@Illuminator said:
I'm not the one making that claim. The author of the story made it, not me. As I said in several previous postings on this thread the idea that the universe was created from preexisting matter was common throughout the ancient world. Where did the preexisting matter come from, and when did it appear? I have no idea how the author of the story would have answered that question, but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have been bothered by the idea that the preexisting matter was always just "there."
Here's how I explained it in a previous posting (
#845):
The author of the creation fairy tale clearly cared greatly about the sequence of statements in his story as he went to the trouble of enumerating each of the days of the creation. Each day of the story has clear boundary markers. Each begins with "And God said...", and each ends with "And there was evening and there was morning a <nth> day." There are no such boundary markers around the second sentence of the first paragraph. That's because that sentence does not describe any actions taken by God, but instead describes the state of the universe before the first day. Note that the second sentence is written in past tense. That's because it describes how things were before God began the act of creation. The earth was. The waters were. I maintain that the author of the story wrote it that way deliberately because he believed that the material substances of the earth and the waters preexisted.
@Illuminator said:
Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, and Psalm 104:5 all say that the earth cannot move:
Yea, the world is established; it shall never be moved;
(Psalm 93:1)
These were among the passages cited by the Pope when he turned Galileo over to the Inquisition for the investigation of heresy.
You got that wrong too.
Galileo came to Rome to see Pope Paul V (r. 1605-1621). The pope turned the matter over to the Holy Office, which issued a condemnation of Galileo’s theory in 1616. Things returned to relative quiet for a time, until Galileo forced another showdown.
At Galileo’s request, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, a Jesuit—one of the most important Catholic theologians of the day—issued a certificate that, although it forbade Galileo to hold or defend the heliocentric theory,
did not prevent him from conjecturing it. When Galileo met with the new pope, Urban VIII, in 1623, he received permission from his longtime friend to write a work on heliocentrism, but the new pontiff cautioned him not to advocate the new position, only to present arguments for and against it. When Galileo wrote the
Dialogue on the Two World Systems, he used an argument the pope had offered and placed it in the mouth of his character Simplicio. Galileo had mocked the very person he needed as a benefactor. He also alienated his long-time supporters, the Jesuits, with attacks on one of their astronomers. The result was the infamous trial, which is still heralded as the final separation of science and religion.
Tortured for His Beliefs?
In the end, Galileo recanted his heliocentric teachings, but it was not—as is commonly supposed—under torture, nor after a harsh imprisonment. Galileo was, in fact, treated surprisingly well.
As historian Giorgio de Santillana, who is not overly fond of the Catholic Church, noted, “We must, if anything, admire the cautiousness and legal scruples of the Roman authorities.” Galileo was offered every convenience possible to make his imprisonment in his home bearable.
Galileo’s friend Nicolini, Tuscan ambassador to the Vatican, sent regular reports to the court regarding affairs in Rome. Nicolini revealed the circumstances surrounding Galileo’s “imprisonment” when he reported to the Tuscan king: “The pope told me that he had shown Galileo a favor never accorded to another” (letter dated Feb. 13, 1633);
“he has a servant and every convenience” (letter, April 16); and “the pope says that after the publication of the sentence he will consider with me as to what can be done to afflict him as little as possible” (letter, June 18).
While instruments of torture may have been present during Galileo’s recantation (this was the custom of the legal system in Europe at that time), they definitely were not used. The records demonstrate that Galileo could not be tortured because of regulations laid down in
The Directory for Inquisitors (Nicholas Eymeric, 1595). This was the official guide of the Holy Office, the Church office charged with dealing with such matters, and was followed to the letter.
As noted scientist and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead remarked, in an age that saw a large number of “witches” subjected to torture and execution by Protestants in New England, “the worst that happened to the men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof.”
Infallibility
Although three of the ten cardinals who judged Galileo refused to sign the verdict, his works were eventually condemned. Anti-Catholics often assert that his conviction and later rehabilitation somehow disproves the doctrine of papal infallibility, but this is not the case,
for the pope never tried to make an infallible ruling concerning Galileo’s views.
The Church has never claimed ordinary tribunals, such as the one that judged Galileo, to be infallible. Church tribunals have disciplinary and juridical authority only; neither they nor their decisions are infallible.
No ecumenical council met concerning Galileo, and
the pope was not at the center of the discussions, which were handled by the Holy Office. When the Holy Office finished its work, Urban VIII ratified its verdict but did not attempt to engage infallibility.
Three conditions must be met for a pope to exercise the charism of infallibility:
(1) he must speak in his official capacity as the successor of Peter;
(2) he must speak on a matter of faith or morals;
and
(3) he must solemnly define the doctrine as one that must be held by all the faithful.
In Galileo’s case, the second and third conditions were not present, and possibly not even the first. Catholic theology has never claimed that a mere papal ratification of a tribunal decree is an exercise of infallibility.
It is a straw man argument to represent the Catholic Church as having infallibly defined a scientific theory that turned out to be false. The strongest claim that can be made is that the Church of Galileo’s day issued a non-infallible disciplinary ruling concerning a scientist
who was advocating a new and still-unproven theory and demanding that the Church change its understanding of Scripture to fit his.
The fact is that the earth does move. It spins on its axis, it revolves around the sun, and the entire solar system is revolving around the center of the galaxy. So yes, it is perfectly possible that the facts discerned by the scientific method can directly contradict both the actual words of the Bible and the teachings of the faith.
A non-sequitur fallacy. You seem to be demanding that the Church change its understanding of Scripture to fit yours, making the same mistake as Galileo.
“Methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws,
can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things the of the faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are” (
CCC 159).
The Catholic Church has no fear of science or scientific discovery.