Officially OT -> Re:My fiscal responcibility...

[Henry Spencer]

On Mon, 24 May 2004, James Knott wrote:
> ...A few hundred years ago, it was accepted 
> knowledge that the world was flat, even though others had earlier proven 
> otherwise...

Uh, no, actually, this is a myth.  The Church accepted the roundness of
the Earth as soon as it was well proven, which happened many centuries
earlier.  (Columbus's argument was over the *size* of the Earth rather
than its shape... and Columbus was wrong and his critics were right.
No way could he sail west to Asia, it was much too far for the nautical
technology of the day.  He and all his men would have most certainly have
died if there hadn't been an unsuspected continent in the way.)

> The teachings of the church were that the earth was the 
> center of the universe.  Those falacies and others have fallen, simply 
> because people such as Galeleo, Coperinicus and others were willing to 
> stand up to what religion taught as being correct.

The Church was quite willing to entertain the suggestion that it might be
wrong about such things, so long as it was phrased diplomatically and not
stated as fact unless accompanied by convincing evidence.  The foreword to
Copernicus's book includes a laudatory letter from a cardinal... and not
just any cardinal, but the right-hand man of three successive popes.  Even
Galileo's problems came much more from his total lack of tact and some
unfavorable politics than from his theories.  (The popular version of
Galileo's experiences comes largely from Brecht's play, which is about as
historically accurate as a John Wayne western.  The real history is much
more complicated and rather less one-sided.)

> Then we get to religious frauds, such as the Shroud of Turin, which for 
> centuries was held as an article of faith, by the Catholic church, only 
> to be shown to be the fraud that it was, when science was allowed...

If memory serves, the Church as a whole never took the position that the
Shroud *was* authentic, only that it *might* be, and hence caution was
appropriate and tests involving destruction of substantial parts of the
Shroud could not be allowed.  When it became possible to do carbon-dating
on quite small samples, they were quite cooperative and most interested in
the results. 

(Just to clarify:  I'm not Catholic and don't have a terribly high opinion
of the Church or its past actions -- including persecution of some of my
ancestors -- but they should be blamed for things they did do, not things
they didn't do.)

                                                          Henry Spencer
                                                       henry-lqW1N6Cllo0sV2N9l4h3zg at public.gmane.org

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