Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei were two great thinkers of the 16th and 17th Century who made great contributions to the growth of modern scientific reasoning and concepts.

However, both fell afoul of heresy laws of the time and were punished to a varying degree for their ideas, Galileo being subject to a humiliating public recantation of his ideas on heliocentricity (the earth orbits the sun as opposed to geocentricity where the earth was believed to be the centre of ther universe). Bruno, an advocate of Copernicanism was less fortunate, and after returning to Venice he was subsequently charged with heresy, tried and after refusing to recant, tortured and burnt at the stake. In Bruno's situation there was a wider issue as he held beliefs that Christ was a "clever magician" as opposed to the son of God.

However, why did such fates befall these men? was it the dominant influence of the Catholic Church or were they the victim of punitive civic law that pervaded Italy at this time (when the Inquisition held great power).

Continued from this thread:http://4forums.com/political/showthr...?t=3272&page=4 where a number of good links about the two men are posted.

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Based on what I was taught in my religous education in a catholic school and discussion with a cahtolic preist the spanish inquistion was at times very strict and discussing the geocentric model would have been risky at the time.

If all you got in school was that the Spanish Inquisition was "at times very strict" than you have been a wee bit undereducated to put it mildly. Let me give you the cliff notes version- the purpose of the Spanish Inquisition was to find anyone who didn't believe exactly what the Church told them to and if they were found to be "heretics," they were gruesomely tortured until they said they believed, or if they didn't they were killed.
Now I hope you can see why saying the Spanish Inquisition was "at times very strict" is a GIGANTIC understatement.

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Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.
-John Stuart Mill

It is called being diplomatic. I hope you don't find out why I have to choose my words with such care. The spanish inquistion used to shove a towel all the way down peoples throats wet it so it woud expand and then pull it out. They certainly tortured people at the drop of a hat however maybe they were not that upset by the heliocentric model specifically maybe it was because some people supporting the heliocentric model claimed the concept of life elsewhere.

Galileo
Under the sentence of imprisonment Galileo remained till his death in 1642. It is, however, untrue to speak of him as in any proper sense a "prisoner". As his Protestant biographer, von Gebler, tells us, "One glance at the truest historical source for the famous trial, would convince any one that Galileo spent altogether twenty-two days in the buildings of the Holy Office (i.e. the Inquisition), and even then not in a prison cell with barred windows, but in the handsome and commodious apartment of an official of the Inquisition." For the rest, he was allowed to use as his places of confinement the houses of friends, always comfortable and usually luxurious. It is wholly untrue that he was... either tortured or blinded by his persecutors -- though in 1637, five years before his death, he became totally blind -- or that he was refused burial in consecrated ground. On the contrary, although the pope (Urban VIII) did not allow a monument to be erected over his tomb, he sent his special blessing to the dying man, who was interred not only in consecrated ground, but within the church of Santa Croce at Florence.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06342b.htm

Bruno
In the spring of 1599, the trial was begun before a commission of the Roman Inquisition, and, after the accused had been granted several terms of respite in which to retract his errors, he was finally condemned (January, 1600), handed over to the secular power (8 February), and burned at the stake in the Campo dei Fiori in Rome (17 February). Bruno was not condemned for his defence of the Copernican system of astronomy, nor for his doctrine of the plurality of inhabited worlds, but for his theological errors, among which were the following: that Christ was not God but merely an unusually skilful magician, that the Holy Ghost is the soul of the world, that the Devil will be saved, etc.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03016a.htm

Modern 'Rational' Thinkers
From the thread "Why does evolution disprove God? post# 12
I have mentioned Dawkins, who is described (as) "A devout atheist, Dawkins has done much to promote atheism and scepticism. In fact, his anti-religious sentiments sometimes overshadow his scientific contributions. He holds a passionate revulsion of what he calls fatuous religious prejudices, which he believes lead to evil. In particular, the Roman Catholic Church has attracted his ire. "It is one of the forces for evil in the world, mainly because of the powerful influence it has over the minds of children," he has said. "Regarding the accusations of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, deplorable and disgusting as those abuses are, they are not so harmful to the children as the grievous mental harm in bringing up the child Catholic in the first place."
http://www.betterhumans.com/Errors/...02-05-21-7.aspx

A leading evolutionist, R. Dawkins says "Religion is also, of course, the underlying source of the divisiveness in the Middle East which motivated the use of this deadly weapon in the first place (referring to the September 11 attacks). But that is another story and not my concern here. My concern here is with the weapon itself. To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used."
http://www.royal-ts.de/mtarchives/000328.php

"Religion's Unguided Missile"
From the Guardian
Saturday September 15, 2001
http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins..._stand_up.shtml
The above site is where he does a lot of back pedalling, it is a response to the out-cry such as...
"Today?s Special on the Menu of Hate by John Liechty"
On September 15, 2001 The Guardian published ?Religion?s Misguided Missiles?, a comment by Richard Dawkins that sought to explain the motivations behind what had happened four days before. Dawkins? conclusion is summed up in two memorable sentences: ?To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used.?
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0711-07.htm
But it is also found on pro-Dawkins sites
http://www.geocities.com/knightsglobal/dawkins.html
and he is viewed as a champion by http://www.blaserco.com/blogs/2002/10/17.html which repeats the claim

However, the whole text is...
"Religion's misguided missiles
Promise a young man that death is not the end and he will willingly cause disaster
Special report: terrorism in the US
Richard Dawkins
Guardian
Saturday September 15, 2001
A guided missile corrects its trajectory as it flies, homing in, say, on the heat of a jet plane's exhaust. A great improvement on a simple ballistic shell, it still cannot discriminate particular targets. It could not zero in on a designated New York skyscraper if launched from as far away as Boston.
That is precisely what a modern "smart missile" can do. Computer miniaturisation has advanced to the point where one of today's smart missiles could be programmed with an image of the Manhattan skyline together with instructions to home in on the north tower of the World Trade Centre. Smart missiles of this sophistication are possessed by the United States, as we learned in the Gulf war, but they are economically beyond ordinary terrorists and scientifically beyond theocratic governments. Might there be a cheaper and easier alternative?
In the second world war, before electronics became cheap and miniature, the psychologist BF Skinner did some research on pigeon-guided missiles. The pigeon was to sit in a tiny cockpit, having previously been trained to peck keys in such a way as to keep a designated target in the centre of a screen. In the missile, the target would be for real.
The principle worked, although it was never put into practice by the US authorities. Even factoring in the costs of training them, pigeons are cheaper and lighter than computers of comparable effectiveness. Their feats in Skinner's boxes suggest that a pigeon, after a regimen of training with colour slides, really could guide a missile to a distinctive landmark at the southern end of Manhattan island. The pigeon has no idea that it is guiding a missile. It just keeps on pecking at those two tall rectangles on the screen, from time to time a food reward drops out of the dispenser, and this goes on until... oblivion.
Pigeons may be cheap and disposable as on-board guidance systems, but there's no escaping the cost of the missile itself. And no such missile large enough to do much damage could penetrate US air space without being intercepted. What is needed is a missile that is not recognised for what it is until too late. Something like a large civilian airliner, carrying the innocuous markings of a well-known carrier and a great deal of fuel. That's the easy part. But how do you smuggle on board the necessary guidance system? You can hardly expect the pilots to surrender the left-hand seat to a pigeon or a computer.
How about using humans as on-board guidance systems, instead of pigeons? Humans are at least as numerous as pigeons, their brains are not significantly costlier than pigeon brains, and for many tasks they are actually superior. Humans have a proven track record in taking over planes by the use of threats, which work because the legitimate pilots value their own lives and those of their passengers.
The natural assumption that the hijacker ultimately values his own life too, and will act rationally to preserve it, leads air crews and ground staff to make calculated decisions that would not work with guidance modules lacking a sense of self-preservation. If your plane is being hijacked by an armed man who, though prepared to take risks, presumably wants to go on living, there is room for bargaining. A rational pilot complies with the hijacker's wishes, gets the plane down on the ground, has hot food sent in for the passengers and leaves the negotiations to people trained to negotiate.
The problem with the human guidance system is precisely this. Unlike the pigeon version, it knows that a successful mission culminates in its own destruction. Could we develop a biological guidance system with the compliance and dispensability of a pigeon but with a man's resourcefulness and ability to infiltrate plausibly? What we need, in a nutshell, is a human who doesn't mind being blown up. He'd make the perfect on-board guidance system. But suicide enthusiasts are hard to find. Even terminal cancer patients might lose their nerve when the crash was actually looming.
Could we get some otherwise normal humans and somehow persuade them that they are not going to die as a consequence of flying a plane smack into a skyscraper? If only! Nobody is that stupid, but how about this - it's a long shot, but it just might work. Given that they are certainly going to die, couldn't we sucker them into believing that they are going to come to life again afterwards? Don't be daft! No, listen, it might work. Offer them a fast track to a Great Oasis in the Sky, cooled by everlasting fountains. Harps and wings wouldn't appeal to the sort of young men we need, so tell them there's a special martyr's reward of 72 virgin brides, guaranteed eager and exclusive.
Would they fall for it? Yes, testosterone-sodden young men too unattractive to get a woman in this world might be desperate enough to go for 72 private virgins in the next.
It's a tall story, but worth a try. You'd have to get them young, though. Feed them a complete and self-consistent background mythology to make the big lie sound plausible when it comes. Give them a holy book and make them learn it by heart. Do you know, I really think it might work. As luck would have it, we have just the thing to hand: a ready-made system of mind-control which has been honed over centuries, handed down through generations. Millions of people have been brought up in it. It is called religion and, for reasons which one day we may understand, most people fall for it (nowhere more so than America itself, though the irony passes unnoticed). Now all we need is to round up a few of these faith-heads and give them flying lessons.
Facetious? Trivialising an unspeakable evil? That is the exact opposite of my intention, which is deadly serious and prompted by deep grief and fierce anger. I am trying to call attention to the elephant in the room that everybody is too polite - or too devout - to notice: religion, and specifically the devaluing effect that religion has on human life. I don't mean devaluing the life of others (though it can do that too), but devaluing one's own life. Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.
If death is final, a rational agent can be expected to value his life highly and be reluctant to risk it. This makes the world a safer place, just as a plane is safer if its hijacker wants to survive. At the other extreme, if a significant number of people convince themselves, or are convinced by their priests, that a martyr's death is equivalent to pressing the hyperspace button and zooming through a wormhole to another universe, it can make the world a very dangerous place. Especially if they also believe that that other universe is a paradisical escape from the tribulations of the real world. Top it off with sincerely believed, if ludicrous and degrading to women, sexual promises, and is it any wonder that naive and frustrated young men are clamouring to be selected for suicide missions?
There is no doubt that the afterlife-obsessed suicidal brain really is a weapon of immense power and danger. It is comparable to a smart missile, and its guidance system is in many respects superior to the most sophisticated electronic brain that money can buy. Yet to a cynical government, organisation, or priesthood, it is very very cheap.
Our leaders have described the recent atrocity with the customary cliche: mindless cowardice. "Mindless" may be a suitable word for the vandalising of a telephone box. It is not helpful for understanding what hit New York on September 11. Those people were not mindless and they were certainly not cowards. On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from.
It came from religion. Religion is also, of course, the underlying source of the divisiveness in the Middle East which motivated the use of this deadly weapon in the first place. But that is another story and not my concern here. My concern here is with the weapon itself. To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used.
Richard Dawkins is professor of the public understanding of science, University of Oxford, and author of The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, and Unweaving the Rainbow"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/A...4257777,00.html
I hope this link works It is linked at http://www.outlookindia.com/full.as...e=dawkins&sid=1, but I have had some trouble opening it, if it doesn't work I found it through this web-site http://watch.windsofchange.net/themes_02.htm

And
People who critique are very likely to be labelled as creationists, and off-handedly dismissed on that presumption alone! Myself, I get accused of being anti-science.

People make mistakes (excepting some pro-evolutionists who respond with anger and blame others of 'twisting their words'.)

I was thinking about the Inquisition at the time of first Bruno then Galileo and wondering how much its approach varied from country to country and with time- how "notorious" was the Inquisition in Italy? Particularly, this is about a century after the worst excesses of the Spanish Inquisition under Thomas de Torquemada (who is thought to have had ~2000 "heretics" burnt at the stake- a modern revised figure) so how much had it changed? Did Torquemada's ideas must have had a powerful legacy on the organisation outside of Spain or was it beginning to change?

Well, as Bruno's treatment shows in 1600 I'd say he was treated with great brutality- nailing his tongue to his jaw before being burnt alive is a horrific and directed infliction of suffering. A small mercy was granted the man as a bag of gunpowder was attached to his neck in the hope that as the flames rose it would detonate and spare him the full suffering of his fate.

Four decades later and Galileo was spared such physical tortures- his public recantation seems sufficent to spare his life- if Galileo had been one of Torquemada's victims this action would have ensured he was burnt alive with dry, quick burning wood (as opposed to slow burning freshly cut wood)- he might even have have been granted the mercy of the garotte had he kissed the cross before his exceution.

It is difficult to view these events with impartiallity today as the violence that was used in the name of the law is so extreme by contempoary standards, at least to the society I belong today.

Perhaps it was inevitable that such a collision of views would occur- hundreds of years of dogma and power are not borne away by the sudden appearance of what is today rational thinking.

__________________
"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and is widely regarded as a bad move."

-Douglas Adams

I publicly admit that I was told that the catholic church at one stage tortured people for saying the world was flat and this seems to be wrong. I was told things in a science book given to us in a catholic school and by catholic layman that do not turn up in a google search.

This incorrect information did fit into my world view since I have seen catholic priests be dismissive of science and the catholic church allows evolution to be taught and the preist made us watch a movie championing a teacher that taught evolution. I swear upon my honour my motivation was not to attack the catholic church since I considered everything to be ancient history - the current catholic church is not responsible for the crimes of the inquistion. I basically used some wrong information about the inquistion to justify the catholic churches attitude. Montalban twisted this into a direct attack on the catholic church because he read on a website that other people do it so I must do it to. Do not converse with Monty because if you say the wrong key phrase and look up a creationist site and twist your words to unreasonable attack on creationism so he can then smugly quote a reply from one of his websites. He does it all the time so much so his posts often don't have a clear point since he does so much twisting.

Fortunately, the Orthodox Church didn't have the Inquisition - we couldn't because we were for the most part dominated by Islam - in the guise of the Turks.

I didn't twist anything. I responded to what you said. I have no issue with you, in fact I find it refreshing that you are honest enough to admit a mistake. However, it is another to blame me for twisting your words... I didn't misquote you. There's no way I can second-guess what it is you really mean.
If you don't wish to debate me, fine. I won't loose any sleep. But I don't hold you in contempt either, even though you called me a snake! But enough of that, it's only got the potential for another slanging match

As to the topic... for thousands of years many leading scientists had taught that the earth was the centre of the solar system. The church accepted scientific wisdom, and even tried to state that certain metaphorical texts were in fact literal indicators of this scientific 'fact' (that the earth was motionless).

We Orthodox don't tie our religion to science...
"Long ago (in the 4th century!) one of the Church's teachers Vasilius the Great wrote about this. He advised the Orthodox Christians neither to rely upon the scientific data in order to provide foundation for their faith in Christ, nor to try to disprove them, because "the scientists permanently disprove themselves."

http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/age-of-earth.htm


This approach has its own set of positives and negatives