Richard Jernigan -> RE: Drake Equation calculator (Mar. 8 2018 6:01:38)
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Galileo thought he was relatively safe with a Medici pope. Some say he was trying to repair the Catholic south's reputation for backwardness, compared to the scientifically advancing north of Europe. When the Medici pope died and a reactionary came in, Galileo was out on a limb. He had been officially warned long before by a cardinal not to advocate the heliocentric system. His (mistaken*) theory of the tides relied upon heliocentricity. He described his theory of tides in a letter to Cardinal Orsini, where it was bound to be seen by a lot of people. When the reactionary pope thought he was satirized in the Dialogue Upon the Two Systems, he sic'ed the Holy Office onto Galileo. Some say that the threat of torture implied by showing the implements to Galileo was an anachronistic formality in Italy. On the other hand, only 80 years before, my ancestor the Lord Chamberlain, Captain of the Guard, Master of the Horse, Lord Lieutenant of Kent, etc. under Mary Tudor, was burning people at the stake--including at least one Bishop-- during the queen's counter-reformation. At any rate the Church forced Galileo to recant publicly and put him under house arrest for the rest of his life...where he lived in Florence, again under the protection of the Medici. I believe he was allowed to receive whomever he wished as visitors, and to continue his correspondence with the Academia dei' Lincei and other scientific colleagues. It took the Church more than three centuries to apologize for its maltreatment of one of the greatest scientists the race has produced. I favor a version of science without divine intervention. I was just saying to Arash that not all atheists, nor all fundamentalists are a$$holes, like some of each who are now prominent. Some of my religious relatives are among my favorite people. I doubt that they take Genesis literally, but I would not be surprised if they believed in divine guidance of evolution. However they understand that doesn't belong in publicly funded school books or classrooms. They are educated, well read and well traveled, having lived in a variety of places overseas, including Scotland, Portugal, Angola and Saudi Arabia. We are careful not to offend one another. Some of my other religious relatives need to be told politely to back off, about every 20 years or so. I condemn wholeheartedly the Republican majority in the Texas legislature, and the Governor and Lieutenant Governor for attempting to impose a fundamentalist regime. Fortunately we managed to vote the creationists off the School Board, preventing them from putting creationism into the science books, and taking Thomas Jefferson out of the history books. My conservative and prosperous neighborhood elected the only openly gay member of the City Council, getting rid of a right-wing a$$hole--but on the political map of Texas, Austin is a blue Democrat dot in a sea of Republican red. My closest friends are mainly agnostic. RNJ *Bill O'Reilly, running about three centuries behind the times, criticized Galileo for "not knowing what made waves." O'Reilly was then criticized for not knowing the difference between waves and tides, rather than for being a bloviating pr1ck.
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