Just 11 years before they published the last edition of the "banned book list" (Index Librorum Prohibitorum). This list includes works by:
Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Montaigne, Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Victor Hugo, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, André Gide, Emanuel Swedenborg, Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, David Hume, René Descartes, Francis Bacon, Thomas Browne, John Milton, John Locke, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Blaise Pascal, and Hugo Grotius. In 1966 it was concluded that with contemporary literature's scope, it was no longer tractable to maintain the list!

I will have to tell you that it's amazing how much of the 'settled' science of my youth is no longer accepted.

My wife says that "everything is phlogiston" but I think she exaggerates.

= gang, right?

Yep, and if the church could get away with burning people at the stake for power now, they'd do it again. And power is given to them for a pile of BS that if someone spouted today, they'd be committed.

The basis of science is "settled". Science is not a sequence of exploded fallacies. Expanding knowledge is based on what one already knows. Aside from correcting occasional errors, such as the phlogiston or caloric theories, existing theory remains "settled" based on known evidence and explanation, but better qualified by its range and context of validity as more is learned about it.

There is a lot more to do it than the freedom to question. The method of scientific thinking and observation is fundamentally different than belief from faith, authority, and rationalizing. If you happened, at least for a short while, to be allowed to challenge a dogma based on a competing dogma it still wouldn't be science. Rational, independent thought based on your own perception of reality and reasoning is what gives rise to the right of the freedom to challenge or question. It also means that those who argue from dogma don't have to be taken seriously in either their decrees or their "challenges".

The Inquisition persecuted Galileo for defying church dogma and authority -- its claimed intellectual authority and the authority to decree what could be published. To this day the Catholic Church has not admitted to naturalistic explanation in science. Apologists for the Inquisition have a lot of nerve claiming it was all Galileo's fault for not pandering more. It was bad enough that he pandered as much as he did as he politely tried to convince them. He even tried to provide them with rationalistic loopholes they could use to re-interpret dogma, to give them a way out. Their reaction to his polite intellectual independence was a frenzy; that was the central issue even beyond defying a specific doctrine. If he had more openly defied them in a more personal way, telling them they had no right to interfere, they would have burned him at the stake.

We are making the same argument, I'm arguing what the church is today, (this started with the church's academy of science posting), and you are arguing church doctrine and positions from the 1300's... How is that relevant? I'd prefer a computer designed by Steve Jobs over one designed by Da Vinci... not saying one is wrong or right, but you're talking 600 years of progress.

The Catholic Church has not endorsed science, it has grudgingly acknowledged it's success. It still treats it as a competing authority, with no recognition of a superior way of thinking and pursuing knowledge. Those with a religious mentality are not capable of discussing science in scientific terms; they still endlessly rationalize in speculation, like the medieval scholastics, in the name of "discussion" and always retreat to "God did it" at the first sign of the unknown. Their retreat before the advance of science can only be a good thing, but their mere acknowledgement of science does not make them an ally.

I agree completely! -- j
.

The Catholic Church has a long history of anti science and anti technology, right down to opposing anesthesia because God wills pain.

The essence of Christian morality is groveling duty to the supernatural for life in another world, not common sense principles against murder. And it isn't "guideposts"; it's outright duty.

Your experiences of a secularized, watered down version are a consequence of the decline of the influence of the church and its fundamental theology, especially since the Enlightenment. That also accounts for differences in "geography": the more intellectually backwards society in Africa and South America did not experience the benefits of the Enlightenment the way America did.

This country is a product of the Enlightenment emphasizing reason and individualism as it overthrow the death grip of religious mysticism on the west.

This has nothing to do with science. It is an alliance between the Catholic Church and the viro "sustainability" "ecology" movement demanding de-industrialization. Both parties latch on to the word "science" as a term of authority, cashing in on the prestige of science by hijacking the name to try to shut down debate.

It also isn't new. If you look into the web site you see that they promote "events" going back to 1998, beginning with "Changing Concepts of Nature at the Turn of the Millennium". It's a fusing of nature worshiping nihilistic viros and equally nihilistic Church dogma demanding groveling before "God's Creation" in the manner of the early church.

If you read the recent Encyclical On Care for Our Common Home http://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/fran... you see this spelled out in all its agony. If you want to experience being "speechless" read that.

The staggering intensity, scope and open admissions in Common Home make the "Agenda 21" "sustainability" conspiracy theories sound feeble and unambitious in comparison. The Church has a lot more practice, for thousands of years.

As you read it you will see an obvious clash in style, with modern lingo mixed with the stock chanting of a priest, as well as contradictions in emphasis, showing that Pops Francis did not write it all himself (if any of it) and that modern viros had a big hand in it. But this isn't new to the Catholic Church -- the text frequently quotes and footnotes previous popes and bishop conferences as well as the likes of Earth Charters and Rio Declarations going back well before 1998. This line of fundamental nihilistic thought has been going on for a very long time merging viros and traditional religionists in a common medieval sense of life.

Some conservatives have decried Common Home as the "Global Warming" activists co-opting a gullible but otherwise innocent Pope as they refuse to criticize the Church for anything other than a single individual going astray. But if you read the document you will see that it is much more fundamental in a way the religious conservatives cannot acknowledge. The political implications spelled out are not restricted to "global warming" of the climate hysteria movement. That is a minor part. They emphatically denounce the last two hundred years of the entire industrial revolution in the name of a grovelling, ascetic, minimalist human existence as the Christian ideal. The Pope, who when he became a bishop years ago adopted the name "Francis" from the ascetic Francis of Assisi, wasn't "co-opted"; modern viros co-opted themselves in a regression to a Dark and Middle Ages primitivist philosophy. Their ideology fits like a hand in a glove.

There are over a billion Catholics in the world, and many more (non-Catholic) people who are influenced by the opinions of the Catholic Church. I would much rather begin conversations with these people from the basis of, "OK. We all agree with evolution. Now: Do you think this gene for red hair was inherited from Neanderthals or was it a spontaneous mutation in the contemporary H. sapiens population?"

I do not have a religious view of the universe, but if the Catholic Church is willing to come up to the plate to endorse the physics and evolution, then they are welcome allies. From my brief perusal of the site that starts this thread, the PAS is inviting new ideas and discussions on things like dark matter, string theory, and evolution - which is not a authoritarian or teleological approach.

(You get a point for teleological, though. One of my favorite words/concepts...though I can never remember how to spell it.)

Jan

Very incorrect. I would argue that the American spirit, our tendency to shed blood for the freedom of others, and the core of our battle with the Muslim world (now 1000 years old) is very much rooted in the Knights Templar, and Judeo-Christian Values.

I'm assuming you haven't travelled much... try visiting places in the world without those values, and see how far the economic and other freedoms survive... I spent time in Africa, Thailand, Bosnia during the ethnic cleansing, Rwanda, and Cairo... all during times of conflict, that absence of those key values can make for a pretty horrific status of life.

Having a majority in any group is never a defense for having the right ideas.

Keep in mind, teachings of the church tend to be very geographical in nature. I haven't ever heard anything 'anti-science' in mass... but if you go to Africa or South America, the teachings may be a little different, but geared toward reducing crime / birth rates / poverty / etc. At the Vatican and in America, the church has been front & center in the search for exoplanets (for example)... ("Go forth and multiply")..

I don't think I'm that different in saying that my faith has always served more as a moral compass, than as a black & white sign post.

Don't steal, don't bang your neighbor's wife, don't kill people, don't falsely testify against someone else, etc... these are all things that greatly enhance the operation of society....

It's also important to recognize that with a billion members, there are going to be some bad apples that don't represent doctrine, the faith, teachings, or interpret things for their own gain.

The only exception to my faith has been the poor handling of the sex abuse scandals. I think the church very wrongly acted in its own self-interests, rather than in the teachings it wants its membership to profess.

You don't have to argue with those who don't respect reason, and whether or not you do the Church clinging to the reputation of "science" as it promotes the opposite doesn't help.

The Catholic Church has not endorsed scientific evolution. It has distorted it into another authoritarian dogma. As the Church retreats before advances in scientific discovery it has found it necessary to acknowledge that life evolves, but it turned that into another "God did it" dogma. There were many hypotheses for evolution before Darwin. The religious version of teleogical evolution directly contradicts the Darwinian theory, which explicitly rejects teleology as the mechanism of evolution.

Most people in this country have no special education or expertise in science but do still respect it as non-controversial and valuable. They have some idea of the experimental method and at least a general outlook of problem solving for living on earth. That is the opposite of the long history of hostility of the church towards reason as the means of human knowledge and purpose as religion constantly recedes before scientific advance.

Without much direct knowledge of science, most people can only read what they are told about science. It isn't their fault that it is so badly taught and reported as all kinds of rationalistic and arbitrary claims posture as "science". (including this latest PR stunt from the Catholic Church).

The growing "pragmatism" and irrationality has caused people to be more susceptible to fraud and scams in a culture that no longer reveres reason. Cynicism and skepticism towards scientific claims grow as the name "science" is hijacked by all kinds of ideology and posturing elitists tossing out "official reports' on whatever they are promoting. One of the losses in contemporary culture is the loss of general excitement and interest in genuine new science -- even with the overwhelming acceptance and valuing of new technology improving lives that is taken for granted while its foundations are underminded.

Correct. A "real" scientist welcomes a challenge to ideas and concepts because he (/she) recognizes that understanding is a process of growth and assimilation. Just as there is no such thing as "absolute truth" there is no such thing as "settled science", if there was the Earth would still be flat. That is a political concept not a scientific one.

This is a forum for reason and science. The Catholic Church has a very long history of being the opposite. Rejecting its wallowing in faith in the supernatural and religious dogma in its opposition to science is not "hate mongering". To defend reason and science is to defend human values. That cannot be done by pandering to its opposite.

Most people in this country who consider themselves religious pay lip service to it because they don't know any better, but are so secularized as to have virtually nothing in common with the original Christianity of the Dark and Middle Ages and before.

yea-they really think, don't they.

Nor can I, personally. I am making the point that how 'we' (the folks on the Gulch) look at things is not necessarily how other people look at them. And that is OK.

Jan

Common Core math is the work of Satan.

About 85% does not embrace science, actually.

I'm being an ass...kind of. Science has been rejected by the average person in our society. To understand science one must make some effort. Instead, people are happy to be told what to believe. "Astroturfing" is a new name for this. People like being told what to know, what to believe. It's easy. Many times in my life I've been told what a study concluded, only to read it myself and find that the study found the opposite. Pretty neat.