The idea that science and religion are distinct spheres, or even things that might be in opposition to each other, has been so thoroughly established in our modern consciousnesses that it's easy to forget that in the past they didn't really make such a distinction.
Science and Religion aren't at odds with each other, they never have been.
What has been at odds is religion and scientific discoveries that contradict or disprove the religious story. Heliocentric system flew in the face of the bible, and that created the problem.
Bruno was burned alive for holding fast to the idea that there are more solar systems than just our own, and that the universe is basically infinite, both ideas that contradict the church's story
To say that religion is anti-science would be disingenuous, but to say that religion isn't often at odds with science or that it hasn't stifled scientific progress in the name of maintaining the myths of its teachings would be equally so...
Bruno was burned alive for being a complete prat, and pissing off all the wrong people, actually. Formally, he was condemned because:
> In the spring of 1599, the trial was begun before a commission of the Roman Inquisition, and, after the accused had been granted several terms of respite in which to retract his errors, he was finally condemned (January, 1600), handed over to the secular power (8 February), and burned at the stake in the Campo dei Fiori in Rome (17 February). Bruno was not condemned for his defence of the Copernican system of astronomy, nor for his doctrine of the plurality of inhabited worlds, but for his theological errors, among which were the following: that Christ was not God but merely an unusually skilful magician, that the Holy Ghost is the soul of the world, that the Devil will be saved, etc.
He also has the interesting distinction of being excommunicated by three major denominations (the church of rome, the lutherans, the reform church, and elizabeth/CofE didn't like him much either) which is possibly a unique distinction for his time.
tl;dr: bruno had a seriously abrasive personality, heterodox and incoherent theological views, and the result wasn't pretty. His science, such as it was, had little to nothing to do with it.
Well, it sounds like he was burned alive for some fairly mundane opinions that were not tolerated by the religious authorities who had at that time the power to murder anyone who disagreed with them.
this being a time in which the vatican had the single largest mercenary force in europe, and all. The church wasn't just "the religious authorities". The vatican had been the most stable de-facto state for much of Europe for something close to a millienia at that point.
Heliocentric system flew in the face of the bible, and that created the problem.
Rather, in the face of a specific interpretation of the Bible. There are other literal interpretations of the Bible that are much more in tune with scientific knowledge of astronomy and origins, but they are not well-understood among less educated religious folk that follow the Bible. Likewise, certain interpretations of the Koran lead to terrorism, while other interpretations don't. It's interpretation that matters, especially if believers insist on literal interpretations. Sadly, few people are willing to be open-minded enough to consider the possibilities, and that often goes for all sides of a debate.
True. If I insisted on a totally literal interpretation of NOAA's web site I'd say they were geocentric, with all their references to sunrise and sunset.
> certain interpretations of the Koran lead to terrorism
No, any belief in it or any other religion, leads to killing and oppression. As Old Man Jay says, it's the act of believing, not the belief per-se that's the issue.
When you believe that there's a god above who will reward you infinitely it's going to skew your worldly actions one way or the other. You'll do what you're told, right or wrong, and that's the #1 ingredient for ISIS, Nazis, etc.
> other literal interpretations of the Bible that are much more in tune with scientific knowledge of astronomy and origins
And there are discussion of Star Wars that attempt to explain the Death Star in terms of the economic power of the empire. If you tried hard-enough you could see Winnie-the-Pooh as a messiah-figure and use the story as a creation allegory, but it wouldn't give you any value. You can't retcon fact into a work of fiction.
> all sides of a debate.
Unlike the evening news, having a differing opinion doesn't make something a debate. In real-life the right answer is rarely an average of all answers.
It's easy to dismiss religion, and entirely reasonable to do so, as it is to dismiss alien-made crop circles.
Let's say that blind belief requires a closed mind. Everyone at the end of the day relies on faith at some level or other. Even scientists believe in their hypotheses until their hypotheses are proven wrong. Then they change their beliefs. The fact of the matter is that everyone still believes in something at all times. I have yet to meet a scientist who precludes his everyday thoughts with, "well, then again, it's also possible that we're in the Matrix and this is all a computer simulation, or that I'm not real at all, even though I appear to have agency, etc, etc, but barring all of that, which requires a higher burden of proof, here's what I currently think and believe..."
Scientists do not generally have faith in their hypotheses in the same way that religious believers have faith in the claims of their holy book or their religious leader. That would be an equivocation on the usage of the term 'faith', one usage being merely confidence or trust, which can be apportioned to the available evidence, and the other usage being a religious belief in doctrines regardless of available evidence.
If you start with the conclusion that the claims in your holy book are true and then work backwards from that by reinterpreting it when it seems to clash with the available scientific evidence, that would be exercising religious faith. If you hypothesize something and withhold a certain level of confidence in your hypothesis until it can be tested, you are not exercising faith in the religious sense of the term.
It sounds as if you've taking your conclusion that religious faith must be blind and ignorant and worked backwards from there.
I remain unconvinced that people who consider themselves religious are any worse at adjusting their world view to scientific evidence than people who do not.
I'm only describing how the term faith is used by religious believers. They take a certain set of claims "on faith", and when contradictory evidence comes along there are various reactions, like outright denial, shelving of the issue entirely in the hope of getting answers later (like after you're dead), reinterpretation of the religious claims to better fit the existing models or to be completely unfalsifiable and therefore out of reach of investigation, and full on apologetics.
I've been a religious believer for decades, and have been surrounded by religious believers my entire life. I enjoy talking with them about what they believe and why (when they're willing to engage of course). They can be completely rational and skeptical, appropriately adjusting their worldview according to the evidence with no problems in any other realm except when it comes to the religious claims they have been brought up to believe. The psychology of it is fascinating to me.
And yet you've also never met a scientist who says: "This is my current hypothesis so I've vanquished all possibility of doubt. I'm going to publish it without even testing because it MUST be right."
You should entertain the notion that the word means something entirely different to religious people than to others.
> The fact of the matter is that everyone still believes in something at all times.
Even if that were true, the only reason you're saying it is to show that even scientists make that mistake. You're trying to drag them down to your level, hoping the equivalence lends weight to your unsupported ideas.
The difference, to the degree that belief isn't just an empty word to a scientist, is that it's not seen as a good thing in the scientific community. You might believe that god ensures your slippers remain under the bed where you left them but if you use that in an argument nobody will take you seriously and there's no social pressure to do so.
You should entertain the notion that the word means something entirely different to religious people than to others.
You have a very narrow definition and/or experience of what religious people are like. You should entertain the possibility that there are religious people who are more open-minded than you think.
Even if that were true, the only reason you're saying it is to show that even scientists make that mistake. You're trying to drag them down to your level, hoping the equivalence lends weight to your unsupported ideas.
I don't say this lightly: you have issues, man. We should not propose that we know what's going on in other people's minds. It leads us to become spiteful, frustrated, unhappy people.
> We should not propose that we know what's going on in other people's minds.
Both are you, and incompatible with each other. It seems that you think you should tell other people what's in their minds, but that nobody should tell you what you think...
And yes, we should not under normal circumstances. But when someone tries to tell us something crazy, such as that we are belief focused, we should examine their motives and see if they have a reason to want us to think we do... You obviously do because you're trying to normalize the idea of belief.
> I don't say this lightly: you have issues, man.
Yes, apparently you do. You don't even read the thread again before saying it, to see if you were the one throwing stones.
Indeed - it's shocking how many adherents to these imaginarily-discrete spheres even see room for the separation of philosophy and science. Philosophy requires science to evolve, and science requires philosophy to provide context.
