Casey got Galileo Wrong

Fr. Casey's Somewhat Off · Casey got Galileo Wrong · On Friar Review & Babylon Bee

The Galileo Myth
Breaking In The Habit | 21 March 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxddfx-qX1c

1:20 OK, what exactly is ridiculous about Nye and Ham doing a scholastic thing like a Disputatio?

1:28 Contrary to Marr and the pastor, Nye and Ham didn't speak about "religion or science" but about creation or evolution, or possibly flood geology vs billions of years geology.

2:03 He's omitting that there were scientists stating the world was as Tycho Brahe said it was.

2:10 There wasn't enough evidence at the time to prove Heliocentrism.

There still isn't enough evidence now to prove an updated version of Heliocentrism.

But the statement this amounts or amounted "not enough to know which was true" presumes Heliocentrism in some form is true.

Geocentrism has the prima facie case, and that should prevail, as long as there is no conclusive evidence to the contrary.

Prima facie, the universe is as big today as it was yesterday. One could theorise the universe were constantly shrinking every single day, and how this could work out so there was no seeming trace of that shrinking. The reason we do not use that model is, while it is contrary to what appearances prima facie tell, it has no solid evidence to trump the prima facie.

The same is true for Heliocentrism.

2:51 Bosworth is basically pretending the Church of the time was sufficiently corrupt to sentence a man to abjuration and lifelong house arrest for suspicion of two heretical statements, simply because one got angry.

Apart from the idea that 1633 could have dogmatic value and (according to some) be wrong at that, that is about the worst thing one can say about the Church, it paints Pope Urban VIII as a very cynical man. Pretty much the equivalent of politicians today.

3:00 Presenting a new theory for which he did not have sufficient evidence would perhaps be a major no no at a modern faculty of science.

May I remind you, what he got in trouble about was not his scientific credentials, but the very status of being a Catholic Christian.

3:06 When told not to teach things he couldn't prove ... and which contradicted the Bible.

He attacked the Church? The Pope?

Er, no.

He attacked a man known in his work as Simplicio. Pope Urban VIII privately knew this was a portrait of himself, but as he had no twitter account and didn't make any airplane interviews, it would definitely not be easy for the common reader to identify Simplicio as the Pope. Furthermore, if Urban VIII was possibly angry or suspected of being that, he precisely for that reason did not himself participate in the deliberations of the Inquisitors.

As to attacking "the Church" - I don't know what you are talking about.

Fellow scientists? So what? Back then, science did not have a status of sacrosanctity, and neither attacking fellow scientists nor presenting theories he couldn't prove (if that was the sole trouble) would have landed him in trouble with the Church.

The theory about the case here presented paints the 17th C. Church as having Science as their religion and Inquisition as Political Psychiatry, Soviet style. Whatever the merits of such a comparison about the Inquisition, it was at least reserved for things like heresy, sodomy (in the Spanish version), black magic or superstitious oracles. Not for questions of the mere sciences.

3:38 Quotemining. [From St. Robert Bellarmine, about revising the Bible interpretation, if proof necessitated it]

His words continue "but I do not think that such a proof is possible" - and he was so far proven right in that prediction.

3:45 "because his scientific findings were very unscientific"

Definitely not all of them.

Does the Milky Way contain many small stars? Yes.
Does Jupiter have four moons (visible to that telescope)? Yes.
Did he correctly describe a passage of Venus? Yes.

Was he condemned for any of that? No.

Two theses were condemned, as contradicting specifically Joshua 10 and commenting passages in Psalms and Habacuc.

They still do.

They most specifically contradict Joshua 10:12 plus the miracle happening - it would be the only time in the Bible a miracle worker were wrong about what he was supposed to adress with an order from God, and the miracle happened.

3:59 The promise before the court was before the court of St. Robert Bellarmine.

And the words of the saint do not support he made such a promise, but the verdict of the saint as judge is that the two theses are heretical.

4:30 Where he finally produced the evidence we use today to support his system?

More like, where he finally wrote a sincere heartfelt support for his already given retraction.

What you just said sounds like a myth calculated to boost him as a scientist.

The evidence misused today is actually from later people, like Newton or Bradley, von Struve and Bessel.

4:40 Voltaire.

Wiki places him in these categories:
"Personnalité de la franc-maçonnerie française"
"Personnalité de la franc-maçonnerie initiée avant 1800"

This is not without bearing.

Freemasonry thought of itself as a "third party" to avoid the wars between Catholics and Protestants, it began in Protestantism, and it involved early on a fan of Newton. Desaguyliers.

Freemasonry has a cult of "great personnalities" that reminds of Catholic veneration of saints, and from the start, not just Galileo but also Bruno were among them, and consequently the adhesion to Heliocentrism.

Protestantism just before Freemasonry was involved in a similar cult of "martyrs to Papism" (Albigensians and Waldensians figuring as honorary Calvinists for the cause, and war criminal Coligny and son killer Colas added to the list) and in this atmosphere it was very easy to sell Galileo as yet another item. It only required to present Heliocentrism as proven scientific truth, why not one more pious fraud in favour of Protestants? Well, they got what they wanted.

5:42 Let me break this down ...

"St Augustine understood that the story of Genesis shouldn't be taken literally at the expense of empirical observation"

De Genesi ad litteram libri XII says no such thing.

He did support empirical observations over wooden literalism of expressions - like heaven being a vault or a tapestry ... but he did not attack the literality of the six day account. Except on one point, and that was God taking as long as six actual days as opposed to one single moment to create. And that was not due to empirical observation, but to taking a word from Wisdom or Maccabees "omnia creavit simul" as it sounded in his dialect of vernacular Latin (He created all simultaneously, simul retains the Classic sense) instead of what it meant in St. Jerome's (simul or even more vulgar insimul replacing classical iunctim).

6:08 You presented Lamarck as a proponent of Evolution. True enough - but while he was not a freemason, did probably not leave the Church, he was probably a Deist.

His mechanism for evolution is also thoroughly debunked. Except perhaps for very small scale micro-evolution.

Phenotypal qualities you acquire over the course of your life do not pass into the genes of your offspring. Epigenetics has some hereditary qualities, but are very inadequate to explain different species or let alone kinds.

7:01 What Neil deGrasse Tyson means by fully embracing science involves Big Bang, billions of years, Heliocentrism for each solar system, several such in a galaxy, ours being the Milky Way, other galaxies also existing ... and obviously Evolution.

What he calls "most religious people in America" would therefore be most syncretists in the US.

7:11 "applies to a small fraction"

Yes, its predicted apostasy will be prevalent and faith dwindling in the last days ...

8:46 "while it is poetry and theology"

A Vulgate has 1184 chapters.

680 of them are history. Or 673, if you deduct the prophetic chapters in Daniel, which are half of the book.

Prophecy (including 7 from Daniel) is 264 chapters.

Poetry is 150 + 8 (Psalms and Canticles). 158.

Probably all of the rest is theological essays.

1184 - (673 + 264 + 158) = 89 (Solomon, Syrach and St. Paul plus other epistles ... just 89?)

158 + 89 = 147. 147 / 1184 = 12.4 %.

Sorry.

Theological essays are:
31 + 12 + 19 + 51 + 16 + 16 + 13 + 6 + 6 + 4 + 4 + 5 + 3 + 6 + 4 + 3 + 1 + 13 + 5 + 5 + 3 + 5 + 1 + 1 = 233 chapters

This would mean my total was too small:

673 + 264 + 158 + 233 = 1328

10:17 If it seems they contradict, there is, as David Bosworth said, some problem in the understanding of either science or revelation.

I agree with that.

But, here is more. If an understanding of revelation on some point is simply one held by all Church Fathers or all of them who touched the point, then it cannot be the understanding of revelation that is wrong. This means, Young Earth Creationism and Geocentrism are part of Revelation. Geocentrism is also part of directly empirical science. So, that being so, there are lots of people who have the wrong understanding of Science these days - no doubt because they make it their god, or their sole oracle, to the exclusion of revelation and of history.

10:44 reasoning and dialoguing and observing are certainly an incredible resource.

It is as certainly a strawman of Young Earth Creationism to pretend we deny it.

And it is equally wrong to tie this up with Science. You know, Registered Trademark.

I have several reasons against the late Rob Skiba II's Flat Earth model. That it contradicts scientific consensus is not one of them.

So, if you love reasoning, if you endorse dialogue, what's up with your refusing to dialogue with a Fundie?