RE: [Marxism] Biblical "truth"

["Calvin Broadbent" <calvinbroadbent@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

There is no doubt in my mind that, through centuries of hardening,
Protestantism has spawned belief systems that are more despicable and
bizarre than Catholic Christianity. And that's saying something.

But I disagree that the Catholic Church considered their (Ptolemaic) model
of the solar system as jibing with the bible. Corinthians states that Joshua
had told the earth, not the sun to stand still (Luther also apparently
quoted this with approval). In 1546, Cardinal Bellamine apparently
repudiated Gallileo, who had protested that the question of the earth
revolving round the sun was not a matter of faith, by saying that the
concensus of the Christian fathers was to the contrary. It was, said
Bellarmine at the fourth session of the Council of Trent, "not a matter of
faith from the point of view of the subject matter, it is on the part of
those who have spoken". (See the book *Science and Religion* by John Hedley
Brooke, p. 98). At any rate, it has also been argued that the Protestant
reformers considered the bible more a 'literal' guide to good conduct, than
a literal guide to the nature of the world and everything in it.

It seems to me that inter-christian conflict has ended up placing the onus
of proof and scientific veracity on to theological scholars, and not
scientists, so that whatever openness the early Protestants might have had
about science (as with sex) has been thoroughly filled with hateful
dogmatism. And so much the better, since it shows up the stupidity of
christianity all the more clearly.

MARK LAUSE WROTE:


In dealing with Galileo and others, the Catholic church was
defending the Ptolemaic view of the solar system, a classical model that
jibed with the Bible rather than the Biblical model per se.  And I don't
think it enters into a position on evolution.

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