The Galileo 2009 Conference: Faith and Science Have the Same Roots?

Today, 26 May 2009, sees the opening of the "Galileo 2009" conference, organised by the Jesuit Stensen Institute and held in Florence. The first day takes place in the Basilica of Santa Croce, where Galileo is now buried, with the last day being held in the Villa "Il Gioello di Arcetri", where Galileo spent his last years. Today's Osservatore Romano has two articles related to this conference.

The first is written by Ugo Baldini, and seeks to give a brief overview of the themes of the Galileo 2009 conference. The Vatican is desperate to rewrite history so that it can, in its own eyes, legitimately bring science into the service of Catholicism. The mantra that the Galileo case was due to a "tragic reciprocal incomprehension", first used by John Paul II in 1992, seeks not just to spread the blame but to eventually come to the conclusion that both parties were blameless! A pity that Galileo himself is unable to witness these inexhaustible re-trials.

So what does the conference hope to achieve? The lectures cover the whole range of historical, philosophical and theological issues pertaining to the sequence of events that led to Galileo being placed under house arrest. It will be interesting to see the transcripts when published, as this brief article already points to a certain amount of rewriting of history.

The real issue at the time was whether the so-called Copernican system was a true and accurate description of physical reality. On a side issue, we are historically obliged to call this "Copernican" even though it should more accurately be called Keplerian. And yet even Kepler refers to it as “Copernican”, seeing the important philosophical shift from geocentric to a heliocentric planetary system, even though Copernicus was still semi-aristotelian in seeking perfect circular orbits. The system developed by Copernicus actually works worse than Ptolemy's! Kepler's system of elliptical planetary orbits around the sun at one focal point was the real success.

Baldini then tries to muddy the waters by reintroducing Tycho Brahe's system, which was still geocentric but had the inner planets of Mercury and Venus orbiting the Sun rather than the Earth. The author claims that this system was compatible with the Bible and hence would have had some support from the Church. This actually shows that in spite of protestations to the contrary the Vatican saw the heliocentric system as a threat to their orthodoxy.

The conference is being held during the International Year of Astronomy so that although astronomy is very much the theme the organisers have explicitly excluded any technical aspects of the debate. As I said, what is left is an attempt to reshape the perceptions that most people have of this as a clash between scientific knowledge and religious doctrine. The technical aspects are absolutely fundamental to the debate. The fact that Catholic scientists quickly took up the new system is not in question, but what is obvious is that the Vatican wanted to control this knowledge until such time as it could integrate it within its theology. This was at a time when the Reformation had claimed many northern European territories and where scientists such as Brahe and Kepler were free to speculate. In contrast, the Catholic Counter-Reformation sought to reinforce Vatican supremacy and the Galileo case was just one manifestation of the Empire striking back. Truth was relegated to an expedient pawn at the service of Catholic doctrines.

The conference hopes to advance Galilean studies to a new level, but frankly, by excluding the actual science it will merely achieve what it really sets out to do, which is to show the Vatican in a better light. The real aim is sketched out at the very end of article where the author sees the Enlightenment and positivism, with their anti-religious philosophies, as the real targets. Their philosophical influences on the Galileo debate have shaped it into a clash of cultures whereas the Vatican now wishes to, in their eyes, redress the balance.

The second article, entitled "The Root of Faith and Science", actually proves this point. The Vatican seems to be on a mission to prove that the whole universe is Catholic. I wrote before of their abuse of language in trying to cast Europe and even atheism as having Catholic roots. Now we find them trying to define science and faith as being in essence two aspects of the same thing.

As another aside, although this may not be of interest to followers of the debates between science and religion, the Catholic Church is also on a mission to unite all the Christian churches. The Vatican insists it is the one and only path to salvation and therefore every other system is merely a poor relation. I think the attempt to reintegrate the Orthodox Churches under the Vatican is doomed to failure, but we shall see. The point here is that bringing science into the Catholic fold is just one part of the overall mission to evangelize the whole world.

Giuseppe Betori, Archbishop of Florence, hopes that the Galileo 2009 conference will lay to rest the myth that the Galileo case is a clash between science and faith. He outlines the old argument that faith grows deeper with the assistance of reason whilst at the same time reason without faith can become mere calculations without taking into account (Catholic) values. He looks forward to a new proposal for a "permanent and constructive collaboration between the Church and scientific research institutions." The Vatican is an organization that has backed itself into a scientific cul de sac and now proposes to turn around and offer science the hand of friendship. Be very, very careful! The Archbishop closes by saying that by bringing together so many respected authorities the conference shows that there exist the "conditions for a constructive division of responsibilities, on the understanding of the respective roles and aims [of science and faith]."

We're back to the notion that the Church has its job to do and that science should not interfere with that task. It is a reiteration that Catholic values (consequences of Catholic doctrines) have primacy on scientific issues. It is futile for the Vatican to attack scientific theories themselves – they've learnt that lesson - but it can influence the course of scientific research through what it sees as its moral authority. The ultimate aim is to create a Catholic science - similar to non-theistic science but with certain important interpretations guiding its philosophy and its relationship with theology.

Just to restate the abuse of language that this entails: the words 'reason' and 'rational' are by no means the same things when spoken by a theologian and by a scientist. Just check out the definition of reason in the online Catholic Encyclopedia. For the theologian, reason is the rationalisation of beliefs, and logic is only used insofar as it supports certain fundamental Catholic axioms. Reason is a tool of faith and a weapon of evangelization - it is not a dispassionate analysis of the evidence.

The Galileo case is ultimately being used as a test of the Vatican's new science-friendly theology. Astronomy is actually a fairly safe science on which to conduct this theological experiment as there are few contentious issues left, save for the metaphysics of what happened before the Big Bang. On that particular subject it is interesting to note how the Vatican often lets its guard down to reveal its true self, witness that John Paul II told Stephen Hawking that he should not investigate the physics of before the Big Bang as that was Catholic territory! However, I'm certain the Vatican is painfully aware of research in the neurosciences that is likely to shed more light on how the mind functions and especially on the mechanism of religious experiences and the state of belief. Now that is going to be a battle worth seeing!

Born to Believe – Review and Response

A New Scientist article, Born believers: how your brain creates God, takes us through some recent research with children that suggests belief in supernatural beings is somehow hard-wired into the human brain. The starting point is the rather unsurprising statistics that many people turn to religion in times of hardship. The afterlife may seem positively luxurious compared to being down and out.

Religious ideas are common to all cultures: like language and music, they seem to be part of what it is to be human. Until recently, science has largely shied away from asking why. "It's not that religion is not important," says Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University, "it's that the taboo nature of the topic has meant there has been little progress."

This is, indeed, good to see. However, I suspect we're also going to be entering a phase where the direction of research may also be contaminated with religious ideology and it is also good to know who says what.

As anthropologist Scott Atran of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor points out, the benefits of holding such unfounded beliefs are questionable, in terms of evolutionary progress. "I don't think the idea makes much sense, given the kinds of things you find in religion," he says. A belief in life after death, for example, is hardly compatible with surviving in the here-and-now and propagating your genes. Moreover, if there are adaptive advantages of religion, they do not explain its origin, but simply how it spread.

This is precisely my feeling on the matter. The shared delusion that may result in social cohesion can also lead that whole society to an early grave. Such dead-end cults would be difficult to find historically but we get an inkling of them in some of the contemporary suicide cults. A belief in afterlife has to also have some good excuse to live this one out fully first.

"Children the world over have a strong natural receptivity to believing in gods because of the way their minds work, and this early developing receptivity continues to anchor our intuitive thinking throughout life," says anthropologist Justin Barrett of the University of Oxford.

One thing the article fails to mention is that Justin Barrett is not only an anthropologist but also one of the founders of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Religion and Science. Barrett is described in the New York Times as a "prominent member of the by-product camp" and "an observant Christian who believes in “an all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly good God who brought the universe into being,” [and] “that the purpose for people is to love God and love each other.” He considers that “Christian theology teaches that people were crafted by God to be in a loving relationship with him and other people, Why wouldn’t God, then, design us in such a way as to find belief in divinity quite natural?” What did I say about investigating both the research and the researcher?

Children do seem to have an innate common-sense dualism between things with minds and inanimate objects. The dualism extends to being able to conceive of minds as separate from their bodies. The common experience of having fantasy friends is one consequence of this. But some of the research seems to contradict this in that it found that children were prone to ascribe meaning and intention to natural physical phenomena – it rains so as to help plants grow, the sun shines because it keeps us warm, and so on. I'm not sure if the researchers looked deeply enough if this was a consequence of the way children's stories are written in that very often animate and inanimate objects are characters with intentions and purposes. Whatever the source of these ideas they do seem to be deeply embedded, with it being a very short step from believing in imaginary friends or disembodied minds to gods and an afterlife.

[...] religion is an inescapable artefact of the wiring in our brain, says Bloom. "All humans possess the brain circuitry and that never goes away." Olivera Petrovich adds that even adults who describe themselves as atheists and agnostics are prone to supernatural thinking.

Seeing patterns where none exist may well be an attribute of the brain but extending that to the supernatural sphere is not an obvious progression. The last piece of research quoted showed that people under stress or feeling a loss of control would be more prone to seeing patterns in random data. The results are interpreted as showing that people under stress are more likely to seek solace in meaning, even if that meaning is purely imaginary. Hence the link with the original observation that religious belief seems to increase when times are difficult.

The final message is that, whether belief says anything about the object of belief, religion is not going to be going away any time soon. Religious faith is the path of least resistance when the world around us seems to be descending into chaos. In contrast, disbelief requires more effort.

It is also interesting that this article prompted an editorial in the same edition. The editor shows a certain resignation in research showing that irrationality may well be the natural human state and that scientific understanding has not only been hard won but may also be more fragile than many of us would hope.

Vatican Galileo Statue Scrapped

VATICAN officials have scrapped plans for a statue of Galileo Galilei, the astronomer who was convicted of heresy 400 years ago.
[...]
The statue, which was due to have been placed in the Vatican gardens, was intended as part of the 400th anniversary celebrations this year of Galileo's development of the telescope and astronomical findings.

Vatican observers had said the plans showed another step towards his rehabilitation, so the announcement yesterday at the Vatican that it had been scrapped came as a surprise.

Monsignor Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican's culture chief, said: "The project has been shelved for the moment. A preparatory sketch for the statue had been made, but it has been decided not to go ahead."

Mgr Ravasi would not explain why the decision had been taken but added: "There was a sponsor who was then told to spend the money on a scientific project in Africa."

(news.scotsman.com)

However much lipstick the pig tries to wear, it's still a pig.

Am not sure whether to be surprised or not. The Galileo Conference in May was advertised as a bridge-building exercise but perhaps my article on Galileo, Neurotheology and the Vatican is much closer to the mark.

Galileo Conference in Florence - Osservatore article and comments

The Vatican has decided to join the events of the International Year of Astronomy 2009. It is also nearly the 400th anniversary of the publication of Galileo's Starry Messenger (Sidereus nuncius). The Osservatore Romano has recently published two articles concerning these events. On the 30th January is the piece "Galileo's revolution 400 years later" and on 31st "The "Galileo Case" as an opportunity for dialogue". The style of the Osservatore, and of course the Vatican, is always tortuous when it comes to diplomacy - a kind of literary equivalent of squirming.

The first article is largely an announcement of an International Conference on Galileo Galilei to be held in Florence on 26-30 May. As conferences go this seems particularly long. The trial of Galileo is one story that just will not go away. It has become the archetypal clash between science and religion, reason and faith. I feel, sometimes, that a wider historical context should be promoted to the public, but I will write about this later, for now it is enough to just watch the Vatican propaganda in action. We must also not forget that the Vatican is in the peculiar position of having to defend itself, and yet if there is anywhere in the world with documents that could shed light on those events it is precisely in the Vatican archives. The propagandist protocol in cases of guilt is not to plead innocence but to completely muddy the water so that many people, especially the faithful, are left in doubt as to the Church's guilt. The aim of this article is in that category.

One strategy is to try to make Galileo seem untrustworthy. This is one of the most-often used bits of black propaganda - to put truths into the mouths of liars so that nobody believes them except those who comprehend the message all too clearly. That Galileo is a "complex" personality is laughable; I mean, aren't we all? Wouldn't we all react in different ways depending on how events unfolded for us? To court patrons is no crime - scientists do the same now except they are corporations or foundations rather than princes or kings. To ignore rivals is not in the spirit of science but that too happens today just as much as in the 17th century. To try and pin the first strike on Galileo's personality is ludicrous and should be recognized for what it is - a diversionary tactic worthy of a cheap trickster. There is one fact that is little mentioned so I will highlight it here.

The Jesuit astronomers taught Galileo's and Kepler's theories to the Japanese and Chinese while Galileo was still under house arrest. Now, re-read that sentence and think through the consequences of it.

One small episode in the whole Galileo drama has recently come to the fore, and this Year of Astronomy is as good a time as any to discuss the history of technology and philosophy of science. One of Galileo's criticisms against his accusers is that they refused to even look through his telescope to see for themselves the satellites of Jupiter and the mountains on the Moon. These fideists refused to do so on the philosophical ground that such a mechanical device distorted reality and therefore anything seen through it was just as likely to be an artefact of the telescope rather than an image of reality. True, the telescopes at the time were no better than cheap ones we can buy easily today, but the navigators who used them on a daily basis were not the kind of people to trust a device that produced mirages. The faithful refused to look through the telescope because by doing so they would see the truth for themselves. By refusing they could attack the man and the theories, not the data. In truth, the Jesuits did perform their own experiments but the role of the Jesuits in all of this and their battle with the Dominicans is worthy of a longer article.

There is a second aspect that is also always left out. Between the iconic figures of Copernicus and Galileo stands an often ignored figure who was a greater mathematician than both of them: Johann Kepler. It was Kepler who first discovered that planets move around the sun in ellipses. It was Kepler who discovered what are still known as Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion. Kepler even anticipated the law of gravity but thought it was some kind of magnetic field. It was Kepler's Laws that Newton later recast as consequences of a gravitational force. I really don't know why Copernicus especially is so well-known as his idea was correct but his formulation was hopelessly wrong. However, some people become totems for others that follow and this seems to be the case for Copernicus.

The Vatican's message in all of this is that the Church's stance at the time was somehow philosophically justified and not a persecution. Re-read my sentence on the Jesuits in Japan. Their stance was justified by the obstinate aristotelian Dominican order that controlled the Inquisition. In Aristotle we find that his idea of natural philosophy was a purely observational science, without experimentation for to experiment was to somehow distort nature. The battle between this narrow, and erroneous, aristotelian view and natural philosophers in no way starts with Galileo but had been going on for centuries. The Condemnation of 1277 in Paris is another little-known but important stage in the liberation of science from fideist religious doctrines.

Unfortunately, Galileo's Starry Messenger was first published in 1610, thereby outside the Year of Astronomy, but the organisers have still taken advantage that it was in 1609 that Galileo became the first modern astronomer, extending the human senses with a telescope. One disturbing piece of recent news is the attempt by Italian and British scientists to exhume Galileo's body in order to test his DNA for eyesight problems! Although this was hidden in the Reuters weird news section this immediately smelled like the hand of the Church at work. If they could show that Galileo had defective vision then they would have another grain of doubt to implant into the intellectually challenged and to show the world that the Vatican's initial scepticism was warranted. "If we knew exactly what was wrong with his eyes we could use computer models to recreate what he saw in his telescope," said Paolo Galluzzi, director of the Museum of History and Science in Florence, the city where Galileo is buried. This may sound like a mantra, but read again about what the Jesuits taught the Chinese.

This edition of the Osservatore also has an article with a brief history of the telescope. It includes quotes about how Galileo constructed his first telescope from a Dutch design. Here we do see Kepler credited for designing a better telescope than Galileo, with a higher magnification. Nothing extraordinary or controversial here but the article does end with "These are the eyes to better see the extraordinary beauty of the universe." How nice.


I will look next at the article in the 30 January edition.

Science and Religion News and Resources

Below are links to news and resources on science and religion that I've found this week. Not all will be new but this is a way of storing them for future reference and before processing into articles. Will be posted once a week with additions made as the week passes.

Large minority of atheists are religious. if you look at this then the third column of figures is meaningless as it stands and should be divided by 100 to make sense.

U.S. Religious Landscape Survey from the Pew Forum

FreeThoughtPedia is a central repository of philosophical, scientific, scriptural, and historical arguments and commentary on the Freethought movement. Our goal is to provide a resource for those who choose to attribute greater significance to what's rational and logical, as opposed to irrational, superstitious, mythological and unproven.

Congregation of the Clergy. A Roman Catholic site for, of course, the clergy but interesting in that the articles are written so that priests can use them in their daily ministry, rather than being convoluted theological essays. The largest part is in Italian but a significant potion translated into English and other languages.

The Evolution of Religion, by R. Elisabeth Cornwell, PhD and J. Anderson Thomson, MD.

The Pledge of Allegiance to the United States is an article I wrote on how the Knights of Columbus lobbied to insert the "under God" phrase into the Pledge in 1954.


Anything you feel I should take note of then please leave a comment.