On Sep 3, 1:24Â am, Pop Fly
gmail.com> wrote:> On Sep 2, 10:49Â am, Jerry Kraus
yahoo.com> wrote:> 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.
Lets establish some baselines here:
1. Galileo was NOT "right" and The Church was not "wrong"! It is
impossible to say that the earth and planets circle the sun. To assert
that as a positive fact would require one to know exactly where the
physical unmoving center of the universe reference frame is located
and establish that it is NOT on the earth someplace. Nobody knows
this.
2. What Galileo did was to simply point out how much simpler the
"wheels within wheels" calculations become if one adopts a solar-
centric viewpoint. This has NOTHING to do with what goes around what!
It's all about point of view.
3. And of course "point of view" always has political implications
which naturally got the church interested in the issue and Galileo's
ill advised arrogance at putting the Pope's words in the mouth of the
"fool" in his dialogs only was the icing on the cake. How dumb are you
(and Galileo)? Politics is always about rewarding your friends and
punishing your enemies!
> 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. Â If they
> had not done it, more people would have jumped on science sooner and
> it would have advanced faster.
And yes, there is this aspect as well. Look at it this way. God's
word, if you will, is "revealed truth". Since it is the ULTIMATE
truth, it would not be surprising if we didn't understand it at all.
Consider it as us standing over an anthill trying to explain physics
to the ants. You'd have to reduce it a LOT to get it down to ant-
level! But being a "god" to the ants, you'd still want it to be true
even it it made no sense to them. So you might say to the ants, "for
everything thing you do there is an equal and opposite thing that
happens". Yeah, sounds like nonsense, right? But if you have
confidence in the source, you'd have to believe it even if it made no
sense. That's the problem with advanced revelations.
> 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.
So read above and ask what is a literal interpretation of Genesis?
That God made everything in so many "days"? That makes no sense! How
can there be "days" when there is no earth or sun? Goofy. Obviously
like the case of ants above, if we have confidence in the "source"
then we have to assume that somehow the rule is true at some level
even if it's beyond our understanding. That would be the correct
viewpoint to take. But so many "ants" just say, "well, you can't have
days, because there was no earth an sun! Therefore, there is no God.
There is no "creator" there is only dumb luck and my thoughts! And so
God created atheists. And Atheists, like the ants ignore, any
revealed knowledge as "wrong" and try to "invent" their own. They deny
any action and reaction. They deny morality or ethics (everything is
survival of the fittest, remember? There is no "punishment" for any
act no matter how hideous or heinous save what man provides.) Hence we
arrive at the rule of politicians "If you don't get caught, there was
no crime". Which brings us full circle back to the church and
Galileo.
So IS "evolution" a proven fact? Not any more than the earth goes
around the sun. Is there action-reaction? Yes one sees it everywhere.
So does that make murder OK? Evolutionists say it does. "Nature" is
full of that kind of thing! But (now think for a minute) does animal
behavior build what we'd call a civilization? Animals have social
structures, but do they have "civilizations"? So just maybe the
revelation of a Higher Science was a little bit about being better,
rather than killing each other over food, mates, and all the rest. But
so many of us are determined to never be better...even a little bit
better.
