Can anybody tell me how can I delete my own postings. I did something wrong here... (as you've probably noticed...). Perhaps the moderator?
Once posted, you can't delete, but you can edit.
c.i.
Sorry, Tartarin. A while ago I realized you were not really equiped to and/or interested in listening. So I decided to focus on the more interesting arguments. We have limited time, and we cannot but pick our fights.
Take care.
Tartarin wrote:Agree with you, Timber. These arguments between belief and disbelief put the full burden on the believer. I think Maliagar has been using, honestly or disingenuously, the old strategy of demanding proof from the disbeliever, stretching out the discussion using the tactics you list.
To state it simply to Maliagar, put up or shut up!
Maliagar, this being a free-thinking society in which religion is accomodated but not to be regarded as purveying fact, you are in luck. You are free to pursue your religious beliefs. We behave politely in the company of your beliefs, if not your behavior when proselytizing. Have some intellectual integrity: don't try to persuade us that belief is fact. Please don't present as fact something which is unproven and has remained unproven for millenia, and which you certainly have not proven here. But most of all don't tell us that because we embrace a diversity of sexual behaviors in the same way that we embrace a diversity of religious beliefs, we are accomodating sin. You simply have no proof.
maliagar, I can delete those "xxxx" posts for you if you'd like .. no problem. Was there a technical difficulty or some sort of website fault you experienced? Whatever the reason, I'm more than happy to help you sort it out. Lemme know here on the thread or PM me ... I'll see what I can do for ya.
Sorry for the repetition. I just learnt a couple of things about how this works.
My dearest Frank:
I realize that oftentimes, for some people, no amount of evidence is enough to dispel deeply held beliefs. But if it doesn't work with you, it may work for somebody else.
You wanted more E V I D E N C E ? HERE IT IS:
"The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals As Solar Observatories" - Harvard University Press; (April 2001) ISBN: 0674005368 by J. L. Heilbron (formerly history and vice chancellor, Berkeley; currently Senior Research Fellow, Oxford)
Amazon.com
The Sun in the Church by J.L. Heilbron is a provocative work of scholarship that challenges long-held views of the relationship between science and Christianity. Heilbron's main point is simple enough: "The Roman Catholic Church gave more financial and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and, probably, all other, institutions." Despite the persecution of Galileo, Heilbron notes, the Church actively supported mathematical and astronomical research--often designing cathedrals that could also function as observatories--in order to set the precise date of Easter (a crucial endeavor for maintaining the unity of the Church). Heilbron's fluid, engaging style brings his detailed reconstructions of 16th- and 17th-century Church politics to life. And his argument that scientific knowledge was deemed both morally neutral and politically useful during the Reformation and beyond yields an unusually interesting, complex, and human understanding of Catholicism in the early Modern period. --Michael Joseph Gross
Of course, you may discard this author as another "crazy" and obscure "nobody"... but that's your problem.
Take care.
Understanding of the solar system existed before Jesus ever came on the scene. The pyramids of Egypt is but one example. c.i.
Some book reviews on Heilbron work (from Amazon):
Scientific American, July 2000
"[Heilbron] has researched his subject deeply... a rich history of... the development of the calendar and the relations between the Church and science." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
The New Yorker, October 18-25, 1999
In this elegant work, Heilbron recounts how in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Roman Catholic Church fashioned several of its major cathedrals into precision instruments for studying the motions of the sun. . .Heilbron, upending common views of the Church's relationship to science after it condemned Galileo, shows that Rome handsomely supported astronomical studies, accepting the Copernican hypothesis as a fiction convenient for calculation...
Book News, Inc.
Heilbron (history of science, U. of California-Berkeley) weaves the history of science and the history of the Church together to show how interrelated they have been. He takes four cathedrals that measure the passage of the sun as a fulcrum from which to consider Church politics in the 16th and 17th centuries, the shifts and ramifications of its policy toward science before and in response to the Protestant Reformation, the calculation of Easter, and other matters. He includes eight color plates...
Book Description
Between 1650 and 1750, four Catholic churches were the best solar observatories in the world. Built to fix an unquestionable date for Easter, they also housed instruments that threw light on the disputed geometry of the solar system, and so, within sight of the altar, subverted Church doctrine about the order of the universe. A tale of politically canny astronomers and cardinals with a taste for mathematics, The Sun in the Church tells how these observatories came to be, how they worked, and what they accomplished. It describes Galileo's political overreaching, his subsequent trial for heresy, and his slow and steady rehabilitation in the eyes of the Catholic Church. And it offers an enlightening perspective on astronomy, Church history, and religious architecture, as well as an analysis of measurements testing the limits of attainable accuracy, undertaken with rudimentary means and extraordinary zeal. Above all, the book illuminates the niches protected and financed by the Catholic Church in which science and mathematics thrived. Combining brilliant writing and deep learning, The Sun in the Church provides a magnificent corrective to long-standing oversimplified accounts of the hostility between science and religion...
From the Back Cover
A fascinating history of astronomy that shows, as no other work has done so well, what happened to Italian science after Galileo's trial. An astonishing display of erudition and linguistic control, with a wealth of fine details, this is a major history that carves out a unique territory. (Owen Gingerich, Harvard University)...
My goodness!!! Read, Cicerone, read!
cicerone imposter wrote:Understanding of the solar system existed before Jesus ever came on the scene. The pyramids of Egypt is but one example. c.i.
I had a spate of double postings today (it made like the post didn't go through, so I reposted, discovered there were two) and found that it was easy to x out the second post.
Hey, Frank:
Here is yet another wacko that really doesn't matter:
Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe by Stephen C. McCluskey - Cambridge University Press; (November 2000) ISBN: 0521778522
Book Description
Historians have long recognized that the rebirth of science in twelfth-century Europe flowed from a search for ancient scientific texts. But this search presupposes knowledge and interest; we only seek what we know to be valuable. The emergence of scholarly interest after centuries of apparent stagnation seems paradoxical. This book resolves that seeming contradiction by describing four active traditions of early medieval astronomy: one divided the year by observing the Sun; another computed the date of Easter Full Moon; the third determined the time for monastic prayers by watching the course of the stars; and the classical tradition of geometrical astronomy provided a framework for the cosmos. Most of these astronomies were practical; they sustained the communities in which they flourished and reflected and reinforced the values of those communities. These astronomical traditions motivated the search for ancient learning that led to the Scientific Renaissance of the twelfth century.
Take care.
That's cute about the cathedrals. But it doesn't disprove that the Church stood in the way of scientific research which challenged the existence of a god as presented by the church (who revolved around whom, for example). Then ah, epiphany (or political savvy) had the Church trailing behind science. Cathedrals as solar observatories! Wow! Better late than never!
Science has always been there, a part of the way the human brain works. The Church, dealing in unknowns and unknowables, slid back and forth between burning science at the stake and going along to get along.
Look at how the Vatican -- even given the intelligence of the current pope -- is not yet reconciled to the notion that pedophilia is wrong, and is being dragged kicking and screaming into that admission. But still it turns a blind eye. Disgusting many Catholics. Including a friend of mine, a Sister of Charity, who said bitterly a week or so ago (have I mentioned this before?) how angry she and her colleagues are at the stand-offish attitude of the Vatican towards pedophilia while coming down heavily on the Arizona bishop involved in a hit-and-run accident.
The instinct of the Church has always been self-protective to the extent that it condones that dirty human sport: endless lying. Under the shelter of a god they cannot prove exists. Brilliant. And we're polite about it! Go figure!
an excerpt from Discovery which does not denigrate nor idolize Heilbron but an interesting comment:
Quote:Heilbron presents a Church that isn't anti-science, that actually is a "force for good" as 'twere. Here he isn't entirely successful. It feels too much like a case of special pleading. A handful of individuals from the Church have figured strongly in the history of science, but they're strongly in the minority. While Heilbron is to be congratulated for pointing them out, he errs in trying to make them more important than the really were. The Church did spend a lot of time and money on astronomy. But weighed in the balance, their contributions were fairly minimal. And they certainly don't offset the negative effects the Church had on free thought and investigating the universe.
dyslexia wrote:The Church did spend a lot of time and money on astronomy.
Thank you. You just agreed with me and rejected Frank's origianl point.
Tart, The Church has no quibble with the wrongness of pedophilia, it simply is reticent to recognize, acknowledge and address the matter as comprising an internal problem. The tradition goes back to at least the beginnings of The Monastic Period, and has occasioned much writing and roughly equal avoidance and denial, along with an entrenched tendency to sweep it under the rug.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got get back to wrestling with the concept of Catholic Sun Worshipers fommenting the Rennaisance ... bear with me please, this could take a while.
Is maliagar's 'take care' a proper Christian blessing, or a warning? Hmm...I look forward to seeing Senor Homo vs. Buddy Christian at the next Wrestlemania.
It's just an expression of care...
cavfancier wrote:Is maliagar's 'take care' a proper Christian blessing, or a warning? Hmm...I look forward to seeing Senor Homo vs. Buddy Christian at the next Wrestlemania.
I do read, but my reading is not 'biased' by any religious doctrin. c.i.
It seems to me that the Egyptians did a pretty good job with limited mathematics and instruments 1,100 years BC.
http://emuseum.mnsu.edu/prehistory/Old%20Egypt/dailylife/astronomy.html
c.i.
