The Latin rite of the Catholic Church is today celebrating the feast of St. Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621), a Renaissance Jesuit and cardinal, who most notoriously was one of the Inquisitors who condemned Giordano Bruno to be burned at the stake in 1600 and was involved in the first summoning of Galileo Galilei in 1616 to Rome on orders from Pope Paul V. This summons was not exactly a full-bore “trial.” Rather, Bellarmine wanted to inform Galileo that the Congregation of the Index was about to condemn the heliocentric model of Copernicus by placing this Polish cleric’s famous book On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres on the Index of Forbidden Books. Given that upcoming condemnation, Bellarmine told Galileo that Copernican theories could no longer be “defended or held,” although Catholic astronomers could continue to discuss heliocentrism as a mathematical fiction.
On the later election Maffeo Cardinal Barberini as Pope Urban VIII—who was both a friend of Galileo and had opposed Bellarmine’s condemnation of heliocentrism in 1616—Galileo ventured to propose the Copernican model once more in his epochal Dialogue between the Two Chief World Systems of 1632, which itself led, as everyone knows, to his condemnation by the Inquisition a year later, after which he spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
Although Bellarmine was long dead by that time, his earlier involvement in Copernican controversies has inevitably fused his reputation with the sorry history of Catholic obscurantism, a reputation which is even more besmirched because of his direct involvement in Bruno’s trial—who was also condemned for his cosmological views.
Part of what makes both cases so dismaying is the way both popes and Inquisitors had not read their Thomas Aquinas with proper thoroughness. I am thinking especially of this passage from Thomas’s commentary on Aristotle’s tractate On the Heavens, where Thomas urges caution in accepting Aristotle’s and Ptolemy’s geocentrism (all italics added): “The suppositions that these men [Ptolemaic astronomers] have invented need not necessarily be true: for perhaps, while they save the appearances under these suppositions, they might not be true. For maybe the phenomena of the stars can be explained by some other schema not yet discovered by men” (Book II, lecture 17).
The churchmen of Galileo’s day could perhaps be excused from knowing this text, based on its relative obscurity and on the fact that Thomas’s commentary is considerably longer than Aristotle’s original tract. But Thomas also says something roughly similar in a much more accessible text, his Summa theologiae: “Reason can be employed in another way, not as furnishing a sufficient proof of a principle, but as confirming an already established principle, . . . because thereby the sensible appearances of the heavenly movements can be explained; not, however, as if this proof were sufficient, for some other theory might [also] explain them” (S.T. I q. 32, a. 1, ad 2).
Read and weep.
September 17th, 2012 | 2:03 pm
Bellarmine’s mastery of Aquinas was so widely recognized the he lectured on Parts I and III of the Summa at Louvain as a 24 year old. (I think I have that right…)
September 17th, 2012 | 2:08 pm
Just history? We risk the same sort of embarrassment today when Church leaders profess that we must moderate our use of fossil fuels because of supposed “global warming.” We risk once again being on the wrong side of an unsettled scientific debate. Recall that the geocentric model was the “settled science” of Galileo’s day.
We also risk causing real harm to those for whom we declare a “preferential option.” For if we profess, in the name of Jesus Christ, that the proposed solutions to “global warming” must be adopted, we will surely help cause significant economic disruptions. We rich (almost all of us in the US) will be inconvenienced. The truly poor will be reduced to subsistence or less.
September 17th, 2012 | 3:00 pm
Like Matthew, I don’t think a lack of Aquinas is a good diagnosis here, and I think this shows up as something of a tension in the post — at the beginning you have Bellarmine insisting that Galileo can only use heliocentrism as a mathematical fiction and at the end you quote Aquinas saying — that these astronomical models might well be nothing more than mathematical fictions. What got Galileo into trouble was that he didn’t accept the Thomistic claim — he was sure he had proof he was right — whereas Bellarmine’s whole approach was based on these very principles.
September 17th, 2012 | 3:27 pm
But if I recall correctly, Brandon, Bellarmine rejected both the Ptolemaic system and heliocentrism in favor of the cosmology (such as it was) that derived from scripture. So I think Fr. Oakes’s point is still noteworthy.
Aquinas, the instrumentalist. Who’d have thought!
September 17th, 2012 | 3:30 pm
It’s worth remembering that Copernicus’ book wasn’t “banned,” it was expurgated. Catholics were required to block out portions of the text that were deemed threatening to the faith, which amounted to a few paragraphs of the book. The portion of ‘De revolutionobus’ expounding the heliocentric theory wasn’t among the offending passages.
September 17th, 2012 | 3:46 pm
The Church has been on the defensive ever since, and now seems to defer too much to imperialistic scientists. Sometimes we seem in danger of pegging our theology to the ever changing theories, especially on human origins. It’s an overreaction. Darwin’s theory will never be on the same level scientifically as Galileo’s or Einstein’s .
September 17th, 2012 | 4:29 pm
No, Nick, Darwin’s theory is far better supported than Galileo’s, and actually known with rather more precision than Einstein’s. Look into the statistics of congruent trees sometime.
September 17th, 2012 | 5:48 pm
I am not sure why one would have to weep , and would it be over St. Bellarmine, a first rate philosopher, a Doctor of the church and one of the best educated man of his time, (he was declared Doctor in 1931), or should one rather weep over the foolishness and pigheadedness of Bruno and Galileo? Or perhaps over a serious lack of fact in this rather crude sketch that severely distorts the character of Bellarmine and of what actually happened in both cases with these heretics. There are many books about the Galileo affair, but if one could recommend only one:
The Cambridge Companion to Galileo, Edited by: Peter Machamer, University of Pittsburgh
http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item1155398/?site_locale=en_GB
Clearly, Bellarmine and the Church were NOT wrong and neither has the current pope Benedict XVI admitted that. When he delivered a speech at the La Sapienza University in 1990, Cardinal Ratzinger quoted the historian and philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend:
“The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo’s doctrine. Its verdict against Gaileo was rational and just, and revisionism can be legitimized solely for motives of political opportunism.”
St. Robert Bellarmine pray for us and especially for the ignorant among us.
September 17th, 2012 | 5:55 pm
Ray Ingles,
If we have to weep over Jesuits, including many modern ones, I would rather weep over Teilhard de Chardin and his followers.
September 17th, 2012 | 7:24 pm
I’m with Mr. DeVet. In Michigan people are dying of West Nile virus and the state refuses the justified and moderate spraying of pesticides. And where did I see a lawn sign bragging that the owner never uses pesticides? In upper middle class Huntington Woods just two miles north of another example of liberal civics, Detroit. Sanctimony ain’t science.
September 17th, 2012 | 9:34 pm
Excellent comments, varied and knowledgeable. I don’t know exactly what Galileo claimed. But heliocentrism would be as wrong as geocentrism if it simply replaced the earth with the sun. For neither the earth nor the sun is the center of the universe, nor is either stationary/immovable. It is quite accurate to call both Ptolemy and Galileo wrong.
September 17th, 2012 | 9:55 pm
I’m afraid I must demur from Polaris, Watson, and Monkeyville. No matter how odd Bruno was (which I grant), nothing justifies burning someone at the stake for his beliefs, which Pope Jonn Paul II admitted on several occasions. As to Belarmine and Galileo, in fact Galileo agreed with Belarmine in 1616; but later his discovery of the four moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus convinced him that the Ptolemaic system was henceforth unworkable. Admittedly, he pushed his luck by mocking Pope Urban VIII in his “Dialogue,” which perhaps indicates a self-destructive streak (I don’t know). But still, purely scientific questions should be settled by scientists. Perhaps Bellarmine might have agreed in his better moments; but it seems to me Thomas was much more forthright in admitting that principle; and no matter what anyone says, it was a great tragedy for the Church that there was even a trial at all. Bellarmine was no doubt a great scholar, but that is irrelevant to the blunder of the whole PROCESS. A papal court is not the venue for deciding such matters, which was partly the reason Pope John Paul II reopened the case, whose “judges” “exonerated” Galileo. Telling, I think, that Polaris, Watson, and Monkeyville never mentioned that. Edward T. Oakes, S.J.
September 17th, 2012 | 10:21 pm
It would be unwise for a religion whose people have been boo-hooing about a vague sense of loss of religious freedom to be justifying burning heretics at the stake. Or for a religion defending itself as maintaining an intellectually significant heritage against the claims brilliant atheistic scholars to justify oppressing scientists who have the misfortune of being correct.
Bellarmine may have been sinful and in scientific error. Get over it.
One can look foolish and ignorant defending the mythologies of the past.
One can go to Hell imitating the sins of the Saints.
September 17th, 2012 | 11:04 pm
‘No, Nick, Darwin’s theory is far better supported than Galileo’s, and actually known with rather more precision than Einstein’s. Look into the statistics of congruent trees sometime.’
Ray, I think this would come as news to astronomers and physicists. As to your link, I am certain I can’t refute any of it. I’m equally certain there are scientists who can. In any event, one can never be certain some scientist won’t come along and overthrow the whole thing. The history of science is full of that kind of thing. Thus my point;don’t let science drive your theology.
September 18th, 2012 | 9:05 am
But still, purely scientific questions should be settled by scientists.
But this doesn’t address the problem at all, which is that it was precisely Aquinas’s claims that led Bellarmine and others to take the position they did. Aquinas’s claims do not have the implication that scientific questions should be settled by scientists, a position that would either have not made any sense to Aquinas or would have seemed to him to reduce to obvious triviality, since he would have nothing exactly corresponding to our notion of a ‘scientific question’; they have instead the implication that astronomical models are purely calculation devices and therefore should be used as such rather than taken to be true or false. The trip-up came from sticking too strictly to Aquinas, not the reverse.
Likewise, the papal court (and Bellarmine, who was involved here as elsewhere simply because he was performing his formal duties) got involved not to answer ‘scientific questions’ but to address the question of how Scripture should be interpreted. They certainly got this wrong, but if Oakes were to go back in a time machine and quote Aquinas to them, they would nod and point out that this was exactly what they were saying: that the astronomical models were calculating devices, and could be used as such, and could be improved upon in any which way astronomers pleased, but should not be taken to be more than that. They were determining what they regarded as a theological question, not an astronomical one, and they were as careful as one could possibly want in sharply distinguishing the two. What they did not know, and what Oakes’s advice could not possibly help them to know, was that Galileo and people like him weren’t merely doing astronomy but reshaping the entire relation between astronomy and physics, so that the old assumptions, such as those given in Aquinas’s claims (which, again, were common knowledge and the basis for their whole approach), could no longer be trusted, at least without considerable rethinking.
September 18th, 2012 | 9:22 am
Nick Kangas – ‘Overthrows’ aren’t quite of the nature you seem to suppose. “[W]hen people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was [perfectly] spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.” – Isaac Asimov
Einstein ‘overthrew’ Newton… and yet, even NASA still uses Newtonian dynamics, with just a couple Relativistic fudge factors, to pilot their space probes. A new theory has to account for all the old data. Whatever picture of the universe arises from the reconciliation of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics (they make different predictions in areas we can’t test yet, like around black holes – and so at least one and probably both are wrong), it’ll still look one hell of a lot like our current view.
Defenses of the church are usually quick to point out that many of Galileo’s arguments were in error, and the predictions from his theory weren’t any better than the existing geocentric procedures. It wasn’t until Kepler’s insight that orbits were ellipses, not circles, that the heliocentric system actually demonstrated greater utility and accuracy than the geocentric.
So, yeah, Darwin’s theory was already better-supported when he published than Galileo’s. Even Darwin didn’t get it all right – it wasn’t until the mechanism of inheritance was sorted out that a relatively complete picture emerged.
‘Deny’ and ‘refute’ are different things. I know that anyone can deny a given theory… but why are you so ‘certain’ that evolution can be refuted? Especially if you’re not willing to study it? When people are said to do that about Christianity (*cough* Dawkins *cough*) they come in for a lot of contempt around here. Is the same behavior virtuous with respect to evolution?
September 18th, 2012 | 11:13 am
The book Galileo in Rome was reviewed in First Things some years ago by Stephen Barr. I recommend both the review and the book. I left the book with a vastly improved understanding of the era, the controversy, and the characters. I carried from the book a great deal of sympathy for the position of the religious authorities dealing with a tumultuous era and an uncertain science. Galileo seems to have been right for the wrong reasons and the Church wrong for the right reasons.
September 18th, 2012 | 12:27 pm
Father Oakes,
1) You are making a common mistake of judging previous historical periods by using contemporary moral and ethical norms. Burning of heretics is a complex issue, and most were really nasty characters whose wild ideas or lack of reason and morality was a more serious danger to the Church and to the Christian society than arms and armed conflicts. Hopefully you have read an excellent book:
Characters of the Inquisition, By: William Thomas Walsh
https://tanbooks.benedictpress.com/index.php/page/shop:flypage/product_id/270/keywords/walsh/
2) You are making another mistake of declaring this to be a purely scientific issue, which it was not, and which it never is. In all so called “scientific” matters there is always a moral, ethical and theological dimension, and in Galileo’s case there was also the deep question of Scripture interpretation, which was the crux of the controversy — that is who should be the final authority when interpreting the Scriptures — should it be the Magisterium of the Church or philosophical amateurs, people like Galileo, Darwin, Einstein, or some modern Ph.D.’s (“Philosophy Doctors”) without any serious philosophical training or understanding whatsoever who are allowed to define a world-view for you and me.
3) The “process” was what it was, and from the plethora of available facts it is clear that Galileo was treated quite fairly in the “Club-Med” type bishop’s palace and with free medical care provided by the Church for him. And, yes, many Catholics were surprised by the “process” of Galielo’s exoneration. Pope John Paul II was in many ways an excellent pope, but he was an artistically minded moral theologian, not a hard-core science minded person, and it is not inconceivable that he was hoodwinked by the exoneration judges. Judging by Cardinal Ratzinger’s insights I don’t think the issue is closed.
September 18th, 2012 | 1:20 pm
Ray Ingles,
Nick is correct that Heliocentrism as a theory is far better supported in science & fact than Darwinism. Clearly, planets and sun and their movements can be observed and calculated, whereas Darwinian evolution has not been proven or demonstrated in a single factual experiment or demonstration. In fact, modern findings in biology go against much of what Darwin thought to be true.
We had this debate last year, and Darwinism is not the same thing as Evolution — evolution as a theory existed before Darwin and the crux of Darwinism is about the “random” mechanism of evolution causing change of species as in “macroevolution”. As opposed to Wallace’s view of evolution and “natural selection”, or modern biological views which oppose Darwinian mechanism as unscientific.
These are problems not of science but of correct philosophy — and that is precisely what the Church’s verdict against Galileo was if you care to check the ruling — it said that Galileo’s two famous statements were “foolish in philosophy”. (sic)
I don’t agree with David DePerro that both Geocentrism and Heliocentrism are “wrong” — clearly each is right in its own way and scope, as Bellarmine understood quite well, and as modern space exploration has proven about heliocentrical calculations.
P.S.
Sometimes it is easier to understand things in a simplified argument. The argument of the literal creationist Eric Hovind is quite funny in several ways, but there is a lot of truth in it:
September 18th, 2012 | 1:50 pm
Monkeyville –
Not for the heretics. Or their families. Gotta say, I’m rather glad it’s not considered a complex issue anymore.
(And come to think of it, I’m not actually aware of any cases of Darwin or Einstein “interpreting the Scriptures”, or even claiming any authority in doing so…)
September 18th, 2012 | 3:05 pm
Ray Ingles is right: it was Galileo who was interpreting scripture – and in the middle of the Reformation, no less.
@Fr. Oakes: Galileo (and others) had discovered the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus prior to 1610, well before the facemeet with Bellarmine in 1616. Galileo knew quite well that Jupiter having moons did not demonstrate that the earth moves around the sun. He worked for years to discover an actual empirical proof and never did come up with one that wasn’t bogus.
The phases of Venus put paid to the Ptolemaic model, but not to the Tychonic or Ursine models, which were mathematically equivalent to the Copernican. Meanwhile, the Copernican model was falsified not only by the apparent lack of parallax and unobserved Coriolis effects but by Mars obstinately refusing to submit to Copernicus’ epicycles. That is why the Tychonic system was the favored model by the time Galileo wrote his Dialogue. Meanwhile, Kepler’s model, which was the best one, languished behind a screen of inscrutable prose. Kepler was by far the better mathematical astronomer, but he couldn’t write his way out of a paper bag.
Bellarmine indicated in his letter to Foscarini
If there were a true demonstration that the sun was in the center of the universe and the earth in the third sphere, … we would rather have to say that we did not understand them (the Scriptures) than to say that something was false which has been demonstrated. But I do not believe that there is any such demonstration; none has been shown to me. It is not the same thing to show that the appearances are saved by assuming that the sun really is in the center and the earth in the heavens. I believe that the one demonstration might exist, but I have grave doubts about the other, and in a case of doubt, one may not depart from the Scriptures as explained by the holy Fathers.
IOW, if Galileo or Foscarini had an empirical proof that Copernicus’ mathematical model was also physically true, then we ought as Augustine wrote abandon an untenable interpretation. But he was not about to let Galileo run about interpreting Scripture because he had a hunch that might be merely plausible.
Galileo’s friend, Cardinal Dini, met with Bellarmine (and later with Fr. Grienberger of the Roman College) and reported:
As to Copernicus, [Cardinal Bellarmine] said that he could not believe his work would be forbidden, and that the worst possibility, in his opinion, would be the insertion of a note stating that the theory was introduced to save the celestial appearances, or some similar expression, in the same way as epicycles had been introduced. With this reservation, he continued, you would be at liberty to speak freely on these matters whenever you liked… [Regarding Scriptural passages, Dini] answered that the Holy Scriptures might be considered in this place as simply employing our usual form of speech, but the Cardinal said that in dealing with such a question we must not be too hasty, just as it would not be right to rush into condemnation of anyone for holding the [Copernican] views which I had put before him …
Father Grienberger would have been better pleased if you had first given your proofs before beginning to speak about the Holy Scriptures…
IOW, show us the scientific proofs that the settled consensus science of 2000 years has been overthrown and this new hypothesis is established as fact. THEN we can talk about how to interpret the passages that seem to be contrary.
The problem was that Copernicus had been wrong, too. His insistence (and Galileo’s) that the planetary orbits were pure Platonic circles was flat wrong and required more cycles than the Ptolemaic system it tried to displace.
+ + +
Bruno was condemned on eight counts of heresy, none of which had to do with cosmology. An age which hesitates to execute serial killers naturally quails at execution for treason, but the investigating magistrates spent eight solid years trying to talk Bruno down, so it’s not like anyone was eager to do it. He was not actually even very well informed on astronomy.
September 18th, 2012 | 3:58 pm
YOS –
I rather think that the key point is this is an age that identifies a distinction between heresy and treason. (Well, many places in this age do, anyway…)
September 18th, 2012 | 4:44 pm
Ray Ingles,
Your link to the definition of “fatwa” shows that you don’t have even a basic knowledge of what Inquisition was and about the historical circumstances in which it operated or had to operate as a necessary evil in order to preserve the Christian & Catholic faith and society. (BTW, witch burning was much more prevalent under “Protestant” rule after Reformation.)
No, Darwin did not dare to interpret the Scriptures with any authority, yet many others did it for him. But he was aware of the implications, and finally turned an atheist in desperation. Einstein did interpret the nature of God, and declared himself to be a Spinozian believer. Anyway, I used their names as an example — the problem is that today we have a plethora of individuals and especially philosophically ill-trained scientists who feel “qualified” to interpret anything and everything, including the deepest mysteries of nature and God.
September 18th, 2012 | 5:15 pm
Ye Olde,
Re: “That is why the Tychonic system was the favored model by the time Galileo wrote his Dialogue.”
Actually there is a fairly recent twist, research by physicist Christopher Graney published in the Nature magazine, which proves that Galileo made a “double” error, which makes the whole Galielo affair rather comical scientifically. If Graney is right, it would prove that Galileo should have concluded that Earth didn’t move. Now, if Galileo betrayed his own “research” and observations and decided to attack the Church and the Scriptures anyway, what does it make him as a person and Catholic?
“But had Galileo followed the results of his observations to their logical conclusion, he should have backed another system — the Tychonic view that Earth didn’t move, and that everything else circled around it and the Sun, as developed by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe in the sixteenth century.” …
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100305/full/news.2010.105.html
September 18th, 2012 | 9:50 pm
Monkeyville –
As a guy who doesn’t think torture is justified today to save our society (not that it does or could, though many claim so), I’m afraid I’m going to have to go ahead and disagree with the whole ‘necessary’ bit. I’m with Spee and the others.
September 18th, 2012 | 9:57 pm
Monkeyville – Tell ya what. Let’s hear the non-simplified argument. I won’t bother with that Hovind stuff – you’ve fenced it ’round with weasel words. Anything I dispute, you can just say, ‘Well, that specific one is not really a good argument, but I didn’t mean that one. It’s one of his other points.’
No, I want something concrete. Hit me with your best shot.
I have a suggestion, if you like. See my attempt to discuss the ossicles with harry. He wriggled and obfuscated and stonewalled to avoid addressing them. If you want to impress me that you’re serious, how about you take a crack a pointing out the problem with the standard evolutionary model of the therapsid-mammal transition?
September 19th, 2012 | 10:39 am
Academic duties yesterday prevented me from replying to my critics until this morning (Wednesday), which will represent my last rejoinder on this posting.
My first point will be to insist that one can hardly think of a greater violation of the Golden Rule than burning someone at the stake for his beliefs, no matter how “threatening” they (allegedly) are to public order or the (again alleged) “fact” that the victims were, as Monkeyville puts it, “really nasty characters.” Of course Bruno was not the first, nor was he the last, to suffer this grotesque punishment. My point in highlighting Bellarmine’s role in condemning Bruno was to invite readers to a sober and objective reflection on the factors that would lead churchmen to such a resort to that form of punishment, although the Bruno case was certainly not the gravamen of my post.
As to the Galileo case, it is risible to point out that he got “free medical benefits” and lived in a virtual “Club Med” setting. Really. Nor is it relevant that at the time Galileo lived, heliocentrism had no sure-fire, knock-down proof. Even John Milton, no friend of the Catholic Church, who visited Galileo after the verdict condemntion him to house arrest, admitted as much. For when he wrote “Paradise Lost” he had a scene in which Raphael explains to the just-created Adam the two different cosmologies, geo- and heliocentrism. Naturally Adam asked him: Well, which one is it? To which Raphael replied, rather hedging his (or rather Milton’s) bets: that’s for YOU to figure out!
But hypothetical as heliocentrism remained in the seventeenth century, the whole problem both with Galileo’s summons in 1616 and his later trial is that the onus probandi was placed on him, as if Ptolemy’s astronomy was not equally a “mathematical fiction.” That was the reason I quoted Thomas’s commentary on Aristotle’s De Caelo, for there he clearly recognized the hypothetical nature of geocentrism: “Illorum tamen suppositiones quas adinvenerunt, non est necessarium esse veras” (“Nonetheless, the suppositions these [geocentrists] INVENT need not necessarily be true.”). As an aside, “invenerunt” in Latin means “invented,” but the addition of the prefix “ad” serves as an intesifier, as in, well, “ad hoc.” With only slight exaggeration one might translate the sentence as “The hypotheses that these men spin out …”
Nor does it do any good to point out how the role of Scripture made the Galileo trial more than about a purely scientific, astronomical hypothesis. That was the point of Pope John Paul II’s statement on the Galileo case in 1992, where he said: “Thus the new science [of astronomy], with its methods and freedom of research they implied, obliged theologians to examine their own criteria of scriptural interpretation. Most of them did not know how to do so. Paradoxically, Galileo, a sincere believer, showed himself to be more perceptive in this regard than the theologians who opposed him. ‘If Scripture cannot err,’ he wrote to Benedetto Castelli, ‘certain of its interpreters and commentators can and do so in many ways.’” (Origins, Vol. 22, no. 22, November 12, 1992m p. 372).
For an example of how John Paul II applied this same methodological distinction I refer to this observation he made in 1988: “If the cosmologies of the ancient Near Eastern world could be purified and assimilated into the first chapters of Genesis, might not contemporary cosmology have something to offer to our reflections upon creation? Does an evolutionary perspective bring any light to bear upon theological anthropology, the meaning of the human person as the imago Dei, the problem of Christology – and even upon the development of doctrine itself? What, if any, are the eschatological implications of contemporary cosmology, especially in light of the vast future of our universe? Can theological method fruitfully appropriate insights from scientific methodology and the philosophy of science? Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.” (Letter to the Director of the Vatican Observatory, June 1, 1988: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/letters/1988/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_19880601_padre-coyne_en.html)
Monkeyville will no doubt attibute these remarks to the Pope’s ‘artistic mind” innocent of hard science. I say they reflect the wisdom of a Shepherd of the Universal Church who was also not afraid to judge the sins of churchmen not according to the standards of that day but by self-evident moral norms that hold true for all socities, as he explictly taught in Veritatis Splendor and Evangelium Vitae. Defense of Belarmine using the arguments of moral relativism at least show how deep the presuppositions of postmodernism have penetrated those who think they are defending the Church but are in fact advocating obscurantism.
Edward T. Oakes, S.J.
September 19th, 2012 | 12:01 pm
Ray Ingles,
It is too bad you don’t want to bother with arguments of literal creationists, because, as Hovind says, the majority of the people in the US still instinctively tend to oppose evolution and especially Darwinian evolution, despite the official “learning” that gets showed down the kids’ throats in schools.
You picked ossicles for your argument with Harry, claiming that there is a good evolutionary fossil record, but there is a multitude of other things in nature where the same argument against Darwinism applies. If we wanted to stay on topic in this thread we should be rather using the cosmos, stars, planets, etc.
Nevertheless, as I told you, Darwinism is not the same thing as Evolution, and as Catholic and not a literal creationist in the sense of Hovind, I am not disputing the real facts or the fossil record, not even the Big Bang, although I can understand why somebody like Hovind can have doubts about it. I am disputing the official scientific mechanism of “evolution” , specifically the Darwinian mechanism.
You say in your post to Harry:
“We know how they came about. Through the mindless combination of chance mutations and natural selection. You don’t get to use weasel words. If you doubt that the information to build ossicles got into mammalian DNA by mindless processes, explain why.”
This is what the crux of the matter is, and, to start with, we DON’T know scientifically how we or the ossicles or the stars came about. You are accusing Harry of using “weasel words” but the words “chance” and “mutation” and “natural selection” are all scientific (or rarther pseudo-scientific) weasel words, or what Chesterton called the “long” words science likes to employ to hide behind. (Since most ordinary people and even most scientists don’t really understand their fuller meaning and deeper philosophical implications.)
Finally, it doesn’t help to throw the weight of the argument back at your accuser, forcing him to explain what even you cannot explain! If you believe the Darwinian explanation of the mechanism, fine, but, if you are intellectually honest, and if you really understand the issues, then it would be up to you to explain it to Harry and to me. Otherwise you are not taking it on “facts” or “science” or on “math & logic”, but on sheer confused faith and it is only your unjustified belief or “religion” as Hovind says.
So if you want to justify your belief and your world-voiew to us, then, as I pointed out in my previous threads, explain and scientifically define the meaning of the weasel words you are using, so we can have a meaningful discussion — the scientific/mathematical meaning and the definition of the “mindless process” and especially the words “chance” or “random” which is so glibly used by evolutionary scientists and biologists to “prove” evolution.
September 19th, 2012 | 4:49 pm
Father Oakes,
I am somewhat disappointed. Yes, it takes time and I have duties also, so this will be my last rebuttal in this thread. The Galileo affair is very complex and convoluted and open to all sorts of interpretation.
I agree with you and the pope that the Galileo affair forced the theologians to re-think their argument, and this is how intellectual progress usually happens. I also agree that solid science enriches or purifies theology, but one has to seriously question whether theology and the world-view of simple uneducated people gets enriched by ad-hoc scientific speculation or wild crazy hypotheses. I have a high opinion of St. Thomas, and have no doubt that many scientists until this day “spin out” all sorts of wild hypotheses, Galileo was certainly not immune. I disagree with respect to the character of Galileo and the role he played in the Reformation — the facts paint a very different person from “St. Galileo the martyr of science” of the Reformers’ cult, or even from an honest and “sincere” Catholic you see. Besides, there was more in the whole affair, starting with Copernicus and his mysterious visitor, Accademia dei Lincei , with the involvement of the Masonic societies, or with Galileo’s middle finger still featured on the NASA’s Jet Propulsion website.
I also agree with the teaching of the Church with respect to the sinfulness of its members — none of us are perfect, we are all sinners. But I find it disingenuous when Catholics, often historically poorly educated, willingly paint a black picture of the Church’s past and its sins, as if all the faults were with the Church and none with its enemies, putting all the blame on people like Bellarmine or the inquisitors who were only trying to make the best of the difficult situations or historical circumstances, defending the integrity of the Catholic faith and society to the best of their abilities. Since the Roman times and later in the Dark Ages the Church existed in brutal times, where slaves and human life meant next to nothing to secular kings and civil authorities, yet the Church had to coexist in these difficult circumstances and defend itself the best it could in order to survive. If you had a chance to visit Europe, you may have discovered that many towns and castles had torture rooms, and that executions were a standard form of punishment and deterrent.
Veritatis Splendor is a wonderful encyclical and its fundamental question about the modern crisis of moral relativism is: “What must I do? How do I distinguish good from evil?” (Section 2) Clearly, it deals with moral relativism of those today who deny there is good and evil, like Nietzche, who is thus very popular. The Golden Rule is specifically mentioned in section 100 in the context of “economic matters” and nowhere is it applied in historical criticism. (The encyclical’s purpose is specifically: “understanding of moral demands in the areas of human sexuality, the family, and social, economic and political life…” and “the lack of harmony between the traditional response of the Church and certain theological positions, encountered even in Seminaries and in Faculties of Theology…” section 4) Killing of human beings is not a good thing, whether in war or otherwise, but if you try to apply the universal Golden Rule in the historical context you will quickly run into numerous paradoxes and contradictions similar to pacifism. You will have to condemn Moses for killing 3000 of his kinsmen, his own “friends and neighbours” (Exodus 32) In fact, you will have to condemn God since he ordered Moses to kill them and you will have to accuse God of being a logically inconsistent hypocrite, since He specifically gave Moses a commandment against killing.
Clearly, there is more to such simplistic application of the Golden Rule argument then mere sentimentalism. Indeed, a sober and objective reflection is needed. As William Thomas Walsh concluded, saintly people like Torquemada get a bad rap, when in fact they should be better understood and honoured.
September 19th, 2012 | 11:42 pm
‘ I know that anyone can deny a given theory… but why are you so ‘certain’ that evolution can be refuted? Especially if you’re not willing to study it?
Ray,
Actually, it’s not so much a matter of being unwilling to study as it is being unable. I’m a working man, raising a family and trying to make a living in a field outside of academics. I have neither the time nor the training to discover the truth or error in every field of knowledge. So, I have to rely on authority – just like you. My worldview has been formed by the Catholic Church. Thus, I view all data from whatever field through that filter. In this case, the Church has left me free to accept or reject Darwin’s theory, though with several provisos; we must hold that man’s soul was not created through evolution, Adam and Eve were real, and there was a real Fall. For me, this is difficult to reconcile with Darwin. I think it must be for others as well or we would not have so much controversy. There are plenty of rational people, scientists included, that doubt all or some of the theory. If the theory was so bulletproof, it would have conquered all by now – just like the earth moving around the sun.
September 20th, 2012 | 8:07 am
Monkeyville – Oddly, my response discussing evolution seems to have vanished into moderation.
September 20th, 2012 | 8:33 am
Monkeyville – I sense an inconsistency.
It’s important enough for the enlightened Church to protect “the world-view of simple uneducated people” – since they are so easily led astray and their judgment is not to be trusted – that it justifies torture and execution by burning at the stake.
And yet, you seem to think that because “most ordinary people” “instinctively tend to oppose evolution and especially Darwinian evolution”, that’s somehow evidence that the theory is not correct or well-supported.
So… do you support “the wisdom of crowds” or not?
September 20th, 2012 | 11:03 am
Nick –
Even after Kepler had the key insight about elliptical orbits, it took over half a century before heliocentrism took over in astronomy… and it still hasn’t won over everyone outside astronomy 400 years later. Indeed, allegedly about one in five adults in the U.S. holds to geocentrism, and nearly one in three Russians.
So… yeah. Disagreement by the public isn’t quite the evidence you seem to think it is.
September 20th, 2012 | 11:57 am
Ray Ingles,
No inconsistency. Most ordinary people have enough sense to see through the sophistry. Nick’s response above is an excellent example.
But there is or was still a significant percentage of those who got fooled easily and who become “useful” in spreading the foolishness or depravity to the point of disrupting the normal course of society. There are many examples of medieval sects and individuals, like Adamites who decided to go naked (even Hussites didn’t tolerate them and simply killed them), or Anabaptists who refused to work and waited for the bread from heaven (they didn’t last long either), or Cathars who practised endura or killing by euthanasia. The life in many Cathar villages became paralyzed to the point of depravity and desperation.
And, arguably, the foolishness due to crazy ideas, say like those of Bruno, in the richer, higher or more educated circles of the society had even more significant impact because these classes owned and ruled their serfs and could impel them to adopt their customs and religions. In fact, that is what happened in Reformation after the Augsburg Peace in 1555. The rich Lutheran princes could now freely choose the faith of their people in the areas they ruled. And it were the Lutheran rulers now who could charge Calvinists, Anabaptists, other sects, and witches with heresy.
September 20th, 2012 | 2:40 pm
Monkeyville – I’ll try one more time to see if I’ll be allowed to respond to your comment.
None of those reproduce with occasional variations, and thus have nothing to do with “Darwin’s theory” – which is what Nick specifically mentioned. They may ‘evolve’ in the sense of changing over time, but biological evolution is a more specific form of change over time. No, I think I’m pretty on-topic, actually.
As opposed to short words like ‘transubstantiation’, ‘aseity’, ‘impassibility’, and so forth? If you want to study a subject – certainly if you’re going to intelligently dispute it – you’ll need to get familiar with the lingo. As I noted, Dawkins takes a lot of guff for not using the vocabulary of theology in his works.
Thankfully, the words that seem to trouble you aren’t hard to define or grasp. “Mutation”, for example, is ‘changing of the structure of a gene, resulting in a variant form that may be transmitted to subsequent generations’. Sure, there are lot of types of mutation, ranging from single-nucleotide transcription errors to chromosomal crossover to endogenous retroviruses, but the basic concept’s easy to grasp.
“Chance” isn’t that hard, either. In the context of biological evolution, it means that the content of mutations is uncorrelated with their function. Lots of evidence supporting that. (See, for example, this link and search for the phrase ‘mouse genes’. You’ll find a graph of the genetic distance betwen over 2,000 human and mouse genes… and you’ll see how well the plot fits the bell curve expected from a chance distribution – the same kind of ‘chance distribution’ people happily accept in other fields where they don’t have an axe to grind.)
Hence, the “mindless” bit. Many attempts have been made to try to find examples of non-human mind(s) tweaking mutations, without fruit. I’ve asked for such evidence in the case of the ossicles, but none has been forthcoming.
“Natural selection” is counterintuitive in some ways, I’ll grant. But it’s not that hard to grasp. Mutations – the genetic variations we just talked about – can and frequently do have an affect on the phenotype, the form of the living thing as it develops. Some of those effects will be bad, some will be good – and if it has a positive effect, more copies of it will tend to make it into the next generation. It’s so easy to demonstrate that even the creationists have had to concede that it happens all the time.
September 20th, 2012 | 2:44 pm
Monkeyville –
And as I pointed out to Nick, a substantial number of people “see through the sophistry” of those astronomers who claim the Earth goes around the sun. I’m afraid I don’t trust ‘uneducated’ opinion the way you seem to.
September 21st, 2012 | 12:00 pm
Ray Ingles,
I’ll try one last time.
You pointing to a histogram or a probabilistic distribution of the comparison between human and mouse genes means nothing. Naturally, there is some similarity between the genes of all living organisms, and monkey genes may be very similar to human genes — and what else would you expect in shapes and forms of two similar organisms? Nobody disputes that. The problem is how or by what intelligible mechanism has the mouse evolved into humans, if that is what you are claiming; and you, if you claim to be a Catholic, must also explain, as Hovind pointed out, why the Scriptures insist that all organisms reproduce after its kind and not another — which practically denies evolution of species or macroevolution.
These “long” words like “natural selection”, especially “chance”, trouble not only me, but they have troubled philosophers since the dawn of philosophy and science. In fact, “natural selection” in the Darwiniam context is an illogical verbalism because “selection” implies some intelligence, as Chesterton pointed out, so Darwinian “natural selection” is really an oxymoron.
Words “chance” and “random” are especially troubling. See the basic 5 categories wikipedia gives ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance ) and then try to explore each if you have time. (It may take you years to explore and understand.) The bottom line — chance, especially within the context of science, has puzzled philosophers and mathematicians and it wasn’t until Pascal’s time that science and mathematics of chance or probability acquired some intelligible mathematical meaning. But the controversies about its philosophical meaning have continued and still continue.
September 21st, 2012 | 3:48 pm
Monkeyville –
Ah, but there’s the rub. Similar genes imply similar forms, sure… but similar forms do not imply similar genes. The genetic code maps triplets to amino acids… but many different triplets are ‘synonyms’ for the same amino acid, neutral variations that don’t affect function. (More info, and a fascinating practical application, here.)
Books used to be copied by scribes, and (despite a lot of care) sometimes typos would be introduced. Later scribes, making copies of copies, would introduce other typos. It’s possible to look at the existing copies and put them into a ‘family tree’. “These copies have this typo, but not that one; this other group has yet another typo, though three of them have a newer typo as well, not seen elsewhere…” This is not controversial at all when dealing with books, including the Bible.
Now, this process of copy-with-modification naturally produces ‘family trees’, nested groups. When we look at life, we find such nested groups. No lizards with fur or nipples, no mammals with feathers, etc. Living things (at least, multicellular ones, see below) fit into a grouped hierarchy. This has been solidly recognized for over a thousand years, and systematized for centuries. It was one of the clues that led Darwin to propose evolution. (Little-known fact: Linnaeus, who invented the “kingdom, phyla, genus, species, etc.” classification scheme for living things, tried to do the same thing for minerals. But minerals don’t form from copy-with-modification, and a ‘nested hierarchy’ just didn’t work and never caught on.)
Today, more than a century later, we find another tree, one Darwin never suspected – that of DNA. This really is a ‘text’ being copied with rare typos. And, as expected, it also forms a family tree, a nested hierarchy. And, with very very few surprises, it’s the same tree that was derived from looking at physical traits.
It didn’t have to be that way. Even very critical genes for life – like that of cytochrome C – have a few neutral variations, ‘synonym’ sequences. (Genetic sequences for cytochrome C differ by up to 60% across species.) Wheat engineered to use the mouse form of cytochrome C grows just fine. But we find a tree of mutations that fits evolution precisely, instead of some other tree. (Imagine if a tree derived from bookbinding technology – “this guy used this kind of glue, but this other bookbinder used a different glue…” – conflicted with a tree that was derived from typos in the text of the books. We’d know at least one tree and maybe both were wrong.)
The details of these trees are very specific and very, very numerous. There are billions of quadrillions of possible trees… and yet the two that we see (DNA and morphology) happen to very precisely match. This is either a staggering coincidence, or a Creator deliberately arranged it in a misleading manner, or… universal common ancestry is actually true.
(Single-celled organisms are much more ‘promiscuous’ in their reproduction and spread genes willy-nilly without respect for straightforward inheritance. With single-celled creatures, it looks more like a ‘web’ of life than a ‘tree’. But even if the tree of life has tangled roots, it’s still very definitely a tree when it comes to multicellular life.)
September 21st, 2012 | 3:57 pm
Monkeyville –
Not at all. I’m claiming that they had a common ancestor, and both have diverged from it.
I don’t.
(Fun fact: Hitler claimed that, too – he based his racism on the idea that the human ‘races’ had been created separately. Not directly relevant to this discussion, but interesting.)
I’m reasonably sure that Scriptures insist on that because species don’t usually diverge in human timescales. Thankfully, we have the fossil record, and contemporary examples, like ring species.
For example, the Larus gulls are several subspecies where variants live in a ring around the Arctic. The Herring Gull in the U.K. can interbreed with the American Herring Gull, and the American can interbreed with the Vega Gull in Russia. And so on, until you come to the Lesser Black-Backed Gull in the Netherlands. It basically can’t breed with the Herring Gull. Hybrids are extremely rare and don’t seem to be fertile, like mules.
So, is it a separate species? You could breed it with its relative to the East, and so on. But what if, say, the Vega Gull went extinct? Would you have separate species – or ‘kinds’ – then?
Now, imagine such variations happening across time instead of (or as well as) space, and you’ve got an idea how species actually do form in evolutionary theory.
September 21st, 2012 | 4:02 pm
Monkeyville –
Chesterton engaged in wordplay rather beneath him, there. Darwin coined the term specifically to compare it to ‘artificial selection’ the breeding that everyone was familiar with. Obviously it’s understood as rather like a sieve – something that ‘selects’ items to pass or block, without conscious intent.
Well, obviously, if you’re willing to actually read what he wrote.
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