[extropy-chat] Famous author self destructs in public! Filmateleven.

[Mike Lorrey]

--- BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:
 
> Hmmmn.  Stretching a bit here, I feel.
> The Catholic Church is very keen nowadays to distance itself from the
> Galileo affair and claim that they are not really anti-science.
> See - we didn't burn him at the stake. We're nice guys really.
> 
> But the facts are still there. What they try to do is spin them
> another way.
> Galileo was forced to recant under the threat of torture and placed
> under house arrest for the rest of his life.
> Now while this may be due to Galileo upsetting church politics, (and
> the Catholic church is a very political bureaucracy), the message
> that
> this sent out to the public was - Galileo is 'nearly' a heretic,
> imprisoned and his books banned. Do as the church says or you're
> next.

The Church preserved aristotlean and other science through the middle
ages, what wasn't dripping with roman or greek paganism. The Galileo
affair should more properly be looked at as a conflict over whether new
science should supplant old science in a spirit of open inquiry.
Looking at the witch-hunts the scientific establishment has instigated
over the past decade wrt cold fusion, abiotic oil, and other theories
and phenomena, I really don't see as much has changed, except the
scientific establishment is the new Church.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com

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