Addressing the God Question -- May 7th, Davenport Hotel, 8pm

I woulda thought that he was just presenting their argument, to generate discussion.

Could be wrong though

robindch wrote: »

Yes, indeed. The Irish Skeptics are a broad church and everybody's welcomed regardless of religious belief, or the lack of it.

Do you have many skeptics in in your church?

You mean apart from myself?

PDN wrote: »

Incidentally, I left my diary behind and one of your society very kindly phoned the number on the inside front cover to let me know before I had even started my car. If I had lost the diary then it would have greatly hindered the work of our churches - so that phone call was valuable assistance to the cause of religion.

If he had only realised!

robindch wrote: »

You've made this quite extraordinary claim about Galileo before -- can you point me to some of Galileo's writings in which he says that this is the case?

From Galileo's letter to the Church in 1632:

This being granted, I think that in discussions of physical problems we ought to begin not from the authority of scriptural passages, but from sense-experiences and necessary demonstrations; for the Holy Bible and the phenomena of nature proceed alike from the divine Word, the former as the dictate of the Holy Ghost and the latter as the observant executrix of God’s commands. It is necessary for the Bible, in order to be accommodated to the understanding of every man, to speak many things which appear to differ from the absolute truth so far as the meaning of the words is concerned. But Nature, on the other hand, is inexorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, or cares a whit whether her abstruse reasons and methods of operation are understandable to men. For that reason it appears that nothing physical which sense-experience sets before our eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages which may have some different meaning beneath their words. For the Bible is not chained in every expression to conditions as strict as those which govern all physical effects; nor is God any less excellently revealed in Nature’s actions than in sacred statements of the Bible. Perhaps this is what Tertullian meant by these words. ‘We conclude that God is known first through Nature, and then again, more particularly, by doctrine; by Nature in His words, and by doctrine in His revealed word.

Dava Sobel, author of Galileo's Daughter, asserts regularly on the lecture circuit that Galileo's scientific research was based on his belief in a rational God who created an orderly world with natural laws rather than a series of unpredictable random phenomena.

Of course Galileo drew on the body of knowledge gathered by universities and libraries which were creations of the Church.

And how exactly do you reconcile this with the Vatican's judgment that "there is no way an opinion declared and defined contrary to divine Scripture may be probable" which used the same religion to reach precisely the opposite conclusion -- that inquiry should be eliminated by threat?

The Catholic Church went down a blind alley for many years that virtually deified Aristotle. Scripture was interpreted according to Aristotle and therefore other interpretations of Scripture (including those of Galileo) were rejected out of hand. It is significant that Copernicus' works had to be published in Protestant lands because the Reformation had permitted non-Aristotlean interpretations of scripture to be advanced.

Galileo received initial support from many clergy (including the Pope) to conduct and publish his research. This earned him the enmity of his fellow scientists (whom he ridiculed mercilessly). Since science and the Church (in catholic lands) were hopelessly intertwined it was easier for his rivals to attack him on 'biblical' grounds than to attempt to refute his research.

However, we live in an age where history is rewritten as a story of goodies and baddies. For those who like this simplistic approach, the devout Galileo has become a proto-atheist scientific pioneer fighting against the evil Church that hated science. This is frustrating to those of us who realise that history is usually more complex and nuanced. I guess I had expected skeptics not to swallow popular mythology quite so easily.

I had hoped to go but I got distracted by the hippity hoppity music kids today are so mad about and ended up bippin' and a-boppin'. Keep us informed on more events Robin.