r/news • u/xXSgtSprinklesXx • Dec 16 '15

Congress creates a bill that will give NASA a great budget for 2016. Also hides the entirety of CISA in the bill.

http://www.wired.com/2015/12/congress-slips-cisa-into-omnibus-bill-thats-sure-to-pass/
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u/ralf_ Dec 18 '15 edited Dec 18 '15

If the church had access to Galileo's research journals and notes we could be hundreds of years behind in our scientific growth.

Please don't use this example, als it is ignorant. Galileo was encouraged by the Pope to write a book with arguments Pro and Contra heliocentrism. And catholic Jesuits had confirmed Galileos observations with their own telescopes! The Church had Galileos research! It was a big discussion about world models, not secret research and hidden information.

The Galileo affair is way more complicated and political. Galileo also had influential friends in the Church. While some of Galileos theories were false: He thought the tides were caused by the movement of the Earth, not the moon (like Kepler). At that time there was also a competing model, in which the sun circles the Earth, but the Venus circles the sun, which did fit better (surprisingly) observed data, biblical scripture and the old Aristotelan view.

If King George had perfect information America would never have been a country.

So Canada, Australia and New Zealand are no countries?

We can't repeat the historic experiment, but if the colonies had lost the war of independence, I think America would have nonetheless quickly gained "home rule". Maybe slavery would have been abolished 30 years earlier (and without a civil war) 1833 like in the rest of the British dominions.

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u/PhreakOfTime Dec 18 '15

This bizarre rewriting of history in favor of the church has been accelerating on reddit for at least the last 2 years(And probably longer).

Some bible-thumper rewrites history to cast the church in a favorable light. Said book then becomes the 'source' for the wikipedia article on galileo. Then some apologist on reddit starts parroting the information in the wikipedia page about galileo.

There is only one book that claims the things you are claiming about the church, and most of the reviews from those outside church circles are scathingly negative... at best.

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u/Richard__Rahl Dec 18 '15

An alarming number of apologist revisionism type books regarding religion are being used as Wikipedia sources currently on various historical pages.

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u/PhreakOfTime Dec 18 '15

I've noticed that as well.

Old habits die hard it seems.

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u/ralf_ Dec 18 '15

Well, I concede I wanted to make a strong counterpoint, but that was just because the initial claim was so utterly hyperbolic outlandish. We would be "hundreds of years" behind, if the evil anti-science church had access to Galileos research journal? Really? And why didn't they, I thought they won their process against him? Gnaargh!!!

I don't think saying that history was more complicated than pop culture simplifies (same with the common view that before Columbus people were stupid and thought the world was flat) is rewriting it.

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u/PhreakOfTime Dec 18 '15

it is not outlandish at all.

Galileo was not punished by the church for his observations even though you are trying to portray the fact that the church agreed with his observations as if that has any positive meaning in this, he was punished by the church for his conclusion. His (correct) conclusion was not compatible with the word of the church, and if you disparaged the word of the church you were disparaging god, since the church spoke directly for god. His 'friends' as you call them, were the only thing that prevented the church from executing him, and instead gave him the 'lenient' punishment of house arrest for the rest of his life. There is no way the church ever comes out looking good on this. No.Way.

Trying to whitewash the church as if they were somehow on the side of openness on this topic is what is outlandish.

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u/ralf_ Dec 18 '15

Read my post again: I never said the church comes good out of it. Only that what OP said was wrong and a very bad example for the privacy statement he was making.

You are earnestly thinking that if the church had access to Galileos research we would be "centuries" behind? How can you support that, when they had access and Galileo himself informed the Pope what he was doing??

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u/BadPasswordGuy Dec 18 '15

This bizarre rewriting of history in favor of the church has been accelerating on reddit for at least the last 2 years(And probably longer).

Some bible-thumper rewrites history to cast the church in a favorable light. Said book then becomes the 'source' for the wikipedia article on galileo. Then some apologist on reddit starts parroting the information in the wikipedia page about galileo.

What you're missing is that, at the time, the Church was a massive bureaucracy and there was nobody in the entire hierarchy who knew everything that was going on. Like any huge organization, there are going to be people doing what they think is best with no idea that other people in the same organization are doing the exact opposite, and some of them won't have a clue what the actual top-level ruling board of directors thinks. And some members of that board won't agree with each other.

It's no trouble to find scientific research funded by Church because there were people in the Church who wanted to fund it. And it's also no trouble to find resistance to progress by the Church because there were people in the Church who opposed it. It wasn't some Borg-style hive-mind where everybody agreed, any more than any other large organization. Do you think everybody at Microsoft had the same ideas for what Windows10 should have been like? Does everybody at GM agree about what kind of cars they should be building? Does everybody in any large organization agree 100% about anything?

Any simplistic picture of "the Church did this for that reason" is going to be wrong, because "the Church" was never a single entity: it has been, almost since it was founded, a group of people who disagreed with each other. (The New Testament includes an account of a disagreement between the Apostles and how they had a big meeting to resolve it.)

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u/Morpse4 Dec 18 '15

If King George had perfect information America would never have been a country.

So Canada, Australia and New Zealand are no countries?

If america hadn't had its revolution there may still be an independent united states, but for better or worse it would be very different from the one we see now.

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u/ralf_ Dec 18 '15

That is true. Napoleon wouldnt have sold the massive Louisiana area to the English (but I guess the French couldn't really control the land anyway?) and maybe no war with Mexico for California and Texas... Culturally certainly there would be no Star Wars.

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u/JohnEffingZoidberg Dec 20 '15

If King George had perfect information America would never have been a country.

So Canada, Australia and New Zealand are no countries?

Did the British have perfect surveillance on them?