Something I was never sceptical about for some reason

[skeptical]

I don't know Gould's book but I also recommend to not take any popular anti-religious stance for granted. That with the flat earth is well known, I would also thoroughly look into the Galileo case and into claims about the RCC's policies causing "millions of AIDS deaths", suicide bombings being caused by religion and other urban legends.

Don't take all this for granted, like many 'skeptics' do. The world is not black and white.

Sapere aude.

I can't speak to the others things you listed, and perhaps "millions" is a stretch. However, when RCC Bishop's are telling people in a 3rd world country rampant with AIDS that the West is purposely spiking condoms with the AIDS virus in order to frighten people into following the RCC's "abstinence only" dogma, that is beyond reprehensible.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20999747/

Most things in the world are not black and white, but I know evil when I see it.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

No, it bloody well didn't. That is a 19th century myth which modern historians have refuted. Galileo is pretty much a lone swallow (and even that case is nowhere near as black and white as most people seem to believe.)

OK, I'll bite. Just why then did the man retract his written works and spend his last days under house arrest? Or is that just a myth?

From Wiki

* Galileo was required to recant his heliocentric ideas; the idea that the Sun is stationary was condemned as "formally heretical." However, while there is no doubt that Pope Urban VIII and the vast majority of Church officials did not believe in heliocentrism, heliocentrism was never formally or officially condemned by the Catholic Church, except insofar as it held (for instance, in the formal condemnation of Galileo) that "The proposition that the sun is in the center of the world and immovable from its place is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical; because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scriptures", and the converse as to the Sun's not revolving around the Earth.[61]
* He was ordered imprisoned; the sentence was later commuted to house arrest.
* His offending Dialogue was banned; and in an action not announced at the trial, publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future.[62]

 

[Herzblut]

I can't speak to the others things you listed, and perhaps "millions" is a stretch. However, when RCC Bishop's are telling people in a 3rd world country rampant with AIDS that the West is purposely spiking condoms with the AIDS virus in order to frighten people into following the RCC's "abstinence only" dogma, that is beyond reprehensible.

He is not 'telling people' this crap, but Reuters. You didn't see that in the article? What do you know about urban legends in Africa, what? Did you know the government of South Africa insisted for years that AIDS was a pure invention of the rich countries to discredit Africa?

You know the actual difficulties and challenges in Mozambique when facing HIV? You investigated? What do you actually know about Mozambique? Do you care about Mozambique? Or do you care about bashing the RCC?

And, oh: please provide evidence that HIV prevalence/incidence is higher within the catholic population compared to the overall population in Mozambique. Would you?

Most things in the world are not black and white, but I know evil when I see it.

But it seems you only see what you want to see, and ignore the rest.

 

[Herzblut]

OK, I'll bite. Just why then did the man retract his written works and spend his last days under house arrest? Or is that just a myth?
From Wiki

No, but Galileo acted a little .. strange, if you look at it. See, from your Wiki quote (I highlighted some phrases):

For the next several years Galileo stayed well away from the controversy. He revived his project of writing a book on the subject, encouraged by the election of Cardinal Barberini as Pope Urban VIII in 1623. Barberini was a friend and admirer of Galileo, and had opposed the condemnation of Galileo in 1616. The book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, was published in 1632, with formal authorization from the Inquisition and papal permission.

Pope Urban VIII personally asked Galileo to give arguments for and against heliocentrism in the book, and to be careful not to advocate heliocentrism. He made another request, that his own views on the matter be included in Galileo's book.

Sounds quite fair to me. So, Galileo obviously agreed and then, what came out of it in the end? Let's see:

Only the latter of those requests was fulfilled by Galileo. Whether unknowingly or deliberate, Simplicius, the defender of the Aristotelian Geocentric view in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, was often caught in his own errors and sometimes came across as a fool. This fact made Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems appear as an advocacy book; an attack on Aristotelian geocentrism and defense of the Copernican theory.

Oh dear, how carefully he avoided any bias.

To add insult to injury, Galileo put the words of Pope Urban VIII into the mouth of Simplicius.

Hohoho... I mean, now that is really a fantastic idea!

Most historians agree Galileo did not act out of malice and felt blindsided by the reaction to his book. However, the Pope did not take the suspected public ridicule lightly, nor the blatant bias.

No?? The pope really didn't??? What a surprise!

 

[Hokulele]

Hohoho... I mean, now that is really a fantastic idea!

This part is not true. I would recommend reading Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel for a more accurate look at Galileo's house arrest and the events leading up to it. The book is based on the letters between Galileo and his daughter, a nun.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Your arguments are not impressive, Herz. The church, or at least various versions and branches of it have hindered scientific progress throughout the last millennia and they continue to do so today by blocking stem cell research and trying to promote bad science in schools that teach evolution theory. That is the point, not the little sidetracks you've gone off on in your post.

 

[lupus_in_fabula]

He is not 'telling people' this crap, but Reuters. You didn't see that in the article? What do you know about urban legends in Africa, what? Did you know the government of South Africa insisted for years that AIDS was a pure invention of the rich countries to discredit Africa?

You know the actual difficulties and challenges in Mozambique when facing HIV? You investigated? What do you actually know about Mozambique? Do you care about Mozambique? Or do you care about bashing the RCC?

And, oh: please provide evidence that HIV prevalence/incidence is higher within the catholic population compared to the overall population in Mozambique. Would you?

But it seems you only see what you want to see, and ignore the rest.

From the Human Rights Watch website: "[…] In December 2003, Cardinal Alfonso Lòpez Trujillo, the president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Family, wrote that “condoms may even be one of the main reasons for the spread of HIV/AIDS.” In the same statement, Trujillo praised members of the Spanish Episcopal Council for taking a stand against condom promotion programs on the grounds that they “tend to be deceitful, . . . hide information, and because they do not contribute towards prevention, but rather to a greater spread of risky behaviour. This statement built upon comments Trujillo had made in 1995 that teaching children sex education was an “abuse” and that the promotion of “safer sex” was “a dangerous and immoral policy based on the deluded theory that the condom can provide adequate protection against AIDS."

 

[Herzblut]

Your arguments are not impressive, Herz.

No argument, whatsoever, will make you re-think your unreflected judgments, skeptigirl.

That is the point, not the little sidetracks you've gone off on in your post.

Sidetracks, skeptigirl? You asked a concrete question and I gave a concrete answer.

You even bend reality to protect your judgments?

 

[Herzblut]

From the Human Rights Watch website:

OK, I won't hijack ACS' thread and discuss this here.

 

[fishkr]

We don't really need history to teach the facts here. Let's take a contemporary flat-earth analog: The Pope goes to a country in Central America, and in spite of the fact that the median age of the poplulace is 15, and the countrymen can barely feed themselves, he declares all forms of contraception a mortal sin.

By doing so, and in spite of all empirical evidence available to him, by giving this dictum he will, with full knowledge of the consequences, incontrovertably increase the suffering of many people.

He claims to be the sole representative of the one true god on earth. Is this correct?

So is the Earth flat? Isn't the premise of the Church the ultimate example of an Appeal to Authority?

 

[fishkr]

Sidetracks, skeptigirl? You asked a concrete question and I gave a concrete answer.

?

Concrete answers? References other than your opinions?

 

[Herzblut]

This part is not true. I would recommend reading Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel for a more accurate look at Galileo's house arrest and the events leading up to it. The book is based on the letters between Galileo and his daughter, a nun.

It is true, without a shred of doubt.

Reading thru this thorough analysis 'Galileo's condemnation: The real and complex story', which I've found here:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4015/is_200301/ai_n9199980/pg_1,

one also discovers this nice statement:

A pervasive idea in much of our culture is that science and religion inherently conflict with one another. However, most modern historians of science do not share that idea. For them, this claim is unsupported and dated.

But, as I said, no evidence whatsoever will convince people who irrationally stick to the unreflected opposite judgment. This is lack of scepticism at its best.

 

[A Christian Sceptic]

OK, I won't hijack ACS' thread and discuss this here.

Go ahead - I won't consider it hijacking of this thread. These points and counterpoints seem actually really relevant. That is, people really want to believe certain things for other reasons then what the facts state. That seems to be exactly why so many people believed the story about the Church pushing a flat-earth agenda, etc.

 

[Tricky]

Still, it seems Columbus brought back something new yet enduring from the New World.

Syphilis.

According to Kristin Harper of Emory University in Georgia, they were all wrong. Syphilis, the illness with so many suspected origins, actually came from the New World. In other words, Columbus brought back much more than knowledge of an unsuspected continent from his travels.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

Go ahead - I won't consider it hijacking of this thread. These points and counterpoints seem actually really relevant. That is, people really want to believe certain things for other reasons then what the facts state. That seems to be exactly why so many people believed the story about the Church pushing a flat-earth agenda, etc.

I thought it was because Washington Irving, the biggest super-star entertainer of his day, included it in a work everyone and his mother read.

Popular entertainment trumps facts in most people's minds. People seem to think Romans spoke latin with a Brittish accent, that feudal Japan was thick with ninjas, and explosions in space are louder because there's no air to get in the way while simultaneously believing that in space, no can hear you scream.

People believe the myths they're presented, much as you do.

 

[lupus_in_fabula]

Go ahead - I won't consider it hijacking of this thread. These points and counterpoints seem actually really relevant. That is, people really want to believe certain things for other reasons then what the facts state. That seems to be exactly why so many people believed the story about the Church pushing a flat-earth agenda, etc.

Except in this case (AIDS vs. condoms & sex education vs. ignorance) the pope and his puppets are trying to infect reason with bronze-aged dogma.

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

Burning at the stake was a European thing. We Americans wanted to show how enlightened and progressive we were so we hanged our witches.

But yeah, the flat earth/Columbus issue is a myth.

A European thing? Not entirely true. In Scotland while technically they were burnt at the stake, that was not the method of their execution as they were strangled before the fire was lit.

 

[A Christian Sceptic]

Except in this case (AIDS vs. condoms & sex education vs. ignorance) the pope and his puppets are trying to infect reason with bronze-aged dogma.

I don't know enough about this situation. But from reading the link posted it appears that the fear is that Europe is using AIDS to kill the African people. That appears to be why that that South African Bishop is saying that.

The head of the Catholic church in Mozambique said on Wednesday he believed some European-made condoms were deliberately tainted with the HIV/AIDS virus to kill African people.

I believe also recently there were some European nurses / hospital workers that were spared the death penalty in Libya even after they were found guilty (but the rest of the world appears to believe they were innocent) for intentionally infecting patients with AIDS.

My casual guess is these things are related and something else is going on other than simply "bronze-aged dogma". We have two different cultures with two different religions with the same fears and accusations - that Europe is intentionally infecting Africans with AIDS to kill them. Of course, it shouldn't be surprising that the person will believe their religion and opinions on morals has the answer.

 

[lupus_in_fabula]

I don't know enough about this situation. But from reading the link posted it appears that the fear is that Europe is using AIDS to kill the African people. That appears to be why that that South African Bishop is saying that.

I’m sorry but that’s complete nonsense. First of all, we’re talking about a cardinal (Trujillo). Second, he’s South American. And third, it’s about dogma rather than fear about Europeans poisoning condoms. It’s about bronze-aged dogma participating in denying proper help for people that needs it.

To be more specific, it's about DENYING the use of condoms and sex education in an area where AIDS is an epidemic and where the church is denying the fact that the emancipation of women and their right to birth control is one of the most effective ways of fighting poverty. This is sickening in my point of view, plain and simple.

Why… why do we have old mal-adjusted virgins teaching rubbish to people in an area were AIDS is killing people by the thousands???

 

[A Christian Sceptic]

I’m sorry but that’s complete nonsense. First of all, we’re talking about a cardinal (Trujillo). Second, he’s South American. And third, it’s about dogma rather than fear about Europeans poisoning condoms. It’s about bronze-aged dogma participating in denying proper help for people that needs it.

If you were talking about someone different - then ignore what I posted. I was posting about the article linked to in this thread. Here it is again - and my comments were not nonsense in regards to that article.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20999747/