Quotes From the Honest Guru

Most people are nice and pleasant

The course of history is dictated by the othes

Astrology and the New Planets

This is a continuation from Why astrology is not scientific, while astronomy is.

Using scientific theories to discover unknown planets, reinforced Newton’s theory of universal gravitation and proved its usability. But there is nothing sacred about Newton or his theories. Had astronomers not found the planets as expected, Newton's Theory of Gravitation would have been falsified, and would have to be replaced by a theory that could better explain the discrepancy in the orbit of Uranus.

Meanwhile, astrologers were enthusiastic about these discoveries, which increased the range of heavenly influences they could explain. They were quick to assign power and influence to the three planets, and associate the discovery of each of the planets with events characteristic of these powers. The discovery of Uranus, associated with human rights, rebellion and progress, was related to the American and the French revolutions of 1778 and 1789 respectively. The discovery of Neptune, the planet linked to both cults and the occult, was closely followed by the emergence of a Chinese clerk, Hung Hsiu-Ch'üan, who decided that he was the son of God, and in 1847 attempted to conquer China and establish his own dynasty. It is believed that more then 20 Million people were killed during his Taiping Rebellion. The discovery of Pluto, which rules atomic energy, is associated with Cockcroft and Walton splitting the atom in 1932.

Astrologers forecast; yet there are no known records of astrologers foretelling the discovery of the new planets. No mismatches between astrological observation and earthly events had ever been attributed to unknown heavenly bodies, nor is there any evidence whether adjusting the charts for the new planets has improved the accuracy of astrological predictions. Whatever the reason for the planets’ orbital mismatch might have proved to be, astrology would have remained unchallenged, irrefutable, and therefore, by definition, unscientific.

Why astrology is not scientific, while astronomy is?

This post is a continuation from:  Refuting a scientific theory: the theory of ether

As we have seen in the previous blogs, testability is the heart and soul of any scientific theory. However, as crucial as it might be, it is never sufficient to test a theory against the observations that led to its creation. A scientific theory must predict unknown facts that can only be confirmed by fresh observations.

As a simple example let's assume that after you had tasted sugar, you concluded that white, small-grained powders are sweet. The unscientific way would be to use sugar as a proof for your theory. The scientific way, on the other hand, would be to seek other white, small-grained powders and taste them. If you stayed alive after your experiment, you would have to admit that your theory was wrong. You will have to find another explanation for the sweetness of sugar.

If anything the theory predicts is proven wrong, the theory is incorrect. This potential refutability is a powerful criterion that distinguishes science from pseudoscience. Nowhere it is as clear as in the case of astronomy with astrology.

For thousands of years astrologers had been using the apparent movement of the sun, moon, and the five known extraterrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) to foretell earthly events. Once a sixth planet, Uranus, was discovered in 1781, astrologers added the new planet to their charts and continued with their foretelling as before, without asking whether astrology is still valid with the new planet, or why they had not foretold the existence of the new planet.

Astronomers, on the other hand, were fervidly forecasting the orbit of Uranus. Their calculations, however, based on Newton's theory of gravity, did not match the observed path of planet. There were two potential explanations: either the theory of gravity was wrong, or that the gravity of an unknown heavenly object, farther from Uranus, was responsible for the deviation. Using the same law of gravity, astronomers foretasted where the body that distorts Uranus' orbit should be. And they were right. In 1846, as predicted, they discovered a new planet, Neptune.

Just as discrepancies in the orbit of Uranus had led to the search for Neptune, irregularities in the orbit of Neptune, and to a lesser extent in the orbits of Uranus and Saturn, had led scientists to suspect the existence of a ninth planet. Once more, it was theoretical calculations that led to the discovery of Pluto in 1930. Their calculations were confirmed, and so was the theory of Gravity -- at least until the next observation.

To be continued ...

Quotes From the Honest Guru: Double Blind

In the country of the blind, the one-eyed men are stoned to death.

Refuting a scientific theory: the theory of ether

 
This post is a continuation from The Boundaries of Science

To demonstrate how established scientific theories can be refuted, let’s look at the theory of Ether, which was the dominant theory for an entire generation of scientists.

Since Maxwell (1831–1879) formulated the electromagnetic theory in 1865, 19th century scientists had puzzled how electromagnetic waves, such as radio or light, traveled through vacuum and the emptiness of space. Just like waves in water or sound in air, the argument went, electromagnetic waves needed a physical medium to travel through. For this reason alone, a new substance, ether, was proposed. (Although the term ‘ether’ was borrowed from Aristotle, the 19th century’s ether was a different concept altogether.)

According to the theory, ether filled in the entire universe, including vacuum and the inside of material bodies. As such, it had to be a weightless, transparent, frictionless matter that did not take part in any physical or chemical interaction, and was, therefore, impossible to test or verify.

Yet, the theory of ether could predict that light emanating from a moving object in the direction of its movement would travel faster than light emanating from the same object in any other direction. (To illustrate, imagine an item thrown from a moving car. Clearly, if we threw it in the direction of our travel it would travel faster than if we threw it in the opposite direction.)

Michelson and Morley relied on this hypothesis in 1887, when they attempted to determine the speed of earth in space by measuring the difference between the speed of a beam of light traveling in the direction of earth, and that of a beam of light traveling perpendicular to earth’s movement.

Had Michelson and Morley detected the difference they expected, it would have put their names, in a side note, as the first scientists to measure the absolute speed of earth. As it turned out, the experiment failed and no difference was detected. Even though Michelson and Morley could not explain their result, it was sufficient to inflict a death sentence on the theory of ether, and to win Michelson the 1907 Nobel Prize for physics. This experiment subsequently led Einstein to develop the theory of relativity.

The Boundaries of Science

This post is a continuation of The Origin of Evolution Theory

As strange as it may sound, modern science is not directly concerned with reality, but rather with models of it. Reality is the realm of philosophy. The essence of science is the scientific theory, whose purpose is to provide coherent explanations to observations; an objective aptly summed up by the physics Nobel laureate, Richard Feynman (1918–1988):

No one has ever seen the inside of a brick. Every time you break the brick, you only see the surface. That the brick has an inside is a simple theory which helps us understand things better. The theory of electrons is analogous … The electron is a theory that we use; it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that we can almost call it real.

Although theory is at the heart of science, not every theory is scientific. For a theory to be scientific it must first be internally consistent, that is, it should lead to no logical or mathematical paradoxes. If, for instance, a theory could lead to a conclusion that an object may simultaneously exist in two different places, the theory would not be consistent and cannot be deemed scientific. (This example is a paradox that contradicts the principle of space and time: a physical object exists separately in space and time in such a way that they are localizable and countable.)

Unlike mathematical models – which being the creation of the human mind require internal consistency only – scientific theories based on these models must be testable: that is, it does not matter how elegant or internally consistent a theory may be, if it does not agree with observations external to the theory, it is wrong. This requirement means that a theory can be considered scientific only after test criteria can be defined. That is, every theory is potentially refutable. Contrary to the common belief, turning an idea into a scientific theory does not necessarily improve it or make it more reliable. In many cases, it will lead, inadvertently, to the refutation of the idea.

The Origin of Evolution Theory

This post is a continuation from The Creation of the World

Unlike physics and astronomy, in which unbiased observation directly contradicted religious teachings, for a long time progress in biology did not challenge old wisdom. Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries the work of biologist was limited to the classification of all known plants and animals into taxonomic groups. While their highlighted the commonalities living organisms shared, the belief that all living organisms had been created in their current form was so well rooted that no serious alternative had been proposed before 1859. This was the year that Charles Darwin shocked his contemporaries by implying that humans and animals shared a common ancestor.

In 1831, Charles Darwin (1809–1882) joined as a naturalist the survey ship HMS Beagle for an expedition around the world. When he returned home in 1836 with over 2000 pages of notes and thousands of skins, bones and fossils, his work had just begun. It took over 20 years before he finally formalized his findings and observations into a consistent theory which he published in his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

Natural selection theory suggests that adaptation to the environment through the survival of the fittest is the main (though not the only) mechanism of evolution. Random variations continuously occur in species, which are constantly under struggle for resources. When “the surviving one of ten thousand trials” gives an organism an advantage in its environment, it would pass on this favorable change to its offspring. Accumulation of such variations within a population – particularly when major environmental changes occur, and fast adaptation to the new environment is required – could eventually lead to the creation of new species.

It took Darwin many years and many attempts to find a theory that could answer the many questions that perplexed him during his voyage. His theory could explain why fossils of extinct animals carried a close resemblance to existing species. It clarified why each of the Galapagos Islands had its different but very similar species of animals. It also accounted for the existence of creatures that, in Darwin’s view, could never be designed by a benign entity, like the parasitic wasp, which – to Darwin's horror and disgust – stored caterpillars to be eaten alive by its grubs.

Modern evolution theory has evolved considerably since Darwin’s days. However, regardless of the major changes the theory has undergone, the new body of evidence, accumulated from otherwise unrelated fields of science, only strengthen its plausibility. While unlocking the secrets of DNA revealed the engine behind the random variations, microbiology gave empirical evidence that not only do such variations occur regularly, but that they directly impact on human lives, as they are both the cause of new diseases (e.g. aids, bird-flu) and the means for their cure.

Further evidence has been derived by paleontologists and evolutionary molecular biologists, who have been able to fill many of the gaps in the history of species. Evolutionary molecular biology provides the tools to measure the amount of DNA change that differentiates one species from another. This has led to the surprise discovery that the difference in the DNA sequence between human and chimpanzee is no bigger than 2%. Humans were no longer the crown of the creation, but the result of random changes that happened to make them better adapted for survival – Aristotle’s scale of value had lost its meaning.

It is not surprising that evolution theory had evoked such passionate antagonism. This time it was not the Church that rose against it, but the public. Its radical implications were far wider than the populist “we are not monkeys” emotional response that led crowds to the streets. Evolution theory eliminated the need for a designer or a creator, and it undermined what was probably the oldest and most frequently used proof for the existence of God, as first expressed by the ancient Roman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106– 43BC):

When you see a sundial or a water-clock, you see that it tells the time by design and not by chance. How then can you imagine that the universe as a whole is devoid of purpose and intelligence, when it embraces everything, including these artifacts themselves and their artificers?

Those who object to the evolution theory can be broadly classified into two camps: creationists, and the advocates of intelligent design, also known as design theorists. Creationists believe that the literal biblical narration provides a factual account of events, and reject any kind of evolutionary process. Intelligent design, on the other hand, accepts that organisms could evolve from other organisms, but rejects the randomness of the process and suggest that it was preordained and following a blueprint. To use an analogy, when dominoes fall, although each piece falls because it is pushed by its predecessor, the pattern of the fall is predefined by the original setting of the dominoes.

Intelligent design theorists claim that without such a blueprint, biological organs and systems that display irreducible complexity could not have evolved. That is, no random process could account for the development of an organ, like the eye, which is composed of several interacting parts, all required for its functioning. As the evolution anything but the complete, operating organ could not be of any use, it would not have survived the process of natural selection.

The Creation of the World

This post is a continuation from Faith and the First Scientists

The heated debate over the working of the universe, we have discussed so far, had little relevance outside the scientific and theological communities. Whether it was the sun or the earth at the center of the universe, or what laws falling bodies obeyed, it made no difference to people’s faith. The new discoveries diminished neither the splendor of the creation nor the greatness of the creator. For most people, religious teachings were about how one goes to heaven, and not how heaven goes.

This attitude still prevails nowadays, when even the most religious of people do not expect their religious practices to explain nature, and are happy to leave these pondering to science. In all areas, that is, but two: the age of the universe and evolution.

According to Genesis, the world was created in six days, and by counting the generations in the Bible since Adam and Eve, theologists concluded that the creation took place some 6000 years ago. This figure is supported by the Jewish calendar, which is believed to commence from the first day of the creation. Contemporary mainstream scientific theory, on the other hand, draws an entirely different picture. It estimates the age of the earth at about 4.6 billion years, and that of the universe at over 13 billion years. Interestingly 6000 years, roughly coincides with the end of the last ice-age, and the beginning of human civilization, as we know it.

Interpretations of the text in Genesis which aim to address this dichotomy have been around since the 19th century. A common explanation was that the Bible, speaking to the ancients who could not comprehend numbers like a million or a billion, did not speak of a ‘day’ (yom in Hebrew) as a period of 24 hours, but rather in a metaphorical way as an unspecified duration of events which could last thousands, millions or even billions of years. (By the way, such big numbers could not be written, let alone understood, before the introduction of ‘0’, which happened around the 7th century in the Arab world, and 13th century in Europe.) Alternative interpretation suggests that the six-days of Genesis do not represent the time of the creation itself, but a six-day period during which God revealed the truth of the creation to Moses on Mt. Sinai.

Despite the various interpretations, many are still adamant that the literal interpretation of the Bible is correct, and that the problem lies with science. They point out that unlike the previous conflicts mentioned, the age of the universe cannot be found by observation or any other direct method, but is deduced from a combination of complex theories with many underlying assumptions. They claim that as theories change frequently they cannot be trusted, and in the end, scientific theory will discover that the biblical age of the universe is correct.

Regardless of future scientific development, this dispute – just like those mentioned previously – threatens only human interpretation and not faith itself. Six days or 13 billion years, it leaves the magnificence of the creation intact, as it does the need for a creator. This, however, is not the case with the theory of evolution, which threatens not only the role of God, but also Her very existence.

Faith and the First Scientists

This post is a continuation from The inquisition strikes back

Standing upon the shoulders of giants, it was the British physicist Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) who can be considered the true father of modern physics – based on solid mathematical models. Newton work evolved science in four different areas: his work of the nature of light, his laws of motion, his development of Calculus, and the laws of universal gravitation. Each of these works would have been considered a life time achievement and would have suffice to place him as one of the greatest scientists of all time. Newton achieved them all.

His law of universal gravitation and the three laws of motion could explain the motion of bodies on earth and the motion of the planets bodies. This was a blow to the Church's worldview in which the rules that governed the ‘corrupt’ transient earth were different from the laws obeyed by the perfect eternal heavens. According to Newton, the laws of nature were universal, and applied equally to earth and heavens. The Aristotelian model of the universe had to be replaced, and so was the Church's hegemony of knowledge. The workings of the universe became the realm of science.

While the new scientific way of thinking was partially responsible for the decline in the power of the Church, the resultant image of the world neither threatened the fundamentals of faith, nor replaced the need for a creator. For many scientists, revealing the nature of the world was the way to understanding the creation and the glory of God. Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton, were all devout believers who saw their scientific work as a religious undertaking. For example, Kepler wrote in his Harmony of the Worlds:

Geometry provided God with a model for the Creation and was implanted into man, together with God's own likeness. ... It is absolutely necessary that the work of such a Creator be of the greatest beauty.

Although these scientists were aware of the objections their work would provoke, they did not consider the new discoveries to contradict religious teachings. They held the view that the scriptures, written for everyone to understand, were not to be taken literally. Any contradiction between religious teachings and the scientific discoveries was due to human’s mistaken interpretation. They believed that correct knowledge of the cosmos would provide a better insight into the scriptures, and that it was our pious responsibility to reinterpret the texts to match the known facts, as there should be no inconsistency between science and the scriptures when they were rightly understood.

The inquisition strikes back

This posting follows: Copernicus and the Church

By claiming that the sun, and not the earth, was at the center of the universe, Copernicus directly challenged the Church's sacred worldview, based on the Aristotelian model. But while Copernicus was the first one to publicly challenge the Church's view of the world, many followed. What he had started could not be stopped.

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), a German astronomer, developed the Copernican worldview and turned it into a mathematical model. The three laws of planetary motion he conceived are still in use nowadays. These mathematical laws, based on elliptical motion, accurately explained all planetary observations. However, by suggesting that the planets were moving in elliptical orbits and not in the heavenly perfect circular motion, Kepler deviated even further from the Aristotelian model. He was excommunicated from the Lutheran Church in 1612.

Kepler's contemporary, the Italian scientist and astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), in his most renowned experiment dropped two bodies of different weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and demonstrated, once and for all, that all bodies fall at the same speed regardless of their weight. This was the first time that an experiment was used to determine scientific truth, and was an indisputable proof that Aristotle's theory and the Church's dogma were fundamentally mistaken.

But this was not enough for Galileop. Being the first person to apply telescope to the study of the heavenly bodies, Galileo also revolutionized astronomy. His observations led him to discover the moons of Jupiter and the phases of the planet Venus, and convinced him that Copernicus' heliocentric model, with the sun at the center, was the correct one. In 1633, Galileo was brought before the Inquisition for a grave suspicion of heresy. He was forced to formally renounce his beliefs, and was sentenced to life-long house arrest.

Copernicus and the Church

As we saw in a previous posting, Copernicus, who postulated a model in which the sun was at the center of the universe, knew that the clear advantages of his model would not protect him from the hostile reaction of the orthodox authorities and the Inquisition. It was not until 1543 – the year of his death – that he eventually published his complete work On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres.

It is clear from the extent of the criticism of his work that Copernicus challenged not only the knowledge of the cosmos, as portrayed by the church, but he challenged knowledge itself: should our impartial experience determine our understanding, or is it our knowledge that the world should conform to?

For example, Tolosani, a contemporary of Copernicus, wrote:

[Copernicus] seems to be unfamiliar with Holy Scripture since he contradicts some of its principles, not without the risk to himself and to the readers of his book of straying from the faith. ... in his imagination he changes the order of God's creatures in his system. ... he seeks to raise the Earth from its lower place to the sphere where everybody by common consent correctly locates the Sun's sphere, and to caste the sphere of the Sun down to the place of the Earth, contravening the rational order and Holy Writ, which declares that heaven is up, while the Earth is down.

It was most likely, therefore, that the Church would have condemned Copernicus and burn his work, had it not been for an introduction inserted by the publisher. The introduction stated that the book merely presented a simpler way to calculate the positions of heavenly bodies, and that the hypotheses contained within made no pretense to truth that, in any case, astronomy was incapable of finding the causes of heavenly phenomena. This unauthorized insertion, although appalled many, ensured that the book was not immediately condemned. In fact, it was publicly available for over 70 years before it was subject to censorship.

Although some were sentenced to death for their support of Copernicus’ heliocentric system (for example, Giordano Bruno was burnt alive in 1600) it was not until 1616 that the Church placed the work on the List of Prohibited Books (Index Librorum Prohibitorum) and decreed that the propositions that the Sun is immobile and at the center of the universe and that the Earth moves around it, judging both to be ‘foolish and absurd in philosophy,’ and the first to be ‘formally heretical’ and the second ‘at least erroneous in faith’ in theology. By then, however, Copernicus’ mathematics had already been widely in use, and although many still viewed it as a hypothetical calculation model, it was unavoidable that questions about the nature of the cosmos as derived from the model would arise.

The scientific revolution had begun.

The first earth shaker: Copernicus

Let's continue our exploration of the birth of modern science ...

Since early history the scientists who studied the heavens were the only scholars to use mathematics, and the terms astronomer, astrologer and mathematician were virtually interchangeable. They calculated the dates of the holy days, developed methods to draw astrological charts, and forecast the position of the zodiac signs and the movement of the planets. However, despite their skillful observations, measurement and calculations, many open issues remained unanswered, some unquestioned. Their theories could not account for the changes in the brightness of the planets, nor for their apparent retrograde movement (at times some planets seem to move backwards.) Their models did not explain why Venus and Mercury were never seen far from the sun, and they could not even agree on the order of the planets. They did calculations, and it was not their role to ponder such matters. How the world worked was a theological question that only the Church was allowed to answer.

All this changed in 1514 when a Polish astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) circled amongst a few of his friends an unsigned hand-written book called Little Commentary. In his book, Copernicus introduced the heliocentric model, in which the sun  – rather than the earth – was at the center of the universe and all planets, including earth, were orbiting around it. With a single model Copernicus explained the apparent movement of the planets, the sun and the stars. His model could also account for the changes in the brightness of the planets, and offered a singular method of ordering them. Copernicus also managed to calculate  the relative distances of the planets from the sun with amazing accuracy (his figures showed less than 10% difference from our current measurements.) However, Copernicus knew that  all the advantages of his model would not protect him from the hostility of the orthodox authorities and the Inquisition. It was not until 1543 – the year of his death – that he eventually published his complete work On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres.

The Birth of Modern Science

(continued from: Aristotle and the Science of the Church)

While the Church maintained control of the knowledge of the world, and prohibited most non-scripture studies, alchemy was the exception. The study of alchemy did not challenge the Church’s view of the world and therefore, could be practiced.

For over 900 years, from about 500 to 1400, philosophers in Western Europe, surrounded by a cloak of secrecy, predominantly occupied themselves with the search for the mythical philosopher’s stone (the substance that would transform everyday material to gold, and produce the elixir of immortality). Many practical techniques, like distillation, were developed during this period, but the understanding of the world and its working remained unchanged and unchallenged.

During this Dark Age of European science, Arab science flourished. Arab philosophers cultivated an intellectual environment that encouraged the sharing of ideas, open discussion and debates. The scientific methodology they had developed was based on experiments to distinguish between competing scientific theories, citation, peer review and open inquiry. This framework, which is the base of all modern science, led to many invaluable breakthroughs in all areas of science: chemistry, physics, optics, astronomy and mathematics.

It was the fall of Constantinople (now Istanbul) that brought Arab science to the attention of the Western European philosophers. Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, had been a major intellectual center. Its conquest by the Turks in 1453 led to an exodus of scientists and philosophers to Western Europe.

Coinciding with the recent invention of printing by Gutenberg around 1450, the scientific knowledge these scholars brought with them (including Arab science) became widely available, and readily absorbed by western philosophers. The seeds for a new worldview were planted in a fertile soil, and science of the stars – the oldest of all natural sciences – was the natural place for them to germinate.

Aristotle and the Science of the Church

(Continues from: Church and Science: the battle begins)

Once the Church assumed political power, its interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures was the only science permitted. Whenever a new philosophy was adopted, it became an inseparable part of the Holy Teachings, impossible to question or challenge.

No philosopher dominated the Holy Teachings more than the Greek philosopher Aristotle (BC 384–322): the most renowned student of Plato and the teacher of Alexander the Great. His collection of lectures, covering the entire field of knowledge known in the Mediterranean world of his day, spanned over 150 volumes. He developed the art of reasoning and logic, and his biological observations and classification of animals were far ahead of his time. For example, he classified dolphins as mammals, a classification that only in the 19th century was confirmed.

Although at first the Church forbade his teachings whether public or private (Council of Paris in 1210) in 1366 he received the Church’s full recognition, and his views became regarded as possessing an almost divine authority. This was ironic as Aristotle himself had used logic and observation to draw his conclusions, and as an advocate of debate and freethinking, he did not believe in blind obedience to authority, but rather that science grew out of curiosity and wonder, to which religious myth gave only provisional satisfaction.

Aristotle supported the geocentric model in which the earth was the center of a finite spherical universe, and all celestial bodies: the sun, moon, planets and stars circled around it in an eternal, perfectly circular motion, driven by the force of a Prime Mover. According to Aristotle, there were two distinct sets of laws, one for the earth, and the other for heaven. He dismissed Democritus idea of the atom as worthless, and instead believed that everything was made of a combination of four elements: earth, water, air and fire. The combination of these elements in each object determined how fast it would strive to reach the center of the earth – the heavier an object was, the faster it would fall. Aristotle also postulated a fifth element, ether, which he believed to be the main constituent of all heavenly bodies.

On earth, Aristotle suggested a hierarchical model he called The Great Chain of Being. It was not only a systematic method of classification, but also a scale of value – the higher an item was in the hierarchy the more it was worth. It gave organic items higher value than inorganic matter; living organisms were placed higher than planets; and within living organisms worms were at the bottom and men at the top. In Aristotle's view, the universe was ultimately perfect, which meant that the Great Chain was also perfect with no waste or duplication – each link contained exactly one species. This left no room for change or development and led to the doctrine of fixed species: if every link is occupied and none is occupied twice, no species can ever move from its original position. To do so would leave one level empty and put two species on another level.

It is easy to see why the Church adapted to Aristotle so willingly and why it eradicated any potential challenge. Aristotle’s philosophy separated the transient, corrupt earth from the perfection of the eternal heavens, and left room for the Divine and the angels beyond the outer spheres. (Some, for instance, speculated that the angels were pushing celestial bodies in their orbits.) The Great Chain of Being was treated not only as a description of nature, but also as philosophical justification for social immobility; that is the futility of people attempting to change their status and position in society. Man, at the very center of the universe, was the crown of the creation. Christians were superior to every other man, and the Church was assigned to rule. This was a law of nature. This was the way the Church wanted it to remain.

Church and Science: the battle begins

(continued from Science Vs. Religion)

Must scientific and religious viewpoints collide, or can there be consistent description of the universe in which each is equally valid? To answer this question, let’s start by exploring the origin of this rivalry. 

In ancient Rome, Christianity was a persecuted secret society, and it was not uncommon for emperors to turn the people against the Christians at times of trouble. But when in the year 310, General Constantine, divinely inspired to take the cross as his standard, won the battle against general Maxentius – the battle that made him the emperor – he pronounced Christianity to be the religion of Rome. It didn’t take long before the persecuted Christian minority had gained enough power to start persecuting others. 

In 385, Priscillian, a Christian theologists, won his place in history for being the first Christian executed by the Christian authorities. The Church sentenced Priscillian, with six of his companions, to death for heresy: that is, for not following the official line of the Church. For centuries to come, his execution set the stage for how the Church dealt with any of its subjects who questioned its teachings. 

By the early Middle Ages, the Church, which had continued to consolidate its power, had established itself as the spiritual leader of the “civilized world”, and often as the political and economical superpower, successfully challenging rulers and states. 

To strengthen its authority further, the Church positioned itself as the custodian of all truth, which it alone was authorized to expound under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It actively eliminated any challenge to its teachings by allowing only the officially correct views of nature and scripture; and in 1231 it established the Inquisition to maintain and defend the integrity of the faith, and to examine and forbid errors and false doctrines. 

Heretics became the enemy of society. 

In the beginning, interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures formed the foundation for the science of the Church. However, whenever the Church council adopted a new philosophy – even those philosophies that were originally banned – it became an inseparable part of the Holy Teachings, impossible to question or challenge. 

I often wonder how many of those who strongly believe that their religious views make them good believers, realize that not so long ago, the same institutions that promote their current ‘good believer’ views, would have put them on the stake for the very same beliefs.

(to be continued)

The good old days

Anyone still missing the good old days?