> On Sep 2, 10:24 pm, Pop Fly gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
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>

>> On Sep 2, 10:49 am, Jerry Kraus yahoo.com> wrote:

>

>>> Modern scientists tend to misinterpret the recent rehabilitation of
>>> Galileo Galilei as indicating that Church admits that they were wrong
>>> to prosecute him, at the time.  This is most certainly not the the
>>> case.  All the Church is saying is that Galileo was not a bad person,
>>> and that his writings, even his satires of the Church,  no longer pose
>>> any social threat.

>

>>>http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0801299.htm

>

>>> ...
>>> Jesuit Father Sabino Maffeo, the Vatican Observatory's vice director
>>> for administration, told CNS that Galileo ran into trouble with the
>>> Holy Office because he did not have proof for his claims.

>

>>> "Not having proof ... (the Holy Office) was forced to hold on to the
>>> centuries-old concept" that saw Earth as the center of the cosmos, he
>>> said.

>

>>> If he had had proof, which did not come for another 100 years with
>>> discoveries made by Isaac Newton, Galileo's fate could have been much
>>> different, Father Maffeo said. He added that Italian Cardinal Robert
>>> Bellarmine, who was part of the 17th-century Vatican commission that
>>> admonished Galileo not to hold or defend the Copernican theory, had
>>> told Galileo "the day in which you bring a demonstration then we will
>>> have to look at how sacred Scripture gets interpreted differently,
>>> but
>>> as long as there is no proof, we will continue to interpret
>>> (Scripture) literally as we have all along."

>

>>> ...

>

>>> What would have happened if the Church had not prosecuted or censured
>>> Galileo?  Would Newton have had the same incentive to develop his
>>> comprehensive Copernican explanation of the Universe?  Would society
>>> have been destabilized by lack of faith in the Church and conventional
>>> social order?

>

>>> What implications does this example have for modern Church criticisms
>>> of scientific theories such as Evolution and the Big Bang?  Does the
>>> Church, or other social institutions have some role in integating
>>> scientific concepts into the broader social perspective?  Was Galileo
>>> a kind of idiot-savant, not understanding how to fully develop his own
>>> ideas?  Is this a common problem among scientists in general, who are
>>> not holistic thinkers, however skilled they may be in their own
>>> speciality?

>

>> Galileo did have proof. He did not have a theory of gravitational
>> force complete with math equations that explained WHY the earth and
>> planets circled the sun, but he had a long history of exact observed
>> positions of the planets that showed they DID circle the sun. He could
>> show that the positions required bizarre and unlikely circles within
>> circles if the sun orbited the earth, but were better explained by
>> simple orbits with the earth orbiting the sun.

>

>> The cardinals rejected his position because they placed more reliance
>> on their personal interpretation of what they thought was God's word
>> than they placed on verifiable observation of God's universe. This was
>> very wrong, as proven in Galileo's case and many other cases.  If they
>> had not done it, more people would have jumped on science sooner and
>> it would have advanced faster.

>

>> Whether this would have chanced to work out better or worse by the
>> time rockets and A bombs came along is a flip of the coin, but I think
>> it's fair to say that faster advancement of knowledge is,
>> probabilistically speaking, a good thing.

>

>> The implication, as the Catholic church has already learned but some
>> Protestant sects have not, is that we should abandon our crude
>> attempts to understand the bible literally when we are faced with real
>> world evidence that contradicts our understanding and shows that our
>> understanding was wrong. I'm sorry, but to back a literal
>> interpretation of Genesis against evolution is pig ignorant. Today's
>> Pope for one would never be so stupid.

>
> I think the main thing is that the cardinals didn't believe evidence
> from telescopes yet because they were so new.

> There was not really
> enough evidence that they were not creating illusions or magnifying
> what was really there. But you are probably right that their world
> perspective was set, like ours is, and when something doesn't go with
> what we decide we become aroused and must change one or more of our
> conflicting ideas.

> So that his calculations were true relies upon
> hindsight since the way we can prove that telescope magnify things was
> not available evidence then.

> This made their religious theory all the
> more competitive in reality with the heliocentric view.

> The Social Animal - Elliot Aronson - 8th Edition 1999http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716733129/
>
> Dissonance as a Consequence of Making a Decision
>
> Suppose you are about to make a decision—about the purchase of a new
> car, for example. This involves a significant amount of money, so it
> is, by definition, an important decision. After looking around, you
> are torn between getting a van and purchasing a compact model. There
> are various advantages and disadvantages to each: The van would be
> convenient; you can haul things in it, sleep in it during long trips,
> and it has plenty of power, but it gets atrocious mileage and is not
> easy to park. The compact model is less roomy, and you are concerned
> about its safety, but it is less expensive to buy and operate, it is
> more fun to drive, and you've heard it has a pretty good repair
> record. My guess is that, before you make the decision, you will seek
> as much information as you can. Chances are you will read Consumer
> Reports to find out what this expert, unbiased source has to say.
> Perhaps you'll confer with friends who own a van or a compact car.
> You'll probably visit the automobile dealers to test-drive the
> vehicles to see how each one feels. All of this predecision behavior
> is perfectly rational. Let us assume you make a decision— you buy the
> compact car. What happens next? Your behavior will begin to change: No
> longer will you seek objective information about all makes of cars.
> Chances are you may begin to spend more time talking with the owners
> of small cars. You will begin to talk about the number of miles to the
> gallon as though it were the most important thing in the world. My
> guess is that you will not be prone to spend much time thinking about
> the fact that you can't sleep in your compact. Similarly, your mind
> will skim lightly over the fact that driving your new car can be
> particularly hazardous in a collision and that the brakes are not very
> responsive, although your failure to attend to these shortcomings
> could conceivably cost you your life.
>
> How does this sort of thing come about? Following a decision—
> especially a difficult one, or one that involves a significant amount
> of time, effort, or money—people almost always experience dissonance.
> This is so because the chosen alternative is seldom entirely positive
> and the rejected alternatives are seldom entirely negative. In this
> example, your cognition that you bought a compact is dissonant with
> your cognition about any deficiencies the car may have. Similarly, all
> the positive aspects of the other cars that you considered buying but
> did not purchase are dissonant with your cognition that you did not
> buy one of them. A good way to reduce such dissonance is to seek out
> exclusively positive information about the car you chose and avoid
> negative information about it. One source of safe information is
> advertisements; it is a safe bet that an ad will not run down its own
> product. Accordingly, one might predict that a person who had recently
> purchased a new car will begin to read advertisements selectively,
> reading more ads about his or her car after the purchase than people
> who have not recently purchased the same model. Moreover, owners of
> new cars will tend to steer clear of ads for other makes of cars. This
> is exactly what Danuta Ehrlich and her colleagues found in a well-
> known survey of advertising readership. In short, Ehrlich's data
> suggest that, after making decisions, people try to gain reassurance
> that their decisions were wise by seeking information that is certain
> to be reassuring.
>
> People do not always need help from Madison Avenue to gain
> reassurance; they can do a pretty good job of reassuring themselves.
> An experiment by Jack Brehm demonstrates how this can come about.
> Posing as a marketing researcher, Brehm showed several women eight
> different appliances (a toaster, an electric coffee maker, a sandwich
> grill, and the like) and asked that they rate them in terms of how
> attractive each appliance was. As a reward, each woman was told she
> could have one of the appliances as a gift—and she was given a choice
> between two of the products she had rated as being equally attractive.
> After she chose one, it was wrapped up and given to her. Several
> minutes later, she was asked to rate the products again. It was found
> that after receiving the appliance of her choice, each woman rated the
> attractiveness of that appliance somewhat higher and decreased the
> rating of the appliance she had a chance to own but rejected. Again,
> making a decision produces dissonance: Cognitions about any negative
> aspects of the preferred object are dissonant with having chosen it,
> and cognitions about the positive aspects of the unchosen object are
> dissonant with not having chosen it. To reduce dissonance, people
> cognitively spread apart the alternatives. That is, after making their
> decision, the women in Brehm's study emphasized the positive
> attributes of the appliance they decided to own while deemphasizing
> its negative attributes; for the appliance they decided not to own,
> they emphasized its negative attributes and deemphasized its positive
> attributes.
>
> The tendency to justify one's choices is not limited to consumer
> decisions. In fact, research has demonstrated that similar processes
> can even affect our romantic relationships ...
>
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