Re: OT: Jefferson?????????????????????????????????

Howard Duck wrote:
On Wed, 29 Jul 2009 21:13:47 -0400, "Francis A. Miniter"
<faminiter@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Correction. See below.

Francis A. Miniter wrote:
Howard Duck wrote:
On Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:41:47 -0500, Howard Duck <hbduck@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/07/15/jeffersons_support_for_intelligent_design/

or
http://tinyurl.com/lftsqz

also

http://tinyurl.com/myn6t4
--
Howard
Quoting from your latest cite:

"In fact, modern science was actually born out of the Christian belief that God was rational and personal. Early scientists such as Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon, Newton, Pascal, and Faraday, believed in the biblical God of objective truth and order."

That is quite an amazing assertion. Note that it is made baldly without any evidence. No attempt to actually discuss any of the writings of these people. And once again, it is argument by authority: "If Newton believed in God, God must exist."

Now as to Newton, J. D. Bernal wrote: "In fact, modern science was actually born out of the Christian belief that God was rational and personal. Early scientists such as Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon, Newton, Pascal, and Faraday, believed in the biblical God of objective truth and order." From *Science in History* (1954, MIT Press), p. 487.
Sorry. I still had your quote in the copy box. I wanted to quote the following:

"Newton's theory of gravitation and his contribution to astronomy mark the final stage of the transformation of the Aristotelian world-picture begun by Copernicus. For a vision of spheres, operated by a first mover or by angels on God's order, Newton had effectively substituted that of a mechanism operating according to a simple natural law, requiring no continuous application of force, and only needing divine intervention to create it and set it in motion."
Bernal, *Science in History* (1954, MIT Press), p. 487.

As to Galileo, he made a lot of statements to stay away from the Auto-de-fe. But even in 1615, when the brands were getting quite hot, he wrote the following in a letter to Madame Christina of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany:

"Next we come to the proposition that agreement on the part of the Fathers, when they all accept a physcial proposition of the Bible in the same sense, must give that sense authority to such a degree that belief in it becomes a matter of faith. I think this should be granted at most only of those propositions which have actually been discussed by the Fathers with great diligence, and debated on both sides, with them all concurring in the censure of one side and the adoption of the other. But the motion of the earth and stability of the sun is not an opinion of that kind, inasmuch as it was completely hidden in those times and was far removed from the questions of the schools; it was not even considered, much less adhered to, by anyone. Hence we may believe that it never so much as entered the thoughts of the Fathers to debate this. Hence it is not sufficient to say that because all the Fathers admitted the stability of the earth, this is a matter of faith; one would have to prove also that they had condemned the contrary opinion. And I may go on to say that they left this out because they had no occasion to reflect upon the matter and discuss it; their opinion was admitted only as current, and not as analyzed and determined."

Read carefully what he is saying. It is most interesting. First, notice that "at most" in the second sentence. He does not really accept that anything should be an article of faith. And his test for something to be a matter of faith is a full debate of all sides in light of all evidence, followed by consensus of all the Fathers, condemning one view and accepting the other. Galileo is being cute. He knows that in all the Councils of the Church, getting unanimity on anything - whether it is fully discussed or not - was damn near impossible. Take the Council of Nicea and the debate over "homo ousion" vs. "homoi ousion". There was no unanimity. Arius and his followers never conceded the point. So, by Galileo's test, not even this issue, central to trinitarianism, could be considered an article of faith.

The point is, that even as to purely theological matters, Galileo so phrased his test, that nothing could ever be considered a matter of faith. All was open to scientific explanation.

-
Francis A. Miniter

Oscuramente
libros, laminas, llaves
siguen mi suerte.

Jorge Luis Borges, La Cifra Haiku, 6

I regard the whole argument as pointless. Every theory that science
develops is, as it turns out, more a matter of convenience than that
of determining ultimate truth.


I don't know about "ultimate truth", but if a scientific theory can be refined to be a better model of the truth of a particular event, then it is valuable.


As Ian Jefferson Smefferson said above, science is looking for
hypotheses from which may be derived useful projections. But you take
the Copernican hypothesis of a stationary sun about which the Earth
and the other planets of the solar system revolve, that is merely a
convenience of technology. If two points existing in a completely
empty space are in motion about one another, it is purely relative as
to which one may be considered stationary (if either be so
considered).

While you may have two objects going round each other, e.g., twin stars, that is not what is going on in the solar system. The mass of the sun greatly dwarfs the combined mass of the planets and asteroids, so there is no way that the gravitational fields of the planets could cause the sun to go around them while they go around it.

If you would like a valid complication, I can give you one. Earth does travel around the Sun in a more or less circular pattern, but the Sun is also traveling more or less circularly around the gravitational center of the galaxy at the same time. So, if you were to stand still (a possibly meaningless concept) outside of the reaches of the Milky Way and focus a huge telescope on the planet Earth and plot its course, you would find that it described a repeated series of half circles in its peregrinations about the center of the galaxy. The same would be said of the Moon's path around Earth as Earth rotates around Sun.


Assuming an intelligent design of nature does nothing to hinder the
progress of scientific hypotheses. There is no useful debate on the
matter - that is non-science in itself.
--
Howard


--
Francis A. Miniter

Oscuramente
libros, laminas, llaves
siguen mi suerte.

Jorge Luis Borges, La Cifra Haiku, 6
.

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