

Ronald Fisher 1890 – 1962.
A devout Anglican: made religious broadcasts, and wrote religious articles. Unified evolution by natural selection with Mendel’s rules of inheritance, so defining the new field of population genetics. Invented experimental design; devised the statistical concept of variance.

Bernhard Riemann 1826 – 1866.
Son of a Lutheran pastor. A devout Christian who died reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Transformed geometry providing the foundation of Einstein’s theory of general relativity; the Riemann hypothesis has become the most famous unresolved problem in mathematics.

Georges Lemaître 1894 – 1966.
Roman Catholic priest. Discovered that space and the universe are expanding; discovered Hubble’s law; proposed the universe began with the explosion of a ‘primeval atom’ whose matter spread and evolved to form the galaxies and stars we observe today.

Isaac Newton 1643 to 1727.
Passionate dissenting Protestant who spent more time on Bible study than math and physics. Profoundly changed our understanding of nature with his law of universal gravitation and his laws of motion; invented calculus; built the first ever reflecting telescope; showed sunlight is made of all the colors of the rainbow.

Charles Townes 1915 – 2015.
A member of the United Church of Christ. Prayed daily. Wrote books linking science and religion; believed religion more important than science. Invented the laser and maser. Established that the Milky Way has a supermassive black hole at its center.

Mary Anning 1799 – 1847.
A devoted Anglican, spent her spare time reading the Bible. Discovered the first complete specimen of a plesiosaur; deduced the diets of dinosaurs.

Willard Gibbs 1839 – 1903.
Member of the Congregational Church who attended services every week. Invented vector analysis and founded the sciences of modern statistical mechanics and chemical thermodynamics.

John Dalton 1766 – 1844.
A faithful Quaker who lived modestly. Dalton’s Atomic Theory is the basis of chemistry; discovered Gay-Lussac’s Law relating temperature, volume, and pressure of gases; discovered the law of partial gas pressures.

Carl Friedrich Gauss 1777 – 1855.
A Lutheran Protestant who believed science revealed the immortal human soul and that there is complete unity between science and God. Gauss revolutionized number theory and invented the method of least squares and the fast Fourier transform. His profound contributions to the physical sciences include Gauss’s Law & Gauss’s Law for Magnetism.

Charles Barkla 1877 – 1944.
A Methodist who believed science was part of his quest for God. Discovered that atoms have the same number of electrons as their atomic number and that X-rays emitted by excited atoms are ‘fingerprints’ for the atom.

George Washington Carver 1864 – 1943.
A Protestant Evangelist and Bible class leader whose faith in Jesus was the mechanism through which he carried out his scientific work. Improved the agricultural economy of the USA by promoting nitrogen providing peanuts as an alternative crop to cotton to prevent soil depletion.

Francis Collins 1950 – present.
Atheist turned devout Christian. Invented positional cloning. Took part in discovery of the genes for cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s disease, and neurofibromatosis. Directed National Human Genome Research Institute for 15 years.

Ernest Walton 1903 – 1995.
A devout Methodist, who said science was a way of knowing more about God. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics after he artificially split the atom and proved that E = mc2.

Florence Nightingale 1820 – 1910.
An Anglican who believed God spoke to her, calling her to her work. Transformed nursing into a respected, highly trained profession; used statistics to analyze wider health outcomes; advocated sanitary reforms largely credited with adding 20 years to life expectancy between 1871 and 1935.

J. J. Thomson 1856 – 1940.
A practicing Anglican who prayed and read the Bible daily. Discovered the electron; invented one of the most powerful tools in analytical chemistry – the mass spectrometer; obtained the first evidence for isotopes of stable elements.

Alessandro Volta 1745 – 1827.
A Roman Catholic who declared that he had never wavered in his faith. Invented the electric battery; wrote the first electromotive series; isolated methane for the first time.

Blaise Pascal 1623 – 1662.
A Roman Catholic theologian. Pascal’s wager justifies belief in God. Devised Pascal’s triangle for the binomial coefficients and co-founded probability theory. Invented the hydraulic press and the mechanical calculator.

William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) 1824 – 1907.
An elder of the Free Church of Scotland. Codified the first two laws of thermodynamics, deduced the absolute zero of temperature is -273.15 °C. On the Kelvin scale, absolute zero is found at 0 kelvin. Invented the signalling equipment used in the first transatlantic telegraph via an undersea cable.

Charles Babbage 1791 – 1871.
A Protestant devotee who devoted a chapter of his autobiography to a discussion of his faith. The father of the computer, invented the Analytical Engine, a Turing Complete computer in 1837 – the first general purpose computer.

Werner Heisenberg 1901 – 1976.
A Lutheran with deep Christian convictions. One of the primary creators of quantum mechanics. Formulated the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Albrecht von Haller 1708 – 1777.
A Protestant, wrote religious texts and helped organize the construction of the Reformed Church in Göttingen. The father of modern physiology.

Nicolas Steno 1638 – 1686.
Born a Lutheran, converted to Catholicism and became a bishop. Beatified in 1988, the third of four steps needed to be declared a saint. One of the founders of modern geology and stratigraphy.

Humphry Davy 1778 – 1829.
Said that God’s design was revealed by chemical investigations. Discovered the electrical nature of chemical bonding. Used electricity to split several substances into their basic building blocks for the first time, discovering chlorine and iodine; produced the first ever samples of the elements barium, boron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, and strontium. Invented the safety lamp.

Arthur Eddington 1882 – 1944.
A Quaker, who believed the hand that made us is Divine. He was the first scientist to propose stars obtain their energy from nuclear fusion. Experimentally verified Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

John Ambrose Fleming 1849 – 1945.
A devout Christian who preached about the Resurrection and founded the creationist Evolution Protest Movement. Founded the electronic age with his invention of the vacuum tube (thermionic valve); devised the hand rules for electric motors and generators.

Samuel Morse 1791 – 1872.
A Calvinist with Unitarian sympathies who funded a lectureship considering the relation of the Bible to the Sciences. Took part in the invention of a single-wire telegraph and patented it. Developed the Morse code.


John Eccles 1903 – 1997. Christian and sometimes practicing Roman Catholic. Believed in a Divine Providence operating over and above the materialistic happenings of biological evolution. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the physiology of synapses.

Woo, Lemaitre is on this list.

 

[BobRyan]

Woo, Lemaitre is on this list.

yep.

And apparently Hoyle is the one that coined the phrase "Big Bang" as a pejorative against the idea that the universe had a start to it such that "in the beginning God said - let there be a universe" out of nothing.

Lemaitre's observation that creation had a start to it - just as the Bible says - is not the most logical idea for an atheist. Rather it is a Christian concept.

 

[BobRyan]

We might say so, as Christians, but many have done Science with no eye to the belief that there had to be a Creator. It is a methodology designed to learn Nature's laws so that we can use them in a profitable, useful way.

True. So we can watch and reproduce the method of getting NaCl to be produced in a chemical reaction.

What we don't see is the tenants of the religion of evolutionism where rocks,dust,sunlight and gas can come together with enough mass, time and chance to produce a rabbit. That kind of "belief" is only found in evolutionism.

But to see Science with the faith that there is design in Creation is helpful, I should think?

Not only a "suggestion" but a Bible fact in Ex 20:11 and Gen 2:2-3 so much so that Rom 1 says even pagans with no access to the Bible at all can see it.

 

[BobRyan]

Some Christians, mainly Fundamentalist Evangelicals, do put their belief before evidence. On this forum, I have seen Christians who believe the Earth is flat when we have all seen GPS real-time imagery.

No doubt there are some folks that do that.

There are other things like calling an embryo a child when even in the Bible it says that life is given by by God when he grants us the breath of life.

In the Bible - fish have the breath of life.
In the Bible the death penalty is the one that is due - if a pregnant woman is struck and the child dies.

Sometimes there also seems to be a general disregard for proven scientific facts in order to believe something that has no scientific proof.

The problem is what even some scientist admit as "junk science" where the most famous frauds in history were promoted by scientists.
without critical thinking - people conflate guesswork and speculation - with repeatable science observed fact.

 

[BobRyan]

The scientists that followed couldn’t defend his claims either.

Well as it turns out - we have observations and rockets and orbiting satellites and have observed that the universe would be going bazillion times faster than the speed of light if it were really orbiting the Earth every 24 hours. It does not work in physics to have the universe orbiting the sun or the earth every 24 hours.

 

[AlexB23]

yep.

And apparently Hoyle is the one that coined the phrase "Big Bang" as a pejorative against the idea that the universe had a start to is such that "in the beginning God said - let there be a universe" out of nothing.

Lemaitre's observation that creation had a start to it - just as the Bible says - is not the most logical idea for an atheist. Rather it is a Christian concept.

Yep, a finite age to the universe is almost purely a Christian concept.

 

[RandyPNW]

True. So we can watch and reproduce the method of getting NaCl to be produced in a chemical reaction.

What we don't see is the tenants of the religion of evolutionism where rocks,dust,sunlight and gas can come together with enough mass, time and chance to produce a rabbit. That kind of "belief" is only found in evolutionism.

Yes, that is undoubtedly not the way evolutionists would put it, but probably a "shorthand" way of describing the fact meaningless, lifeless matter somehow produces animal life. They likely think the original seed of life was bound up in the original "rock." Billions of years are obscure enough to hide processes that may result in enough change to produce what we have today.

The fact we see "change" today, producing greater diversity, indicates some kind of "evolutionary" change is taking place on a smaller scale within the short period of existence as we know it. Obviously, "change" is the process by which God unveils His creation over time. That is, change can either take place over long periods of time by Intelligent Design, or it may simply appear to take place as such, time being sped up by the Word of God.

Not only a "suggestion" but a Bible fact in Ex 20:11 and Gen 2:2-3 so much so that Rom 1 says even pagans with no access to the Bible at all can see it.

Intelligent Design is everywhere recognized. And even if we don't "sign onto it," we live our lives with that in mind.

What people really want is freedom to think outside of the "box" of religion. They don't want to be bound by "divine revelation." And so, they theorize without help from the Divine, and obviously search in vain for meaning for their lives, or they simply create their own meaning.

 

[eleos1954]

Ten minutes of video provide a basic answer to the thread's question. The answer is no. Here is the video.

---

Transcript:
The Catholic Church and Science have had a… tumultuous history,
as the Church is generally afraid of science and persecutes anyone who challenges the
Bible with science. It did so with Hypatia, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno, to name a few.
Or… so the story goes. There’s just one problem: these stories are myths.
While there have definitely been conflicts between individual scientists and the
Church over the years, with some of them experiencing harsh punishments for their work,
the idea that the Church has ever had anything wrong with science in itself is completely false.
What actually happened with these three,
and what can we say about the Church and science today? This is Catholicism in Focus
———
We begin with Hypatia, a fifth century woman known for her work as a neoplatonist philosopher,
astronomer, and mathematician. Although not the first female professor in Alexandria,
she is the earliest for which we have any reasonably well-kept records of her life.
It’s no wonder, then, that modern people have held her up,
not only as a scientist, but as a strong feminist icon.
It’s no wonder that her brutal, unjust death would be remembered so many centuries later.
As the story goes, she was attacked by a mob of Christians, incited by Cyril,
the bishop of Alexandria, because of her philosophical teachings against Christianity.
She was torn limb from limb, scraped to the bone, and then burned. A martyr for philosophy,
the last of the Hellenes, a symbol of Catholic oppression of free thinking.
At least, these are things that were attributed to her in the 19th century,
1500 years after her death. The reality is that she was never perceived as a martyr in her
time because her death had nothing to do with science or religion.
Although a pagan and a philosopher, there appears to be no conflict between
her teaching in Alexandria and Christians prior to this moment. She was well regarded
for her tolerance towards Christians, and even taught them in her school.
There was also nothing fundamentally problematic about her branch of philosophy—neoplatonism was
actually a preferable branch of philosophy at the time for Christians, taken up by key
figures like Origen, Psuedo-Dionysius, and most notably, Augustine of Hippo.
When you’re a pagan on the side of Augustine, the Church is going to like you.
The problem, and what ultimately led to a mob violently ending her life,
was her politics. Historians say that she was well-connected in the political
world and often found herself in league with ambitious and ruthless men. This
would ultimately lead to her demise when she crossed paths with Cyril.
Although canonized a saint, he bears the mark of a very flawed, very violent man,
fraught with controversies. He used force against the Jews in retaliation for persecution,
fought nasty theological battles against the heretic Nestorius, and engaged in a
violent feud against with Prefect Orestes, who represented the moderate camp of Christians.
According to Neoplatonist historian Damascius, this is what led to Hypatia’s demise,
as she was his close friend. Cyril incited a mob against her and she was brutally killed.
Meaning, that her death had nothing to do with science. She was not persecuted for any of her
scientific beliefs—she died because her politics conflicted with a violent man.
Was this man a bishop? Yes. Is that a good thing for the Church? Absolutely not. But
it doesn’t provide a drop of evidence that there is a conflict between the Church and
science. It just shows that some of the people who led the Church were bad men.
In her time, she was not seen as a martyr for science or as someone
in conflict with the Church. This did not appear until the 18th and 19th centuries,
when her story was revived as a powerful symbol of an anti-Catholic scientific movement.
The same can be said about the Giordano Bruno,
the Dominican Friar and priest often regarded as the first martyr for science.
Born in 1548, he was ordained a priest at the age of 24, and spent a number of years studying,
wandering Europe, and publishing works. He was interested not only in science,
but in mathematics, philosophy, poetry, and theories regarding the cosmos. He was
among the first to defend the then-controversial Copernican
model of the Universe, and wrote about his belief in the plurality of worlds.
In 1593, his beliefs caught the attention of the Roman Inquisition,
and he was arrested. After convicted in trial in 1600 he was burnt at the stake as a heretic.
A man supporting a scientific principle we now know to be true
is killed by the Church. Obviously, this is a problem for the Church.
Except, his support of heliocentrism was hardly his biggest concern. Bruno was also a major
advocate against the virgin birth, denied transubstantiation, questioned the miracles
of Jesus, supported pantheism, and possibly even believed in reincarnation and Hermetic occultism.
That is quite the rap sheet for a priest.
Although his support of heliocentrism and plurality of worlds were mentioned at his
trial and certainly played a part in why he was initially questioned,
they were by no means the primary reason he was convicted. He was
condemned for his LONG list of heretical theological beliefs.
It can certainly be argued that the Church used excessive force in punishing heretics—a topic
for another video—but there is simply no argument that Bruno was condemned for being a scientist.
But what about Galileo, the grandaddy of them all, you ask? This was not a priest with unorthodox
beliefs. He didn’t get wrapped up in politics with the wrong people. He was just a scientist
who was condemned, jailed, and tortured for boldly contradicting the Bible, right?
Yes… and no. Galileo’s story is by far the most complicated.
For one thing, the image of Galileo heroically standing up to the Church
in defense of science is just untrue. At no point did he publicly reject Church teaching,
nor did he categorically defend heliocentrism. What brought him before the inquisition was a
book entitled “Dialogue on the Two World Systems” in which three characters discuss
the theories of the universe. One of the characters does defend heliocentrism,
but it is unclear whether Galileo held that position at the time.
In all likelihood, Galileo DID side with heliocentrism but because of the threat
of punishment, he remained silent on the matter. It’s also important
to remember that the best scientists of his day all disagreed with heliocentrism.
Not for biblical reasons, but for scientific ones. The science of the day didn’t support
Galileo, and Galileo didn’t have the evidence to defend his new claims.
It’s also difficult to be a martyr when little was done to him besides censure.
While the story for many years was that he was tortured and jailed by the Inquisition,
the evidence says otherwise. During his trial, he was lodged at the Tuscan
Embassy. After convicted of suspicion of heresy, he was placed under house arrest
at the Archbishop’s residence in Siena, a personal friend. After a few months,
he moved back to his villa near Florence where he spent his remaining years.
With the exception of the three days of interrogation, June 21-24, 1633,
he was housed in luxury. It is not known where he stayed during those days, and it is possible that
he was put in a jail cell, but much more likely that he was lodged in the prosecutor’s apartment.
The likelihood of torture seems even more remote. Court records show that the pope
decreed against torture in his case, and that he was interrogated merely with the
threat of torture on June 21. No record remains of any methods used upon him,
a requirement of inquisitors, and given the fact that he appeared in court on the 22nd,
at an advanced age, strongly suggests that he was not maltreated.
Contrary to common knowledge, Galileo never heroically stood up to the Church
nor was he jailed and tortured for his beliefs. He was silenced,
forced to give up teaching and publishing.
Which, is not insignificant, and the Church has since recognized this. In 1992,
Pope John Paul II praised Galileo’s work and admitted the error of his
contemporary scientists. For a time, their improper elevation of Aristotle’s
philosophy and literal interpretation of scripture clouded their judgment.
Both Church and scientists were simply wrong in the case of Galileo. We unfairly
censured a brilliant scientist, and for that we must do penance.
But notice what we’ve done here in this video. In unpacking these three situations,
we have not exonerated the Church from any wrong doing. Not at all. We have acted harshly along
the way—a bishop incited a mob against someone, a man was burned alive for his theological beliefs,
another was put under house arrest for our mistake. This is not great.
But it’s also not evidence that the Church has a vendetta against science. While each of these
cases involved scientists, the fact that they were scientists had nothing to do with what happened to
them. During Hypatia’s time, Augustine was supporting the same philosophy; during the
time of Giordano and Galileo, the Church was the leading supporter of research in astronomy
and was educating thousands of people in its universities in natural philosophy and physics.
Throughout our history, the Church has not only tolerated the sciences,
it has kept them alive and allowed them to flourish. We can thank Catholic priest Marin
Mersenne for founding the science of acoustics; Bl. Nicolas Steno for the field of geology;
Jesuit priest Angelo Secchi who pioneered the use of spectroscopy
to study stars and developed the first systematic classification; Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel
for his experiments on plant hybridization, earning him the title “Father of Genetics”;
Fr. Georges Lemaître for his proposition of, wait for it, The Big Bang Theory.
You simply can’t have martyrs for science if the Church has never been inherently against science.
Rather, what you have are three people who were the unfortunate victims of powerful,
ill-formed men. You have examples of the Church overstepping her authority and acting
very un-Christ-like. You have individuals, in particular times, acting on their own accord,
against the overall tradition of the Church. We must atone for sins we’ve committed against
Hypatia, Bruno, and Galileo… but calling them what they’re not won’t help anyone. The Church
may have a problem with power, but it does not have a problem with science.

Creation according to the Genesis account as written makes science evolution theory and creation by God mutually exclusive ... you can't believe both. That being said ... yes people have a problem with that "science".

People of faith are not against all science and science has been and is studied by people from all kinds of different backgrounds.

Just like anything ... information is gathered and INTERPETATED and there are many and varying interpretations.

 

[awstar]

It does not work in physics to have the universe orbiting the sun or the earth every 24 hours.

Actually, according to scientists, it does work.

André Koch Torres Assis, Relational Mechanics, pp. 190-191.

Now the gravitational attraction of the sun is balanced by a real gravitational centrifugal force due to the annual rotation of distant masses around the earth (with a component having a period of one year). In this way the earth can remain at rest and at an essentially constant distance from the sun. The diurnal rotation of distant masses around the earth (with a period of one day) yields a real gravitational centrifugal force flattening the earth at the poles. Foucault’s pendulum is explained by a real Coriolis force acting on moving masses over the earth’s surface … The effect of this force will be to keep the plane of oscillation of the pendulum rotating together with the fixed stars.

Luka Popov, “Newtonian–Machian analysis of the neo-Tychonian model of planetary motions,” European Journal of Physics, 34, 383-391 (2013).

The analysis of planetary motions has been performed in the Newtonian framework with the assumption of Mach’s principle. The kinematical equivalence of the Copernican (heliocentric) and the Neo- tychonian (geocentric) systems is shown to be a consequence of the presence of pseudo-potential in the geocentric system, which, according to Mach, must be regarded as the real potential originating from the fact of the simultaneous acceleration of the Universe. This analysis can be done on any other celestial body observed from the Earth. Since Sun and Mars are chosen arbitrarily, and there is nothing special about Mars, one can expect to come up with the same general conclusion. There is another interesting remark that follows from this analysis. If one could put the whole Universe in accelerated motion around the Earth, the pseudo-potential corresponding to pseudo-force will immediately be generated. That same pseudo-potential causes the Universe to stay in that very state of motion, without any need of exterior forces acting on it.

All this science stuff is way over my head. So I’ll just continue to believe the Bible where it says the earth was created on the third day, and then the sun, moon and stars on the fourth day. The scientists seem to know that it is at least possible that the sun, moon and stars can revolve around the earth — just as we see with our own eyes that it appears to be so.

I’m just bearing witness to that ignored truth that scientists say it could be either way, just to warn my brothers and sisters in Christ to “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” Colossians 2:8

 

[BobRyan]

BobRyan said:

It does not work in physics to have the universe orbiting the sun or the earth every 24 hours.

Actually, according to scientists, it does work.

as a biophysics student - I would have loved to see that.

All this science stuff is way over my head. So I’ll just continue to believe the Bible

I don't object to what the Bible says.

where it says the earth was created on the third day, and then the sun, moon and stars on the fourth day.

On the fourth day the text says "two lights" were made - not a zillion and two (not the entire universe).

The text is very clear on the number of lights in the sky created on day 4.

The text points to God as creator of the start but nothing for day 4 says "And God said let there be stars". Rather it says "he made the stars also".

In vs 1 the making of everything is stated "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" but then what follows is the specifics for this Earth, life on Earth and Earth's Sun and moon.

The scientists seem to know that it is at least possible that the sun, moon and stars can revolve around the earth

I have yet to see anyone work out the physics for such an extreme view.

 

[rturner76]

people conflate guesswork and speculation - with repeatable science observed fact.

If a scientific experiment is not repeatable, it has not been proven by the scientific method making it also a belief based on faith alone.