Kudos to Morano, CFACT and Heartland for their quickly organized and now apparently effective mission. Even with the heavy criticism received, the Vatican seems to have blinked.
Craig Rucker of CFACT writes:
‘According to Vaticanist Sandro Magister, Pope Francis has decided to postpone the publication of his long-awaited encyclical on the environment. The reason, according to Magister, is that the Pope realized that the document in its current state had no chance of receiving the approval of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith under the leadership of Cardinal Gerhard Müller.’
Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga came out swinging against the delegation of climate realists that recently traveled to the Vatican and featured CFACT’s Marc Morano. Politico reports that, “the Pope’s closest adviser on Tuesday slammed climate-change skeptics, blaming capitalist motivations from ‘movements in the United States.’”
Crux reports that Cardinal Rodríguez said that environmentalism is “too tied to a capitalism that doesn’t want to stop ruining the environment because they don’t want to give up their profits.” Cardinal Rodriguez is an adherent of left-wing “liberation theology.”
Cardinalrating.com reports that he has likened global Capitalism to Nazism, declared a fence between the U.S. and Mexico to be comparable to the “Berlin Wall,” called for the complete “forgiveness” of the national debts of developing world nations, and called the American embargo of Cuba “ridiculous.”
Cardinal Rodriguez has been considered a papal candidate himself. “He is young enough, say many Vatican watchers, that he could be considered again.”
The Vatican needs take a hard, independent look at global warming science and ideology for itself and wake up to the reality that the warming campaign’s case is collapsing on its merits. Climate computer models have been wrong for the past 18 years and the weather is historically normal. The proposed solutions would enrich an elite few, but do nothing meaningful to alter the climate.
Capitalism and freedom have done more for the well-being of people and the planet than any other competing political-economic system.
Denying the world’s poor these crucial engines of opportunity, prosperity and human dignity, while starving them of energy, would be a tragic mistake.
History teaches us time and again that Socialism and the centralized planning that go with it are inefficient and cause great suffering.
Hopefully the Vatican is listening to loyal Catholics like Marc Morano and reassessing its position on the climate issue.
There is reason to be hopeful.
Word has it, according to Vaticanist Sandro Magister, Pope Francis has decided to postpone the publication of his long-awaited encyclical on the environment. The reason, according to Magister, is that the Pope realized that the document in its current state had no chance of receiving the approval of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith under the leadership of Cardinal Gerhard Müller.
You can follow this breaking story on Climate Depot.
Does this mean there will be a change in tenor in the upcoming encyclical? Marc’s mission may have caught their attention?
Time will tell.
Great to hear this.
Marc and the team did a great job, Thanks.
It would be wise not to assume too much and consider oneself to know what the motivation for the stated delay and reconsideration are. The Pope probably thought the science was settled . Pope Francis is a Jesuit, renowned scholars. and it may be that the the CFACT mission has caused him to ask some probing questions of his science advisers
I’m very surprised by this reconsideration. When I heard of this ‘encyclical’, I thought it must already be written and cast in stone and thought that CFACT mission was in vain.
Oh, ye of little faith !!
The pope has probably figured out that there is little support for CAGW amongst the young. All this pandering to liberal causes is most likely to try to draw the young in the west back to the church. Lots of support in poor countries doesn’t do much for the bank balance. It won’t be long before he OKs abortion and gay marriage.
Hopefully the Vatican is listening to loyal Catholics like Marc Morano and reassessing its position on the climate issue.
haha! not likely, what is much MORE likely is that they observed the orchestrated push back against the Holy Father’s Encyclical and realized that there was much more organized evil in the world than they had thought. For example:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/13/1384442/-Pope-God-Will-Judge-Climate-Denialists
————
Pope Francis has warned “the powerful of the Earth” they will answer to God if they fail to protect the environment to ensure the world can feed its population.
————
@Jai posts: Pope Francis has warned “the powerful of the Earth” they will answer to God if they fail to protect the environment to ensure the world can feed its population.”
Yeah, the communists have such a good track record of feeding their population. So I guess the powerful leaders of Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea will be answering to God.
Veteran investigative reporter about to blow the lid off this developing story:
http://l.yimg.com/fz/api/res/1.2/MB3LvZDzmqVZQUq93Grgww–/YXBwaWQ9c3JjaGRkO2g9NDQyO3E9OTU7dz01NzI-/http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Qs0c1qipjuw/T0EmD5HuJgI/AAAAAAAALMU/_gTADtl-zjw/s1600/sarduccisfc.jpg
LOL! Loved that guy. Would have made an able representative of Climate Change.
There he is! I was wondering just the other day.
sturgishooper, thanks. Imagine Father Guido Sarducci as a global warming skeptic. That would be a classic routine.
How about Emily Litella rambling on about climate change until showed a plateau v projection graph, then saying, “Never mind!”
PS: Don Novello is still alive. His sister-in-law Antonia was Surgeon General of the US under the elder Bush.
This should be Exhibit “A” whenever anyone asks, “Isn’t this all about the science? What does this issue have to do with politics and/or religion???”
This isn’t about “science” anymore. It hasn’t been about the science for a very long time now.
its very simple:
Obama helps Pope about Cuba.
Pope helps Obama about “global warming”.
Just it. It is the politics, idiot!
Great story. First create the myth of papal endorsement of CAGW. Then create the myth that the Pope has decided to listen to climate realists. Finally, when the Encyclical does get published and there is no endorsement on CAGW the papal alarmists can say, “That was a close shave. But we made the Pope see sense.” Trouble is that none of that can ever be proved. But that won’t stop the speculators and papal alarmists.
Nice try Alba.
(Not really. Actually it was weak, very weak.)
Fact: The Pope has delayed the release of this encyclical. Do you care to explain it, or is it all a conspiracy against the church?
@Alba
Your comment does not make sense to me. Could you please elaborate?
Agreed. Who’s gonna bother figgering out which story he’s referring to? Who created the myth? What’s a papal alarmist?
Tedious, oblique blah, blah, blah.
Projection. Altering the story to suit the facts? Pause, anyone?
I really doubt that the Pope is intimidated by the Cardinal.
More likely, he wants to preserve the image of Papal ‘Infallibility’ by avoiding making very public committments to political positions that may well be proven wrong in the near future.
It would be good if he could avoid such gaffes as those that gave the Church an anti-science image by denying the evidence supporting the Copernican model of the solar system, or those that led to the Protestant Reformation.
The church never denied the Copernican model. They just declared that it hadn’t been proven. Which at the time, it hadn’t been.
The Church most certainly did d*ny the reality of the Copernican model. They were willing to allow it to be discussed, but Galileo was convicted of heresy for stating that the earth moves as a fact, not a simplifying means of calculating planetary motions.
Almost as soon as Copernicus’ 1543 heliocentric book was published by Protestants did the Church regard it as heretical, since it clearly contradicts the Bible. However, De Revolutionibus wasn’t banned outright until 1616.
The Church didn’t officially change its position until the 19th century.
Whether the medieval Roman Catholic church thought that “… it clearly contradicts the Bible” or not, the theory did, in fact, not contradict the Bible. Only those with either a mistaken reading of the original Hebrew or a poor translation of the Greek (Septuagint) translation of that Hebrew and or a mis-reading of the English (or other Modern Language translation) version of the Bible would think that.
The Bible does not say that the Sun orbits the Earth.
Janice,
You are wrong. There is not the least doubt that the Bible repeatedly makes a big deal about the immobility of Earth. If you think it’s a translation problem rather than textual, please show this to be the case, if your knowledge of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek are up to it.
Even worse, the Bible repeatedly makes plain that the Sun moves over (not actually around) the Earth, since earth is not considered spherical. Both Testaments (remarkably in the case of the New) are flat Earth documents, although it appears to be of two minds as to whether Earth is rectangular or circular.
The Early Church Fathers insisted on the biblical flat earth, but latter, under the influence of pagan science and for fear of losing potential educated adherents, the Church finally incorporated a spherical earth into its doctrine, by ignoring the literal words of the Bible, as recommended by Augustine. However, it never abandoned the immobility of the earth, resting at the center of a universe of nested spheres, since the Bible is so adamant on immobility and that model could be fit into the Hellenistic and Ptolemaic cosmology.
The biblical cosmos is however the standard Ancient Near East model, with domed vaults over a flat earth, with “waters” above and below it. The dome has openings through which the moon and sun pass. From it hangs the heavenly host, ie stars, which are anthropomorphic, as is the sun. God Himself operates the levers of the storehouses of rain, snow and other precipitation.
Biology, including evolution, is much easier to read into the literal words of the Bible than are modern astronomy, physics, chemistry or geology. The talking serpents and donkeys, the cud-chewing rabbits, etc, however don’t inspire confidence in its biological credibility, either..
The creation myths in the Bible contradict themselves as well as physical reality.
sturgishooper
False. The first chapter describes the exact sequence of all of today’s known science from the Big Bang and its nuclear physics and gravitational formation of the stars and planets, the creation and movement of the continents and seas, through the evolution of life in the sea, of plants, dinosaurs, mammals and snakes; the atmospheric cleaning by plants and the settlement of land creatures after life began in the sea. Your hatred blinds you.
Later, for latter.
Dear Sturgis Hooper,
Re: “Bible repeatedly makes a big deal about the immobility of Earth. ”
Cite even one Bible verse that supports that assertion.
Janice
Janice,
Five verses spring readily to mind, but there are others: Isaiah 45:18, 1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalm 93:1, 96:10 and 104:5.
I forgot to mention the pillars of the earth, as in Job and elsewhere.
@sturgishooper
Not only was the Church slow to accept Copernicus, it was even slower in changing it’s treatment of Galileo:
http://vaticanobservatory.org/research/history-of-astronomy/54-history-of-astronomy/the-galileo-affair/370-the-galileo-affair
Stephen,
Better late than never, I guess.
The official statement still misrepresents what actually happened, though. The Inquisition ignored the evidence from science then available from Copernicus, Kepler and GG, not just theoretical but observational, because it so clearly contradicted the Bible.
Early Protestants, like Luther and Melanchthon, also criticized Copernicus in the 16th century, but they didn’t ban heliocentrism and after the discoveries at the start of the 17th century, Protestant Europe was more accepting of the new science, taking the work of God over His alleged words, written by men. There were even Copernican Calvinists in the Low Countries.
Sturgis and friends,
That the Bible speaks phenomenologically and not abstract-scientifically is well known and hardly an argument against the Bible. Even as a scientifically educated modern person I might say, quite un-self-consciously, that the sun rises and sets, but I know full well that the earth rotates eastward.
The OT insistence on the immobility of the earth is not in the least meant to address the question of whether the earth moves through space. The question had not been posed at the time! The statements address, rather, such issues as the permanence (at least in a timespan of centuries) of what God had created.
Sure, theologians, church leaders, and laypersons have erred at times by taking the text literalistically — meaning finding a literal meaning in a text apart from the Bible’s own context but in accord with a current question.
It’s hardly surprising that the Bible repeatedly makes its points in terms of the cosmology of its time. What else would any of us expect? That the Bible would pre-figure all of our modern science? The psalms, the visions of the prophets, the early chapters of Genesis, Job, and other writings all build upon what people of the time understood — and they all in various ways subvert the received cosmologies of the times. A hymn to the Egyptian sun-god is transformed into a more profound revelation of the God who created the sun and rules over it.
The church’s errors in these matters are not mainly a matter of mistranslation but of inappropriate interpretation.
I might add that the errors of biblical critics are also mainly a matter of misinterpretation.
RACook,
Your faith blinds you, it would appear. I don’t hate the Bible. I like it. I find however that many who consider themselves Christians prefer to thump it without actually reading and understanding it.
The first chapter of Genesis bears no relation whatsoever to anything remotely resembling science (and neither does the conflicting story in Chapter Two). It’s a reworking of Mesopotamian creation myths. I could go into great detail, but will just skim for you in hopes that the scales will fall from your eyes.
Genesis 1 King James Version (KJV)
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Me: Waters? Where did these waters come from?
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Me: What was the physical source of this light?
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Me: Still no source for the light. How can there be Night and Day, evening and morning, without the sun existing yet? Clearly the author of this story had no concept of the rotation of the spherical earth.
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
Me: The firmament is the dome or vault(s) of heaven. It’s from Jerome’s Latin translation “firmamentum” of the Greek Septuagint “stereoma”, which translates the Hebrew “raqiya”, which is an onomatopoetic word (similar to “racket” in English) which means to “hammer out” a metal sheet into a shape, as for instance a bowl. So this cosmos which you imagine reflects physical reality so well includes a stadium dome over the earth.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
Me: Now we have waters above the dome and waters under it.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
Me: Another evening and morning without a sun.
9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
Me: But of course this is not what actually happened at all. Not even remotely. Nor of course did plants develop in a single day from out of the earth. What really occurred was that first cyanobacteria evolved to use solar energy to make sugar and O2 out of CO2 and H2O. Only much later did green plants evolve, whose chloroplasts are endosymbiotic cyanobacteria. In fact, plants evolved long after animals. Cambrian ecosystems were still based upon cyanobacteria, not green plants.
Besides which, how do these green plants survive without the sun to provide the energy they need for photosynthesis?
Moreover, life does not begin in the sea in this story, but with plants on the land.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
Me: Still no sun, as noted.
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
Me: OK, so now at last we get the sun and the moon, but clearly the author doesn’t know that it is the sun which produces the light needed by plants, nor that the turning of the earth makes day and night. The sun and moon are merely signs.
The stars appear to be an afterthought, but of course there was at least one generation of stars before the sun; more likely two or more.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
Me: The stars are hung from the dome.
18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
Me: Again, not the rotation of the earth.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
Me: So, the flying creatures appear at the same time as swimming creatures, again totally contrary to what actually happened in the history of life on earth.
21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
Me: So, land creatures appeared after the flying creatures. As you know, not how it happened. Flying creatures evolved from land creatures.
25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Me: So, God looks like people. Also, men and women were created at the same time, unlike the creation myth in Chapter Two.
28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Now please explain to me how in your opinion this account of creation can possibly be said to describe “the exact sequence of all of today’s known science from the Big Bang and its nuclear physics and gravitational formation of the stars and planets, the creation and movement of the continents and seas, through the evolution of life in the sea, of plants, dinosaurs, mammals and snakes; the atmospheric cleaning by plants and the settlement of land creatures after life began in the sea.”
It differs from reality in just about every possible way.
Thanks.
I enjoy your comments when based upon what you know.
Dr. Doug,
The problem is that the 17th century and later Church (not just medieval) did and many today who consider themselves Christian do rely upon the Bible as a scientific text. I read it for the purposes for which Paul (or someone using his name) said Scripture was valuable. Among these uses is not science.
I also read it to understand what its authors actually meant, which is nothing at all like what creationists try to twist the words into meaning. Of course the authors’ conception of physical reality was pre-scientific. That doesn’t detract from the value of the stories, philosophy and poetry in the Bible. But unfortunately some people today place value on the wrong parts of the assembled books. That’s to commit the blasphemy of bibliolatry, worshiping their false interpretation of a collection of writings by men (and possibly one woman) seeking to understand the Divine rather than the Divinity Itself.
The creation myths, perhaps surprisingly, come out of Mesopotamia, by way of Ugrit and the Babylonian Captivity, rather than Egypt, but the Egyptian cosmology wasn’t much different. It had the sun going under the earth to return to his place of rising, rather than around the outside of the dome. In the Bible, the Earth is held up by pillars, and there is water under it. The rising and setting of the sun in the Bible aren’t figurative. They’re literal. The sun moves while the earth stands still.
Dear Sturgis Hooper,
Re: your assertions (1) at 2:36pm today — that the Bible says that Sun orbits the earth; and 2) at 3:22pm today — that the Earth does not rotate on its axis or is “immobile;” perhaps, you meant the same by both assertions)
1. I. Chronicles 16:30; Psalm 93:1, and Psalm 96:10 — That the earth is “established” does not = either 1) that the Sun orbits the earth; nor 2) that the Earth does not rotate on its axis.
2. Psalm 104:5 — That God “set the earth on its foundations” does not = either 1) Sun orbits earth; nor 2) earth does not rotate.
The above verses you cite only say that the earth was put into a permanent setting, i.e., its place in the solar system, and that it is solidly established in its properties (e.g., speed of rotation; speed of orbit; distance from Sun and from other planets).
*******************************************************************
Re: Hooper’s Bible Commentary (you at 4:58pm today)
Taking each of your comments, i.e., each “Me …:”
1. Re: “waters” — You apparently take as a given that “God created.” Thus, the source of the waters.
Note: If you merely omitted saying that you do NOT take as a given “God created,” then you make your entire commentary a waste of time for me to respond to.
Logically, if you assumed God did NOT create, then you were silly to write all that!
If you simply do not believe in an Intelligent Designer/God or, you do, but just do not believe that that Designer created the earth, then, you should be forthright and just say so and not waste everyone’s time.
Okay. Assuming from your failing to state that you reject this that you DO take as given that a Designer/God did “create” the heavens and the earth then:
2. Re: light — God created light out of NOTHING. You cannot grasp that concept. Neither can I. Just as with the idea of infinity, I simply accept it. God — can — do — anything. That is the definition of God.
3. Re: Day One’s “night and day” — Now, Mr. Hooper. For Pete’s sake. If God can create the light (which you took as a given — “God created”), then God can make it be light for part of the time and dark part of the time. God can make that happen. Maybe God used a little remote control dimmer switch…. or a clapper…. the mechanism is unknown, but the fact remains: God can do anything, including light/dark without the Sun (created on 4th day).
4. Re: “raqiya” (cf. “raqa'”), i.e., “expanse,” or “sky” — “Raqiya” is “expanse;” which is the term used in Genesis 1:6. 7. It is simply a “vault.” It does not imply that that vault is like a metal dome. While “raqa” can mean “hammered,” it can also mean “spread out.” God, apparently, by a mechanism akin to “hammering” or “trampling,” spread out the molecules of the atmosphere into an enormous space — a “dome.” That dome could be, you know, VERY LARGE. That there is an outer “limit” to space is not counter-science. It is simply an area which science cannot, yet, go. There are only educated guesses about just how big the universe is. Note: beyond any limit, infinity would continue, so, who cares how “big” it is? It’s big. Good enough! 🙂
5. Re: Day Two’s “night/day” — see Item 3 above.
6. Re: “‘Let the land produce vegetation” — You simply declare that you know best. You were there, I take it.
Re: no Sun for photosynthesis, could not trees/vegetation make it < = 24 hours with no Sun (and there was, as you acknowledge above, "light")? We are dealing with the text as written — day/night = 24 hours. If you want to add into it a theory about a "day" = certain millions of years, then, that is another discussion.
Re: Life beginning on land not sea — So? If you are referring to a theory of the origin of life along the lines of Darwinism, it is commonly thought by many who hold to such views that life began on the land, also (maybe, such theorists would say, the first self-replicating molecule spontaneously happened in a warm, muddy, pool, or maybe via a crystal from another planet… whatever, but, the common belief is that a land animal turned into a whale, not vice versa).
Darwinianism is not proven, you know. It is only a theory.
The Genesis account simply disagrees with it.
7. Re: Sun and Moon — 1) That some of their properties/functions are listed does not negate their having other properties/functions. You misread the plain meaning of the text: the Sun and Moon are never declared to be "merely" signs. The specified functions/properties are not mutually exclusive with the earth orbiting the sun nor the moon orbiting the earth, etc… . Your objection is illogical. The age of stars v. Sun is theory only — that has not been proven. That is, there is no evidence disproving the idea that the Sun and the rest of the stars are almost the same age.
8. Re: stars "natan" ("placed" or "set" or "gave") in the sky — does NOT = "hung from a dome."
9. Re: Sun and Moon and stars and day and night — what is written does NOT negate the idea that the earth rotates.
10. Re: birds and fish created on the same day — Your statement: "the history of life on earth" is nonsensical. There IS no book or fossil record or any record that records the complete (or even close to complete) "history of life on earth." There are only theories. The Bible disagrees with the most popular one: neo-Darwinism. “God created…” — anything is possible.
Or are you now going to finally simply acknowledge, this late in the game (and OH WHAT A PAIN THIS HAS BEEN!), that you just don’t believe God created anything at all? If so, sir, you have been dishonest and wasting my time. If no, then, anything is possible.
11. Re: man and woman — 1) “in the image of God” is in “our likeness” = parallel and symbolically and “like” not the exact same. God refers, for instance, in Scripture, to Her “mighty arm.” This is strength, not, (or, perhaps, is!) a giant, invisible, human, arm. Someday, we will know just how we are “like” God in our bodies — for now, all we know for certain is that our physical members are (at least) a parallel for God’s properties. In Genesis 6:6, for instance, it says that “God’s heart was filled with pain.” Well, I highly doubt that God has left and right ventricles and atrium, etc… . But, that we can feel “heart” pain (emotional pain) is because God can, too.
2) Genesis 1 and 2 reconcile very well. Gen. 2 is an expansion on 1. That Gen. 2 does not preclude that Adam and Eve were both created on Day 6.
12. Finally, what you assert at “known science” and “reality” are only guesses and theories about how life on earth began and became what it is. The Bible disagrees with the theory of Neo-Darwinism. You must simply choose what to believe.
The Bible has been proven right intrinsically (i.e., it is a self-authenticating document) by the beyond-coincidence accuracy of its numerous (hundreds of details) predictions (called “prophecies”) which actually came true. The Babylonian captivity of 70 years, etc… are verified fact.
You can choose to disbelieve it, but the Bible has never been disproven by evidence.
************************************************
Oh, Mr. Hooper. This was pure agony. If I had only read what you wrote before I started to carefully parse your “commentary!” I decided to finish once started, but, I will NOT respond to you on this topic any more. While you ask some legitimate questions, you are sloppy to the point of idiocy in some of your remarks. I will not “debate” with someone as slipshod as you. If you do have genuine questions, ASK SOMEONE YOU KNOW (or read scholars of the Bible).
If I thought you were a sincere seeker of truth, I would offer to answer your Q’s via e mail, but I am convinced that you are disingenuously airing your own opinions simply for the sport of it — and it was not fun.
Praying for you (just the same),
Janice
Pope Paul III had 2 bishops assemble all of the documents for Copernicus’s Book and Rheticus, on behalf of Copernicus published the book TO Pope Paul III, who received it.
The book was accepted by the Church from 1542 till 1616 when it was temporarily banned because of 9 sentences, which were fixed and the book was un-banned in 1622.
Galileo’s second trial was for breaking his contract to not teach theology.
Cardinal Bellermine, writing to Foscarini, posited that Copernicus (and Galileo) may be correct and the “understanding” of scripture would have to be reconsidered if Galileo could make the proof.. Galileo stirred everyone up, and left everyone hanging because he failed to prove his theory.
MarkW is correct. The Church, never denied the model, they declared that it was unproven, and if misunderstood, would lead to scandal. Scandal meaning that people who were led astray due to poor instruction may fall into error.
Sturgis,
I enjoyed your commentary on Genesis 1, but I’ll disagree with your “clearly” and “merely”, as in your discussion of verse 16. I don’t think the author was oblivious to the fact of light — daylight in particular — coming from the sun. Perhaps that’s a clue that Genesis 1 isn’t supposed to be a historical chronology, but a theological commentary. Along with much else, there’s a lot going on in the text about God first creating structure (bringing order out of chaos) and then filling it or giving it content. The author makes a point of the heavenly lights being signs, but they’re not “merely” signs; before they are signs, they rule the day and the night — perhaps in parallel with the role of man (male and female) in ruling creation upon the earth, I suppose as a “sign” of God’s rule/dominion, in that people are created in God’s image. (In the ancient near east, kings set up images in the hinterland as signs of their dominion.)
As for your reply to me, I suppose there’s not much that I directly disagree with, but I do see the Bible as more than a human endeavor, and I think that its theological interpretation of the cosmos easily transcends the cosmology of its time, making it freshly meaningful both for its own era and for ours. I agree with you that Christian interpretation and application of the Bible should be attentive to the historical contexts in which the various parts of the Bible were written.
Following up comments by Paul Westhaver and others, part of the context of Galileo was that heliocentrism was promoted at the time not only (or even mainly) by Copernicans, but more by the esoteric hermetic tradition, which claimed descent from the (mythical) ancient Egyptian sage Hermes Trismagistus. The hermetics ascribed divinity to the sun. The Church had a natural reason to be suspicious of heliocentrism, quite apart from science.
As in the case of the Bible, it’s helpful to know the intellectual context of things.
To be clear, I don’t think anyone accused Galileo of association with the hermetics.
Janice,
I’m not surprised that you won’t reply. I’m completely serious, I assure you, and not the least bit slipshod. Rather my reading is exacting. Unlike you, apparently, I read Hebrew and Greek, although not Aramaic. I respect the Bible enough to try to find out what its authors actually meant, rather than blasphemously reading into their words whatever a cult wants to lie and say exists there.
Like all creationist special pleaders, you cherry pick the parts of verses that serve your purpose rather than trying to discover the truth.
For example, you focus on a false interpretation of the Hebrew word translated as “established” in Chronicles. But what the whole verse says is: “Tremble before him, all the earth! The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.”
Similarly with the Psalm passage, in “laying the foundations of the earth”, we have God actually doing that with His own hands. “He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved” (ESV). In the Bible, God literally
sets the pillars of the earth so that it cannot be moved. Spin, so to speak, all you want, but the text means what it says.
There is nothing at all in the Bible, as you so falsely imagine, about the earth going around the sun. There are however many passages showing that in the Bible, the sun moves over the earth. Both the Church and Luther read the Bible and came to that conclusion. I could cite them at length, but nothing will allow you to break free from the chains that bind you.
Evolution is not “just a theory”. It is a fact observed over and over and over again, with theory to explain these observations. The theory is subject to refinement, but the facts upon which it is based are not in dispute. Same as the theory of universal gravitation, atomic theory of matter and theory that germs cause disease.
But in any case, regardless of your anti-scientific opinion about evolution, the fossil record shows plainly that the order of creation in both Chapter One and Two of Genesis, and elsewhere in the Bible, is dead wrong. This fact was recognized decades before Darwin. The sequence of change in living things was called “development” and recognized even by those geologists who opposed evolution on religious grounds, there being no scientific basis for doing so.
As I noted, there were no “green plants” in the Cambrian, but lots of animals. Flying vertebrates did not appear until about 300 million years after fish, although flying insects evolved only about half that long after the appearance of marine invertebrates (insects evolved from crustaceans). Trying to twist the Bible to fit modern science does violence both to real science and true religion.
I assumed from the beginning that you would prove impervious to the truth, so firm a hold does your cult have upon you.
Sturgis,
The burden is on you to produce a document from the “Church” (that would be either the Pope or the Magisterium) that “denied” the Copernican “model”.
Because some priest or bishop says something does not mean he has the authority or knowledge to speak on behalf of the “Church”.
Show me.
Paul Westhaver
May 13, 2015 at 7:11 pm
Apparently you missed my citation of the actual report in full of the board appointed by the Inquisition to decide whether Copernicanism was heretical or not.
As noted already, I quoted from it. For your benefit, I repeat (from the Wiki entry on the Galileo Affair):
On February 24 the Qualifiers delivered their unanimous report: the idea that the Sun is stationary is “foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture…”; while the Earth’s movement “receives the same judgement in philosophy and … in regard to theological truth it is at least erroneous in faith.
This finding formed the basis of the Inquisition verdict that GG was a heretic.
Sturgis,
I missed nothing.
You are guilty of bait and switch. Stick to the point.
I asked you to “produce a document from the “Church” (that would be either the Pope or the Magisterium) that “denied” the Copernican “model”.”
Plenty of people have been convicted of heresy by various tribunals etc, but heresy decision is not a denial of the Copernican model. I asked you to produce a document where the Church denied the Copernican model.
Where is it?
Paul Westhaver (challenging Sturgis)
Read The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus by Owen Gingrich.
He has read Galileo’s actual edits and commentary written within Copernicus book, and found that the eight sentences that were required to be edited were only lightly lined through (so they remain visible) and that only the Copernicus editions owned by readers in and around Rome were edited by lining out those 8 sentences. the rest of Europe either ignored the requirement, or edited them only partially. The book itself was not banned, nor was the (false) idea of circular orbits rejected. Only that his ideas needed to be stated as “theory” rather than an absolute truth like “theology”: Which was the purpose of the dedication and comments on the first page as well. To present a theory.
Taylor Pohlman
May 13, 2015 at 5:18 pm
Sorry, but the FAIL is yours. Helps to keep an open mind and keep looking.
KJV is not the best translation, but if you had bothered to look up what the Hebrew words in that passage mean, you’d see that it says that God actually built the foundation of the earth.
Too bad you didn’t check out the other verses, in which after the foundations are laid, the earth cannot then be moved.
But you’re right I should have led with Chronicles or Psalm, if only to stay chronological.
Dr. Doug
May 13, 2015 at 6:46 pm
How can Verse 16 possibly be interpreted any other way, when the sun doesn’t get created until after there already are day, night, morning, evening and green plants, which need sunlight to live?
The sun and moon are merely markers of day and night, as the chapter states. The sun isn’t perceived as the cause, clearly, because it didn’t exist when day, night, morning, evening and photosynthetic plants already did.
Same goes for the “waters” at the Beginning. H and O couldn’t yet have existed, since there were no stars to make them.
Sorry, again, but it’s simply foolish to try to twist Genesis into science. And worse. If you’re a Christian, it’s blasphemous idolatry, ie worshiping a book over God, whose actual universe bears little resemblance to its description in the Bible.
Sturgis (7:40 pm),
Perhaps you missed my point, which is that the writer of Genesis 1 is not likely to have seen the sun as a mere marker of light that occurs independently.
Doug,
I didn’t miss your point. Clearly as a marker of the day is exactly how he saw the sun. He obviously did not view the sun, or rather the rotation of the earth, as the cause of day and night. He thinks those happen without the sun.
This is understandable, since it becomes lighter before the sun “comes up” and stays twilight after it “goes down” for a while.
But it should be plain that no biblical author understood that the earth goes around the sun while turning on its axis, or that the earth is a planet, or even a sphere. As I noted, remarkably, this is true even for the NT, by which time the Greeks had known that the earth is a sphere for hundreds of years. It’s mostly written in Greek and one of its authors, Luke, is supposed by some to have been a physician from Antioch, who should have known better. Maybe he did, but neglected to tell any other authors he might have known, such as Paul.
Janice Moore
May 13, 2015 at 6:38 pm
Forgot to mention, regarding your claim about the history of life on earth, that your d*nying the fossil record means that you’re not only against biology but geology.
Geologic periods and ages are based upon the first appearance of a fossil genus in the record written in stone. So when you try to argue that science has the sequence of “creation” wrong and the Bible right, you’re arguing against all the actual physical evidence in the world.
The observed fact is that green plants appear in the record long after animals, and in a form that makes it clear they’re at the very beginning of their evolution.
My opinion is that something like a God may or may not have “created” the universe, but there is no evidence whatsoever that such a Being personally made the earth and the organisms which inhabit it. Indeed all actual evidence argues incontrovertibly against that unfounded belief. Any such Being would be unspeakably cruel, astonishingly stupid and incompetent and repulsively deceptive. However you’re free to inject such a Being into the natural process at any point you want. It just isn’t necessary.
Sturgis, what part of the Bible does Copernicus’ book contradict? I was aware that the Church had accepted the prevailing Ptolemaic scientific consensus that the sun orbited the Earth but not that the Prophets had promoted such a position.
RACookPE1978
May 13, 2015 at 8:02 pm
I’ve had the pleasure of discussing Copernicus with Prof. Gingerich, particularly whether he could be considered Polish rather than German.
The fact is that GG was found guilty of heresy for maintaining that the earth actually does go around the sun, which fact I’ve shown in more than one comment here. It’s incontrovertible.
Again, heliocentrism was considered heretical from the very beginning, because it so obviously contradicts so many biblical passages. However, as long as it was sold as a better method for calculating planetary motions, having done away with the equant, it was allowed. After being edited, it was technically available for selected experts to read, but was not endorsed by the Church.
Kepler’s Copernican “Eptiome” remained on the Index until 1835, IIRC.
Crispin in Waterloo
May 13, 2015 at 8:16 pm
Here are a few.
The one cited by Luther against heliocentrists even before Copernicus published his book was Joshua 10:13, also quoted by the Church against GG, in which Joshua stops the sun and the moon.
But there are better examples. Psalm 19:4-6, for instance, which also anthropormorphizes the sun. That this is not figurative is shown by the Book of Enoch, which wasn’t included in the Masoretic Text of the OT (compiled after the rise of Christianity) but was very popular in Jesus’ time, especially among his sect, the Essenes. Except for snippets of it quoted in the NT, it was thought lost until found in the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible, and then the Dead Sea Scrolls. (In Genesis 5, “God took” Enoch, Noah’s great-grandad, and he was no more. This was thought to be like Jesus’ assent to heaven.)
Or Ecclesiastes 1:5, in which the sun hurries to the place where he arose.
Even in Matthew 24:29, we find that the stars will fall from heaven.
It’s simply ludicrous to try to maintain that biblical authors knew that the earth goes around the sun. Or that the earth was a sphere, let alone a planet. There is no evidence to support this baseless assertion, nor should anyone rationally suppose that in the OT at least, there would be any. It’s surprising to me that there isn’t any in the NT either, as to shape.
Paul Westhaver
May 13, 2015 at 7:32 pm
I most certainly have done no such thing. I have repeatedly showed you the incontrovertible evidence that GG was found guilty of heresy for saying that the earth actually goes around the sun.
How many more times do I have to show you? With what I’ve told you, you could easily have found the actual report of the commission set up by the Inquisition to determine whether GG’s stated opinions were heretical or not. It found that they were, and the Inquisition convicted him.
You can read all about it in. among a number of other books, mostly in Italian, McMullin, Ernan (2005). “The Church’s Ban on Copernicanism, 1616”. In McMullin, Ernan. The Church and Galileo. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame. pp. 150–190. ISBN 0-268-03483-4.
But you don’t need to, as I noted because the actual report of the commission was made public in 2014. For the umpteenth time, here is what it said, in English translation:
On February 24 the Qualifiers delivered their unanimous report: the idea that the Sun is stationary is “foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture…”; while the Earth’s movement “receives the same judgement in philosophy and … in regard to theological truth it is at least erroneous in faith”.
If you don’t believe me, here is a link to it, courtesy of Cornell and Christopher Graney. Please read it yourself:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1402.6168
I hope you’ll apologize, but am not holding my breath.
Sturgis, your inability to accept symbolic interpretation of Genesis perhaps binds you.
Genesis 1 King James Version (KJV)
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
—————————————————singularity
The beginning of what, creation yes? So in the beginning no mass as we know it existed. We are talking beyond matter, to the infinite energy, beyond time and space solutions that the singularity demands.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
==============
Logic dictate water here to be symbolic. Creation clearly has no form, is void of relativity mass, all vibration. “Spirit moved” Infinite energy, beyond time and space intelligence moved, or conceived in idea form of the creation.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
=========================================
Infinite energy, beyond time and space intelligence “said” or “spoke” the word” This is vibration, where the manifested absolute, manifests, or noumena becomes phenomena. Light is considered to be the first manifestation. This light is not yet even a physical light, but an almost infinitely subtle light composed of manifest intelligence, or thought, the ideational blueprint of the creation.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
=======================================================
The absolute, God the father, is beyond vibratory creation, not bound by the laws of creation. The light was good, the four fundamental forces, conceived thus far in idea only, were just right for the creation to evolve as planned.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
====================================
The creation manifest, even in its thus far subtle thought form, is that aspect of the absolute God awake and active in creation, the Son, “God created all things through Christ Jesus” The un-manifest Father remains in the darkless dark, the lightless light, the un-manifest, beyond all the laws of the creation.
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
===============================
The absolute is speaking again; “God said” This is a separation of the finer elements of the creation, an impression of the ideal thought vibrations, manifesting in a more gross or limited form.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day
==================================
“As above, so below” The creation, first conceived in the Son, the aspect of the Absolute involved in the ideal creation, is embedded into every part of the creation. The way to the Father is through the Son.
The “days” you object to before the physical Sun, are symbols of definite phases of the process the infinite energy, beyond all vibratory creation took to manifest a vibratory creation.
The bible is deeply symbolic here, but at the same time literal in its idea of Christ, where clearly it separates the physical Jesus, from the Christ. “God created all things through Christ Jesus.”.
Remember, this was 2000 plus years ago. You try and communicate the Big Bang and string theory to that mindset.
.
Sturgis (8:00 pm),
Yes, the Genesis 1 writer wrote in terms of daylight (and night) before the sun was there to rule (and signify) the day. But the sun is then said to become a ‘light’ that ‘gives light’. The prior division of light from darkness becomes embodied in a physical object — part of the process of increasing separation and specification that is a theme of the chapter. Yes, the sun is a sign, but the text makes it more than a sign.
In any case, the writer would certainly have known, if only from shadow and shade, that daylight comes from the sun. As for your mention of twilight, it is localized in the direction of the sun.
The character of Genesis 1 should be understood, partly, in contrast to other creation accounts in the region, where earth and sky and people are formed from the remains of slain gods and the like. The Genesis account speaks much better of the character of a Creator and the dignity of humankind. The writer was saying, “No, the world and we and God aren’t like that; they’re like this…” The sun is not a god; it did not exist from the beginning; it is not even an autonomous source of light.
By the way, my earlier reference to Egyptian rather than Mesopotamian mythology was because Psalm 104 is partly a polemical response to an Egyptian hymn to sun-god Aten.
David A
May 13, 2015 at 9:25 pm
It’s not an inability to interpret Genesis “symbolically”. It’s because there is no reason to do so. I’m responding to what the author actually wrote and obviously thought and comparing it with what is known now, because Mr. Cook claimed that Genesis 1 is an accurate retelling of modern science from the Big Bang through the evolution of life on earth. Which it isn’t, in spades. Biblical literalists should look at what the Bible literally says rather than what their beliefs make them want to see.
The Genesis 1 story is based upon exactly such a god death myth as you mention. The dividing of the land from the sea comes from the Sumerian creation myth, which makes sense in terms of the geography of its area, but less so for the Levant.
You could well be right about the Psalm and the praise song to the sun god Aten. It would be surprising if Hebrew monotheism were not influenced by the brief Egyptian experiment with that concept.
Dr. Doug
May 13, 2015 at 10:21 pm
Sorry. The last reply was also for you.
Too many comments at too great a distance from the reply point.
Paul,
I’m wondering if your inability to accept the fact that GG was found guilty of heresy at his first trial for advocating heliocentrism perhaps stems from a focus on his second trial.
But in that case, there’s even less doubt that then Pope Urban agreed with the finding of his Master of the Sacred Palace that GG was guilty of heresy and his book should be banned, he forced to recant and be subjected to house arrest.
So maybe that’s not it.
One of the best, and most entertaining synopses of the Galileo affair has been put together by Thomas Flynn at: http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown.html?_sm_au_=i5VF4657F1fjt223
Most people completely misunderstand the difficulty of actually proving the motions of heavenly bodies, and almost everyone today with the exception of real scholars of scientific history don’t truly understand what Copernicus was proposing vs. what was being discussed during Galileo’s trial.
Read Flynn’s whole summary. It’s enlightening and entertaining.
There are many misconceptions regarding the position of the modern Catholic Church regarding matters of science.
Would that be the missionary position:
Sturgishooper – Isaiah 45:18
Sorry, but that verse says (KJV): “For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.”
Not sure what is arguable about that for people of faith from a scientific stsndpoint, at least from an earth-centric vs a helio-centric standpoint. Maybe some of the other verses you cited are more on point, but since the first example was a FAIL, I didn’t bother to check further.
Taylor
Sturgis says, David A
May 13, 2015 at 9:25 pm
It’s not an inability to interpret Genesis “symbolically”. It’s because there is no reason to do so.
=====================================================
The intended symbolism is clear within the context of what is written, the logical deductions from it. There is an old saying, scripture interprets scripture. In other words the symbolic portrayal is clear in other passages.
I gave two brief examples in my post.
If you insist the only interpretations is illogical nuttery, then your mind is closed and your argument circular. it means this stupid illogical literal interpretation, therefore the author was stupid and illogical.
An Indian theologian, reading Genesis, would give the same interpretation I gave you. Aspects of what I wrote are the Catholic interpretation as well.
Mark, actually they did deny the Coperican model.
On the Revolutions was declared a banned text because it said that the sun did not move, contrary to statements in the Bible which referred to the sun’s moving through the sky. Even Martin Luthor disliked it for that very reason.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_revolutionibus_orbium_coelestium
Don’t go too far in defending the church. While they were not nearly as bad as many have painted them to be in modern times, they were not innocent of the charges that modern scholars have laid against them.
The court-appointed Qualifiers’ actual report, upon which the Roman Inquisition based its verdict of heresy, was made public last year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair#Deliberation
Their unanimous report was that the idea that the Sun is stationary is “foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture”; while the Earth’s movement “receives the same judgement in philosophy and … in regard to theological truth it is at least erroneous in faith”.
sturgis, thank you for providing the exact citation. You have confirmed my suspicion that Copernicus did not contradict the Bible, but rather disagreed with multiple interpretations of select texts found in it.
Anyone today suggesting that the Sun is fixed in position in the heavens would be considered heretical so on that score Copernicus would lose but for different reasons than in those days.
Crispin,
Copernicus contradicted the plain text of numerous passages in the Bible.
Nowhere in the Bible is there the least hint that the earth goes around the sun. Everywhere in the Bible where the topic comes up, the sun moves over an immobile earth.
The pope is not infallible “full stop”. Only in matters of faith and morals.
Reporters once asked Cardinal Gibbons whether he thought the Pope was infallible. He replied, “Well, the last time I was in Rome, he called me ‘Jibbons.'”
Paul,
Sorry, but you’re wrong.
GG was convicted of heresy for maintaining that Copernicus was physically correct. The idea that the earth actually does go around the sun was considered heretical from the git go. The first opinion to that effect was in 1547, IIRC, but even before publication of the book, his ideas were known from his summary of decades earlier, and was always found heretical. It’s why he didn’t publish until urged to at the end of his life by a Protestant student.
The Church allowed people to read Copernicus’ book before 1616, but only because it permitted planetary motion calculations without the equant. Because he still believed in circular orbits, his method continued to require epicycles, however.
I quoted the precise wording of the board set up by the Inquisition. As noted, the whole report is now available. I would urge you to read it. I haven’t translated it into English (except for the relevant parts previously cited), so have its entirety only in the original Latin and a Spanish translation.
While “Of the Revolutions” was “unbanned” after the offending sentences were deleted, it was not distributed (maybe never printed; not sure about this) in that edition. Anyone wanting to read it had to get permission. The Church didn’t accept the fact of heliocentrism until the 19th century. Don’t recall the date.
No Sturgis. You are wrong and are ignorant of the words you are using, so you are doubly wrong.
You throw “heresy” around like you know what it means and meant in 1633. I refer you to Thomas d’Aquino for the appropriate meaning. You don’t know what “Church” means. You don’t know what “d*ny” means. Furthermore, you don’t know what “model” means, particularly in relation to the case at hand.
You are such a pretentious blow hard, faking your way through wiki history, which anyone can do, misinterpreting the simplest of ecclesiastical terms, misrepresent what MarkW said, and making statements which you refuse to prove. You are worse that Galileo. You can’t prove your own words. You lie by omission, (omitting that the Copernican book was un-banned in 1622) and change what people say.
You are such a attention seeking fraud.
Sturgis the smoke and mirrors wiseacre,
For the 3rd and final time I ask you to prove your words,
The burden is on you to produce a document from the “Church” (that would be either the Pope or the Magisterium) that “denied” the Copernican “model”.
The Italian Inquisition is not the “Church”.
The Qualifiers of the Holy Office is not the “Church”.
You pretend to quite an expert (well.. a wiki expert) on church history and Canon Law…and even English.
Put up or shut up.
sturgis, Paul’s got you on that one. Your story over simplifies and confabulates.
Paul, what are you talking about? You are picking over details and pulling up insults over a fairly mundane historical discussion. If there’s a problem, explain it, don’t blow up over it.
Yeah, it might not be technically “heresy” (I’m not a church scholar so I can’t comment on your quip other than to acknowledge that the word is overused), but the important part of this discussion was that the concept of a stationary sun was banned. I just grabbed the wikipedia entry because it’s easier to reference than other works (I would suggest “A More Perfect Heaven” though).
And Sturgis, Galileo’s case was more complicated, as he was also accused of believing in atoms, which were considered contrary to the sacrament of the Eucharist, but realistically was found guilty of stepping on too many political toes. That’s why I confined my argument to Copernicus, as the his case was as straightforward as these things get, being an unremarkable Polish canon in life and dead and buried before the heat on his book came to life.
Paul,
You’re certainly an expert on blowing hard. I’ve long ago put up. Now time for you to quit babbling or shut up.
The Church means its hierarchy, to include the Roman Inquisition and the Pope. What do you imagine that the Church means?
The incontrovertible fact is that Galileo was found guilty of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church. Anything else you spew is just verbiage.
Why do you refuse to read the document I had to spoon feed you? Don’t read Latin? Doesn’t surprise me.
If you don’t think that the Church found GG guilty of heresy, then why did that organization eventually lift the ban on his Dialogue in 1822? Why later did statements by the Vatican Council in the early 1960s and 1979 imply that Galileo was pardoned, and that he had suffered at the hands of the Church? Why at last, in 1992, did the Vatican formally and publicly exonerate Galileo of any wrongdoing? If it was not “the Church” which had found him guilty.
Your sophistry is amusing.
Crispin in Waterloo
May 13, 2015 at 8:27 pm
Paul has nothing but babbling, ad hominem and blindness to reality he doesn’t like. The fact is that, as I’ve showed over and over, the Roman Inquisition, the highest court of the Church, supported by the Pope, found Galileo guilty of heresy for the express reason that he said the earth moves.
No oversimplification. Just fact. As you could see for yourself by reading the actual court documents. If you were interested in the truth.
Ben of Houston
May 13, 2015 at 8:32 pm
Paul fails to realize that whether I understand what “heresy” meant at that time is totally irrelevant, although I do, and probably better than he, having written at length about the Bruno case. It’s irrelevant because the fact is that the Roman Inquisition and the Pope, that is the entire hierarchy of the Church, found GG guilty of the sin of heresy. The Church leaders who did so obviously understood what the term meant to them in the 17th century. So his babbling makes no sense.
As I said, he’s just making whatever noises he can to distract from the facts that he was wrong.
I don’t feel that I oversimplified because I was responding solely to his false assertion that GG was not found guilty of heresy for saying that the earth goes around the sun, which I’ve shown over and over again that he was, but which fact Paul simply can’t bring himself to accept. Any other charges are beside that point.
But thanks for your further explication of the case, for anyone who might be interested. The Church was just as wrong on the other charges.
sturgishooper
May 13, 2015 at 11:37 pm
“The fact is that, as I’ve showed over and over, the Roman Inquisition, the highest court of the Church, supported by the Pope, found Galileo guilty of heresy for the express reason that he said the earth moves.”
sturgis,
I appreciate your attempt to clarify the history of Galileo’s case, but you are often not getting some details right, which prevents you from replying to Paul (and others) accurately. I also think the two of you are often talking past each other, much like Galileo and the Inquisition did almost 400 years ago.
Galileo was not found guilty of formal heresy but one step below that for implicitly arguing that the sun was stationary. I say implicitly because the Inquisition determined that he believed that the Copernican system was physically true, and the sun’s lack of motion was part of that system. Galileo, for his part, claimed that he did NOT believe in Copernicanism. Basically, he perjured himself and the Inquisition correctly saw through this.
The Inquisition determined that this opinion was scientifically false (“foolish …in philosophy”) because it was impossible. In their opinion, celestial bodies had to move in circular motions and could never be still. Although this reasoning is no longer accepted, they were still correct in saying that the sun’s immobility is impossible. Even Galileo had shown that it rotates. The heretical portion of the belief lay primarily in its contradiction of the passage in which Moses makes the sun stand still. Galileo appeared to be denying a miracle attested by Scripture. Here the Inquisition can be faulted for considering discussions of motion as being a matter of faith and not considering alternative possibilities.
With regard to Earth’s motion, the Inquisition did not declare this heretical. They were on sound scientific footing for rejecting it (“false…in philosophy”) given the scholarly consensus at the time within Aristotelian philosophy AND the lack of physical evidence, such as no feeling of the Earth’s motion nor the observation of parallax. And although the Inquisition certainly never considered the question, Galileo’s theory of tides based on Earth’s spin was easily proven wrong through observation. So Galileo had no real scientific support at the time while the Inquisition did. With regard to doctrine, the Earth’s mobility was merely considered false in faith, not heretical, because many of the apparently contradicted Scripture passages were clearly metaphorical and not literal. But a willingness to possibly contradict Scripture with no solid evidence pointed to a defect in faith. This is a reasonable judgment within the context of the times.
Paul (I think) challenged you to show evidence that the Church rejected the Copernican “model.’ You responded by saying they declared Galileo guilty of heresy for believing it to be true. Here the two of you are talking past each other. The Church never rejected the Copernican system nor considered it to be false because they never attributed any reality to astronomical systems in the first place. They didn’t believe in the Ptolemaic system either. Such systems were used to “save the appearances,” which meant they were calculational devices only. They could not be used, even in principle, to prove or disprove anything. The Inquisition, however, did reject Copernicanism, which is an explicit belief in the truth of Copernican ideas. The Inquisition was well justified in this rejection for the reasons given above, even though some Copernican ideas (Earth spinning and orbiting the sun) turned out to be correct.
.
Brian,
re: May 14, 2015 at 9:17 am
Your analysis is nearly uniformly correct in my opinion.
You seem to have a genuine understanding of the facts and a more subtle understanding of the meaning of the words used. Words matter. It is one thing to parrot words written by others, it is quite another thing to understand them.
I created a very simple statement, using very specific and a limited number of words to betray a simple weakness in the colloquial perception of the Galileo affair. Few people know what the “Church” is. Few people know what heresy” is. Fewer people still know that Galileo was only suspected of “heresy”. Even fewer people beyond that know that many in the educated class in the church hierarchy ( notice I used a small “c”) absolutely accepted the Copernican model including Pope Urban VIII, even before he was the pope.
Sturgishooper is simply an ignorant axe grinder, who, like many, dislike the Catholic Church ( Capital “c”). I am not about to repair his deep seated bigotry. I don’t care. His correction of Mark W was wrong. When you correct people, you better get your facts correct and Sturgishooper just doesn’t understand, I mean understand, what actually took place. He suffers a condition referred to as invincible ignorance, which lets him off the hook to a certain extent. The rest of us just have to put up with it. My intent in replying to this troll was to let MarkW know that he was correct. IMO.
Since you put in the effort to, not only comprehend the nature of the tit for tat there, and understand history, I would like to simple direct you to one thing you brought up. I would suggest a refinement of a stated fact that you may already know. I mean no offense.
wrt With regard to doctrine, the Earth’s mobility was merely considered false in faith, not heretical, because many of the apparently contradicted Scripture passages were clearly metaphorical and not literal. But a willingness to possibly contradict Scripture with no solid evidence pointed to a defect in faith. This is a reasonable judgment within the context of the times.
There are records of letters between the bishops regarding what Galileo said. One bishop stated that he admitted that some bits of Joshua may have been misinterpreted IF Galileo was right. Misinterpreted, not wrong as written. The theologians were quite willing to examine their understanding of the passages. They were not willing to declare that the bible was “wrong”. Hereafter is a direct quote from them.
Cardinal Bellarmine, the most influential member of the Sacred College, writing to Foscarini, after urging that he and Galileo should be content to show that their system explains all celestial phenomena — an unexceptional proposition, and one sufficient for all practical purposes but should not categorically assert what seemed to contradict the Bible, thus continued:
I say that if a real proof be found that the sun is fixed and does not revolve round the earth, but the earth round the sun, then it will be necessary, very carefully, to proceed to the explanation of the passages of Scripture which appear to be contrary, and we should rather say that we have misunderstood these than pronounce that to be false which is demonstrated.
I read this as very conciliatory. It seemed to me that they were relying on Galileo to finish the proof, but he couldn’t. Galileo was smart, but not smart enough to alleviate the burden of proof necessary to precipitate a reexamination of the understanding of the Book of Joshua. Too bad really.
So if by faith in your comment you include the “understanding of scripture” then I apologize for offering this opinion.
The Church (capital “c”) and members of the church have always embraced good science and have been skeptical of the big claims of bad science. Judging by the delay of the encyclical, cooler heads may be prevailing today as well.
Paul,
Re: May 15, 2015 at 5:03 am
I agree completely that Bellarmine was conciliatory to Galileo and was attempting to give him wise counsel as a son of the Church. I doubt that Bellarmine was inviting Galileo to offer proof–he thought such an attempt would be as fruitful as chasing one’s own tail–but there is little doubt that Galileo took it that way.
My reference to a defect in faith referred to the Inquisition’s opinion of Galileo. A willingness to cast doubt on the Bible for such little justification would appear to the Inquisition as a failure to take the word of God seriously enough. It would, more importantly, be taken as evidence that Galileo did not take his own salvation seriously enough. I can almost hear them saying, in modern terms, “You’re willing to risk eternal damnation over this? Really?!!” The effort of the Inquisition was an attempt to snap him back to spiritual reality, as they saw it.
It’s worth noting that Bellarmine’s original action ordered Galileo not to hold or teach the Copernican system as true. Galileo did not tell anyone about this order, including the censor, when his book was up for approval. His failure to disclose this during the process was a clear indication of his defect in faith, and he had no option but to recant when evidence of the order came to light during the Inquisition’s investigation.
Brian,
Hmmm interesting. I never considered that. Inquisitional activity, had at their basis, the salvation of the sinner. I disregarded the notion that Galileo needed a rehabilitation in his faith. I clearly was caught up in the technical histrionics. Ok. I am convinced. WRT to Bellermine, I read in his words as a willingness to reexamine interpretations of Joshua less than an offer, but your point there is also well taken. Galileo was pretty reckless with his own relationships, with his friends, notwithstanding scripture.
Thanks… I like the new ideas adjusting my thoughts on the subject.
Cheers.
“Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga” …
This fellow is truly frightening. It is astonishing that some still do not understand that capitalism is the engine of freedom and prosperity. If this Cardinal wants to share the wealth, then he has many examples of how it is done in Capitalist countries.
Congratulations to Mark Morano and his mission.
Re: Cardinal Rodriguez
Blasting free market capitalism with his hate-thy-neighbor diatribe is to blow to bits the cardboard platform of pretense to honor God’s Word, for capitalism has a rock-solid foundation in Scripture (both the Old and New Testaments).
Having nothing to stand on, all that remains is just a man, screaming… .
The quoted sentence from Cardinal Maradiaga should probably be a little longer. He says “The ideology surrounding environmental issues is too tied to a capitalism that doesn’t want to stop ruining the environment because they don’t want to give up their profits.” rather than ‘environmentalism’ being too tied to a capitalism… a subtle but important difference.
The ideology surrounding environmental issues is too tied to a capitalism
==============
When the Berlin Wall came down, was it East or West Germany that needed to clean up environmentally?
It is only when you generate a surplus (profit) that you have the money to clean-up the environment. until then your only choices are between poverty and the environment.
travel the developing world and compare the garbage on the streets with the developed world. the difference is that the developed world pays people to clean up the trash. the developing world is too busy putting food on the table.
Ever been to Paris?
Good point, Alan Robertson. France’s economy struggles under the heavy shackles of socialism.
@ YOU — How are you?? After reading your account of the OK storms, tigers in the streets, etc…, I prayed. Sure hope all is well. Take care, out there, O “Wu” (lolol).
Malawi is a really poor country and is really clean and neat. It is also full of really nice people.
Have you been to Paris?
Huh? The mind boggles at the stupidity of that statement. For one thing, what does “ruining the environment” have to do with climate? What does “ruining the environment” even mean? If it means real pollution, not the fake pollution CO2, then Communist China is a good example of that.
Besides being a grammatical nightmare, that sentence shows an abysmal lack of understanding of what capitalism is.
It deflects from deforestation going on all around them.
Let’s just wait until the Roman Catholic church does have a policy. Even though speculation is fun.
I got news for Cardinal Rodriguez. Environmentalism is too tied to crony capitalists who have hijacked the movement for their own self serving, self perpetuating purposes. Big multi billion dollar green organizations have turned social investing ion its head. They mobiluze their useful idiots to get legislators elected who will perpetuate in politics thei big scary stories that will keep them relevant and keep the donations flowing.
Charitable organizations can and do own for profit consulting companies so government can return the favours by doling out government contract to through regulators like the EPA. Crony capitalist like big bankers and hedge funds support these organizations to benefit from sustainability subsidies and carbon trading
Government and U scientists sense the consensus and happily j(or unhappily) jump on the bandwagon just to maintain their careers. This is the perfect storm of converging self interest. It has and is hurting a lot of people and it will continue to do so for some time
Will this make any difference? The damage has been done, headlines have been wrought, the thing will be like the IPCC reports, nobody will read it, just the summaries written in advance by the vested interests.
It takes a certain kind of courage to be a front man in the face of the sort of zealot rage that Morano has had to deal with. That and an incredibly thick skin. I would imagine that Anthony Watts, and other prominent skeptics, must have a similar level of fortitude (although it always helps to have facts on your side). The sort of backlash I’ve received just in my own small circle for my stance on this issue makes me all the more grateful for those willing to take the slings and arrows.
Amen. Thank you, dear Anth-ony and Marc Morano and all of you fine people on the front lines of truth in science. You are fighting for our FREEDOM (from what is, at bottom, vicious, liberty-devouring, socialism).
“The sort of backlash I’ve received just in my own small circle for my stance on this issue”
Ditto.
I used to avoid the topic because of this, but I decided I could not stay silent any longer.
Besides, whatever people may think about skeptics and the skeptic community now, I feel certain that vindication is not far off.
Janice & Menicholas,
I sympathize. As a New Yorker, I have a distinct advantage: I’m EXPECTED to be arrogant, obnoxious, and rude. So I just let fly.
Amen. Watts deserves endless credit for his huge contribution to the integrity of science. Morano has made some fine contributions and this one is a real zinger.
There is an alternative.
If Aristotle knew what we know today about how oceans make the climate, how might he convey that meaning to one of his young Greek students?
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/05/13/an-alternate-climate-encyclical/
Apollo, god of music, poetry, art, oracles, archery, plague, medicine, sun, light and knowledge, might tell Poseidon to quit horning in on his action.
Apollo is welcome to the artsy, intellectual stuff. I’m talking winds, waves, storms, heavy duty climate stuff. Oceanus is my only rival.
I wouldn’t want to tick Apollo off. He might go on strike and quit riding his flaming chariot across the sky in protest. Then where would uppity Poseidon be? Not just all wet, but frozen solid!
Yahweh too originally got around on wheels, as depicted on 4th century coins (winged chariot) and referenced in the OT (Ez 1:16-21; 10:2-19 and Dan 7:9). The sun god apparently behaved pretty much the same all around the ancient Near East and Mediterranean worlds.
With this climate issue going around in circles, we shall all become wheels.
And you are giving Apollo too much respect. Now Helios, yes I would be frozen without him!
Helios was but a mere Titan, not a true Olympian!
Pagans too have their theological disputes.
Helios not a true Olympian? When was he ever caught doping?
LOL!
Maybe he just went in for red blood cell packing.
If it were up to me, I’d be looking into Apollo’s Tour de France results!
Apollo surely is the God of Skeptics.
Capitalism is the problem? What are they smoking? The problem here is liars using climate change and other scare tactics to gain as much authority over others’ lives as possible. It’s all political BS.
Bingo
Liars is just the right word. And when one lies in order to extract money from others, or for other sorts of personal gain, it has another name.
Several other names in fact.
Socialists/Communists/Progressives always say Capitalism is the problem. Never fails
I don’t think this is accurate. Case in point – Pope Francis’ closest adviser castigated conservative climate change skeptics in the United States Tuesday, blaming capitalism for their views.
Speaking with journalists, Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga criticized certain “movements” in the United States that have preemptively come out in opposition to Francis’s planned encyclical on climate change. Rodríguez’s comments came at the beginning of the annual meeting of Caritas Internationalis, an association of Catholic charitable groups.
He said many individuals both inside and outside the Catholic Church are awaiting Francis’s encyclical “with hope,” and especially watching how it might impact the United Nations’s December meeting that seeks to reach an agreement on an international climate change pact.
That is Francis’s top stated goal for the encyclical, to encourage Catholics to fight climate change and influence the U.N.’s process.
But Rodríguez singled out the United States as the source of premature criticism, the Globe reported.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/241769-popes-top-adviser-blasts-us-climate-skeptics
If the U.S. economy tanks due climate change policy there won’t be much money to fund any charities.
A group of international globalists who want to do global business so they want a global government to accomplish this.
Does this mean Cardinal Muller is in possession of the graph that shows how wide the gap is between warming model predictions and actual? More importantly, is he the only one in the picture willing to acknowledge what the graph says? Lastly, does it seem like the world is receding from common sense at a faster rate, rather like expansion of the universe?
I would not put a lot of faith (so to speak) in Cardinal Gerhard Müller, who is buddies with the Peruvian instigator of Liberation Theology, Father Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino, but a miracle might happen.
IMO the way to sell climate reality, besides the science, to this Vatican would be to point out how important energy is to lift the poor out of poverty. I suspect that the Vatican however would prefer more poor people and fewer rich, or at least its Liberation Theologians would.
From Climate Depot, I learned that former divinity school student St. Albert (patron saint of hypocrites but definitely not of masseuses) is thinking of converting:
http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/05/04/climate-conversion-al-gore-i-could-become-a-catholic-because-of-this-pope/
Gore: ‘Well I’ve said publicly in the last year, I was raised in the Southern Baptist tradition, I could become a Catholic because of this Pope. He is that inspiring to me.’
Such liberation jargon must be a very powerful tonic in Latin America to deflect from real issues and reforms. It sounds good but does nothing and just buys time, much like certain country leaders engage in.
Thank God, as it were, that there are Latin American thinkers who call BS on Enslavement Theology, masquerading (Marxquerading) as “liberation”.
First, a Papal bull, or in this case an encyclical does NOT fall under infallibly of the Pope.
Next up is we have well over 1000 years of documents and Proclamations by the universal church, and you will NOT FIND ONE that EVER stated the idea that the Earth is a center of our universe is some doctrine.
The idea that such a concept is to be interpreted literally from some scriptural passage is even more laughable. In fact such literal interpretation of scriptures is frowned upon.
This idea that the earth is the center of our planet system has never been, and never was an official Doctrine of the church. As noted you have 1000+ years of one of the most meticulously documented institutions and you NOT FIND ONE such document that states this is an official dogma of the church.
In fact the church up-held the scientific method on this matter. Cardinal Bellamy of the inquisition stated to Galileo that your science and proof fails under scrutiny and until such time I will NOT accept your science.
In other words it was POSSIBLE for Cardinal Bellamy to accept that teaching but Galileo failed based on bad math and Scrutiny. The scientific method was thus up-held by the church.
And today even grade school children know the difference between a circle and an ellipse. Planets don’t go around in circles, and that is WHY Galileo’s math failed (his model was wrong, and Cardinal Bellamy stated as such). It was only until calculus (derivatives) in math was adopted could one use math to explain why the planets speeded up and slowed down (so we had to realize that planets did not go around in perfect circles like Galileo model, and ALSO we required calculus to do the math that explains such motion of the planets.
Next up we all know that the sun is not the center of the universe. Once again why should the church accept something that is clearly wrong? If said church did then you would all be here pointing out that such claims by Galileo are well known by grade school children. The church would have been THUS WRONG. In fact such a position could have held up science for a very long time to get the model of the planets correct.
We also know that the sun is not the center of the universe but ALSO our planets and sun on in “motion”. Galileo claimed that not only is the sun the center of the universe but ALSO was immoveable. The sun and our solar system is clearly in motion, and the sun is not stationary at all. Once again Galileo was VERY wrong.
So clearly Galileo failed on basic math and basic concepts that are well known today – even by grade school children.
And note that the catholic priest Copernicus was able to go off and supposedly toss out all his devoted faith and all of sudden propose and proclaim a system of motion that goes against his very faith? Not a chance! Copernicus was ABLE to purse this idea since no such doctrine of the church existed on this matter.
In fact history records that a presentation to the pope during Copernicus’s time on the Copernican motion system was well received. In fact the pope was not only impressed, but this resulted in giving the presenter a sizable gift. If Geo centricity was an Official church teaching then NO such public endorsement could EVER occur without scandal.
Next up, because a book is on a banned reading list does not mean the book is necessary against the church and MORE important does not necessary make that book fall against the dogma of the church or even official teaching. Such bans and lists are simply a matter of discipline. If the church thinks it is a bad idea to read a book about growing peaches, then they are free to ban such a book. However such ban does not and NEVER meant that such reading is against the doctrine of the church. This is a matter of discipline – not doctrine. So again in terms of dogma, such reading lists do not fall under dogma of the church nor do such bans mean the book falls against official teachings of the church.
The simple matter is the general science community of that time frame (and even going back to Plato and Aristotle) common taught the earth was the center of the universe. This common teaching was not limited by any means to church members, but that of educated people in that time frame.
Because the average priest believes in wood consuming oxygen when a fire burns does not by some magic association mean this is an official teaching of the church!
More important is that a papal bull or even an encyclical DOES NOT necessary fall under doctrine of the church and most certainly does not have to fall under infallibility of the pope. (such documents are often a matter of discipline – not doctrine).
And let’s read the final conviction issued to Galileo – I sure a group of 101 law students will fall on their seats laughing as to how silly the conviction handed down is:
“Suspect of”
Now you can read the on and on, but they start the whole conviction with a caveat! (Suspect of!!!).
The church choose their words VERY VERY carefully. Since they did not have a doctrine on this matter, then they could NOT convict him of teaching against church doctrine, so they called him “suspicious” of doing something wrong – that’s why such a light sentence of house arrest was given.
In fact they put a “big” word in front of suspect.
They used:
“Vehemently suspected of”
Now we DO NOT need to read the rest of the conviction. You can be very suspicious, super suspicious, or vehemently suspicious – but that just means you still just suspicious off doing something! Such a high court does not use the word “suspected of” out of the blue, but in fact VERY carefully choose their words – they had to since no doctrine existed of which to convict him with!
So the church has their doctrine and teaching, they ALSO have a copy of Galileo’s manuscript right inn front of them. The SIMPLE task remains is to quote church doctrine and then his manuscript – really quite something that should be easy!
But no such quoting of doctrine occurred! As Cardinal Bellamy stated in public, we are MOST happy to re-evaluable the interpretation of scriptures if such science could be up-held. You CAN NOT re-evaluate church doctrine – and they NEVER have and would NEVER entertain such an idea. Thus this issue was clearly up for grabs. Church doctrine is NOT up for grabs.
At the end of the day the church had NOTING to convent Galileo with, so they said he is “suspicious” of doing something wrong. And this explains why Pope Urban VIII sent his special blessing to the dying man and why Galileo was buried on consecrated grounds (grounds of Santa Croce in Florence).
So keep in mind Galileo was a “suspect guy”, and no church doctrine existed of which to convent him with.
Regards,
Albert D. Kallal
Edmonton, Alberta Canada
kallal@msn.com
Cardinal Rodriguez – his statements are not directed at the planet warming, then causing devastation to the human population. Instead, he echoed a statement against capitalism right from Christiana Figuere’s playbook.
What else does Cardinal Rodriguez think? That may be more important than the encyclical. What he says here explains a lot about the non-economic, populist babble that has been rattling around in recent years. Or is this just another way of issuing the call to retreat to the mountaintop retreats from reality again?
That picture!
http://mafiatoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/r151092_538084.jpg
The reason, according to Magister, is that the Pope realized……….that half of them do not believe in global warming
….and the other half like to make money
People in the God biz know the difference between what people say and what they know.
Is the real climate science process of checking and evaluation locked up in the Vatican Bank too? Free the science questioning process!
To honor all the freedom-loving and science realist Roman Catholics who are distressed at their leadership’s recent stance and who are often unfairly mischaracterized on WUWT, a reminder to us all of what the essentials of their religion are really all about:
Sister Theresa of Calcutta
A little old woman. What does she know? She knows that the most important thing of all is:
love.
And love will never knowingly serve a l1e.
Thanks, Janice!
You’re welcome, Jose! My pleasure.
I think she was more about making sure people suffered as much as humanly possible. That’s what happens when you move from reality to religion.
I find it amusing that the pope is trying to blend these two religions – Catholicism and CAGW . It’s always a problem trying to find the right balance of endorsement and distain in a collision between make believe worlds.
and lighting lots of candles- god wants you to light lots of candles. It says so somewhere in the bible and the koran
Thank you Janice, your defense of creation, God, and faith is heartening.
Thank YOU, Sal! Your encouragement made my morning.
On the question of changing one’s mind, here in the UK our new Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change is citing Mrs Thatcher’s first raising the issue of global warming (as it was then) as her inspiration in her new role.
But the speech everyone quotes from was made back in November 1989, 25 years ago. I wonder if she would have made the same speech if she knew what we know today?
As someone may have once said “when my information changes, I change my mind” (I think I remember Mrs T quoting it herself), but maybe Ms Rudd belongs to the “inconsistency is the bugbear of small minds” end of one of the variants of the quotation.
“The lady IS for turning,” Lady Margaret Thatcher would no doubt say, according to what she wrote in her final book: Statecraft.
“In 2003, towards the end of her last book, Statecraft, in a passage headed “Hot Air and Global Warming”, she issued what amounts to an almost complete recantation of her earlier views. ***
Pouring scorn on the “doomsters”, she questioned the main scientific assumptions used to drive the scare, from the conviction that the chief force shaping world climate is CO2, rather than natural factors such as solar activity, to exaggerated claims about rising sea levels. *** She recognised how distortions of the science had been used to mask an anti-capitalist, Left-wing political agenda which posed a serious threat to the progress and prosperity of mankind.”
{Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7823477/Was-Margaret-Thatcher-the-first-climate-sceptic.html }
Agree – Thatcher did a 180
This all literally gives me a headache (as in needing the application of some ASA).
I am really glad that the pope won’t damage his credibility by espousing bad science.
When Liberation Theology started it was in response to tin-pot dictators and warlords who were subjugating the population. The problem is that some folks conflate those conditions with capitalism. As we defend capitalism, we don’t want to look like we’re supporting the pigs who murdered Oscar Romero.
It’s complicated folks.
Not for liberation theologians. Here’s what Gutierrez, the founder of LT, has to say about capitalism and capitalists, milder than his acolytes. From Chapter Eight, “Statement of the Questions”, pg. 72:
“Although until recently the Church was closely linked to the established order, it is beginning to take a different attitude regarding the exploitation, oppression, and alienation which prevails in Latin America. This has caused concern among the beneficiaries and defenders of capitalist society, who no longer can depend on what used to be – whether consciously or unconsciously – one of their mainstays.”
His mainstay OTOH is Marxist class struggle.
Words are slippery and are misused by folks on every side of the issue.
The conditions that caused liberation theology were much much worse than those that caused the Boston Tea Party.
Conditions in some parts of Latin America were no doubt worse in some ways than in the North American colonies, but LT’s emphasis on attacking capitalism is totally misplaced. The oppressive oligarchs in Latin America could operate because of a lack of the middle class there which capitalism allowed to develop in North America.
Exactly so.
As a long time practicing conservative Catholic, physicist / engineer, I am well aware of the science and the “infallibility” doctrine. That doctrine is LIMITED to matters of “faith and morals” for members of the Church. That doctrine is even more heavily constrained by procedures specified in church law. It is HIGHLY unlikely any Pope would risk his liturgical authority and reputation of the church by making definitive statements about science…. especially being well aware of the history of science where the only enduring certainty is that reality eventually proves all theories false, flawed or limited.
The most telling part of this entire story is the impact of “liberation theology” on Christianity. Multiple Bishops have been excommunicated over the years due to this modern schism, driven by socialism. The core of Christianity is love, charity, compassion…. It is easy for socialists to lead the gullible to think “if only government would force people to…”
In this context, if only government would ‘make’ people do good re climate, maybe they can ‘make’ them be moral!
Obvious analog to the snake in the garden of Eden and the tree of all knowledge!
“Forced morality” has been recognized as oxymoronic since the days of the inquisition (actually since Augustine) and the Church has no intention of regressing!
I am glad “deniers” have preached the truth re the science, and served as the necessary counterweight to the “liberation theology” propaganda. If this has not been enough, count on an army of Catholic scientists like myself to join the battle.
As scientists, you all know reality always trumps theory, in the long run. Few institutions are more familiar with “the long run” than the Pope’s. …you can have “faith” in that!
Hope you’re right.
I used to think that the Roman Catholic Church had learned a lesson from the Galileo Affair, which led it to produce reasonable statements on evolution in the 20th century. We’ll see if the lesson is still being taken to heart in the 21st century era of politicized “science”.
Capitalism is like a tree. Trees shade out the grass and shrubs. So let’s cut down all the trees for a greener world.
/s
great analogy!
I imagine we are also awaiting from the Pope proclamations on string theory, geophysics and Cosmology as well.
Which is to say the world is waiting for the Pope to say something on this science because unlike other sciences, climate science is the only one self-indulgently swirling around in the toilet of politics. The only good thing that may come of this is watching the faces of greens as they back-pedal away from the Pope if his encyclical on climate is tepid.
From the “broken clock is right twice a day” column, the US restrictions against Cuba is ridiculous. Otherwise that Rodriguez is some seriously crazy left wing nutbag alright.
“…doesn’t want to stop ruining the environment because they don’t want to give up their profits.” Cardinal Rodriguez
=============================
How can a company afford to clean up the environment unless they make a profit? If you need to by a piece of equipment to make your plant cleaner, where does the money come from?
Lets say a factory need to add $100 million dollars to your plant to install scrubbers. Otherwise they will be shut down. Where are you going to get the money?
You can’t pay for it out of the companies savings (retained earnings), unless you made profits in the past that you could save.
The bank won’t lend you money, unless you are making a profit, and this profit is then used to pay off the loan over time.
You could issue bonds, but again unless you can make a profit to pay interest on the bonds, they are going to be worthless. No one will buy.
So in the end, your only choice is to sell stocks in the company, to give away part of the ownership. But again unless you are making a profit, or have retained earnings, the stocks will also be worthless.
So in the end, without profits you might as well just close the doors and sell the land and equipment and be free of the headache.
so, without profits, there is no way for the company.to clean-up the environment.
Well, said, and HEAR, HEAR, Ferd!
Every company that is involved with what can be cited as toxic to the environment should be required to place a percentage of revenue into a company fund for potential cleanup of the environment. These funds should be calculated before salary/stock options/any payments to the major officers of the company.
Try to sell that in the Middle East, or Africa.
The US has many laws in place to mitigate/eliminate toxic wastes and those laws carry penalties for either willful noncompliance, or accidental incident. The most toxic nations are either the poorest, and/or those ruled by some form of Socialist- derived, or other tyranny. Compliance with “requirements” imposed by governments inevitably and ultimately is insured by the use of force, which means men with guns.
Careful what you ask for…
The Democrats would just loot the funds and spend them on buying votes.
it is beginning to take a different attitude regarding the exploitation, oppression, and alienation which prevails in Latin America.
=======
the number 1 problem in Latin America is corruption. there is no incentive is a corrupt official can simply squeeze your earnings out of you.
the church is hardly innocent in this. they have been squeezing money out of people for centuries. give us your money or you will burn in hell. a protection racket in the name of god. what use has god of money? where does he/she/it spend it?
Now, Ferd (ahem!). Historically, this is true, but, to be fair…. Roman Catholics got rid of Indulgences and the like a loooong time ago. I, too, disagree with many of the tenets of that religion, but, its essentials are pure: Love God. Love your neighbor. Most of them do.
Roman (and Orthodox) Catholics did not get rid of indulgences. Granting indulgences is still a big part of Catholic doctrine and practice. The Roman rite did however stop the activity of “pardoners”, who sold indulgences.
God uses the money to help the poor.
I think it’s a better argument that corruption is a major problem everywhere.
“…..Two world-wide religions
Coming together,
But with different Gods,
Not quite birds of a feather;
One worships the real God
To which millions have prayed,
The other a false God,
The God of Man-Made…..”
Read more: http://wp.me/p3KQlH-K3
This topic reminds me of a joke that JFK used to tell his friends. Kennedy once asked his friend, Cardinal Spellman, if he actually believed the Pope was infallible. Spellman replied, “I don’t know, Jack. All I can tell you is that whenever I see him, he calls me ‘Spillman.'”
[SNIP – provide proof of your assertions/character assassination or refrain from commenting, you’ve racked up a few policy violations here, you may want to read the WUWT Site Policy page and heed it to prevent yourself from being banned. -mod]
The no.3 in the Vatican hierarchy, Cardinal George Pell (formerly of Sydney), is a forceful and articulate climate sceptic of long standing. According to him, in 2007 there was a meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at which no agreement could be reached. I would be surprised if the same is not the case in 2015. My guess is that the more Pope Francis consults within the Vatican and its closest advisors, the more he will encounter views on climate that are quite different to those of Cardinal Rodriguez. That should at least give him pause for thought.
God love George Cardinal Pell if he can stem this tide of BS.
Pell’s 2011 Annual GWPF Lecture is here:
http://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/pell-2011_annual_gwpf_lecture_new.pdf
Crux 13 Feb 2015: “Pope Francis’ finance czar [Pell] today informed fellow members of the College of Cardinals that the Vatican has more than $1.5 billion in assets it didn’t previously know it possessed,”
Sounds as if he’s a better accountant than his predecessors, which bodes well for his analysis of the climate con game.
Risky Business’s Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer, Hank Paulson & Robert Rubin will be disappointed if it’s true:
Oct 2014: Columbia Journalism Review: Robert S. Eshelman: Has climate change become a business story?
The cost of brushing science aside
But something different happened in June. Another report, yes. Only this one was of a different character. It was called “Risky Business,” and the team that produced the analysis wasn’t at all like the other climate-change sages. It was co-chaired by A-list titans of American business and former government officials, including Michael Bloomberg, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and hedge-fund billionaire Tom Steyer. With such headliners, media coverage wasn’t hard to come by…
The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times published stories ahead of the report’s release. Leading business publications, including Forbes, Fortune, and the International Business Times, ran high-profile articles on their websites the day of the press conference. Steven Mufson, an energy and finance reporter, wrote about it for The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times’ report ran in its Business section. Long-time economics correspondent John Ydstie covered the news for National Public Radio. The New York Times was one of the few publications to cover the event as a science story…
Business reporters, like political and economic elites, seem to have brought a degree of legitimacy to the climate-change story by putting it in terms that most anyone can understand—money…
***Environmental journalist Bud Ward of Yale Climate Connections: “I think it helps to move climate change off the science page, where it has been ghettoized.”…
http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/climate_change_risky_business.php
Steyer, Paulson and Rubin are all skilled at manipulating politicians for their own gain. If they had not talked Clinton in subverting controls on speculative investments, and neutering the CFTC, back in 1996 the whole investment banking nightmare of 2008 would have resulted in either a modest recession, or it might not have happened at all, They are clearly in it for their own gain, and very few people in business take their suggestions as a “good faith” advice. When they publish everyone knows to check for the hidden agenda.
Oh yeah, most business editors these days are morons, just watch CNBC with a serious investor and they will point out how laughable the whole thing is.
Tearing down the Glass-Steagall wall between mortgage lending and investment banking by itself wouldn’t have produced the financial crisis. The banking system was already heading that way. What made the crunch so hard was the subprime slime upon which Democrats insisted to vote for the banking “reform”.
Then Rubin promptly resigned from Treasury to hurry to Citibank to take advantage of the monstrosity he, Clinton, Dodd, Frank, et al had just created.
Paul Westhaver called it.
Thanks Max but credit goes to Marc Morano, Chris Monckton, Harold Doiron at Heartland, and of course Anthony Watts our host who took the correct approach and, appealing to the the angels our better nature, facilitated an awesome robust, and thoughtful, science-based rebuttal.
With the exception of a small few who wanted to focus on Galileo, the small group of skeptics politely appealed to the quiet majority of the Church hierarchy who see earth-worship as heresy, and the proponents of the green movement as socialists, and liberation theologists. We filled the gap of legitimacy that the conservative cardinals needed to rely upon to bring scientific critical mass to their theological objections. Also, you did it is a respectful and engaging way. It does not serve our interests as AGW skeptics to alienate ourselves from a large body of the planet’s population, some of whom constitute the scientific community.
BRAVO! Anthony! Absolutely brilliant.
Going forward we must endeavor to keep tapping the wedge in between the American &c onservative camp amongst the magisterium and the wacky liberation theologists that felt empowered by Francis’ election.
WUWT, Heartland Climate Depot Tom Quirk, Bob Tisdale, Eric. Judith, have all accomplished a great feat….
YOU HAVE BEEN HEARD, and that makes all the difference.
Predictions,
1) the Church will reel in any declarations about conclusive opinions on the climate and refer to ONGOING scientific examination, and resist any specific prescriptions for action.
2) I worried that the Church might support a UN TAX, but I am thinking that without the US public support that may not happen,
3) Now the leftists (especially in the media) will come out and scapegoat the Church as making another Galileo fiasco, undeservedly.
Actions:
Whether you are catholic or not, politely contact every parish office in the country and state the case that the green movement is the natural enemy of the Church, families and humanity. That custodianship for our planet does not require wealth redistribution by way of UN involvement.
Don’t expect the leftists to give up….imoira… you know.
Also, here is a news article from the EWTN news program “The World Over” seen by 10s of millions of people.
Heartland at the Vatican
If you want to see the impact of anti-capitalist movements, compare North and South Korea. Or compare Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
In Haiti, the “oppressors” were hunted down and slaughtered in a slave revolt. All the land was then split up among the masses. That sounds like a Communist utopia! But splitting up the land made farming inefficient, and the masses struggled to eke out their own subsistence. Brutal dictatorships and corruption have taken their toll as well. The environment has suffered, with many forests being clear-cut to provide “renewable fuel” for daily needs. The Dominican Republic is also very poor by international standards, and they have dealt with political instability and corruption. But compared to Haiti, DR is a paradise. DR has passable roads, they have developed their infrastructure and use of natural resources, including fossil fuels, rather than clear cutting every tree on the island.
But the leftists among us would have us belief that if we just followed the Haiti model and shared the wealth we too could live in peace, harmony, and shared abundance like Haiti.
Everyone, sit around the campfire, hold hands, and sing!!!
Maradiaga is a real piece of work, a chip off the old Latin American Jesuit block. A Che with a frock.
Bigger story is Pope’s #1 adviser Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez author of the now tabled climate report also authored a book, “Heal me with your mouth, The art of kissing,” published in 1995. Of the book, the publisher website says: “In these pages, the author stresses the importance of sustaining the kiss as much as affective love relationships, as well as teaches the reader to kiss better.” Fernandez himself writes: “I explain that this book was written based on my personal experience as the lives of the people kissing. In these pages I want to summarize the popular sentiment, what people feel when they think of a kiss, what mortals feel when kissing. For this reason I spoke at length with many people who have a lot of experience in this field, and also with many young people who learn to kiss their way. I have also consulted many books and I wanted to show how the poets speak of the kiss. So, in order to synthesize the immense richness of life came these pages in favor of the kiss, which I hope will help to kiss better, that you push to release a kiss in the best of your being.”
I understand Fernandez and Pachauri are going to collaborate on a novel that, if actually read, will increase global temperatures by 0.0001 C. It’s going to be called, “Return to Al Gore, Eh?”
The Wiki entry on Cardinal Muller is interesting. It includes this quote from a 2015 interview with the Cardinal:
“In an interview with La Croix in 2015 (English translation here), Cardinal Müller suggested a new area of work for the CDF [Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith]: theological architecture. The cardinal was asked how he viewed his role under Pope Francis, especially given that Benedict XVI was a theologian. “The arrival of a theologian like Benedict XVI in the chair of St. Peter was no doubt an exception,” Müller replied. “But John XXIII was not a professional theologian. Pope Francis is also more pastoral and our mission at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is to provide the theological structure of a pontificate.”
My interpretation of this is that the Cardinal doesn;t think that the Pope knows anything abut theology, and he views his mission at the CDF is to provide that.
What is that behind Mr Morano , it looks strangely like a large building …
oh no….. sorry, my mistake, I see it clearly now,…
10`s of thousands of tons of stone quarried from probably open quarries with the attendant spoil heaps teams of artisans needing toilet facilities, and the obvious iron making and casting plants and machinists making thousands of metal chisels and hammers, not to mention the mining for Gold , and Silver, and Copper, and Lead, Oh and the forest full of trees cut down for the timber work as well as the scaffolding. to think how many people were injured, maimed and died during its construction, or how many people made money off the back of the supply contracts
So I hope they are not too worried about a bit of modern environmental disruption, especially when it brings benefit to so many people, .just like it did in the past, so it shall in the future.
+1, Franziskus.
From south american slums to responsibility.
God blessed Youre jesuitic ways: shoulder your burden.
Admirations – Hans
Hope Francis doesn’t see himself as a latter day St. Francis, looking out for the birds of the air. The environazis massacre millions of birds and bats with their windmills, machines of death.
Cheers for Mr. Morano. He and his companions have achieved something very important. Thank you, Mr. Morano.
This communist pope is going to do a lot of harm to both the church and the world in his tenure.
The Vatican should have stayed out of this mess. There is no possible positive outcome for anyone involved.
May your God go with you!
The Roman Catholic Church moves very cautiously in areas where it lacks comfortable expertise. Recall when the theory of evolution came out, protestant churches we e up in arms. The Catholic church said nothing and let it ride and adjusted over time without making waves.
Looks like a repeat of tht history.
George,
Mainstream Protestant churches soon recognized the reality of evolution. Some cultish sects however resisted it then and now. Also, in the 19th century the Catholic Church might not have condemned evolution officially, but many prominent Catholics, especially in Catholic countries, did oppose it.
However, Gregor Mendel was a Catholic monk.
I am saddened, but not surprised at the Cardinal’s diatribe against capitalism driving environmental destruction – has he never heard of the Kyshtym disaster in the Soviet Urals? A quick scan of Wikipedia should give him all he needs to know about the environment under Socialism – contrast that with 3 Mile Island and tell me who’s the better steward of the environment.
Taylor
yes, sturgishopper.
‘Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them.
____
Are ye not much better
than they?’
____
just asking.
The birds feed themselves off the bounty of nature, as did our hunting and gathering ancestors. (I also plant flowers for the hummingbirds.) If you wish to thank God for this bounty, please feel free. However seven billion people can’t survive without sowing, reaping and gathering into barns. And burning the fossil fuels that the haters of humanity want to ban. I hope Francis doesn’t heed their demonic calls.
“declared a fence between the U.S. and Mexico to be comparable to the “Berlin Wall,”
Interesting stance when this is the least protected border in any western nation. Would this guy be okay with 20plus million immigrants to italy the last few decades?
Mexico used to shoot illegal crossers of its southern border. Now it just rounds them up and sends them home without trial. Unless they’re riding on trains definitely bound for the USA, like the tens of thousands of often sick kids invited in by Obama.
“Berlin Wall…”
Doesn’t this guy know the Berlin Wall was built to keep people in a socialist country from escaping to a free (capitalist) one? The Mexican border wall is about controlling a population that wants to get to what capitalism can provide – had Mexico built it, I can see (maybe) the analogy, but built by us, it’s an absolute contradiction to everything the Berlin Wall was built for.
It’s bad enough that these types don’t know climate science, but you’d think they would at least know history and politics…
Taylor
Note the grotesque immorality of Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga implied in his statement that, “[the] American embargo of Cuba [is] “ridiculous.””
Cuba, under the Castros, has murdered thousands of political prisoners since 1959. They remain a police-state, which murders, oppresses, and tyrannizes its citizenry. During the Cuban missile crisis, Fidel Castro encouraged Khrushchev to start a nuclear war with the US, offering Cuban help and participation. Cuba remains a haven of the profoundly evil. And yet, according to Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, embargoing that state is ridiculous.
Pope Francis recently met with Raoul Castro. So apparently unrepentant collusion in mass murder is not enough to repel the pope or Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga.
Does anyone need more proof that these men are ethical imbeciles, whose morality includes bias in favor of mass murderers? It appears, for Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, that free trade is a far worse offense against god and morality than mass murder. Presuming Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga finds mass murder offensive. We lack evidence that he does so.
History repeats itself.
“In 1939 Eugenio Pacelli was elected Pope Pius XII. As head of the Catholic Church during the war years, he signed the Concordat (agreement) with Nazi Germany. The Catholic Church, as an organisation, did not protest against any of the anti-Jewish policies of the Nazi state.”
“The Vatican knew of the murder of the Jews very early on, as they had religious representatives in all of the occupied countries. Certain individual priests saved Jews but the Church, as an official body, did nothing significant to save the Jews of Europe.”
http://www.theholocaustexplained.org/ks3/responses-1933-1945/what-did-individuals-do/how-did-the-catholic-church-respond/#.VVQ06fmeAXA
I am trying to stay out of these discussions, but sometimes it just gets too hard to do so.
The Catholic Church rightly deserves criticism for many things, but also gets unfairly criticized for many others things. The Pope’s actions during WWII is certainly one of the unfair criticisms:
http://www.catholic.com/documents/how-pius-xii-protected-jews
Isn’t it convenient the Pope made an alliance with the Nazis by signing the Concordat in 1939 when Hitler was at the height of his power? Then in 1943 when the Allied Forces invaded Italy and Mussolini, an ally of Hitler, was ousted, the Pope began criticizing the Nazis. Perhaps to gain favor with the Allied Forces, which was winning against the war. If the Pope was sincere, there would be no agreement with Hitler in the first place. It was politics. Always be on the winning side. Of course Vatican reinterprets history and insists it was morality.
To paraphrase Stalin, how many divisions did the Pope have? None, of course. So quit characterizing Pope Pius’s actions without historical context. It is beneath you and anyone else.
Certainly, Dr. Strangelove, the Pope should have had his countless minions just rattle their halberds to have the Axis quaking in its jackboots. It’s not as if he was surrounded by millions of Fascist troops. The Vatican is on a fortified island somewhere, innit?
/sarc
Thanks, Marc Morano. I hope you shone a light.
I think you were lucky to come out of Rome unburnt.
BTW, a papal encyclical does not necessarily imply infallibility and rarely does. Infallibility is only brought out when the Pope speaks on matters of dogma, like the deity of Jesus or the Holy Trinity. Most of what people think of as Church dogma, is not. If it is not dogma it may change over time, like eating meat on Friday. Let’s hope this article is correct in its assumptions.
Perhaps my prayers have been answered. 🙂
Isn’t this Cardinal Gerhard Müller most important?
So unless he just goes along with this Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga then the latter`s opinions have a lot less weight- the former is not much a leader if he follows the latter. Shouldn’t the address the former much more.
Anyway the versions of the Bible are so inconsistent that a committed Christian bible expert ceased being Christian.
If the Vatican can’t run a church that is safe for children to attend what makes them think they’re in a leadership role in chaotic sciences?
***it’s all over folks – even the UN has surrendered:
13 May: Reuters: Alister Doyle: New climate deal seen aiding GDP, lacking sanctions: U.N. chief
A U.N. deal to combat global warming due in December will seek to lift world economic growth and be based more on encouragement than threats of punishment for non-compliance, the U.N.’s climate chief said on Wednesday…
The looser formula is a sharp shift from the U.N.’s 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which originally bound about 40 rich nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions and foresaw sanctions that were never imposed even when Japan, Russia and Canada dropped out.
***Figueres dismissed fears by many developing nations, which have no binding targets under Kyoto and fear that a Paris accord due to enter into force from 2020 could force them to cut fossil fuel use, undermining economic growth.
***”The bottom line (is that) this is an agreement and a path that is protective of growth and development rather than threatening to growth and development,” Figueres told an online news conference.
The deal would be “enabling and facilitating” rather than a “punitive-type” agreement, she said. The deal’s main thrust would be to decouple greenhouse gas emissions from gross domestic product growth…
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/05/13/us-climatedeal-un-idUKKBN0NY2AD20150513
nonetheless, another lecture from Christiana, which falls on deaf ears:
13 May: WaPo: Joby Warrick: UN climate official pans idea of Arctic drilling in subtle slap at Obama administration
The United Nations’ top climate official took a subtle poke at the Obama administration on Wednesday over its decision to conditionally allow oil exploration off Alaska’s coast, suggesting that the Arctic’s oil and gas should stay underground.
Despite the tentative green light given to Shell Gulf of Mexico earlier this week, both the environment and Shell’s stockholders would be best served if such projects are shelved, said Christiana Figueres, the executive director of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
“There is an increasing amount of analysis that points to the fact that we have to keep the great majority of fossil fuels underground,” Figueres said at a news conference…
Figueres was responding to a question about the Interior Department’s decision on Monday to grant conditional approval to Shell’s plan to begin exploratory drilling later this year in the Chukchi Sea, off Alaska’s northeastern coast…
Figueres said she would not comment on the specifics of a U.S. policy decision. But generally speaking, she said, spending huge sums to extract fossil fuels from remote environments — what she termed “high-cost carbon investments” — is a risky proposition.
“One has to question the prudence of moving forward with those kinds of investments,” she said. “It is very evident that climate policy is advancing and progressing.”…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/05/13/un-climate-official-pans-idea-of-arctic-drilling-in-subtle-slap-at-obama-administration/
Judge Not, lest Thee Be Judged
I see nothing on the Internerd quoting Sandro Magister concerning postponement of the putative climate encyclical in the past week. I’m becoming increasingly skeptical that there’s a story here. I hope I’m wrong.
The Catholic Church will continue losing adherents in the US and perhaps other parts of the developed world if its pedophile protection scandal is followed up by a Communist pope pushing the watermelon line of lies.
Very likely. Its relevance has been dropping for decades, now. Truly it was said, “By their fruits you will know them.”
There is already a movement for an American Catholic Church, along the lines of the Anglican rejection of Rome, but without the president in the role of the English monarch as leader. Since the Roman rite already uses the vernacular, it’s already part way there.
An American Catholic Church would probably be even more “progressive” than the Roman, certainly on married priests and same-sex marriage, if not abortion.
While not a Catholic, I’d hate to see the Church go away, since parochial schools are IMO an important counterbalance to government monopoly on education. And would the Italian government inherit all that property, including the world’s greatest art?
Surely the headline should be:
“Is the Vatican backing off from its climate change position?”
if they are on something shouldn’t they be falling off it ?
Not to worry. If it’s true that Cardinal Gerhard Müller is an impediment there are enough Cardinals supporting the Pope they elected to move Cardinal Gerhard Müller off to building the largest cathedral in Nuuk, Greenland. Oh, and it’s a much used ploy to postpone a completely voluntary political action to allow time to work it’s Alzheimer’s magic.
Perhaps some Christians are really Christian and just can’t go along with a plan that would hit the poor the worst.
It appears some cooler heads have come together At the Vatican, & defuse the spin.
http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/keeping-a-cool-head-on-pope-francis-environment-encyclical/
Zappa, as usual, had the it right.
“There’s a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.”
“Tax the churches.”
“Tax the businesses owned by the churches.”
“You ain’t got nothing and they got it all and your miserable ass is up against the wall.”
Oh, yeah, “He’s got $20m in his heavenly bank account”.
There is NO difference between the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury or Jimmy Swaggert. They’re all in it for one thing, and none of them are thinking of you as they count the takings.
“You can choose to disbelieve it, but the Bible has never been disproven by evidence.” – Janice Moore
I believe you. To quote from the bible:
“As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you.” (Deuteronomy 20:10-14)
The bible has never been disproven by evidence. History proved the faithful committed horrible crimes in obedience to the Lord. More horrible crimes in the name of the Lord http://www.evilbible.com/Rape.htm
The Bible most certainly has been “disproven” by science. Anyone who believes this blatant lie has never read the Bible, never studied science or both. Descriptions of the natural world in it are ludicrously wrong.
As the passages I cited show, in the Bible, the is supported by pillars, so that it cannot move. A flat earth is covered by a solid dome, upon which God walks and operates the levers of the storehouses of rain and snow. There are windows in it for the sun and moon to pass through. Stars hang from it.
Nowhere is there a mention of a spherical earth, let alone its going around the sun. The author of Genesis 1 plainly did not know that day and night are caused by the sun, let alone the rotations of the “immobile” earth. Day and night exist in Genesis before God creates the sun. The author’s thought was pre-scientific, so he could not even deduce from the position of the “rising” and “setting” sun that light came from it, although he felt that heat did.
Serpents and donkeys talk. Rabbits chew their cud. The list is endless. Besides which, in many books, its “science” contradicts itself from page to page, as with the unresolvable incompatibility between the irreconcilable creation myths in Genesis 1 and 2. Suggesting that the Bible is compatible with science is ludicrous, and theologically preposterous.
Sorry. Please insert “earth” before “is”. I was interrupted.
sturgishooper on May 15, 2015 at 12:57 pm
– – – – – – –
sturgishooper,
Your topic is interesting.
I would approach the discussion of the inquiry into the Bible’s relevance to science in a different manor. Question #1 – I would ask does the Bible provide any treatment of what is the process that is called science? Given that the science process produces knowledge, the knowledge is evolving continuously if it is produced by the science process. Question #2 – Does the Bible say its knowledge is conditional on the continuously evolving fruits of the science process?
First, before I give my answers to those two questions, we should look at the history of science prior to Jesus of Nazareth’s life. There was already in Greece, starting ~590 B.C. with Anaximander and ending with the death of Archimedes ~200 BC, a significant definition of principles of the science process; definition that provided some of the essential principles in our current modern science process. Two centuries before the life of Jesus of Nazareth’s there was already established within Greece and its Mediterranean settlements clear public awareness of a science process that is related to our modern science process.
The answer to my two questions above is no and no. The Bible is not inclusive of the cultural product of the already existent publically known Greek science process that had been in the Northeastern and Eastern Mediterranean for half a dozen hundreds of year earlier.
John
John,
I agree. As I’ve said in comments here, it’s surprising that the New Testament is as pre-scientific as the Old, given its having been written in the first through (probably) third centuries AD, when pagan science was quite advanced (although still suffering from a geocentric consensus). The OT’s pre-scientific nature is less surprising, its having been written before and during the first period of Greek science. The Holy Land and Mesopotamia didn’t come under Hellenistic influences (thanks to Alexander) until after most if not all of the OT was written.
The Early Church Fathers nevertheless stuck to the biblical flat earth cosmology despite living in scientifically advanced Alexandria. Augustine rightfully wrote that this prescientific attitude was costing the Church adherents, so argued for a non-literal interpretation of Genesis, c. AD 400.
sturgishooper on May 15, 2015 at 2:02 pm
– – – – – – – –
sturgishooper,
Yes, your term ‘pre-scientific’ is appropriate.
It is revealing that the NT part of the Bible is ‘pre-scientific’ when the science process was known for a half dozen centuries.
I think the bible is important in that mythology is important as a story telling guide to life. I think Joseph Campbell’s studies on myth had it right.
John
Couldn’t agree more.
Both the mythological and legendary parts of the Bible contain wonderful stories which I’ve always enjoyed. The more or less historical parts after about 800 BC are also useful, despite the spin they put on events.
Studying the Bible is rewarding, IMO, and made even moreso by trying to understand what it really says, rather than trying to read into it garbage which simply isn’t there, as do twisting literalists and creationists, who don’t even understand their own religions and appear never actually to have read the document.
PS:
To me, a pre-scientific mindset explains observations by making up stories about them. Hence the explanation for the rainbow in the Noah story.
The scientific mindset uses deductive and inductive reasoning, based upon testing hypotheses with direct or experimental observation. The Greeks made great advances in understanding, using the earliest forms of the scientific method. For instance, they realized that the earth is a sphere and were able to measure it with some accuracy, while biblical literalists still thought it was flat, based upon the plain text of scripture.
– – – – – –
If that can be independently corroborated by other independent sources and if the Vatican itself clarifies whether it has now decided (based on the recent Vatican conference in Rome) to take time to adopt more circumspect views and to allow considerations of more skeptically inclusive positions, then that strategy of Morano, CFACT and Heartland had major accomplishments in the name of objective science.
John
Those who want to know about Galileo can start here: http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown.html
Galileo had Mann’s personality but it was easier to get lucky back then.
All you know is that the Pope knows nothing about global warming, Cardinal Pell does know a lot, the global warming advocates were pushing him in one direction, there was push back (thank you Heartland).
Religion should not be discussed on this site. It generates ignorant comments faster than a global warmist having a seizure.
Joe,
Anthropogenic Global Warming is a doctrine of the Green Religion. It is only now that “AGW and Climate Change are being discussed in their proper venue. Finally!
Did the church astronomer get his input through to the Vatican?
The approach to the Vatican in Rome by a skeptical contingent (sponsored by Heartland / CFACT / Morano) is a strictly pragmatic move absent the intellectual problems of religion of Paul of Tarsus on the one hand compared to objective science on the other. And I thought when it was first posted at WUWT that there was no downside to the pragmatic move. It appears that there hasn’t been any downside to the pragmatic move.
However, the fundamental intellectual problem remains that objective science and the religion of Paul of Tarsus are profoundly irrelevant to each other on formal epistemological and metaphysical grounds. And the demarcation by science of what is within science will always be in significant dispute epistemologically and metaphysically with the demarcation by theology of what is within the religion of Paul of Tarsus. That situation does not give me the idea that objective science and the religion of Paul of Tarsus are compatible; au contraire mon ami .
John
I am glad that Marc Morano and the other skeptics at Heartland Institute made an impact upon the Pope and whoever is advising the Pope. It would have been bad for the Church if this Pope had issued an encyclical based solely upon what the idiot Cardinal Rodriguez and the green science advisors surrounding the Pope are telling him.
ditto.
Vatican press office denies rumor that Pope’s encyclical on environment has been postponed.
http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=24931
The Vatican press, according to George Weigel, is in a terribly messy state.
Damn it, Mark.R, what have you done? Inconvenient truths (i.e. facts) are not liked here…
Another rehash to be read carefully: http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/05/15/pope-allegedly-halts-publication-of-eco-encyclical-amid-controversy/
How long would a rewrite take? Not long enough to delay publication past June 30, I’d guess. Chop out Maradiaga’s ignorant, spittle-spewing Marxist comments on climate, add a few more references to charity and justice, quote Jesus out of context a few more times, cut and paste to cover the gaps, and it’ll be ready to roll out. Forty eight hours, tops, to have the next draft ready for review by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Maradiaga’s rant is no surprise to me, ever since I became aware of the neo-Marxist position of Catholic bishops in Seattle WA.
And it appears Anglicans in Canada, and perhaps UK, are of similar bias. (The two churches are very similar, despite historical politics. (Note too the eco-bias of British royalty at least from Prince Phillip and Prince Charles.))
The Anglican church may be known in the US and Scotland as “Episcopal”.
So the Pope is about to Endorse Global Warming BS!
{CC is Catholic Church}
Which is odd since the last time the CC got heavily involved with Science (Galileo) it didn’t work out that well and helped usher in the reformation (Luther, the Illuminati, and all that other stuff, Anglican split, confining the CC to a few acres in Rome, etc.).
Recently, the evil Capitalist demons on the side of the CC have assisted the CC in maintaining a great many of the CCs agenda items.
Every so often the leftists get the bright idea to tax Church property. Dear Mr. Pope, the CC owns several billion dollars worth of property in NYC alone and the evil capitalists stopped it from being taxed. It’s going to be a heavy yearly bill. But I’m sure George Soros will want to buy the Pieta for a princely sum, it would look very nice in his office lobby.
Then there is all that income you collect in donations to send to Rome. I’m sure we can find home grown charities to ease our hearts here while you pay income tax on the donations.
And then there is the matter of the money you pay to priests, nuns, Cardinals, etc. Have you been withholding taxes and SS money? Have you been paying a fair wage?
That is just the beginning. Are you telling me you will not perform a gay wedding? And there are no women priests or Cardinals? No male nuns?
Then there is the issue of priests and choir boys. You are going to need to add some more zeros to those checks you write to cover over that because the juries will want to be generous with your money. Very generous.
Finally there is the issue of abortion. More than any other country, the USA has tried to keep that in check. Given the chance, planned parenthood and Nancy Pelosi will want to build a clinic on every corner in Harlem. So if you sell us out to a UN tax on Carbon we just might sit back and watch.
So it’s your choice Mr. Pope. If you want to bring us hell on earth, we just might return the favor. And we will not have to lift a finger.
And if you think you new friends on the left will help you, you are very wrong. Changing the CC to be just another secular corporate entity will destroy you.
You should rethink this very carefully, God is watching.
Bill Johnson, May, 2015
“… the Pope realized that the document in its current state had no chance of receiving the approval of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith under the leadership of Cardinal Gerhard Müller.”
If recent history is any indicator, Francis will not delay because of any change of heart. He will instead delay until he can replace Cardinal Muller and anyone else he needs to at the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.