In last night’s debate, Rick Perry was confronted with the fact (yes, the fact) that something like 98% of climate scientists agree that climate change is happening, and that human activity is involved. Here’s Perry’s devastating riposte:
“The science is not settled on this. The idea that we would put Americans’ economy at jeopardy based on scientific theory that’s not settled yet to me is just nonsense,” Perry said. “Just because you have a group of scientists who stood up and said here is the fact. Galileo got outvoted for a spell,” he said.
Perry’s invocation of Galileo is precious irony indeed. Because Galileo’s problem wasn’t that he was “outvoted” by other scientists. His problem was that his ideas conflicted with those of the Catholic Church. His problem, in other words, was that a group of powerful religious men refused to accept what scientific data showed because it was at odds with their interpretation of the Bible. Sound familiar?
There are many interesting accounts available of Galileo’s struggles with church authorities, and some details remain unclear. But the bottom line is that, because he insisted on advocating heliocentrism over geocentrism (i.e., he insisted that the earth rotates around the sun rather than vice versa), he was convicted on suspicion of heresy.
Galileo was found guilty, and the sentence of the Inquisition, issued on 22 June 1633, was in three essential parts:
- Galileo was found “vehemently suspect of heresy,” namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless at the centre of the universe, that the Earth is not at its centre and moves, and that one may hold and defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture. He was required to “abjure, curse, and detest” those opinions.
- He was sentenced to formal imprisonment at the pleasure of the Inquisition. On the following day this was commuted to house arrest, which he remained under for the rest of his life.
- His offending Dialogue was banned; and in an action not announced at the trial, publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future.
I was also struck by this passage from one of wikipedia’s articles:
Galileo defended heliocentrism, and claimed it was not contrary to those Scripture passages [that arguably suggest geocentrism]. He took Augustine’s position on Scripture: not to take every passage literally, particularly when the scripture in question is a book of poetry and songs, not a book of instructions or history. He believed that the writers of the Scripture merely wrote from the perspective of the terrestrial world, from that vantage point that the sun does rise and set.
I wonder what Rick Perry would say about that.
eb3-fka-ernie-boch-iii says
You have to feel sorry for all the normal republicans out there. Seems worse then then how I feel when I see the nut jobs the Dems have put up in the past.
hesterprynne says
that burning a heretic at the stake is properly called a “landslide victory” for the Inquisition.
seascraper says
Galileo’s view of the universe was probably unworkable at the time, and still has problems for humanity. The church has survived 2000 years because it puts people first. It’s a strange fact but the people who believe in creationism continue to reproduce faster and therefore out-evolve the people who believe in evolution.
tim-little says
Success in evolutionary terms entails the continuation of traits that allow a species to adapt to its surroundings. A species could well evolve itself into extinction if it fails to pass down traits that conduce to adaptability. Think for a moment of a parasite that reproduces well enough that it eventually kills its host. Is that that evolving “better”?
This is of course not to say that creationists, climate change deniers, et al, are parasites per se, but it does bring to light how much of our evolutionary future actually *is* in our control. Are the traits we pass down condusive to our long-term survival or not? And I would include psychosocial traits, too, not strictly biological ones. Will our values and behavior lead us towards survival or extinction?
Of course this would be of little interest to a creationist who expects God to bail us out of any mess we find ourselves caught up in, but to me it implies an imperative for humans to act in ways that promote our long-term chances at survival, specifically through wisdom and compassion for all — including our host, Mother Earth. These seem decidedly *not* to be the values espoused by Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and their ilk.
Christopher says
…is that at least after awhile, this became more about the principle of church authority rather than the substance of the issue at hand.
seascraper says
At some level, authority, even unscientific, has the advantage over anarchy in the health and wealth of the people.
SomervilleTom says
Sure it was about “church authority” — specifically, when that claimed authority flies in the face of evidence and rational analysis.
The south has always claimed that the Civil War was about states rights, not slavery. This, in my view, is a similar argument. Maybe it contains some truth, maybe not, but more importantly it colossally misses the point.
Galileo was prosecuted for offering scientific evidence that Church dogma was, quite simply, wrong. He got off lightly in comparison to, for example, Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake in 1600.
Rick Perry is an embarrassment to the nation and the GOP. Sadly, he and they remain blissfully unaware of their shamefully superstitious ignorance.
rickterp says
but I think I might understand what Perry’s thinking here.
I think what he’s trying to say is that Galileo was a lone scientist with a radical theory that ran counter to the prevailing views of other scientists as well as the dominant institution in that society. In this analogy, Barack Obama is essentially cast in the role of Pope Urban with some climate change skeptic as Galileo. The theological perspective is a red herring.
bostonshepherd says
I think Perry intended the AGW climate-alarmists to play the role of church, with skeptics playing Galileo, e.g., Al Gore = The Spanish Inquisition.
What do you think of the CERN experiment which shows cosmic rays affecting — perhaps controlling — cloud cover?
sue-kennedy says
You’re saying Perry sees himself in the role of the scientist and the scientists in the role of the dogmatical authority?
Wow!
SomervilleTom says
The delusions of the climate change deniers are breathtaking.
kbusch says
Meant to thumbs up and I thumbed down. Sorry sommervilletom.
centralmassdad says
That bostonshepherd thinks that what Perry meant, or what Perry meant?
SomervilleTom says
I invite you to read the Real Climate analysis of the CERN study.
Here’s the takeaway, regarding cosmic rays and climate change:
In short, there continues to be no evidence that cosmic rays compare with anthropogenic forcing in driving climate change.
SomervilleTom says
Apparently, the image tag confused the formatting for the surrounding blockquote. The quote begins immediately after my citation (“… climate change:”), and ends after the figure.
The concluding sentence is my own.
mski011 says
be true, but fundamentally Galileo plays the role of a true scientist. The heresy is disavowing a scientific reality in the face of political/personal pressure. The church (which centuries later absolved Galileo) did not want its supremacy challenged and much of the bickering was personal as much as scientific/theological.
Who are the modern church leaders in a true analogy of Perry’s premise? The moneyed interests that stand to lose if they are forced to change. The fear-mongers who denounce reason in favor of popular fright stand to lose. Yes, even the religious (not the Catholics so much in this case) stand to lose if science is given the place that it used to have in society. Believing global warming science could cast doubt on creationism as it implies the natural world (of which we are part, even our built society) can change the globe. That is, not all cosmic events are solely the province of God. I happen to believe that Christianity (my choice of faith) fits with science quite well, but others, Perry included I’m sure, do not.
What’s more, however Perry’s argument runs into other problems. Namely on HPV. He straddles the science fence by saying he looked at the evidence on HPV, but not global warming. What if the “heretics” like Galileo in his premise, are right and the vaccination has danger? I’m not saying it does and I’m not educated enough on the subject to offer a qualified answer. However, you can’t make an argument like he did on Global Warming side by side w/ HPV w/o having each argument affected by the other’s reasoning.
JimC says
I think his Social Security “gaffe” was deliberate.
michaelbate says
He believed that science and religion were not in conflict, that God gave us a brain so that we could study and understand the wonders of His creation.
I highly recommend Dava Sobel’s book “Galileo’s Daughter” which tells the fascinating story of his life, and that of his daughter, who was a nun at the convent in Arcetri, just outside Florence.
On a personal note, I have a close friend who is an astrophysicist at Arcetri Observatory. Florence is one of my favorite cities, full of beautiful art. The last time I was there I saw an exhibit of Galileo’s instruments.
willb says
The irony of Rick Perry’s Galileo remark is that he exposed himself as not only a dunce in science class but in history too.
The fact is that Galileo’s sun centered universe “theory” was settled science at that time. The Church leaders knew he was right, they just wanted to silence him for fear that the ignorant masses might start to question the Church’s teachings.
So here is Perry, an evangelical conservative Christian, doing the very same thing when it comes to climatology and evolutionm. Keep the masses ignorant.
By the way, the notion that science was not known at that time is simply wrong. Eretosthenes calculated the circumference of the earth in 240 BC. He also calculated the earth’s axis tilt.
No educated person in Galileo’s time could claim an earth centered universe was correct. They just accused him of heresy to shut him up so they could continue to dupe the uneducated.
jconway says
First off Perry is definitely getting it wrong and is using a poor analogy. But many of the comments here are certainly coming from the Richard Dawkins school of history and are also getting several facts wrong. Obviously I am not defending the Church or its actions against Galileo, actions several Popes have openly and repeatedly apologized for. Its a black mark on the faith. But to make this fight a simple fight of rational science v. religious dogmatism obscures several important nuances.
-Re: SomervilleTom and Bruno
Bruno was burned because of his pantheistic beliefs not because he supported heliocentrism. And he was sentenced to death in a civil court by civil judges since his beliefs were threatening to the political order. Obviously this does not justify the criminality of his execution, but he was not executed for the same things Galileo was accused of or executed by the same authorities that opposed him.
-Re: Heliocentrism v geocentrism
The Catholic Church, as someone pointed out by referencing Augustine, has never taken Scripture literally. Rather, it has taken Scripture as the inspired Word of God as transcribed to men, and that much of it is allegorical In many ways the “Dark Ages” is a self-serving term to justify the latter 18th century Enlightenment. In many ways the Middle Ages was a Golden Age of recovery classical science and thought. The Church that opposed Galileo was the same church that was under the spell of Thomism and its rigorous intellectual pursuit of philosophical and spiritual truth.
Additionally much of Catholic thought at this time was influenced by Greek thought including Platonism in philosophy, Aristotelian physics and math, and Ptolemaic astronomy. Geocentrism was never defended from the standpoint of Scriptural dogmatism, rather than defending the Bible the Church was defending pagan scientists like Ptolemy and Aristotle. These were not ‘dark age’ clerics burning people at whim who dared defy the simple minded literal interpretation of Scripture, rather these were learned men who actively understood the classical mathematics and physics that justified geocentrism. And frankly, if all you were armed with was simple geometric tools and a the night sky in front of you, you would draw these exact same conclusions. My agnostic Philosophy of History in Science professor defended Ptolemy from the physicists in the class by pointing out that using his resources, he was actually quite brilliant. Remember these same thinkers had quite accurately calculated the circumference of the Earth, beat Newton to proposing gravitational theories, and obviously knew the Earth was round and had many continents.
The Church was defending Aristotelian physics and Ptolemaic astronomy, NOT, thoughtless literal young Earth creationism and the like. Where they were wrong was in looking at the Jovian moons orbit another body and not make the same conclusion that Galileo did, that the Earth is not the center but orbiting around a body of greater mass and density. Galileo by the way did not de-emphasize the Aristotelian philosophical belief that the circle was perfect and Godly and the center of the circle was where God was, since he still maintained that our Sun was the center of the universe, a belief later disproved as telescopes improved. But the Cardinals denied what they saw before the eyes and viewed it as a threat to their known universe, but in doing so they were trying to defend their classical education and beliefs, a way of thought and life, and their view of natural law. The irony is the men they so emulated would have worked twice as hard to formulate new theories to understand what they saw in the telescope, rather than silence their critics, and in that matter Galileo was the true heir to that tradition while the Cardinals bastardized it.
SomervilleTom says
I’m familiar with these arguments.
As I said earlier, they miss the point. Bruno was burned at the stake. Of course his torturers invented a legal rationale to defend what they were going to do anyway.
I’m sorry, but I suggest that you may be so close to the still-reverberating implications for the religious institution to appreciate how bizarre — and cruel — these horrific actions were.
Your protestations are, in fact, precisely analogous to those offered by defenders of the “traditions” of the deep south regarding the civil war. Since even they appreciate that slavery is evil and cannot be justified, they pen similarly detailed and lengthy explanations of what the conflict was “really” about.
The civil war was about slavery. Period.
jconway says
First off we are not talking about slavery but rather the issue of why the Church opposed Galileo. And in history it is important to remember all the causes of certain actions to ensure not only accuracy, but also so we can learn not to repeat the same mistakes. I am reminded in your comment by the Simpsons episode where Apu is taking a citizenship test, and the moderator asks him what the Civil War was about, and Apu gives a nuanced and accurate answer but is cut off by the moderator who advises him “just say slavery”. To say any one event was about just one thing is to deny that history occurs not in isolation of other events but as a series of events and ideas occurring simultaneously. On the Civil War no doubt that slavery was the primary cause, but the constitutional arguments were essentially about state rights vs federal rights and whether a state had a right to secede, and this question has tremendous consequences for our own present, especially when a candidate we have both ridiculed on this thread proposed secession and is running as a strong 9th and 10th amendment candidate. Can the 13th amendment which ended slavery, the 14th amendment which broadly guaranteed equality under the law, and the 15th amendment which ensured universal voting rights truly be applied to the states? The Civil War arguably answers that question, but it was not until Brown v Board that the court conclusively decided that argument. Ask any Union soldier if they volunteered to save the union or end slavery and the would say the former. In fact none other than President Lincoln said he would rather save the union than end slavery, and he used emancipation as a political tool to advance that end. So the act of simplifying history is in effect dumbing it down to make an easy black and white ideological point. Atheism looks good because the Church killed hundreds in the Inquisition and attempted to suppress modern science. Well, if you look at the history, it was not a church v science debate, but a bad science v good science debate, with the church, equally wrong and reprehensible I might add, on the side of bad science. Bruno was killed mainly for political purposes and for threatening religious beliefs, not for his scientific beliefs. Nowhere does this justify his murder, nowhere does this make the Church look good which acted idly, and it certainly does not make the local authorities look good opposing political and religious freedom. But oppose science they did not, does that make them any less repugnant? Of course not. It does not make Robert E. Lee any less treasonous in his desertion of his nation for his state either, but he was no apologist for slavery and he freed his slaves long before the Civil War began and was far more enlightened on race relations than many of his peers on both sides, which makes him a far more complicated figure than you depicted. But if you view history as a science rather than a humanity, as the academy does, than history is not a morality tale or a nationalistic or ideological tome to be simplified and manipulated, but rather the recording of factual occurrences and the determination of causation and effect.
SomervilleTom says
You write:
I see. So now you deny that the medieval church was against science?
You really are turning handsprings and making yourself into a pretzel to avoid the glaringly obvious reality of what the Church was then and is now. There is zero relationship between the values, practice, and processes of the Church and of science.
I invite you to share anything from the Church comparable to the peer review process that is a foundation of science. I invite you to share any example where a leader in the Church has demonstrated a major fallacy in a core religious belief and been celebrated as a hero as a result — another hallmark of science.
The Church, as it did with Bruno, tortures and kills those who dare challenge its dogma or “authority”.
jconway says
Its not worth having a substantive conversation with you on this subject, which is unfortunate since we agree on a lot of other issues and I usually respect your viewpoint. But instead of responding to my points you make another defenseless claim that the Church, is not only resolutely anti-Science, ignoring the contributions of Gregor Mendel, the priests that run the observatory and have been a key part of CERN, the priests at Catholic higher educational institutions across the country and globe that contribute to science. my friends father, a devout Catholic and a lead researcher at Dana Farber and Harvard Medical School, my college biology professor. Not to mention that Rome was the first denomination of any faith to accept Darwin and to call it fully compatible and complementary with the Catholic faith. Or the fact that the Church, contrary to the Dawkins school, was the sole protector of classical scientific and philosophic thought throughout the ‘dark ages’. It is only due to the dedication of the curia, dedicated monks throughout the old Empire, and to give credit where credit is due the Eastern church as well, that allowed classical science, mathematical, astronomical, physical, and philosophical knowledge to survive. The Muslims to their credit were also instrumental in this and actually preserved ancient Western knowledge and passed it back to the Spaniards and other Westerners during their time in Iberia. But no, keep saying science has all the answer, cherry pick your examples, and continue to ignore facts at your convenience. For a scientific mind, your statements are the hallmark of a bigot, and a stain on your otherwise intelligent commentary here. I could cherry pick atheistic doctors like those that ran the Tuskegee Institute, Dr. Mengele, the other Nazi scientists that performed grotesque and dehumanizing experiments, the Communists who murdered millions with their secular utilitarian philosophy not to mention murdered anyone with political and religious views divergent of theirs, or even the hero of the Dawkins school Crick and Watson who have both advocated sex-selective abortions, aborting the retarded, and aborting homosexuals in their pursuit of a genetically purer human race.
The Church, in recent times, has committed grave errors responding to child abuse and on some of its positions regarding gay and womens rights. Historically, it has committed gray errors in the arena of anti-semetism and silencing those it disagrees with. I have acknowledged this, and never defended it. But the history demonstrates that the Church, then, as now, is not as simplistically anti-science as you would like it to be, and its gray marks are due to personal and political corruption getting in the way of the faith and reason that ought to drive it.
sue-kennedy says
devout Catholic, doctor, white male, madman and Nazi. He committed atrocious acts under the authority of the Nazi’s as Galileo was tried by the authority of the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church has made progress, but still has an uncomfortable relationship with science.
willb says
I think the bottom line is, especially in the context of how and where these remarks were made, do we really want an anti-science President. Someone who thinks the earth is 6000 years old? Someone who thinks that evolution is unproven? Someone who thinks they teach creationism in the Texas public schools?