Did the Church really set Western society back hundreds of years?

[melekali]

I saw in a thread on here someone mentioned Occam’s Razor. So I went and looked it up, and found that the great thinker who invented it was, yet again, a Catholic, and a 14th century Franciscan Friar at that. That gave me the idea for this thread.

Atheists love to proclaim that the Medieval Church set Western society back hundreds of years, and that if it weren’t for the Church we would be flying around in hover cars and such. I’ve seen it all over the place, and even in acquaintances that I’ve talked to. They claim we did all kinds of book burnings and persecution of free thinkers (like Galileo).

It seems very silly to me to say such a thing, when it was the Church who produced the university, and the scientific method, and many great thinkers and clergymen such as this William of Ockham, and Nicolaus Copernicus, and Roger Bacon, and Gregor Mendel, etc. etc.

So how many of these claims have any footing to stand on? Did the Church fight for or against knowledge and scientific thought?

It was the very Church that is challenged by these mental Lilliputians that provided the philosophical basis for the societal progress that we enjoy in this century. I suspect if they stopped reading trash and started reading actual history, they would have a different outlook.

 

[robindenver]

I saw in a thread on here someone mentioned Occam’s Razor. So I went and looked it up, and found that the great thinker who invented it was, yet again, a Catholic, and a 14th century Franciscan Friar at that. That gave me the idea for this thread.

Atheists love to proclaim that the Medieval Church set Western society back hundreds of years, and that if it weren’t for the Church we would be flying around in hover cars and such. I’ve seen it all over the place, and even in acquaintances that I’ve talked to. They claim we did all kinds of book burnings and persecution of free thinkers (like Galileo).

It seems very silly to me to say such a thing, when it was the Church who produced the university, and the scientific method, and many great thinkers and clergymen such as this William of Ockham, and Nicolaus Copernicus, and Roger Bacon, and Gregor Mendel, etc. etc.

So how many of these claims have any footing to stand on? Did the Church fight for or against knowledge and scientific thought?

Contrary to the conventional wisdom among atheists such as Christopher Hitchins, Richard Dawkins, and others, the Catholic Church was a force for civilization, learning, and help for the poor, sick and oppressed during the Middle Ages.

Mankind is imperfect, and that is the source of any gaps in how Catholic institutions (as well as any human institutions) have dealt with the many problems of any age, including how best to accommodate the insights of science within a faith-based world view. But the positive role of the Church as a guardian of civilization, learning and the general good during the Middle Ages is unassailable.

An extremely good book on this subject is “Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies”, by David Bentley Hart.

 

[Pfaffenhoffen]

What does “changing for the better” have to do with science? Besides, I’m not asking about others; I’m asking why Teilhard was “promptly censored”, as you claim he was.

I claimed that?
Forget about it, please…

 

[aragonjohn1]

Built improved, promulgated, saved, helped, loved western civilization without no education, no schools, no colleges, no firemen, no hospitals, no bibles, y’all would be speaking one or two languages throughout the world, no scientific method, no Jesus the Christ, paganism would be rampant, etc………

 

[Pfaffenhoffen]

What does “changing for the better” have to do with science? Besides, I’m not asking about others; I’m asking why Teilhard was “promptly censored”, as you claim he was.

You could do your homework.
But I will answer.
Because some minds did not understand him.
Enough?

 

[sedonaman]

You could do your homework.
But I will answer.
Because some minds did not understand him.
Enough?

No. It doesn’t explain what “changing for the better” has to do with science.

 

[edwest2]

There’s some serious oversimplification going on here.

The obvious fallacy is that the Church was either pro- or anti-science. In reality, it is both: there has always been a pro-science faction and an anti-science faction. Like in any large organization, depending on the prevailing cultural winds of the time, one faction or the other will get on top and drive the policy.

This is very nicely described in A canticle for Leiboivitz. It’s a sci-fi story, set in a Catholic monastery, after the nuclear war wiped out the present civilization. The monks preserve the pre-war books, and they do a great job. After several hundres years, a renaissance finally comes and science gets reborn. A scientist comes and asks to see the old books. And here’s the twist: he gets opposed by the librarian. The librarian says, that his job (and vocation) is preservation of books, and so, he keeps them in air-tight, sealed containers. He’s afraid that if he gives them to the scientist, these (truly priceless) books could be destroyed. An argument ensues; the abbott finally sides with the “progressive” faction, and the library is opened. (There’s another notable argument later after it’s realized that the library contains Darwin’s works.) Anyway…

The Church’s contribution to preserving knowledge during the Dark Ages is undeniable. And it’s undeniable that the Church, acting as a stabilizing force in Europe, has contributed to the start of Renaissance. Nevertheless, one must remember that the Church had a direct interest in the preservation of status quo, and was the last force wanting modernization. So the European Renaissance itself has happened independently of the Church, because of a favorable combination of other factors such as Gutenberg’s invention, Columbus’ voyage, fall of Cordoba and fall of Constantinople. Massive social change followed; let’s just note that Gutenberg’s Bible which went on sale in 1454 was instrumental in Luther’s 1517 reformation. The world changed, while the Church was still sticking to an old way of thinking; the ideas which were at the forefront of human thought in 1200s, were becoming horribly outdated. The change was seen as a bad development; the hardline conservatives got in power, in what the historians now call the Counter-Reformation. By 1600s, the Church went from being conservative to being anti-progress. That’s the era which gave us The Inquisition, and The Thirty Year’s War, culminating with the Galileo Trial, followed by 200 years of formal ban on studying the heliocentric system – which was nothing else than an open war on science. Fortunately, by Galileo’s time the kings have both gained enough independence from the Church and realized the power of advanced weapons, so while playing lip-service to the doctrinal orthodoxy, they started funding science while turning a blind eye to accusations of heresy.

This thread has some less than charitable statements on the Islamic contributions. One must be reminded of the existence of the so-called Islamic Golden Age, between ca. 750 AD and 1250 AD: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age At that era, the Arabic societies have been much more advanced than Europe. Notable contributions include: the number zero; algebra (the concept of using letters for describing variables); chemistry, astronomy (the bright stars are still today called by Arabic names) and medicine. The Arabs also had an extensive library of translations of classical works. Some argue that it was the conquest of Cordoba in 1492 which was instrumental instrumental in starting the Renaissance, as the Arabic libraries got in hands of laity, and so, the ancient Greek texts became known in Europe. The Church had its copies, of course, but they were kept under lid for ideological reasons.

Some have argued that the decline of Islamic civilization after 1250 AD has been due to increasing religious orthodoxy, which has finally eliminated creative science. Fortunately, 300 years later in Europe, things have turned out differently.

There is a very important lesson here.

TL;DR The Church was at the forefront of science in Europe in the Middle Ages, but by Galileo’s time is has became anti-scientific.

The Galileo statement is incorrect, though I see it repeated here on a regular basis. I invite everyone to read this article about Galileo from the Catholic Answers Library:

catholic.com/tracts/the-galileo-controversy

Peace,
Ed

 

[Pfaffenhoffen]

No. It doesn’t explain what “changing for the better” has to do with science.

The views of Teillhard the Chardin wanted to mix science and religion, the God of Faith and the God of Science.

 

[Contarini]

Luther’s contribution was indirect. He started the Protestant Revolution, which resulted in many countries severing ties with Rome. One result was that, in a Protestant country, one did not need to apply for Church’s imprimatur before publishing anything; thus the censorship has been eliminated and that has greatly contributed to the free exchange of ideas.

Untrue. Protestant countries practiced censorship as well. It’s true that in most of them it was more directly under the control of the government rather than of the Church, if you think that’s such a great thing. . . .

Another result was that the Protestant countries did not prosecute heresy (obviously…)

It’s very far from obvious. It’s not even true. One can make an argument that both persecution and censorship were less strict than in Counter-Reformation Catholic countries (I’m not at all sure they were less strict than in the Middle Ages–the general tone of early modern Europe was harsher and more censorious than that of medieval Europe). But they certainly existed.

Protestants did not think themselves to be heretical. That should be obvious.

I actually agree with your thesis to a great extent, insofar as the division of Western Christendom reduced the Church’s power vis-a-vis the state and thus privileged concerns about order and material prosperity over concerns about orthodoxy and sanctification (not that Christian governments didn’t share these latter concerns as well, at least to some degree and at some times). On a more abstract level, since there were so many conflicting claims about theological truth, it was easier to make a case that revealed religion was a dead end and one should rely rather on more universal sources of truth.

So I think you’re basically right, but you have made some very misleading specific statements above. And you make another one below:

Now, it is true that AD 2012 the Protestant denominations (particularly ones in the US) are openly anti-science

Which denominations? Apart from the fact that you’re conflating being “anti-science” in general with being anti-evolution, which is questionable (I’m not denying the scientific evidence for evolution, only saying that the conservative Christians who oppose evolution usually don’t consider themselves to be against science as a whole), as a matter of fact the “mainline” denominations are certainly not against evolution. Most fundamentalist Christians belong to small groups or independent congregations. There are some large conservative denominations, and some of them have clear statements against evolution, no doubt. But certainly not all American Protestant denominations–I’d be very surprised if it was even a majority.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Which is why I said PROsecute the heresy, not PERsecute.

ETA: Which is to say, that the Protestants were too busy fighting regular wars with Catholics (and each other) to worry about some guy with a telescope and his crazy ideas.

How do you persecute without prosecuting?

Well, I suppose you can have mob persecution, etc.

But anyway, your claim is false. Protestants were not “too busy” to proceed against ideas that they thought threatened the Christian faith.

 

[kama3]

The Galileo statement is incorrect, though I see it repeated here on a regular basis. I invite everyone to read this article about Galileo from the Catholic Answers Library:

catholic.com/tracts/the-galileo-controversy

That’s a typical attempt of whitewashing it. From the article:

Many people wrongly believe Galileo proved heliocentricity. He could not answer the strongest argument against it, which had been made nearly two thousand years earlier by Aristotle: If heliocentrism were true, then there would be observable parallax shifts in the stars’ positions as the earth moved in its orbit around the sun. However, given the technology of Galileo’s time, no such shifts in their positions could be observed.

The problem with this statement is that stellar parallax is not the only proof of heliocentricity there is. Gallileo had two others: he saw phases of Venus and moons of Jupiter – phenomena which are impossible under a geocentric system.

That aside, the author of this article conveniently “forgets” to mention that, as late as 1758, heliocentrism was still treated as formal heresy and Index of Forbidden Books included works on the subject.

 

[_Abyssinia]

I saw in a thread on here someone mentioned Occam’s Razor. So I went and looked it up, and found that the great thinker who invented it was, yet again, a Catholic, and a 14th century Franciscan Friar at that. That gave me the idea for this thread.

Atheists love to proclaim that the Medieval Church set Western society back hundreds of years, and that if it weren’t for the Church we would be flying around in hover cars and such. I’ve seen it all over the place, and even in acquaintances that I’ve talked to. They claim we did all kinds of book burnings and persecution of free thinkers (like Galileo).

It seems very silly to me to say such a thing, when it was the Church who produced the university, and the scientific method, and many great thinkers and clergymen such as this William of Ockham, and Nicolaus Copernicus, and Roger Bacon, and Gregor Mendel, etc. etc.

So how many of these claims have any footing to stand on? Did the Church fight for or against knowledge and scientific thought?

There was a series on EWTN Called ‘The Catholic Church: Builder Of Civilization.’ I believe all the episodes are posted here, and audio. Each episode shows how the Catholic Church has contributed to western civilization.

 

[kama3]

As far as historical record is concerned, Catholicism is a pretty rational religion, and labeling it anti-science is unjustified. That said, the Church has a documented track record of opposing scientific developments it perceives as contradictory to the dogma. Fortunately, there are relatively few of these, and, ultimately the Church ends up accepting them. However, Catholic theology, when faced with such development, needs between several tens to several hundred years to evolve so that originally problematic propositions can be accepted.

The problematic areas include:

1. Heliocentrism: accepted, controvery of historical interest only
2. Evolutionary theory: determined to be not contradictory, widely accepted by Catholics as true
3. Polygenism: still a formal heresy, although scientifically proven
4. Health impacts of contraceptives, abortion and assisted reproduction techniques: while not a doctrinal matter per se, Catholic activists have been repeatedly caught cherry-picking data and studies to support pre-determined conclusions. A particularly blatant example is Cardinal Trujillo, who made provably false statements on HIV transmission: linacre.org/condoms.html
5. Extraterrestrial life: the Church deserves praise here for working in advance and already preparing theological groundwork to accomodate future discovery.

 

[sedonaman]

That’s a typical attempt of whitewashing it. …

This is a typical conspiracy theory.

The problem with this statement is that stellar parallax is not the only proof of heliocentricity there is. Gallileo [sic] had two others: he saw phases of Venus and moons of Jupiter – phenomena which are impossible under a geocentric system.

This is not true. In a geocentric system, phases of other bodies would be visible if the sun were far enough away, much like the sun is farther from the earth than the moon, and we see the moon’s phases.

That aside, the author of this article conveniently “forgets” to mention that, as late as 1758, heliocentrism was still treated as formal heresy and Index of Forbidden Books included works on the subject.

Therefore, the Church is against science. That’s what I like: take one data point and extrapolate a whole universe. Look, if Catholicism were opposed to science as many think, science would not be taught in Catholic schools and universities, it would be a mortal sin for a Catholic teacher to teach science, it would be a mortal sin for a Catholic student to study science, and it would be a mortal sin for a Catholic to enter a career in science, which are clearly not the case. No one who claims the Church is against science has ever bothered to address this.

Even if your last statement is true, it has nothing to do with whether or not Galileo proved his theory. Which brings up the real question: why didn’t he prove it if he could have?

 

[edwest2]

The point the Church was making at the time was that Galileo had not rigorously proved his theory, and was running around saying, “I proved it! I proved it!” before all the data was in and that meant future contributions as well.

I think it might be relevant to identify any specific Christian church that has declared itself against science in general.

And I’m seeing the same assumptions being made here about what Christians believe about human development and polygenism.

What Catholics believe or don’t believe need references:

timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article1645453.ece

From Humani Generis:

“37. When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.[12]”

Peace,
Ed

 

[edwest2]

As far as historical record is concerned, Catholicism is a pretty rational religion, and labeling it anti-science is unjustified. That said, the Church has a documented track record of opposing scientific developments it perceives as contradictory to the dogma. Fortunately, there are relatively few of these, and, ultimately the Church ends up accepting them. However, Catholic theology, when faced with such development, needs between several tens to several hundred years to evolve so that originally problematic propositions can be accepted.

The problematic areas include:

1. Heliocentrism: accepted, controvery of historical interest only
2. Evolutionary theory: determined to be not contradictory, widely accepted by Catholics as true
3. Polygenism: still a formal heresy, although scientifically proven
4. Health impacts of contraceptives, abortion and assisted reproduction techniques: while not a doctrinal matter per se, Catholic activists have been repeatedly caught cherry-picking data and studies to support pre-determined conclusions. A particularly blatant example is Cardinal Trujillo, who made provably false statements on HIV transmission: linacre.org/condoms.html
5. Extraterrestrial life: the Church deserves praise here for working in advance and already preparing theological groundwork to accomodate future discovery.

An understanding of how the Church makes determinations about certain scientific matters is needed. The key words are: with certainty.

1. Extraterrestrial life is speculation at this point, but the Church is way ahead of those who claim, with no basis, that everything, including our religious beliefs, would change if we made contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life. We simply don’t know. My current guess is that some type of simple living things might be found under the surface of Mars, for example.
2. The health impact of contraceptives are well documented by the makers of contraceptives. Examples:

nuvaring.com/Consumer/aboutNuvaRing/possibleSideEffects/index.asp

drugs.com/pro/ortho-tri-cyclen.html - scroll down to Warnings.

Peace,
Ed

 

[kama3]

This is not true. In a geocentric system, phases of other bodies would be visible if the sun were far enough away, much like the sun is farther from the earth than the moon, and we see the moon’s phases.

You’re grasping at straws.

First: the evidence that such argument was levelled at Gallileo is…?

Second: here is a 1568 drawing of the geocentric universe: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Bartolomeu_Velho_1568.jpg . As you can see, Sun is believed to orbit Earth between the orbits of Venus and Mars, with the period of 365 days. You can see that the further out a planet is in this model, the longer its orbital period. Moving the Sun further out, while maintaining the 365 days orbital period, would contradict that rule.

Third: if you moved Sun further out, you’d have to explain why only Venus and Moon (and Mercury, but phases of Mercury were unobservable) show phases, while Mars, Jupiter and Saturn do not. It does not follow from the model at all.

Fourth: Ptolemy (the author of the geocentric system that the Church was clinging to so dearly) estimated the Earth-Sun distance as 1210 Earth radii. Kepler (1627) observed that this estimate is too low by at least the factor of three, so his estimate was 3600 Earth radii. Wendelin (1635) and Horrocks (1639) indpendently measured 14000 Earth radii. Huyghens (1659) measured 24000 Earth radii. The correct value is 23455 Earth.
So in Galileo’s time, the Earth-Sun distance was believed to be smaller than it really is, so your argument simply couldn’t be made logically.

Fifth: you still have to deal with the moons of Jupiter. And moons of Saturn a couple years later.

Therefore, the Church is against science. That’s what I like: take one data point and extrapolate a whole universe. Look, if Catholicism were opposed to science as many think, science would not be taught in Catholic schools and universities, it would be a mortal sin for a Catholic teacher to teach science, it would be a mortal sin for a Catholic student to study science,

And that was indeed the case, at least if we look at the paperwork. Teaching heliocentrism before 1758 was a formal heresy, and, as such, incurred an automatic latae excommunicaton. That’s a documented fact. There is no record of bishops enforcing this however, so it appears that the faithful have ignored this article of faith en masse. Nevertheless, if we are to stick to the letter of the law, then myriads of Catholic scientists have indeed been condemned to Hell for believing the astronomers, and not the Congregation of Index.

The situation is strangely similar to Humane vitae: the law sits on the books, but nobody really cares. In another 300 years, the Catholic apologists will claim There is no record of people being excommunicated for using condoms in the 20th century, so it’s untrue that the Church opposed it!.

 

[kama3]

Sayeth edwest2, quoting Humani Generis:

For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents.

Tenesa et. al., Recent human effective population size estimated from linkage disequilibrium, genome.cshlp.org/content/17/4/520.full

Effective population size (Ne) is an important population parameter that helps to explain how human populations evolved and expanded, and to improve the understanding and modeling of the genetic architecture underlying complex traits (Reich and Lander 2001).

Overall, the estimates of Ne appear to be much lower than the usually quoted value of 10,000 (Takahata 1993). Earlier studies using mtDNA data suggested an Ne in the range of 1000–6000 (Rogers and Harpending 1992; Harpending et al. 1993; Sherry et al. 1994), for a population ∼200,000 yr ago (∼10,000 generations ago). Erlich et al. (1996) estimated a recent population size of ∼10,000 from HLA polymorphisms. Sherry et al. (1997) estimated an ancestral population size of ∼17,800 during the last one to two million yr from Alu repeats evolution.

Thus Humani Generis teaches, infallibly ex cathedra and under the penalty of latae excommunication for a formal heresy, that Ne=1, while scientic literarure over the last 20 years, estimates Ne somewhere between 1,000 and 20,000, depending on the study. Regardless of discrepancy between studies, they all agree that notion that Ne=1 is scientifically indefensible.

Therefore technically, any catholic genetist or biologist is an excommunicated heretic.

 

[sedonaman]

…First: the evidence that such argument was levelled at Gallileo is…?

You said,

… phases of Venus and moons of Jupiter – phenomena which are impossible under a geocentric system. …

I never claimed that my counter to this was “leveled at Galileo”. I was merely pointing out that your statement is not true.

Second: here is a 1568 drawing of the geocentric universe: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Bartolomeu_Velho_1568.jpg . As you can see, Sun is believed to orbit Earth between the orbits of Venus and Mars, with the period of 365 days. You can see that the further out a planet is in this model, the longer its orbital period. Moving the Sun further out, while maintaining the 365 days orbital period, would contradict that rule.

Third: if you moved Sun further out, you’d have to explain why only Venus and Moon (and Mercury, but phases of Mercury were unobservable) show phases, while Mars, Jupiter and Saturn do not. It does not follow from the model at all.

Those are all beside the point. My statement was only to show that some phases would be visible, which you have admitted here.

Fourth: Ptolemy (the author of the geocentric system that the Church was clinging to so dearly) estimated the Earth-Sun distance as 1210 Earth radii. Kepler (1627) observed that this estimate is too low by at least the factor of three, so his estimate was 3600 Earth radii. Wendelin (1635) and Horrocks (1639) indpendently measured 14000 Earth radii. Huyghens (1659) measured 24000 Earth radii. The correct value is 23455 Earth.
So in Galileo’s time, the Earth-Sun distance was believed to be smaller than it really is, so your argument simply couldn’t be made logically.

Fifth: you still have to deal with the moons of Jupiter. And moons of Saturn a couple years later. …

Of course a geocentric model has its problems; that’s why I restricted my comments to your erroneous statement. The heliocentric model had one problem in Galileo’s day: Galileo couldn’t prove it. What got him into trouble was his insistence that the Church change its interpretation of scripture based on his unproven theory.

None of what you posted shows that the Church is against science.

 

[kama3]

My statement was only to show that some phases would be visible, which you have admitted here.

You’re clearly confused here. This should clear up the issue: astronomy.nmsu.edu/geas/lectures/lecture11/slide02.html

What Galileo saw – Venus in full phase – is impossible under a geocentric system. Galileo had observational evidence that contradicted geocentrism years before his trial. That’s a documented fact.

Yet, the pro-science Church didn’t mind charging him.
The pro-science Church also kept works of him, Kepler, etc. on Index for more than a century – well after the controversy has long been settled in the scientific circles.