Cosmos and Giordano Bruno

As many of you probably know, famed astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson is offering a reboot of Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" series; the first episode aired in the United States last Sunday. It was spectacularly done, with beautiful graphics and the excellence of popular presentation that Tyson shares with Sagan. Those of us who are science buffs lapped it up.

But, all of that was interrupted by a middle segment that was cartoonish, both literally and figuratively, telling the distorted tale of Giordano Bruno:

Did "Cosmos" pick the wrong hero? (Discover Magazine):

Here is where Cosmos 2.0 runs into its big problem, missing out both on a chance to set history straight and to embrace the generous, forward-looking spirit of Sagan. Bruno is well known as a martyr to the cause of modern astronomy.
(...)
That depiction in the new Cosmos matches the standard textbook story of Bruno, but it is misleading and in some ways downright wrong. For starters, Bruno was not the first to link the idea of infinite space with the infinite glory of God. That idea actually originated with Nicolas of Cusa, a German philosopher who lived a century earlier (and who wrote about the notion of infinite space even before Copernicus, though not in a detailed astronomical way). Nicolas kept his infinite theology within the Catholic framework, however, and suffered no ill consequences for his views.

Bruno also was not much of a Copernican, or by most accounts much of an astronomer at all. His interests were theological, not physical, and his astronomical writings are considered amateurish and confused…In Cosmos, Tyson does carefully say that Bruno was not a scientist, and instead describes that picture of infinite worlds as a “guess.” But Bruno was not guessing. He was advancing his own, heretical theology, which goes a long way to understanding the real reason that he was burned at the stake.
(...)
None of this means that Bruno in any way deserved his fate. But neither does he deserve to be reduced to a cartoon about intellectual freedom. He was a brilliant, complicated, difficult man.
(...)
While Bruno was making grand pronouncements and racking up enemies, Thomas Digges was quietly doing much more to bring the ideas of Copernicus into the mainstream of European thinking. Digges was one of the leading astronomers in 16th century England–a place where Catholic doctrine obviously did not hold the kind of sway that it did in Italy. In 1576, Digges published the first English translation of Copernicus’s revolutionary (literally) text, De revolutionibus.

Digges’s goal, in the words of science historian Francis Johnson, was to make the ideas of Copernicus and the sun-centered universe available “to the skilled artisans and mechanics whose intelligent co-operation was so necessary to successful research in the sciences.” Digges was not just an astronomer, he was also a popularizer of science. You might call him the Carl Sagan of his day.
(...)
All of this seems very much in the spirit of Sagan: taking an audacious idea, explaining it to a broad audience, and citing philosophical precedent from classical Greek literature to show that the idea was not so heretical after all.

OK, you may still be thinking that this is much ado about nothing, splitting hairs over old astronomical history. I believe otherwise. The story of Bruno and Digges has a lot to say about the way science operates today, and about the spiritual side of science that Sagan was so adept at exploring.

One irony of the Cosmos narrative is that Bruno very likely got some of his ideas from Digges, since Digges was widely read and Bruno spend two years in England in the 1580s. A second, deeper irony is that in trying to show how science and religion sometimes worked hand in hand, Cosmos missed a chance to showcase a key episode in brokering peace between the two sides.

Bruno was a pugilist and an ideologue. In many of his ideas he was right–wildly, spectacularly right–but his method of spreading his ideas alienated his supporters. More importantly, his ideas sprang from faith nearly as much as did the ideas of the Church; Bruno was far from a scientist in the modern sense.

Digges, in contrast, was focused on advancing the work of Copernicus. He helped lay the intellectual groundwork for Kepler and Galileo, and established England as a beachhead of progressive scientific thought. “The influence of Digges’ treatise on contemporary astronomical thought can hardly be overestimated,” Johnson continues. Digges grafted the idea of infinite space onto Copernicus’s idea of a sun-centered solar system, showing that the two ideas naturally go hand in hand.

By presenting the heliocentric system not as heresy but as an extension of classical learning, Digges pointed out a path forward: away from superstition and theological debate, toward the modern world in which scientific theories own real power as physical descriptions of nature. He also implicitly presented science as a cumulative intellectual journey, with each generation expanding on earlier ideas, testing their validity, inviting further questions.

Did Neil Degrasse Tyson miss an opportunity to bridge the gap between religion and science by ignoring the places where they work together and instead choosing to offer a tired caricature of Giordano Bruno and the evil Inquisition?

ETA:
Here a few other commentaries on the situation:

There Was One Big Problem With Sunday’s Cosmos Episode (Slate)

Cosmos may get science right but it gets church history wrong (Patheos)

A Dishonest "Cosmos" (Patheos: God and the Machine)

For another avenue that "Cosmos" might have pursued, see this new research out about the cosmological theories of the thirteenth-century Robert Grosseteste:

Medieval multiverse heralded modern cosmic conundrums (New Scientist)

Mathematical Model Of Medieval Cosmology Produces The Same Conundrums Modern Cosmologists Face (Medium.com)

Really, none of the main characters in the controversy come out well in modern eyes. Unfortunately for the Church, the chief opposition was right, at least scientifically. And the Church clung to its opposition to heliocentrism far past the time when everyone else had accepted it as a fact, which tends to put religious thought on the matter in a worse light yet.

"Every story needs a hero." When you don't really have one, one gets picked and made into a hero, whatever the facts might be. (Much like many saints, for instance.)

Certainly it would have been nice for Cosmos and Tyson to acknowledge some unpleasant facts about Bruno as an icon. (I remember in the Ascent of Man Bronowski commenting 'It would be nice to say that (scientist) was a gentle, kindly man. Alas, I cannot.")

A little more than "four hundred years ago Bruno suffered a martyr's death by fire. Excommunicated by an obscurantist ecclesiasticism he went to the stake for his beliefs. He was convinced that the wisdom and magic-born religion of ancient Egypt excelled the fanatical theology that burnt dissident thinkers as heretics. For him the Biblical record was on a par with the Greek myths. Refusing to retract his teachings, he met his doom dauntlessly, for he had less cause than his judges to fear the verdict of history and could snap his fingers at them in warning. Giordano Bruno, the unfrocked monk, perished on 16 February 1600, for his intransigent denial that Christianity was unique.
R. E. Witt, Isis and the Ancient World pp269-281.

On Bruno et al., I'd recommend Ioan Culianu, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance.

>1 nathanielcampbell: a tired caricature of Giordano Bruno and the evil Inquisition?

>3 BruceCoulson: Really, none of the main characters in the controversy come out well in modern eyes.

Here's the thing, if the Church burns David Barton at the stake, there's a clear villain to this story. David Barton is a liar pushing evil ideas, but we don't burn such people at the stake, and people who do are e-e-vil. And perhaps Giordano Bruno wasn't much a scientist, and perhaps he was a jerk, but I don't see him as evil in the way that David Barton is. Those who can quibble and twist to communicate despite oppression do not make the oppression any less oppressive, or that we should be any less sorry for those oppressed.

Maybe Cosmos should have written it differently, but Bruno was killed for, among other things, making the claim that there were other worlds out there. To act like another example means that science and religion were getting along is just wrong; any scientists working in this subject in this physical area had to work with a sword of Damocles over their head, Digges being English and thus protected from the Pope.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthere/2014/03/13/cosmos-giordano-bruno-resp... is a follow up to the original article.

Jordanus Brunus Nolensis the Martyr is actually sainted in my church (canonized in 2000). Yeah, he was probably an asshole. No, he certainly wasn't a "scientist" as we understand the term in the 20th and 21st centuries. There are some problems with Frances Yates's seminal revisionism in Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, but it was far more accurate than the scientistic praise for Bruno that had become routine before it.

Bruno was a mnemo-magician who wanted to revive the solar worship of Egyptian antiquity as a reformation of European culture and a restoration of Christianity to its pagan roots. Good on him.

#6

Just because the people who do something are evil (at least in modern thinking) doesn't mean the victim was good. It may mean that the victim didn't deserve that punishment, or perhaps that the process that led to the punishment was evil, even if the results were correct. Which is why I channelled Mercutio.

The Bruno segment of Cosmos was my least favorite section of a show that evoked only a lukewarm response in me. (My favorite part was when Tyson talked about meeting Sagan as a young student).

The reason why I disliked it so much, I think, is because it was about politics, not science. For a show that was supposedly going to "reconcile" science and faith (not that I think even that should be a goal) that one segment seemed to dive right in to the morass.

And yeah, big bad benighted and evil Inquisition, with it's glowering mean-looking priests and its angry mob mentality...not to mention the close ups of the torture instruments! What in the hell does any of that have to do with science and scientific discovery?

My brother asked if I thought the show should have glossed over the whole tortured-for-heresy aspect of the era. I told him I thought that a show about wonders of scientific discovery would have done better to focus on the science and the discovery.

Otherwise I thought the whole show was too video-game and graphicky, and I think the old film The Powers of Ten did a much better job at grasping the scale of the universe than Tyson's weird "spaceship of the imagination" did.

I also though his natural ebullience was a little clipped. I was sorry for that. I'm hoping that future episodes will be a little more focused, a little less concerned with polemics, and thus a lot more interesting.

>9 southernbooklady: " (My favorite part was when Tyson talked about meeting Sagan as a young student)."

Mine as well.

>8 BruceCoulson: Just because the people who do something are evil (at least in modern thinking) doesn't mean the victim was good.

No, but nobody has explained why Bruno was evil. He was a person with wild ideas who was aggressive about pushing them. His death may have elevated him to a level he never could have achieved on his own, but ultimately his "crimes" were ones that history just doesn't remember. Few know about Einstein or Gödel's personal life; many know what they did.

So yes, Bruno comes out well in modern eyes, and saying the Inquisition is evil is not a caricature, and talking about religion and science working together glosses over the fact that a man was charged and executed for believing that there were other worlds out there, which puts a damper on things whether he phrased that as a religious belief or scientific one.

>6 prosfilaes:

Good use of David Barton as a rhetorical object!

#11

No one (as far as I can tell) is arguing that the Inquisition wasn't evil. And the third link provided in the first post indicates why Bruno was executed; oddly enough, his scientific views (such as they were) were a very minor part of that trial. (Which the third link offered in the first post makes clear.)

Bruno, in many ways, is a poor example of 'religion hates science and burns the questioning minds alive' thesis.

As for your point that 'we don't do that sort of thing to people who express different ideas'; no, not now. But the Church was hardly the only offender in that regard. And although we don't execute such people, there are several countries, Western countries, that carry stiff legal penalties for expressing ideas contrary to established facts. Perhaps we haven't moved forward quite as far as you think.

I don't think it's particularly unfair to question the facts presented on a TV show that purports to offer the facts about science and the universe. One should think that such robust, fact-based criticism would be welcomed by those who advocate a rational, scientific view of the world.

>13 BruceCoulson: And the third link provided in the first post indicates why Bruno was executed; oddly enough, his scientific views (such as they were) were a very minor part of that trial.

It would not be a great comfort for me for someone to be executed with one of the charges being holding a belief similar to mine, no matter how minor that charge was. I, in fact, find it quite likely that I would be silent about speaking on that subject.

But the Church was hardly the only offender in that regard.

I don't recall any other organization that punished people for scientific views, any other organization that made its orthodoxy the universe and everything in it. Later, yes, but not then.

And although we don't execute such people, there are several countries, Western countries, that carry stiff legal penalties for expressing ideas contrary to established facts.

I live in one that doesn't, and I'm proud of it.

I don't think it's particularly unfair to question the facts presented on a TV show ...

Did Neil Degrasse Tyson miss an opportunity to bridge the gap between religion and science by ignoring the places where they work together and instead choosing to offer a tired caricature of Giordano Bruno and the evil Inquisition?

is not a statement about facts. I don't see much argument about facts on this thread; most of it is arguments about the interpretation.

No, but the implication (there's no way any scientist could (or should) be associated with any religion; look at the terrible things they do to scientists) is certainly provocative, and demonstrably not true.

It's fortunate that you do live in such a country. I'm merely observing that it's an exception, rather than the rule. (Which I agree is very unfortunate.)

'And we find the defendant guilty of first-degree murder, arson, gross sexual imposition, and littering.' Just because all the charges were a part of the trial doesn't mean they were all considered to be of equal severity.

In THE Grand Inquisitor's Manual: A History of Terror in the Name of God, JONATHAN KIRSCH tells us:

Before Galileo, “Cardinal Bellarmine had prosecuted, among others, Giordano Bruno (1548—1600), a celebrated polymath and an early advocate of the Copernican theory of the universe, on charges of holding erroneous opinions about various aspects of Catholic dogma, including the divinity of Jesus Christ, the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the virginity of Mary. Bruno had offered only a halfhearted recantation rather than the abject confession that the Inquisition always demanded, and he was burned alive as an unrepentant heretic."

"Right up to the moment when the straw was set aflame, the friars urged the condemned heretics to save their souls—and possibly their lives, too—by admitting their guilt, recanting their false beliefs, and embracing the Catholic faith. Heretics who confessed in time were likely to spend the rest of their lives in prison, but at least they would not die then and there. By contrast, those who had already confessed to heresy on a previous occasion and had been sentenced to die as relapsed heretics would still be burned alive even if they confessed a second time, but at least—the friars told them—they would save their souls by dying as Catholics.

An admission of guilt, as we have seen, was always an urgent concern of the Inquisition, and never more so than when it came to capital punishment. Burning an unrepentant heretic posed the risk of presenting his fellow believers with a martyr; if we are to believe the evidence of the Inquisition itself, the bones of a dead heretic might be collected and preserved as relics. A display of courage in the face of death by a true believer in a dissident faith might make the wrong impression on the good Catholics in the crowd. For that reason, too, the condemned heretic was not permitted to speak and, in some cases, he was gagged to prevent him from addressing the crowd with some affirmation of faith before going up in flames."

"One such gagging device, known as 'the mute's bridle', is described by Robert Held. It consisted of an iron box that was inserted into the victim's mouth and held in place by a collar around the neck. The gag itself might be used to inflict yet more pain and humiliation on the victim; when the Renaissance scholar and scientist Giordano Bruno was sent to the stake in Rome in 1600, he was wearing an elaborate contraption "so constructed that one long spike pierced his tongue and the floor of his mouth and came out underneath his chin, while another penetrated up through his palate." Thus was the victim pointedly punished for his previous false utterings and prevented from making any new ones while, at the same time, he was prevented from uttering any screams that might have "interfered with the sacred music,"

Held, Robert. Inquisition: A Bilingual Guide to the Exhibition of Torture Instruments from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Era. Florence: Qua d'Arno, 1985.

Religious terrorism isn't pretty, no matter what the reason was for it (vis-a-vis Bruno).

#15: No, but the implication (there's no way any scientist could (or should) be associated with any religion; look at the terrible things they do to scientists) is certainly provocative, and demonstrably not true.

Okay, so you can look at "the caricature of .. the evil Inquisition" and say "No one (as far as I can tell) is arguing that the Inquisition wasn't evil." but then try and stick that on one of us? Inferring that from one person, one church and one incident is a heck of a leap.

'And we find the defendant guilty of first-degree murder, arson, gross sexual imposition, and littering.'

See, the movie Heavy Metal was being comedic in that scene. As the TV Tropes page points out, that's a joke; no one in reality actually gets charged with misdemeanors in the same case where they're getting charged with first-degree murder. If they do, then it's clear that littering is a felony, a serious crime.

Did Neil Degrasse Tyson miss an opportunity to bridge the gap between religion and science by ignoring the places where they work together and instead choosing to offer a tired caricature of Giordano Bruno and the evil Inquisition?

Is 'bridging the gap' one of the stated goals of the new Cosmos?

I thought it was to be an updated general history of science.

No; but people often DO get charged with multiple felonies, all of which may have different sentences if convicted. Prosecutors have a lot of reasons for doing this (and I won't digress by going into them here), but it happens quite frequently. So, yes, the point remains; simply because felony 'x' carries a death penalty specification doesn't mean that felony 'y' has to as well; 'y' might merely be 5-10 years of incarceration.

Cosmos episodes are 60 minutes long. Of that time, how much was spent on Bruno, as opposed to Nicholas of Cusa, Thomas Diggs, and others who proposed or pushed similar models and managed to avoid prosecution? But spectacular ends make for better television than quiet retirements.

The Inquisition is considered evil, even in its earliest incarnation, because it was a theocratic-based enforcement and judgement system that (primarily) punished people for heresy against the Revealed Truth. In a society where a theological absolute truth has been replaced by a scientific ever-refining and searching truth (at least in theory), and secular rather than theological law dominates, the Inquisition looks horrible. (Or, in more cynical terms, in the West the secular legal system triumphed over the clerical one after a long, bitter struggle, and so our impression/history of the church legal system is written primarily by the winners. imho, the right side (eventually) won.)

Granted, television, even quality television, may not be the right media to present nuanced views.

>20 BruceCoulson: "people often DO get charged with multiple felonies, all of which may have different sentences if convicted."

Yes, I'm not sure how #18 failed to communicate that I understood that. "Merely" 5-10 years of incarceration is still a very good silencer.

Giordano Bruno's conviction for heresy hinged on two points: his refusal to believe that the bread of Communion was literally transformed into the body of Christ; and his refusal to renounce as heretical the eight propositions distilled from his writings by Robert Bellarmine.

Cardinal Bellarmine finally drew up a list of the theories deemed to be heretical, over which Bruno again hesitated before categorically refusing to renounce his doctrine, saying: "I fear nothing and retract nothing, there is nothing to retract and I know not what I would have to retract".

The eight propositions that the philosopher refused to renounce were as follows:
"1 - The statement of "two real and eternal principles of existence: the soul of the world and the original matter from which beings are derived".
2 - The doctrine of the infinite universe and infinite worlds in conflict with the idea of Creation: "He who denies the infinite effect denies the infinite power".
3 - The idea that every reality resides in the eternal and infinite soul of the world, including the body: "There is no reality that is not accompanied by a spirit and an intelligence".
4 - The argument according to which "there is no transformation in the substance", since the substance is eternal and generates nothing, but transforms.
5 - The idea of terrestrial movement, which according to Bruno, did not oppose the Holy Scriptures, which were popularized for the faithful and did not apply to scientists.
6 - The designation of stars as "messengers and interpreters of the ways of God".
7 - The allocation of a "both sensory and intellectual" soul to earth.
8 - The opposition to the doctrine of St Thomas on the soul, the spiritual reality held captive in the body and not considered as the form of the human body"
.
None of these final accusations tied in with the philosopher's magic reflections. Nevertheless, with the help of informers, the Inquisition accused him of having turned towards hermetism and the arcane, branding him a sorcerer for having written in On Heroic Frenzies that "Magi can accomplish more using the faith than doctors using the ways of liberty" and for recognising magic as beneficial and lawful.

“In his last defenses, Bruno declared that the inquisitors had no right to dictate what was heresy and what was not. It was this denial of their authority that sealed his fate.”
Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic by Ingrid D. Rowland.

Because Bruno refused to acknowledge the inquisitors' authority, they could only respond by showing him their power, which they did by forcing him to his knees as they read him his sentence:

"We proclaim in these documents, state, pronounce, sentence, and declare you, the aforementioned Fra Giordano Bruno, to be an impenitent, pertinacious, and obstinate heretic, and for that reason to incur all the ecclesiastical censures and penalties of the sacred canons, laws, and constitutions, in general and in particular, as those are imposed on such confessed, impenitent, pertinacious, and obstinate heretics; and as such we degrade you in words and declare that you should be degraded, just as we order and command that you now be degraded from all the major and minor ecclesiastical orders to which you have been admitted, according to the order of the holy canons; and that you should be expelled, as we now expel you, from our ecclesiastical bar and from our holy and immaculate Church, of whose mercy you have rendered yourself unworthy.”

Bruno's reaction shows how clearly he understood the situation. A German convert to Catholicism, Caspar Schoppe, was in the audience that attended Bruno's sentencing and left a description: "He made no other reply than, in a menacing tone, (to say), 'You may be more afraid to bring that sentence against me than I am to accept it.' "

Regarding evil and the Inquisition, here's an interesting article on the effort to exterminate heretics in France in the early 13th century. http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/content/128/534/1047.full

I really hope the rest of the episodes don't get derailed by the science/religion debate. That would be such a disappointment.

25> Why would they get derailed?

>26 theoria: You don't think that the fact the only thing folks seem to want to talk about in the first episode is the Bruno segment is an indication it already has?

> 27

Well, in this group, maybe. But that's the focus here.

27> I can understand how some people don't want the dirty laundry of the Catholic Church aired on such a popular program, fronted by a congenial host. But historically, the Church had its moment in the sun (so to speak) vis-a-vis Galileo et al.; fortunately, that moment ended. I doubt subsequent episodes, for historical reasons, will have any reason to mention Bruno or the matter of heresy again. That doesn't mean a vocal few won't denounce the entire series based on one episode. That is their right.

>25 southernbooklady: "I really hope the rest of the episodes don't get derailed by the science/religion debate. That would be such a disappointment."

I'd rather that the rest of the episodes follow Sagan's original approach, which was amiably to leave room for religious awe at the universe as its own expression of the same awe that drives scientific exploration -- that is, I'd really hope that Tyson would refuse to buy into the false dichotomy that science and religion are locked in a debate, a battle, a war, in which only one side can win and only then by destroying the other.

The problem is that forcing the relationship between science and religion into a paradigm of debate and antagonism is already a distortion. Allow them to be allies (as most people do) and they can work together for the amelioration of the human condition. Pit them against one another as foes (as a small, benighted minority vociferously desires) and they must destroy each other.

30> Pit them against one another as foes (as a small, benighted minority vociferously desires) and they must destroy each other.

A bit melodramatic. In reality, science and religion have been pitted against each other and neither is any worse for the wear. The former continues to generate huge research grants and pharmaceutical patents; the latter continues to fill church treasuries and to save souls.

>29 theoria: I can understand how some people don't want the dirty laundry of the Catholic Church aired on such a popular program, fronted by a congenial host.

I can too, but that is not the foundation of my objection.

>30 nathanielcampbell: I'd rather that the rest of the episodes follow Sagan's original approach, which was amiably to leave room for religious awe at the universe as its own expression of the same awe that drives scientific exploration

Personally, I hope that the show leaves religion right out of it. But it is a failing hope.

-- that is, I'd really hope that Tyson would refuse to buy into the false dichotomy that science and religion are locked in a debate, a battle, a war, in which only one side can win and only then by destroying the other.

And I hope that the show remembers it is supposed to be about the science, not some kind of palliative reassurance for those who regard science as a challenge to their faith.

>32 southernbooklady: "And I hope that the show remembers it is supposed to be about the science, not some kind of palliative reassurance for those who regard science as a challenge to their faith."

If it were about science, then why tell the pitiful tale of a sixteenth-century mystic burned as a heretic? He never conducted scientific experiments, nor ever claimed that his ideas about the universe were sourced in anything other than mystical revelation?

Moreover, why intentionally create more animosity between the realms of science and faith? It the goal is to get people to like science, then why intentionally antagonize them?

This is what I simply don't understand about the approach taken by folks like Dawkins. Do you really think that you'll get people to respect you more by telling them they're stupid and attacking the very core of their identity as false?

Every time a scientist attacks religious faith, it makes it that much harder to convince religious believers that science is their friend, not their enemy. It's science shooting itself in the foot, and it frustrates to no end those of us who endeavour to make peace between the sides.

Copernicus really was a scientist and a priest. Tell his story, and you have the story of an actual discoverer who was also a man of faith, a witness to the peace that can exist between them.

Science is a recruiting tool for religion.

Religion (i.e., the support of religious believers) is not necessary for science to flourish in modernity.

>33 nathanielcampbell: If it were about science, then why tell the pitiful tale of a sixteenth-century mystic burned as a heretic?

Exactly. So not the point.

Moreover, why intentionally create more animosity between the realms of science and faith? It the goal is to get people to like science, then why intentionally antagonize them?

When instead they could just be talking about how cool science is.

This is what I simply don't understand about the approach taken by folks like Dawkins.

Not sure what Dawkins has to do with Cosmos, but his "selfish gene" theory is pretty brilliant.

Copernicus really was a scientist and a priest. Tell his story, and you have the story of an actual discoverer who was also a man of faith, a witness to the peace that can exist between them.

But it's only the story of the scientist that's relevant.

>33 nathanielcampbell: Do you really think that you'll get people to respect you more by telling them their stupid and attacking the very core of their identity as false?

Why do you think that his prime concern is getting people to respect him? If his goal is to spread atheism, his approach is proven to work in some cases, to shake people hard enough to question what they believed. How effective it is overall is a hard question, but I see the existence of atheists like Dawkins as being essential to making atheism loud enough that people can't dismiss it. As an atheist in a world where atheist groups have trouble advertising their mere existence on buses, I think that's a good thing.

Every time a scientist attacks religious faith, it makes it that much harder to convince religious believers that science is their friend, not their enemy. It's science shooting itself in the foot

If there's such a thing as a religious scientist, then you must accept that there's atheist scientists and that some days they act as atheists, not scientists. Catholic scientists believe that wine somehow turns into blood, in some essential way that scientists as scientists know doesn't exist. Is that science shooting itself in the foot, or is that people acting as Catholics, not scientists?

>36 prosfilaes: "in some essential way that scientists as scientists know doesn't exist"

Scientists know that they cannot physically observe the sacramental existence of the wine as Christ's blood; that is not the same thing as saying that they "know it doesn't exist", unless you make the scientifically unprovable a priori assumption that only the physically observable exists.

In a response to Corey S. Powell's article,
Steven Soter, a resident research associate at the American Museum of Natural history and Cosmos‘s co-writer (along with Ann Druyan), pointed out that:

"Bruno was indisputably the first person to grasp that the Sun is a star and the stars are other suns with their own planets. That is arguably the greatest idea in the history of astronomy. Before Bruno, none of the other Copernicans ever imagined it."

> 38

And yet he wasn't an empirical scientist. He was a magus.

Tell his story, and you have the story of an actual discoverer who was also a man of faith, a witness to the peace that can exist between them.

You mean the story of a man who feared to publish his book until he was on his deathbed? And the story of the church that, once his book was published, had it placed on a list of banned books?

>39 paradoxosalpha:
That's how the magi roll; look at what Newton did with Bruno's ideas.
Of course he waited until he was dead before publishing, too.

In Rome’s Campo di Fiora, on the spot where Giordano Bruno met his fate on Ash Wednesday, February 17, 1600, there now stands a monument to his memory. Tomorrow On February 17, 2014 a group of people led by the Mayor of Rome will lay a wreath and the day will be filled with celebrations of “free speech.”

But the church has neither forgiven nor forgot:

“.… as the anniversary of Bruno's death loomed over the Roman jubilee year of 2000, John Paul declared, through two cardinals, Angelo Sodano and Paul Poupard, that Bruno had deviated too far from Christian doctrine to be granted Christian pardon. The inquisitors who put the philosopher to his gruesome death, the cardinals added, should be judged in the light of their gruesome times. As Sodano noted, in what was obviously a carefully worded document: ‘It is not our place to express judgments about the conscience of those who were involved in this matter. Objectively, nonetheless, certain aspects of these procedures and in particular their violent result at the hand of civil authority, in this and analogous cases, cannot but constitute a cause for profound regret on the part of the Church.’”

Cardinal Bellarmine was named a saint in 1930, but the Church refuses to forgive the man who died defending the belief that ‘‘in the end even the devils would be pardoned and that religious strife, with its human claim to see through God's eyes, was the most misguided strife of all.’’

Giordano Bruno Philosopher/Heretic by Ingrid D. Rowland

>37 nathanielcampbell: Transubstantiation says that matter has reality and accidentals, and all our senses reveal are the accidentals. A Catholic chemist who believes in the doctrine of transubstantiation speaking precisely can not tell you how much alcohol is in a liquid given to them; the reality of that substance is hidden from them. That goes way beyond "only the physically observable exists" into some deeply confusing statements about reality.

And whether or not it's scientifically unprovable, do you really think that it does science any credit in the eyes of the world that there are chemists who can look at a glass of wine, taste a glass of wine, run a sample through the mass spectrometer, and not be able to tell you that it is in reality a glass of wine? You're telling me that's in science's best interests?

>40 StormRaven: "And the story of the church that, once his book was published, had it placed on a list of banned books?"

Quite some time later. De revolutionibus was published in 1543; the Congregation of the Index first demanded nine sentences be changed (and proscribed the unamended edition) 73 years later. Were they just inefficient, or might there have been a motive for their action in 1616 that hadn't applied in Copernicus' lifetime?

>42 quicksiva: "the Church refuses to forgive the man who died defending the belief that ‘‘in the end even the devils would be pardoned and that religious strife, with its human claim to see through God's eyes, was the most misguided strife of all.’’"

Others paint a less saintly and more partisan view of Bruno. In the historian John Bossy's curious account (Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair), Bruno acted an Elizabethan secret agent, was driven by fanatical hatred of the papacy, and took an allegedly sadistic pleasure in torture; his contemporaries failed to detect his treachery, but (Bossy harshly concludes) given his own stated principles and the treatment he had helped the English state mete out to 'papist' traitors, "there is room for saying, after more sympathetic things, that it {his end} served him right." (!)

On John Bossy's "history."

If this story is true, then Bruno was not just a spy but a fraud, impersonating a priest, and a traitor, betraying the French king and the ambassador, and all of this for rather vague reasons--neither for money nor power but to undermine the credibility of the papacy and because it appealed to his taste for practical jokes.

From this story, it is difficult to tell how Bruno acquired his reputation for brilliance, charm, wit, courage, and integrity, for Bossy depicts a ``smart operator'' and a ``dishonorable'' one, argumentative, abrasive, the author of ``soporific'' dialogues whose speculations on science and cosmology were eccentric and unoriginal.

Regrettably, the significance of Bruno and even of the conspiracy is lost in Bossy's presentation- -obscure, convoluted, turgid, weighted with chronologies, false clues, obfuscation, irrelevant letters, artificially designed mysteries--such as a whole chapter arguing for the ``coincidence'' of Fagot and Bruno's similarities when Bossy is about to reveal that they are the same man.

However correct his facts, however indisputable his conclusions, Bossy compromises them by his melodramatic presentation--which is probably more suitable to fiction. A bewildering and frustrating read. (Illustrations.) --

Kirkus Associates, 1991

Looks like another round of science versus religion tonight. Or not.

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey - Some of the Things That Molecules Do
Artificial selection; natural selection's impact on the human eye; extinction.

44: It doesn't matter how much later. The idea that Copernicus' story is somehow one that shows how science and faith can be reconciled is laughable.

>33 nathanielcampbell: "If it were about science, then why tell the pitiful tale of a sixteenth-century mystic burned as a heretic?"

>35 southernbooklady: "Exactly. So not the point."

Couldn't agree more.

The problem, I think, originates in Tyson himself. He refers to the Bruno "story" in his article Holy Wars and states
"Let there be no doubt that as they are currently practiced, there is no common ground between science and religion." He also refers to A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom by Andrew D. White, one of the "tomes" as he puts it, that is one of the sacred texts of the Conflict Thesis. White has been almost universally criticised by more modern and enlightened historians of science. If Cosmos is going to be a polemic for the Conflict Thesis it is going to put off many of the viewers it hopes to draw in, which will be a real shame.

Cosmos should stick to the science and leave out religion.

For an alternative view, I'd recommend When Science Meets Religion by Ian G. Barbour, who died recently. His thesis is that there are four broad categories of opinions of the relationship between science and religion: Conflict, Independence, Dialogue and Integration.

Conflict is the worst option. Independence (Gould's NOMA and Sagan's tone in his Cosmos) is better. Dialogue is better still. Integration is best.

While I understand why some would prefer it if it were never mentioned that the Church persecuted "heretical" thinking to the point of physical destruction of the "heretics", I think there are excellent reasons to do so within a programme on science. It illustrates the difference between what religious totalitarianism aims for and stoops to, ideologically and practically, and the spirit and aim of science, a disinterested search for objective truth.

It is because religion and science are completely and irrevocably antagonistic that illustrating one helps understand the other.

Oh, and there's of course always the little fact that the Church DID persecute certain people and groups for specific scientific ideas they held, that this is part of the intellectual history of both the Church and Western science and therefore perfectly pertinent within any discussion of history of science.

While I understand why some would prefer it if it were never mentioned that the Church persecuted "heretical" thinking to the point of physical destruction of the "heretics", I think there are excellent reasons to do so within a programme on science.

If we were watching "a history of science and religion" I'd agree. But the Cosmos I remember and the one I was hoping for now was all about the joys of scientific discovery. I was really wanting this show to leave religion out of it. Must it worm it's way into everything? Hopefully future episodes won't stoop to it. It's not like theological criteria can assess the validity of scientific evidence. So why even bring it up?

But the Cosmos I remember and the one I was hoping for now was all about the joys of scientific discovery. I was really wanting this show to leave religion out of it.

The original Cosmos had some commentary on the conflict between science and faith - for example, Sagan talked at some length about Saint Cyril's religiously motivated destruction of the Library at Alexandria and the murder of Hypatia.

Saint Cyril's religiously motivated destruction of the Library at Alexandria

I hope he's burning in hell for that.

The Bruno segment was so long, though. So in your face about it. You lost track of the idea that he thought sun was a star among thousands of stars in an infinite universe when they started bringing out the weird iron torture implements.

Operator error.

"Viewers in Oklahoma who tuned into watch 'Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey,' hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, missed about 15 seconds of the show, which just happened to be the one part where Dr. Tyson mentioned evolution.
Instead, a local news promo was aired in the few seconds time slot.

The station apologized, chalking it up to an "operator error."

"Many believe this was done intentionally in an attempt to shield our viewers from this subject matter," said Fox 25 in a statement. "That is not the case." http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0313/Oklahoma-Fox-affiliate-cuts-evolution...

>49 LolaWalser:
religion and science are completely and irrevocably antagonistic

As someone who supposedly values evidence, this is an incredibly stupid thing to say. One can only conclude that evidence is not something Lola values, which doesn't bode well for science.

As one vote for the Conflict Thesis, she also might benefit from reading some historians of science. To quote the wikipedia page I linked above -- "Most historians today have moved away from a conflict model" and

"The result is the growing recognition among historians of science that the relationship of religion and science has been much more positive than is sometimes thought. Although popular images of controversy continue to exemplify the supposed hostility of Christianity to new scientific theories, studies have shown that Christianity has often nurtured and encouraged scientific endeavour, while at other times the two have co-existed without either tension or attempts at harmonization."

54> The Catholic Church lost the ideological battle with science once and for all sometime in the 19th century. Boulevard evangelicalism has taken up the fight in its stead.

There's also an institutional story for the irrelevance of religion to scientific research since the 19th century: intellectual life found a safe haven in secular educational institutions and in private firms.

The Catholic Church lost the ideological battle with science once and for all sometime in the 19th century.

But it wasn't a battle. The Church incubated, nurtured and supported much early science, particularly astronomy. Again, the evidence points the other way. See for example the Wikipedia Catholic_Church_and_science page.

I'm not sure how listing the works of Galileo and Copernicus on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum nurtured or supported astronomy.

By default, Catholic universities were sites of scientific inquiry only because these institutions were the only game in town. But that left scientific work open to interference since the Church sought a monopoly over the means and use of knowledge. That monopoly was broken first by the Reformation and later by political revolutions which opened spaces for scientific inquiry independent of religious authority.

Sure, the works of Galileo and Copernicus were suppressed. But the same thing happens today. Those who pay for research control its dissemination.

But you have to honestly answer theses two questions.

1. Would the work of Copernicus or Galileo been done without the patronage of the Church?

2. Did the indexing of their work help or hinder the cause of astronomy in any significant way?

>47 StormRaven: " It doesn't matter how much later. The idea that Copernicus' story is somehow one that shows how science and faith can be reconciled is laughable."

It matters how much later only if we care what Copernicus' story might mean in its own historical context.

I don't disagree that Copernicus having been a clerk in minor orders (apparently not strictly-speaking a priest) demonstrates little more about normative or actual relations between present day 'faith' and 'science' than, say, the career of Cardinal Richelieu does about relations between Church and State. (I read Nathaniel to be employing it illustratively rather than demonstratively.)

That doesn't mean the correct come-back is to wheel out the scientistic version of Foxe's Book of Martyrs. There needn't be an inevitable conflict between Science and History...

59: But it is for the point the Bruno story was making - in an environment where religion holds sway, free inquiry is stifled. Copernicus was working in an environment where he feared publishing his work until he was at death's door. His work was later judged to be worthy of banning. Saying that Copernicus' story is one in which science and faith worked together, as nathaniel posited, is simply ridiculous.

>60 StormRaven: in an environment where religion holds sway, free inquiry is stifled.

Scientific inquiry has found a way to incorporate the possibility of error in a way that religious doctrine eschews. That is to say, science learns from both its successes and failures. Religion reacts really badly to being told it is wrong about something.

I think the two perspectives stand facing each other on either side of window that they each think is a mirror. Science benefits from the ethics that were largely developed under religious guidance when it starts exploring things like how to make atom bombs or work with pathogens.

Religion, on the other hand, needs to accept what science discovers, and incorporate scientific discovery into its own theological perspectives. It has no authority over such discoveries. It can't pronounce scientific conclusions about the observable universe valid or invalid. And it has no business stifling inquiry or the pursuit of scientific knowledge.

It seems difficult to me to claim that the Church continued to be an enemy of science even in the 19th and 20th centuries when you have such scientists as Gregor Mendel (the father of genetics and a monk) and Georges Lemaitre (a priest and first physicist to enunciate the Big Bang theory in the early 20th century).

My wife (the evolutionary biologist) decided to turn last night's episode of Cosmos off half-way through because Tyson was making so many mistakes in explaining evolution, including:

• Claiming that genetic mutations are entirely random -- they are NOT entirely random; there are "hot spots" in the genome where mutations occur more frequently.
• The "tree of life" was badly distorted.
• Darwin did not discover "THE" mechanism of evolution -- he discovered one of the mechanisms for evolution.

I was only half-paying attention to the episode as I was finishing up class prep for today, but even I caught several moments of gratuitous and completely unnecessary antagonism towards religion.

And that's the problem: attacking religion is NOT necessary to lay out the science of evolution. Taking potshots at religion is gratuitous, and serves only to alienate religious viewers. Tyson had a wonderful opportunity to create a monument of science education for the popular audience; but he's sullied the science with unnecessary attacks on religion.

We won't be watching any future episodes, and I suspect there are others as well who have been discouraged from watching because of such unnecessary antagonism. It's a shamefully missed opportunity.

I thought the episode was simplistic, but not inaccurate. And frankly, I thought it went out of its way not to take potshots at religion this time around, given that it was concerned with showing that the processes of evolution happen just fine on their own.

That said, it was clear to me that at some point, someone said to the show's writers "for Pete's sake, go over the evolution of the eye thing. Let's get that out of the way, please."

I think I know too much science to find Cosmos as revelatory this time around as I did as a kid.

>64 southernbooklady: "I thought the episode was simplistic, but not inaccurate."

I think the danger for us--and this is true of many pop-sci programs, not just "Cosmos"--is that my wife knows too much about the details and thus grates at the oversimplifications. I think what she found most disconcerting was that the oversimplifications involved unnecessary distortions, i.e. it's not necessary to say that Darwin discovered THE mechanism of evolution; saying that he discovered a mechanism would be both more accurate and no more complex.

(This happens on my side of the coin when we try to watch pop-history programs -- my nerves grate at the oversimplifications, especially when they unnecessarily distort reality.)

>64 southernbooklady: " I thought it went out of its way not to take potshots at religion this time around"

There were two in particular that jumped out at us:

1. "there is no breeder" guiding natural selection: My wife objected to this one because it essentially rules as out-of-bounds the idea of theistic evolution. Was it necessary to say this? Could it have been left unsaid, or said in a different way, to leave more room for theistic evolution?

2. He took on directly the objection to humans being related to poop-flinging chimps, and the way he painted religion as forcing a false "humans are special" narrative was simply unnecessary. You can describe the human place in evolution without having to ever mention religious alternatives.

As a theologian, what particularly disturbed me was this tendency to criticize those religious perspectives while ignoring other religious perspectives that are more sympatico to the scientific narrative. For example, Tyson's wondrous painting of the interior of the cell as its own universe is simply one in an ancient line of seeing individual organisms as microcosms (or, to put the point, mircocosmos).

That is: if you're going to criticize certain religious perspectives that conflict with science, you should have the integrity to acknowledge religious perspectives that don't conflict with science.

>65 nathanielcampbell: saying that he discovered a mechanism would be both more accurate and no more complex.

I'm not sure about that. It may actually introduce complexity.

But on the other hand, if your objection of the program hinges on the substitution of a definite article for an indefinite one, then are you really assessing it fairly?

Speaking as someone with editorial experience, I run up against this kind of critical assessment all the time. When is simplifying actually clarifying, and when is it obscuring? It's always a judgement call, but one where our own personal prejudices are likely to come into play.

It was clear to me that the main objective of the show was to confirm that natural selection was sufficient to explain species development without involving an intelligent designer. So that seemed to be the focus of the script. And given that objective, I can see why the show limited itself to the best-known (and also most-contested) aspects of evolutionary theory.

I mean, there are many many detailed theories about the causes of the Permian extinction as well. But I'm not going to fault the program for focusing on the most popularly accepted umbrella theory about it.

>66 nathanielcampbell: "there is no breeder" guiding natural selection: My wife objected to this one because it essentially rules as out-of-bounds the idea of theistic evolution.

I don't know what "theistic evolution" is, exactly, but it is certainly a statement that an intelligent designer is unnecessary for evolution to work. That's hardly a "pot shot."

He took on directly the objection to humans being related to poop-flinging chimps, and the way he painted religion as forcing a false "humans are special" narrative was simply unnecessary.

If that was really the goal of the tree of life thing, I think it was bungled. The whole point was to emphasize the connectedness of life, and human beings' inclusion in that connectedness. ("I find it very spiritual" I think he said).

As a theologian, what particularly disturbed me was this tendency to criticize those religious perspectives while ignoring other religious perspectives that are more sympatico to the scientific narrative.

So you think the show should be about reassuring religious people, instead of about science? Do you think Cosmos is about how a person can have faith and still accept evolution? Or is it about science?

That is: if you're going to criticize certain religious perspectives that conflict with science, you should have the integrity to acknowledge religious perspectives that don't conflict with science.

If an objection to a scientific theory is raised, science answers it. Why wouldn't it address such objections?

Really it could have been much more emphatic and confrontational. Instead it limited itself to how evolution happens by natural selection.

"Theistic evolution" is unscientific bollocks so why and how could a programme on science "leave room for it"?

Anyone can believe whatever they want, but they don't have the right to sell their fantasies to others as scientific.

"there is no breeder" guiding natural selection: My wife objected to this one because it essentially rules as out-of-bounds the idea of theistic evolution. Was it necessary to say this? Could it have been left unsaid, or said in a different way, to leave more room for theistic evolution?

There is no evidence for a breeder. The idea of "theistic evolution" isn't science. It is religion grafted on to science. Science itself sticks with the evidence. Provide evidence of your theistic guiding hand and then maybe your objection would have some merit instead of just being mendacious whining.

I have not seen the episode, which sounds about as interesting as Warhol's Empire, but pagan hagiography is always king of baffling (someone mentioned Hypathia upthread, and indeed the first thing Tyson's Bruno fanfiction brought to mind was that turkey Agora).

I kind of wonder if they will slam the pagan "Enlightment" for killing Lavoisier, who was, you know, a real world-class scientist. By which I mean I do not wonder it at all.

>68 southernbooklady: "So you think the show should be about reassuring religious people, instead of about science? Do you think Cosmos is about how a person can have faith and still accept evolution? Or is it about science? "

I think that if he's going to attack religion, he should also give religion a fair hearing on the places where it is sympathetic to science.

Science does NOT have to attack religion. Tyson made a choice to be antagonistic towards religion, rather than simply talking about science. He has to live with the consequence of that choice, which is that he alienates many religious viewers who might otherwise be sympathetic to his project, if only he didn't feel the need to attack them.

>52 southernbooklady: "I hope he's burning in hell for that."

Let's just clear something up: St. Cyril did NOT destroy the Library of Alexandria. That one's a myth.

I kind of wonder if they will slam the pagan "Enlightment" for killing Lavoisier, who was, you know, a real world-class scientist.

Probably not, but that's because Lavoisier wasn't killed for his ideas. Bruno and Hyapatia were.

I thought intent did not matter now, only results ?

Also, while his death might not have been a direct consequence of his ideas, it certainly was a direct consequence of the barbarians' contempt for them. "La République n'a pas besoin de savants ni de chimistes" means what it means.

75: I think you missed the entire point of the Bruno story, and I don't think there is any way to explain it to you.

>72 nathanielcampbell: Science does NOT have to attack religion. Tyson made a choice to be antagonistic towards religion, rather than simply talking about science. He has to live with the consequence of that choice, which is that he alienates many religious viewers who might otherwise be sympathetic to his project, if only he didn't feel the need to attack them.


Honestly, Nathan, this statement makes me think that it would be impossible to devise a description of natural selection that would not be interpreted as an attack on religion by you. The complaint that the show "slams the door on theistic evolution" is a case in point here. "Theistic evolution" -- whatever that is theologically, is not a scientific concept. It has no place in a show about science, certainly no intrinsic right to be accommodated.

But questions about science can be answered. And since one of those questions has been "How could the human eye evolve without an intelligent designer?" then I think the show was within it's scope to answer the question.

Your complaint about the lack of accommodation for religious feeling and faith in Cosmos reminds me of the complaints Reza Aslan received for writing a book about the historical Jesus that didn't justify his status as the son of God.

>43 prosfilaes: "Transubstantiation says that matter has reality and accidentals, and all our senses reveal are the accidentals. A Catholic chemist who believes in the doctrine of transubstantiation speaking precisely can not tell you how much alcohol is in a liquid given to them; the reality of that substance is hidden from them."

I took it for granted that you understood that transubstantiation is not the same thing as the doctrine of the Real Presence. Rather, it is a particular attempt at explaining the mechanics of the Real Presence, given the metaphysical paradigm of Aristotle. One does NOT have to be an Aristotelian to believe in the Real Presence; and indeed, most theologians have accepted the completely valid scientific critique of Aristotlelian metaphysics.

(And even if the Catholic chemist DID, mirabile dictu, operate under an Aristotelian metaphysics, he could tell you the amoung of alcohol in a liquid because such a liquid, as a composite, consists of different parts and their accidents, which are measurable. But your implication that a Catholic chemist looks at the world through an Aristotelian metaphysics is just silly.)

#75

So is "kill them all, God will know his own" an adequate representation of the Christian barbarians?

Lavoisier was executed during Terror as a traitor to the revolution, for a specific list of crimes completely unrelated to science; not as a scientist, for his scientific ideas. It is a shameful black mark against the Revolution but to pretend it is evidence of some ideological contempt for science is arrant nonsense. Three dozen other people were executed at the same time; somehow one doesn't hear much about them.

I'm amused to see believers, presumably "Christians", bend over backwards trying to minimize Bruno's murder on account of his (take your pick) bad character, not being a "proper" scientist, mysticism etc.

Evidently the Inquisition could return tomorrow to loud cheers.

>79 LolaWalser: "Lavoisier was executed during Terror as a traitor to the revolution, for a specific list of crimes completely unrelated to science; not as a scientist, for his scientific ideas."

Bruno was execued by the Inquisition as a heretic, for a specific list of heretical propositions only one of which (and a very minor one) could later be construed as anything related to science; he was not a scientist, nor ever claimed to be a scientist; and he was executed not as a scientist and not for any "science" in which he did not participate.

By your very own criteria to exclude Lavoisier from the list of martyrs for science, Bruno should be excluded as well.

None of us are excusing the Church for killing Bruno. We all openly agree that nobody should be killed, whether by the Church or by the State, for their beliefs alone.

On the other hand, we also recognize that Bruno's case was far more complex than the caricature of it portrayed in Cosmos. (Do scientists get a pass for distorting the facts when it comes their own "martyrs"?)

Moreover, most of us are wary of committing the presentist fallacy, which imposes present moral convictions upon the past whilst ignoring the past's own context. It is a recent invention of human society to think that is wrong to execute those whose ideas pose a danger to social stability. Projecting the standards of that invention onto the judgments of the past is a dangerous and fallacious approach to history.

I wonder if Tyson will do a segment on J. Marion Sims, Henry Heiman, Richard Strong, F. C. Knowles, Jonas Salk, or the Tuskegee syphilis experiments?

>81 nathanielcampbell: Projecting the standards of that invention onto the judgments of the past is a dangerous and fallacious approach to history.

Careful there. That sounds like moral relativism. :)

>82 Arctic-Stranger: I'm not sure about Cosmos, per se, but documentaries on when science goes wrong is certainly justified.

Bruno was executed by the Inquisition as a heretic, for a specific list of heretical propositions only one of which (and a very minor one) could later be construed as anything related to science; he was not a scientist, nor ever claimed to be a scientist; and he was executed not as a scientist and not for any "science" in which he did not participate.

The story was not presented as showing Bruno as a martyr to science. It was presented as an argument as to why the very idea of heresy is antithetical to the flourishing of human inquiry. Your persistent sniveling on this issue makes it clear that you are willing to excuse anything in the name of religion.

By your very own criteria to exclude Lavoisier from the list of martyrs for science, Bruno should be excluded as well.

I'm not the one for making lists of "martyrs" and I don't need any criteria not to count Lavoisier as a "martyr for science"--that's simply not what he was. Nor was he executed for "heresy". Bruno was. There is just no twisting the two histories into something similar.

>84 StormRaven: "Your persistent sniveling on this issue makes it clear that you are willing to excuse anything in the name of religion."

Please see >81 nathanielcampbell: "None of us are excusing the Church for killing Bruno. We all openly agree that nobody should be killed, whether by the Church or by the State, for their beliefs alone."

(At this point, if I followed your standard modus operandi, I would accuse you of lying.)

Cosmic inflation: 'Spectacular' discovery hailed (BBC):

Scientists say they have extraordinary new evidence to support a Big Bang Theory for the origin of the Universe.

Researchers believe they have found the signal left in the sky by the super-rapid expansion of space that must have occurred just fractions of a second after everything came into being.

It takes the form of a distinctive twist in the oldest light detectable with telescopes.

(This makes up and more for the lackluster quality of Tyson's series.)

>30 nathanielcampbell:

(i'm a little late to this conversation, but...)

I'd rather that the rest of the episodes follow Sagan's original approach, which was amiably to leave room for religious awe at the universe as its own expression of the same awe that drives scientific exploration

i read cosmos just a few weeks ago (and had never seen the show or this new one) and understood sagan to leave not much room for religion at all.

"'If a faithful account was rendered of Man's ideas upon Divinity, he would be obliged to acknowledge, that for the most part the word 'gods' has been used to express the concealed, remote, unknown causes of the effects he witnessed; that he applies this term when the spring of the natural, the source of known causes, ceases to be visible: as soon as he loses the thread of these causes, or as soon as his mind can no longer follow the chain, he solves the difficulty, terminates his research, by ascribing it to his gods...When, therefore, he ascribes to his gods the production of some phenomenon...does he, in fact, do any thing more than substitute for the darkness of his own mind, a sound to which he has been accustomed to listen with reverential awe?' --Paul Heinrich Dietrich, Baron von Holbach, Systeme de la Nature, London, 1770"

"And so it was that the great idea arose, the realization that there might be a way to know the world without the god hypothesis; that there might be principles, forces, laws of nature, through which the world could be understood without attributing the fall of every sparrow to the direct intervention of Zeus."

maybe just my interpretation.

>81 nathanielcampbell: It is a recent invention of human society to think that is wrong to execute those whose ideas pose a danger to social stability. Projecting the standards of that invention onto the judgments of the past is a dangerous and fallacious approach to history.

At which point you acknowledge that those that killed Christians in the name of the Roman empire were right and the early Christian Church was in the wrong, I'll accept this. I'd actually say that it has been pretty universal to consider those that kill those in your group as wrong, and thus as long as we consider Bruno one of us--or even his execution a warning sign to those who are one of us--then we will consider the Church wrong and be not one bit anachronistic in doing so.

>60 StormRaven: "Copernicus was working in an environment where he feared publishing his work until he was at death's door."

So the legend runs. Today's historians do not seem to think fear of the Inquisition (or whatever could have been its Polish equivalent) had much to do with Copernicus' delays bringing De Revolutionibus to press. Perhaps his dedicatory preface to the Pope, and his crediting his work to the grace of God "without whom we can accomplish nothing" can be read at face value; perhaps this was timid cynicism; or perhaps he simply doesn't fit the retrospective straitjacket of the Galileo Affair?

>88 overlycriticalelisa: Sagan seems to object to the "gods of the gaps" -- but so do most theologians, so...

>91 nathanielcampbell: but so do most theologians, so...

Does the general community of the faithful, though, do you think? Is there a difference between the idea of "gods of the gaps" and the notion of divine intervention or divine will? Gods that cause direct effects in the world?

And wouldn't you say the latter is certainly the kind of belief that predominated up through possibly even the Enlightenment era?

>91 nathanielcampbell:

if i understand the meaning of "gods of the gaps" correctly (basically what that first quote in >88 overlycriticalelisa: says, that if there is a lack of knowledge or understanding it's just easier or feels better or insert your reason here to attribute that slice of reality to a god) then going back in time, didn't most everything come from a gap in knowledge? maybe that's not a pertinent question or even what i mean to ask. i think i see what you're saying, but it's definitely not at all what i got from my reading of cosmos. still, i read with an atheist's eyes. if i still had the book with me i'd see if it was more what you say.

still, though, i feel like the average non-secular person attributes these "gaps" to a god. i think attributes is the wrong word. it seems more like the gaps are proffered as proof of a god.

There will always be gaps in human knowledge. These gaps represent our ignorance. To label the gaps "god" does nothing but add confusion.

The "Cosmos" show is about science, which has nothing to do with "revealed" religion, as religious/supernatural/superstitious beliefs have nothing to do with cosmology, biology or anything real.

The catholic church used to burn people at the stake for "heresy". Whatever the reason they did it and whatever the poor victims said or taught is not particular relevant. Murder is murder.

The catholic church no longer has the political power to murder dissenters or those they deem rivals. The catholic church and christianity in general do not rule politically much at all in today's world. So that shows improvement.

Science marches on. The catholic church has no moral or intellectual authority now. It is a dinosaur and science will be its death-dealing asteroid.

Ratings for Cosmos hold firm despite Tyson's statement that "Gravity is the clockmaker."

Ah, but "Levity is the cobbler!"

#95

I think next time I watch Deadwood I'll substitute "clockmaker" for you-know-what.

97> Damn, you just ruined Deadwood!

MAXIMUM POWER!!

Wu's pigs, CLOCKMAKER!

A stopped clock is right twice a day.

Some of the folks on LT have a way lower batting average than that. You know, the ones that believe in six impossible things before breakfast each day.

lol.

For a television program that explores evolution in depth and with extraordinary grace and clarity (while avoiding unnecessary entanglements with religion), I can highly recommend PBS' new "Your Inner Fish": http://www.pbs.org/your-inner-fish/home/

We watched the first episode last night and were both enthralled. I cannot recommend it enough!