Darwin's Deception
During this month, June, 391 years ago, a loudmouthed, bombastic, dishonest,(1) scientific quack was brought to heel, ridiculed and silenced.? It was a good thing then, and it remains a good thing today.
Scientific quackery is as much a problem today as it was 391 years ago when the Court of Jurisdiction backed by virtually the entire scientific community corralled an aged, 69 year old dishonest scientific con-artist and humbled him into silence.
The "scientist" in question was essentially the "Howard Stern" of the 17th Century; loud, abrasive, arrogant, obnoxious, insulting and largely ignorant of the sciences he attacked.? This is, in fact, what made him very famous in his time – for he had a style of writing that was short on science and very long on boisterous ridiculing the day's scientists in a very unflattering way using vitriolic rhetoric and outright dishonesty that delighted the literati elite of the day.
This individual tried to attend University, but he was scholastically inferior, and according to his professors, he was substandard in virtually all aspects, and worst of all, he was so arrogant and so contentious and quarrelsome, he earned the nickname "The Wrangler."? The Wrangler was forced to leave University without a degree, and he returned home to his Father and decided to teach himself mathematics.?
You should have already ascertained that I'm not referring to Darwin.? More on that in a moment.
The Wrangler's primary method of argumentation was to obfuscate and, through dissimulation and ambiguity, make sure that if he were to be caught in a fabrication or an absurdity, he could always find a way to wriggle out of a commitment by reinterpreting what he had said.? To help make that ploy work, The Wrangler attacked his detractors, and accused them of being "…ignorant and superstitious masses," "...buffoons," "…evil poltroons" and "…ungrateful villains."? All the while simultaneously holding himself out as the scientific superstar of the day; indeed, The Wrangler boasted that he was the epitome of science itself.? His writings and those of his contemporaries demonstrate that if one criticized The Wrangler, one attacked "science" itself.(2),(3)
However, The Wrangler was a humble man, and he was quick to point out his great virtue of humility.? In fact, in his writings we see that The Wrangler goes to great pains to boast of his enormous humility as an almost superhuman quality.? So comical is the contradiction of The Wrangler's self-proclaimed humility one could be forgiven to think that in "Hard Times," Charles Dickens modeled the very annoying (but humble) Josiah Bounderby after The Wrangler.
The Wrangler alluded to (and allowed others to believe), that he had invented the telescope.? He presented himself to the Venetian Fathers as the inventor of the telescope only to find out that the Venetian Fathers had already heard of Lippershey's device.(4) The Wrangler wasn't well versed in optics, and didn't really believe in the known optical principles of his time. ?In fact, he had a strange idea of what light was; an idea that was inconsistent with known observations, opting instead to propound for "fiery minims" a la Democritus.? After trying (and failing) to understand the groundbreaking work of the great scientist Johannes Kepler, The Wrangler finally gave up and he stated that Kepler's work could not be understood because Kepler had effectively made up a bunch of horse-pucky that was simply gibberish designed to confuse the addle-minded professors (such as Orazio Grassi, who was an actual expert in optics and whom he hated).??
The Wrangler, who had admittedly improved the geometrical compass, claimed(5) to have invented the compass (that had been invented 50 years earlier), and he vehemently attacked(6) two colleagues who had written an instructional manual without giving him credit for the invention and accused the colleagues of plagiarism calling them a "… malevolent enemy of honour and of the whole of mankind…," and “…a venom-spitting basilisque…,” and “…an educator who bred the young fruit on his poisoned soul with stinking ordure…,” “…a greedy vulture, swooping at the unborn young to tear its tender limbs to pieces…” and so forth.? That was, after all, why The Wrangler earned his nickname.
Although The Wrangler claimed to be the very pinnacle of the study of astronomy, he wasn't particularly well versed in astronomy – For example, he didn't believe comets were real, and he had endless fun publicly ridiculing professors like Orazio Grassi (mentioned above), who wrote extensively (and accurately) on the subject of comets, and who demonstrated that comets were very real extra-lunar objects.? The Wrangler, by contrast, claimed that comets were merely illusions, like rainbows or the tail of the sun on a sunset over water.
Although sunspots had been reported for millennia, it wasn't until a chap named Christoph Scheiner described the phenomenon of sunspots in a scientific manner, wherein Scheiner speculated that sunspots were possibly moons of the Sun in orbit around the Sun.? The scientific world was fully aware of Scheiner's work and publications described these ideas.? But that didn't stop the abrasive(7) Wrangler from claiming that he, and he alone, had exclusively discovered sunspots and he declared that sunspots were merely clouds hovering over the sun's surface.??
This egotistical shock-jock believed that gold evaporated(8) and he didn't believe in heat,(9) either.? Objects did not become hot.? Fire was not hot.? Heat was merely the sensation felt when an object gave off very thin slivers of itself, which when those slivers of matter entered the human body, humans interpreted the sensation as "heat."? Thus, accordingly, a fire is not hot, rather, a fire transmits the sensation of heat.? The Wrangler held similar ideas regarding color, taste and odors – they were not real, rather, they were merely illusions.
By the way, this is what really started to get The Wrangler into trouble, because he tried to push the idea of Democritus' "a-toms" in a way that that was very problematic and very unpopular and, (as we now know), very, very wrong.
The Wrangler denied the existence of the sea's tides and openly ridiculed the leading scientists of the day as being fools for believing the moon was causing the semidiurnal tides.? Remarkably, The Wrangler claimed that there were no real semidiurnal tides, and that the observed semidiurnal tides, like comets, were merely illusions, and that the real tides occurred only once per day, and high-tide, in accordance with his (incorrect) pet theory of the cosmos, only occurred at noon.
Remarkably, The Wrangler initially rejected what would become his pet theory, and vehemently argued against it before he vehemently argued in favor of it.? But by that time, it was already considered outdated by many of the leading scientists.? He nevertheless dogmatically (and ever more desperately) clung to a dead theory that was actually known at the time to be incorrect.
Yet in spite of all his shenanigans and lies and temper tantrums and insults, The Wrangler remained the center of attention for decades.
Why?? How did this bombastic, anti-science, loudmouth manage to survive in the public eye for so long?
The answer is simple: Politics.? Our friend, The Wrangler, was none other than Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei and he survived because he was the personal scientist and close personal friend of a guy named Maffeo Vincenzo Barberini, who just so happened to wear a funny hat because he happened to be a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and later the supreme ruler of the Papal States and who later went by the name of "Pope Urban VIII."
Oh, I may have also forgotten to mention that Galileo disliked the leading scientists of his day, such as the aforementioned Father Orazio Grassi and Father Christoph Scheiner because they were Jesuits with the Collegio Romano.? It's no coincidence that Pope Urban VIII similarly had no great love for the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) either and that's just another reason the Pope and Galileo got along so well.
So, what was it that ultimately got Galileo into hot water with his friend, Pope Urban VIII?? After all, not only did Pope Urban love Galileo and call Galileo his "beloved Son," he encouraged Galileo at every step.? Ironically, it was Galileo's friendship with Pope Urban VIII that lead to Galileo's trial, for, as will be seen, the Pope and the Pope's closest circle ultimately brought charges against Galileo to protect Galileo (and himself) from the circumstances of the day and from Galileo's bombastic personality.(10)
Today, in 2024, if you ask the average Man-on-the-Street "Why was Galileo condemned by the Catholic Church?" 99% of the time, you will get something like:? "Because Galileo, was a great forward thinking scientist who taught that the Earth goes around the Sun and the big bad anti-science Catholic Church teaches that the Sun goes around the Earth, and so they burned Galileo at the stake as an heretic" (or a similar variant thereof).
Yeah. None of that happened.? That's not why the Roman Catholic Church condemned Galileo, who, by the way, was never tortured, never burned at the stake, and never spent a day in a dungeon or a prison and never pathetically called out from a lonely prison cell "Eppur si muove!"
Today, some of the better educated members of the General Population (ironically, especially those who have attended higher education facilities) will have heard of the Copernican Model and might answer something like "The Church Condemned Galileo as an heretic because he taught the Copernican theory."? At least that is a little closer to the truth, but still not correct.?
The Catholic Church never taught geocentrism as an article of faith and never taught as an article of faith that the Earth was fixed or the center of the Universe.? However, those were articles of faith of the newly invented religion called "protestantism" that was sweeping Europe causing the death of some 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians in the Thirty Years War. ?Those "protestors" demanded wooden, literal, interpretations of the bible using an anti-Christian heresy called sola scriptura and "Biblical Perspicuity" (common even in today's some 40,000 Protestant sects).(11)
In fact, the Copernican Theory was a product of the Catholic Church named after its primary formulator, Canon (Father) Nicolaus Copernicus, a Catholic priest.? The Catholic Church Herself was ambivalent on heliocentrism and it was the newly invented religion called "Lutheranism" that had openly attacked the Copernican Model precisely because the Catholic Church was generally supportive of the model.
Copernicus himself didn't even want to publish his new ideas out of fear he would be ridiculed… not by The Church, but by his fellow scientists.? It was Pope Paul III who encouraged Copernicus to publish “Six Books on Revolutions of the Celestial Orbits.”
Copernicus (and others) had no problems with discussing his ideas, so why should the Catholic Church's official scientist, Galileo Galilei (also a tonsured Catholic(12)) run into problems? Contrary to popular myth today, geocentrism was not a formal heresy and indeed, one could hold any kind of cosmological model based on actual observations.(13) ?To be sure, the record is replete with some people within The Church who declared Copernicanism and geocentrism as heresies, but those few authors expressed their personal opinions, not the teaching of The Church.? The analogy would be if a US Senator stood up and made a formal declaration that represented his opinion; that would be his opinion, and his opinion would not necessarily represent the position of the US Government as an whole.?
Furthermore, until his trial in 1633, Galileo was instructed that he was allowed to discuss and teach the Copernican Theory – provided that he stuck to physics and didn't go wandering off into the sacristy.(14)(15) As long as Galileo acknowledged that Copernicanism was just a model, a theory, a way to explain observations, he (and others) were free to lecture on Copernicanism.? Galileo's own words affirmed this when he mentioned that he was allowed to discuss Copernicanism in a manner that was "…hypothetical and without reference to Scripture.".(16)? Certainly nothing wrong with that provision – Galileo was instructed to call a theory "a theory;" what's wrong with that? ?It was still a foolish theory however, since although Galileo supported the Copernican Model, the model was already very much outdated and was considered by most leading scientists to be archaic anyway.? In fact, Galileo himself explicitly repudiated Copernicus and lectured on the validity of the Ptolemaic System(17) until he was 49 years old, and then, riding high with fame, he mysteriously embraced Copernicanism assuming he was untouchable; was this the "Shock-Jock Syndrome;" being a provocateur for the sake of staying in the limelight?
So, contrary to the current misconception that Galileo was some kind of "forward seeing" scientist, he was actually far behind the times clinging onto a theory that was already known to be defunct and had no scientific support.? Much of the scientific world had moved on from the idea of perfectly circular orbits and the many epicycles needed to prop up a dead idea.
Even Father Copernicus himself, when he was working on his model, held no pretensions that his model was an actual representation of reality(18) (that is, the Sun is the center of the Universe (not the solar system), and the planets move around the Sun in perfect circles along epicycles- more than 52 epicycles to boot, which was even more than the Ptolemaic Model).(19) ?Copernicus understood that his model did have several useful aspects which may have represented reality.? However, contrary to common misunderstanding, Copernicus didn't just put the Sun at the center of the solar system, (for there was no "solar system"), rather he put the center of the Earth's orbit (approximating the Sun) at the center of the Universe.?
The condemnation of 1616 prohibited Galileo from presenting the Copernican Theory as fact and prohibited him from presenting himself as an authority of scripture; but he was not prohibited from discussing the Copernican theory, in toto.? This takes on an interesting twist 17 years later, which will be addressed in a moment.
Before, during and after the Galileo trial, many people were openly lecturing on the Copernican Theory at Catholic Universities (including many Catholic Priests), and they had no problems with being accused of being an heretic.? So why Galileo?? I'll get to that in a moment.? ?And what does this have to do with Darwin and the title of this piece?? I'm getting there.
The general population today and some contemporary secular writers would have us believe that the condemnation of Galileo had a chilling effect on the progress of science. ?Nothing could be further from the truth.? For a start, for a century before Galileo, the scientists of Europe (many of whom were Catholic), led a vibrant life of scientific and philosophic speculation, much of that speculation was quite contrary to the official teaching of the Roman Church.? However, academic speculation was the "Catholic way;" speculation and investigation and asking the "why" and the "how" questions.(20)? Such speculation, presented as speculation, was not (and is not today) "heresy" even when the speculation went into areas that contradicted Church teaching.? Furthermore, lively investigation continued well after the condemnation of Galileo.? The generation following the condemnation of Galileo saw the rise of Borelli, Cavallieri, Toricelli and others whose contributions to science were greater than those of Galileo's generation.
Prior to his condemnation in 1633, Galileo was wrong about so many of his "scientific" positions.? It was known in 1633, by leading scientists, as it is known today, that the Copernican Model was completely wrong on many levels.(21)? Remarkably, most people today (2024) are so poorly versed in science, they mistakenly believe that science adopted the Copernican Model and they mistakenly believe that we currently use the Copernican Theory as championed by Galileo.
But Galileo, being the obstinate man that he was, refused to consider the scientific evidence that was presented to him – According to Galileo, he was a superman, a highly gifted individual who, almost by his own will, could bring objective facts and nature under his control, including the tides.? Remember, Galileo didn't believe in the reality of tides, since they didn't fit with his beloved Copernican Theory, and he ridiculed anyone who claimed that the Moon influenced the tides, so he just pretended that the semidiurnal and diurnal tides didn't exist, and he tried to explain the tidal observations as due to the fact that inland seas were inland, and that fact skewed the observations into mere illusions.
After his trial and condemnation, Galileo's mighty ego was brought to heel.? Galileo, who thought he was the pinnacle of all knowledge, had been humiliated and he was unable to provide the slightest hint of scientific evidence to defend his ideas.? Being sent home like a little schoolboy, he crashed and burned.? Galileo returned to his apartment at the Tuscan Embassy "more dead than alive" according to the Tuscan Ambassador Niccolini.? Was Galileo mad?? The atheist author, Koestler, called Galileo "delusional."(22)? Certainly Galileo's friend, the Tuscan Ambassador Niccolini seems to have thought Galileo mad:??
“He is of a fixed humor,” the Tuscan Ambassador reported, “to tackle the friars head on, and to fight personalities who cannot be attacked without ruining oneself. Sooner or later you will hear in Florence that he has madly tumbled into some unsuspected abyss."(23)
In fact, it was not until after his condemnation, that Galileo, now 69 years old, had the bombastic winds knocked out of his sails.? He had been exposed as a scientific quack, he was embarrassed and having been ridiculed himself, he could no longer engage in his favorite past-time: ridiculing his detractors.
Now under house arrest (or in his case, "houses" arrest since he moved multiple times from luxurious residence to luxurious residence during his "house arrest"), with nothing else left to do, and no one to harangue and pester, at the age of 70 years old, he now had the time to finally sit down and do some something productive.? While resting comfortably in his luxurious apartment under house arrest, he finally produced something that actually was useful to science. It is actually only those writings that truly contributed to science.
In the words of the atheist, anti-Catholic writer and philosopher, Arthur Koestler(24)
It is therefore, hardly surprising that the fame of this outstanding genius rests mostly on discoveries he never made, and on feats he never performed. Contrary to statements in even recent outlines of science, Galileo did not invent the telescope; nor the microscope; nor the thermometer; or the pendulum clock. He did not discover the law of inertia; nor the parallelogram of forces or motions; nor the sunspots. He made no contribution to theoretical astronomy, he did not throw down weights from the leaning tower of Pisa, and did not prove the truth of the Copernican system. He was not tortured by the Inquisition, did not languish in its dungeons, did not say "eppur si muove"; ?and he was not a martyr of science.
So what really happened??? And what has this to do with Darwin and the title of this discussion?
The devil is in the details, and the whole story is rather complex and messy and cannot be addressed in a short discussion such as this, the aim of which is something entirely different from being an history lesson.? So, here is the (very) short version of what happened, sacrificing precision for clarity.? Galileo's abrasive and arrogant personality won him many enemies and was the primary reason for his run-in with his fellow scientists.? Riding on the coattails of Galileo's obnoxious behavior towards people, the sequence of technical events that led to his demise began with the publication of Galileo's "The Assayer."? The Assayer was a messy discussion that included discussions of the fundamental indivisible forms of matter: "a-toms."? However, through dissimulation (intentional or otherwise), Galileo danced around the issue, and he never quite nailed down what he meant by "atom"; sometimes he referred to "minims," sometimes "atoms," sometimes "fire corpuscles," sometimes "shaped corpuscles," and so forth.?? Although Galileo never actually discussed the issue of "The Eucharist" in The Assayer, an anonymous denouncer published a critique of The Assayer, and pointed out that Galileo's "atoms" were essentially the materialistic "atoms" of Anaxagoras derived from Democritus' "shaped atoms."
Unlike our common idea of "atoms" today (think of Bohr's protons, neutrons and orbiting electrons), Anaxagoras' atoms were ontologically homogenous of the thing they compromised.? Thus, iron atoms were substantially iron with each atom exhibiting the absolute ontological traits of iron; water atoms were substantially water and each water atom was homogenous with the physical properties of water (e.g. water atoms would be "wet.")? Dog atoms would, at the atomic level, consist of "dog" particles that were substantially dog, and so forth.
This idea, if held by the Church's Official Scientist, could be a formal heresy, since at the core of Christian belief, was the transubstantiation of the bread and the wine into the very real body and blood of Jesus during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.? That is, during the holy sacrifice of the Mass (or the Orthodox Divine Liturgy), all of Christendom held, as absolute truth, that the species of bread was substantially changed to the actual body of Jesus, and the wine was substantially changed into the actual blood of Jesus.? The Aristotelian accidents of bread and wine remained with their apparent temporal and spatial extensions of bread and wine, but the ontological substance was changed.?
Today's scientific understanding of modern atomic theory, as brought to us by the great scientist, Roger Boscovich, (1711-1787), has not changed the Church's understanding.? The accidents of bread and wine continue to contain the various accidental molecules (and by extension, the accidental atoms associated with those molecules), but the ontological substance of the matter has been changed. ?By the way, for those who may not know, the "Father of Modern Atomic Theory," Roger Boscovich, was a Catholic Priest.
As a sidebar, as the subdivision of modern atoms continued to be probed and with the emergence of quantum mechanics, and the current state of knowledge of matter, the Catholic understanding has still not been challenged by modern theoretical physics or modern atomic theory.? To this day, we still don't know what matter, ontologically, "is" and science has not challenged the concept of transubstantiation.?
If Galileo's forceful arguments regarding "a-toms" were true, then following consecration, there would remain the substance of bread and wine, which is an error that was anathematized by the Council of Trent, and based on that anathema, the error would be a formal doctrinal heresy.? (This article is too short to explain the word "heresy" – hint, it isn't what most people think it is).
Naturally, Galileo could not prove his idea of atoms, not least of which because, as we know today, his ideas were false, but also because Galileo was used to making claims that he could not substantiate anyway.
Lack of proof notwithstanding, Galileo insisted he was, of course, correct.? After all, he believed he was always correct, and never thought he needed proof (we are starting to get close to Darwin).?
Now is when things start to get interesting.? The Roman Catholic Church is not, as many uneducated members of the General Population believe, a monolithic vertically structured "top-down" organization.?? That is, the Catholic Church is not like a modern Industrial Corporation with pooled collective resources, a President calling the shots, vice-presidents that execute his ideas, senior executives by the dozens, junior executives by the hundreds and an organizational chart that continues to subdivide has one moves further down the line until we get to the peons at the bottom (minions, like me).
The Roman Catholic Church has a more horizontal, circular, organization rather like a large family each holding their own material resources (occasionally shared), wherein there is a wise old Matriarch who silently must be appeased out of deference and who only rarely uses her power of veto when things get out of hand.? Crazy Uncles provoke the Elder Matriarch at their own peril.?
In the Western Catholic Church and in the Eastern Catholic Church(25) the Bishop of Rome (The Pope), is a Bishop like all the other Bishops, and the side organizations and the "horizontal" Bishops can exert enormous influence over even the Pope. Such is the case today, and such was the case in the Seventeenth Century.? Now is when things get messy.?
Enter Spain.??
The 17th Century was no different from World politics today – intrigue, deception, power struggles… i.e. Humans doing what humans do.? One can no more separate the 17th Century scientific world from the 17th Century political world any more than one today can separate the scientific claim of Climate Change from the political ramifications. Science was and is and always will be a blood sport.(26)
As I had mentioned, most of the people that Galileo attacked were with the Collegio Romano (mostly Jesuits), with a few exceptions like the great Johannes Kepler. Kepler belonged to the newly invented religious group that had formed loosely based on Christian ideals, called "Protestantism." ?(Ironically, Kepler, who was a Protestant, ?was under the protection of the Catholic Church, and it was the Protestants who burned down his printing press).(27)
This sets the stage for the political climate in Christendom and Christendom was inextricably interwoven into civil society.? The new political movement known as "Protestantism" threatened to destabilize Western Europe, which eventually it did with the Peasant's War (1524-1525) and the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). ?
The Jesuits were generally favorable to Spain and to the Spanish Cardinals.? In January of 1621, the Pope (Pope Paul V) who had (sometimes reluctantly) protected Galileo, died.? A new Pope, Gregory XV, was elected.? Reigning for only two years, Gregory XV doesn't play a large role in our story, and I will skip those two years.?
The Seat of Peter remained empty until August 6, 1623, during which time there was a dramatic upheaval.? France and Spain were in conflict.? A new Pope was to be elected.? The Vatican was awash with maneuverings and intrigue that would impact the stability of Europe.?
On August 6, 1623, Galileo's close friend and protector, Maffeo Barberini was elected as the Bishop of Rome and took the name Pope Uban VIII.? Pope Urban VIII was known to have been a bit fast-and-lose with philosophical ideas and rather delighted in anyone who could rile the Jesuits.? But the Pope, like any global leader, had enemies, foreign and domestic.
From the beginning of his pontificate, there were weekly clashes between the Spanish Ambassador, Cardinal Borgia, and Urban VIII.(28)? The pro-Spanish party took every opportunity to attempt to undermine Urban VIII and his pro-France leanings.? Similar to many Catholic's reaction to the current Bishop of Rome, Pope Francis, Cardinal Borgia and his entourage frequently accused Pope Urban VIII of protecting heretics.?
The new Pope had managed to deflect the accusations, but not stem the source of the accusations.? On March 8, 1632, the crisis came to a head in the Hall of the Consistory, during an official "council of state" when Urban VIII was openly confronted and publicly denounced by Cardinal Borgia, the Protector of Spain, who was backed by the powerful Cardinals Albornoz, Colonna, Doria, Ludovisi, Sandoval, Spinola, and Ubaldini.
A shouting match ensued and Urban VIII ordered Borgia to be silent, and the Pope's brother, the Cardinal of Sant' Onofrio, Antonio Barberini, lunged at the Spanish Prince of the Church to attack him.? The Pope's brother was unable to break through the wall of Spanish Cardinals who protected Borgia while he read his condemnation of the Pope.? Attendants flooded in to intervene and stop the proceedings, but Borgia had his way, and had read his condemnation of the Pope, and even managed to distribute pamphlets to the council attendees.
The word spread that Pope Urban VIII, ostensibly the Protector of The Faith, was not just lenient towards heretics, he was in liege to them.? After all, was he not best friends with the scientific quack Galileo whose anti-science "minims" denied the reality of the Transubstantiation??
The crisis was spreading, violence ensued, Jesuit colleges were plundered and the Fathers expelled from the cities occupied by the Swedes.? Caught between the demands of Philip IV of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II, who supported Borgia, and France's Richelieu urging the Pope to break with Spain, Urban VIII froze.?
Urban VIII was desperate, and at the center of the storm were two people, a Priest in Prague(29) and his loudmouthed buddy whom Urban VIII called "my beloved Son," Galileo.? But Galileo was a consummate provocateur who didn't know when to shut up and who stirred the pot by publishing "The Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems."? The Pope had already given Galileo permission to print the discussion… but not the way it was finally printed. For in it, the dishonest Galileo changed the text and bit the hand that fed him, and in The Dialogue, Galileo couldn't help himself and he insulted his friend, the Pope, and compromised his political position.
Galileo was now, more than ever before, really in jeopardy (but it had nothing to do with his scientific positions).? The only thing that had protected him, Papal power, was now itself under siege, and the Pope was irked at the insult in Galileo's new book.? Now, Galileo wasn't just a nuisance to be made a fool of, Galileo became, in the hands of the Spaniard Borgia, a useful tool to dethrone Pope Urban VIII.? Since Galileo had slighted his friend the Pope, Urban VIII did not hold Galileo in the best of graces either.
But there was a way out of this global political crisis.? The Pope understood there was a way to save Galileo's neck, and simultaneously save his own neck.? Pope Urban VIII understood that if he himself accused Galileo, and he himself performed the trial, he could at once appear to be defending the faith against heretics, thus deflecting the Spanish accusations, and at the same time, he could control the damage about to be wrought on his abrasive "beloved Son."?
But what could they accuse Galileo of??
Although he may have been a fool, Galileo had not actually committed any formal heresy; the condemnation of 1616 was a renunciation (a "gentle"(30) administrative admonition) but not a finding of formal heresy.? The Assayer never actually discussed The Eucharist.? What could the charges be?
Just as mysterious charges were being dreamt of, on August 1, 1632, the Jesuits condemned Galileo's The Dialogue for its connotation of Anaxagoras' atoms.
The Pope not only couldn't figure out what to charge Galileo with, he couldn't even take the case through the normal channels which would be the Congregation of the Holy Office because that was dominated by Cardinal Borgia who would like nothing better than to hang the two of them on the same gibbet of heresy (metaphorically speaking of course).?
The Pope concluded that he had to be able to control the entire proceedings in a very extraordinary manner to bring about the desired end of protecting his neck, and saving the neck of his friend, Galileo.? Pope Urban VIII convened a "special commission" that was presided over by his blood-brother, Cardinal Barberini and would consist of just three people:? 1) The Pope's personal theologian Monsignor Oreggi, 2) the Pope's pro-French right-hand-man, the culturally progressive Father Pasqualigo, and 3) an obligatory Jesuit, Father Melchior Inchofer (a bit of a gamble).?
The commission met five times, in strict secret, with one goal: Figure out a charge against Galileo that would legally stick, no matter how contrived, but a charge that wouldn't be too serious or subject Galileo to any actual harm, (even if it meant bringing Galileo down a notch or two to finally teach him a lesson in humility and stop going around unnecessarily poking wasp's nests.)
Finally, the commission revealed the charge: Breach of Contract.? In The Dialogue, Galileo had discussed the Copernican Theory in violation of Cardinal Bellarmine's 1616 admonition.?
There were just two problems that needed to be overcome: 1) the accusation would leave room for a correction; Galileo could be asked to simply remove the offending passages, and, more difficult 2) nowhere in Cardinal Robert Bellarmine's documents and nowhere in the minutes of the 1616 meeting could a total prohibition be found.? The pious and unreproachable Bellarmine was dead, so Galileo was consulted on the matter; Galileo stated that he was not prohibited from discussing Copernicanism, he was only prohibited from discussing Copernicanism as a fact, instead of a theory.?
This seemed to create a dead end to the resolution.? But, if such a document could be found that indicated that Galileo was given a total prohibition on discussing Copernicanism, would Galileo, in order to save his skin, be willing to admit that the prohibition existed and he was aware of it?? Would he be willing to admit there was a breach of contract, and he had in fact known that the 1616 admonition prohibited him from discussing Copernicanism and that admonition was violated in The Dialogue?? Initially Galileo agreed (he later recanted, and then he recanted his recantation).? The solution was before them all, the charge would be "disobedience" (i.e., treason, which, according to the letter of the law at the time was an "inquisitorial heresy," that is, a disciplinary action, not a theological heresy and not a doctrinal heresy.)
All that was needed to wrap up the deal was to find a document from Bellarmine from 1616 that would support the legal argument.? This was a speed bump, since no document could be found from the 1616 episode that indicated that Galileo had been issued a total prohibition on discussing Copernicanism, and all the documents that existed conformed with every one's memory that Galileo could discus the Copernican Model provided he did not claim that Copernicanism was fact, and/or that the Scriptures were wrong.
Well, divine providence works in funny ways, because by the time of the trial, such a document was produced. (That, in itself, is a fascinating story for another time).? The document appeared to be in the handwriting of Bellarmine himself but was unsigned.? Many people have rightfully wondered how such an important document could remain hidden, indeed, unknown by anybody, for 17 years.? And yet, how convenient for the moment?
The writing was on the wall, and writ large: "Agree to the deal or we will hang together."
Galileo took the deal.?
Life is messy.? In his book "Galileo Heretic" author Pietro Redondi sums up the confusion nicely.(31)?
Confronted with all these apparent incoherences, one must not forget that the Galileo affair was an affair of state, a very serious affair of state. If it were to come out that the pope's official scientist was a suspected heretic against the faith, it would be? scandalous. As can be seen, the situation was in many ways the same as that which had arisen when The Assayer had been denounced.? The difference was that now the times had changed, aggravating all the consequences: the scandal was more serious, and more serious were the mounting pressures exerted by the intransigents. The room for maneuver was more restricted, and a trial of Galileo—his official condemnation was the only way out.
Was Galileo actually an heretic?? Pope Urban VIII, who had arrogated to himself the secret inquiry of the 1633 trial, officially condemned Galileo by way of the Holy Office, because he was vehemently suspected of having believed in the Copernican doctrine, despite his repeated formal denials before the ecclesiastic authority in 1616.
The issue rests on the meanings of words used then, not as they carry connotations today.? Inquisitorial heresy, that is "disciplinary heresy" was high treason. Galileo was officially condemned in 1633 for high treason, NOT for his (erroneous) scientific theories.
Because the trial and condemnation were, by design, to be very public (even though it was not), the results needed to be announced far and wide.? By order of Pope Urban VIII, Galileo's condemnation for high treason was sent to all offices of the nuncios.? This was after all, nothing to do with science, or planets or what goes around what, this was high drama and an affair of state.? And the official condemnation was the resolution of that drama.? Galileo's trial, orchestrated by his friends to protect Galileo from himself, and to protect the inner circle of the Pope and his supporters was a "liberating exorcism"(32) that was designed to alleviate a serious political crisis.?
Conclusion
This brings me to not only the title of this discussion "Darwin's Deception" but the main lesson that resides in this discussion.? That lesson is: why do so many people in Western Europe, especially educated people, believe in myths such as the mythical "Galileo Effect" despite the overwhelming vast preponderance of historical documentation to the contrary and what does any of this have to do with Darwin and the title of this discussion?
The Galileo Effect is almost an obligatory leitmotif in contemporary writing, and it shows up repeatedly in print and online videos regardless of the subject matter.? This is, in fact, what prompted me to discuss this maddening nonsense in the first place since it seems like I cannot pick up a book of any stripe without encountering the Galileo Effect.
As an experiment, I randomly ran my hand across some of my bookshelves and yanked books out to check for the Galileo Effect.? I knew they were there, since I remember being irked by the reference when I encountered it.? Here's an example of the diversity of titles where the myth of the Galileo Affair is propagated as truth:
I could keep going, but you get the idea.
To their credit, not all authors who reference the Galileo Affair got it wrong. A small portion of authors referenced the Galileo Affair in a manner that indicated they actually understood the issue:
The Galileo Effect is a symptom of an erroneous institutionalized worldview that permeates Western Civilization at the moment.? A worldview that sacrifices objective truth at the altar of the popular agenda of secularization by linguistic confusion.
Heroes and villains are sought to support the popular narrative and where none exist (or indeed where the villain is really the hero and vice versa), then those narratives are created out of thin air, facts-be-damned.
In spite of the fact that objective history should inform the present, there are a myriad of pervasive myths in our society that inform the future.? Those myths are responsible for the development of how we will make decisions and how, in the absence of Aristotelian metaphysics to objectively understand "good" and "bad" become the foundation for flawed thinking and problem solving and the true retardation of science and scientific thought.
There are many parallels between the Galileo Effect, for example, and what could easily be called the "Darwin Effect."? It is similarly difficult to read a contemporary book without coming across an inaccurate allusion to Charles Darwin that indicates that an elaborate mythology has grown up around Darwin.?
But Darwin, like Galileo, is mostly famous for things he never did and scientific discoveries he never made.? Like Galileo, Darwin was personally immune to scientific facts.?
For example, in his book "On the Origin of Species" Darwin struggles with what we now call the "Cambrian Explosion," the sudden appearance of some 23 of the roughly 36 animal phyla in the Lower Cambrian geologic strata.? Darwin was actually a geologist and he fully understood the reality that the strata under consideration killed his beloved theory.? But he stated that he hoped that the lower Cambrian transition was merely an illusion (rather like Galileo hoped that comets really didn't exist but were mere illusions), and that the Cambrian rested "uncomfortably" over the pre-Cambrian strata. That is, despite his own observations which clearly indicated that there was an uninterrupted continuum between the pre-Cambrian strata and the overlaying Cambrian layers, Darwin hoped there was actually a disruption that resulted in a discontinuous deposit. Darwinism is an entire theory based on personal faith and wishful thinking, not science.
The actual nature of the transition between pre-Cambrian and Cambrian was also well known by Darwin's colleagues Wallace and Lyell, and so as a backup plan, Darwin went to great lengths of dissimulation to explain that even if there was continuity from pre-Cambrian to Cambrian, the pre-Cambrian ancestors to the Cambrian animals were soft bodies creatures, and therefore, their remains would not be preserved as fossils. But surely Darwin would have understood that if this argument was correct, that fact also would have violated one of the pillars of his theory which states "Natura non facit saltum (Nature does nothing in jumps)" since if 23 phyla abruptly and simultaneously went from soft-bodied forms to hard preservable exoskeletons, that would surely have been a massive jump in nature! But such is one of the many, many, contradictions found in "On the Origin of Species."
Darwin even went so far as to admit that not only could he not explain the confounders to his theory, but that the facts simply presented argued against his pet theory:
For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived."
Galileo, when faced with the embarrassing fact that tides didn't behave as they should according to his theory, claimed that he could prove his theory, but, frankly, according to Galileo, people were too stupid and lacked sufficient intelligence to understand his proof, so he wasn't going to produce his "proofs."(43)
To me, the surest and swiftest way to prove that the position of Copernicus is not contrary to scripture would be to give a host of proofs that it is true and that the contrary cannot be maintained at all, thus, since no truths can contradict one another, this and the Bible must be perfectly harmonious. But how can I do this, and not be merely wasting my time, when those parapetics who must be convinced show themselves incapable of following even the simplest and easiest of arguments?
Galileo dodged (and he could dodge well), demands for proof and falsely claimed (lied) that if he wanted to, he could provide his proofs since he had a multitude of such proofs.(44)
I merely offer this as an example of Nature's bounty and variety of methods for producing her effects. I could offer many, and doubtless there are still others that we cannot imagine.
Darwin was the same:
"It is hopeless to attempt to convince any one of the truth of this proposition without giving the long array of facts which I have collected, and which cannot possibly be here introduced. I can only state my conviction that it is a rule of high generality."
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Darwin again:
"But I am well aware that these general statements, without facts given in detail, can produce but a feeble effect on the reader’s mind. I can only repeat my assurance, that I do not speak without good evidence."
Evidence he never produced.? Darwin again:
"To treat this subject at all properly, a long catalogue of dry facts should be given; but these I shall reserve for my future work."
Darwin again:
"I can here give only the general conclusions at which I have arrived, with a few facts in illustration, but which, I hope, in most cases will suffice. No one can feel more sensible than I do of the necessity of hereafter publishing in detail all the facts, with references, on which my conclusions have been grounded; and I hope in a future work to do this."
Future proof, of course, was never forthcoming.?
Darwin, unlike Galileo, was a plagiarist, but like Galileo, "Darwin had a life long bad habit of not acknowledging, until he was obliged to do so, the debts his work owed to other people; either that or, he had a still worse habit of not even noting them."(45)?
Galileo's entire pre-trial fame rested with his style and with a bizarre theory that defied reality and had no greater proof than the Ptolemaic model that it suggested to replace.?
Completely ignored by virtually everyone today (including the extremely small number of people who have actually bothered to read On the Origin of Species) and completely unknown to those who think that Darwinian Evolution is a valid scientific theory is the very blatant and embarrassing fact that Darwin's entire theory is predicated on,(46) and inextricably reliant on the Malthusian Myth.(47)
Like the Galileo Affair, the general argument one hears from the General Population is the invalid argument that the Galileo Affair (like the Bruno affair)(48) exemplified the penultimate example of the war between science and religion.? A bogus argument that was famously expounded with complete disregard for honesty and intellectual integrity by the likes of John William Draper(49) and Andrew Dickson White(50) and yet educated people still believe this fairytale; in fact, the belief seems to be proportional to the degree of secular education received.?
In fact, the obtuse educated of today have artificially drawn a false dichotomy between those who believe in Darwinism as "science believers" and those who don't believe in Darwinism as "Religious Zealots" or "Creationists" in spite of the fact that the brightest scholars presenting the best arguments against the Darwinian myth are often atheists and agnostics: ?Robert C. Berwick(51), Noam Chomsky(52), Michael J Denton(53), Jerry Fodor(54), Stephen J Gould(55), Mary Midgley(56), Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini(57), David Stove(58), etc. This false dichotomy is just one of the ways that historical bigotry informs today's opinions at the expense of facts.
It does not bother today's "general knowledge" that Darwinism is not a scientific theory and never has been a scientific theory. Even in his day, the scientific community rejected Darwin's ideas as unscientific:
His friend Jean Agassiz (Evolution and the Permanence of Type, 1874) opined:
?"… Darwin's theory, like all other attempts to explain the origin of life, is thus far merely conjectural. I believe he has not even made the best conjecture possible in the present state of our knowledge."
Samuel Eliot stopped short of accusing Darwin of fraud and referenced his "speculations":
"Many are dazzled by the ingenuity which he displays, and do not at once see that facts are wanting for sufficient basis of so broad a theory; and not only so, but that facts inconsistent with his theory are carefully kept out of sight…(North American Review 1860).
Thomas Huxley was conflicted. He liked and supported Darwin, but realized Darwin's book was a mess, and in 1860 Huxley wrote a confused review in Westminster Review that referred to "On the Origin of Species" as "…intellectual pemmican - a mass of facts crushed and pounded into shape rather than held together by the ordinary medium of an obvious logical bond…" In the end, even this staunch supporter concluded that Darwin had no theory at all, because there were no facts to support his ideas, and, at best, Darwin had an "hypothesis."
Over the last 165 years, not a single one of Darwin's pillars has been supported by facts, and all the evidence to date demonstrates that the pillars of Darwin's theory were never demonstrable; and have fallen flat viz:
Bottom up diversity- Darwin's famous "tree of life" doesn't exist.? In fact, the fossil records show exactly the opposite is true(59) and population diversity decreased as time advanced (something Darwin already knew, but ignored).
Gradualism from a Common Ancestor – Which proposes a random set of micro changes resulting in a continuum of organisms, a spectrum of genetic material without any "jumps" between species, or even phyla, and no periods of stasis.? The opposite is true,(60) and Darwin's "warm little pond" is a complete scientific lie.(61)
All changes in surviving lineage (genetic changes) convey an advantage – It is difficult that even in Darwin's time, any rational person would believe this.? But there we have it; that is what Darwin claimed.? Of course it isn't true.? It was never true. ?Consider the (very) small list of the following: Angelman syndrome, Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease, Cri du chat syndrome, Cystic fibrosis, Down syndrome, Familial hypercholesterolemia, Hemophilia, Klinefelter syndrome, Phenylketonuria, Prader–Willi syndrome, Sickle cell disease, Spinal muscular atrophy, Tay–Sachs disease and on, and on, and on …
But, like Charles Darwin, who knew from the very beginning of his theory that all the available evidence was against him, Galileo clung to his pet theory anyway.??
And yet, these myths remain and pollute our current age with misinformation.?
Such myths include:
Christopher Columbus depicted with his famous (but not yet invented) spyglass on the bow of the Santa Maria courageously proving the Catholic Church was wrong and the world was really round – none of which is true: The scientists of the Catholic Monarchs who sponsored the voyage merely argued that the route suggested by Columbus did not exist, and there was no reason to think it existed and Columbus would fail. ?Today, of course, we know they were correct – it turns out there was an inconvenient continent in the way which Columbus accidentally ran into.?
The Dark Ages -The Dark Ages never existed, this was merely a derogatory term invented to denigrate the "superstitious" Catholic Church.(62)? Anytime someone uses the term "Dark Ages," in a sincere fashion with regard to actual history, they instantly lose credibility.
The horrors of Inquisitions – In truth, people who were charged with civil crimes attempted to claim they were heretics to get their cases moved into the Courts of the Inquisition where there were rules of procedures, rules of evidence, a presumption of innocence, the right to face one's accuser, and so forth.? The justice systems of most Western Civilizations today base their systems on the procedures of the Inquisitions.
COVID-19 virus was one of the deadliest viruses in history, and little cloth facemasks will prevent the spread of this deadly disease. Fact - The SARS-CoV-2 virus was about as deadly as the seasonal flu and of all the deaths reported as "COVID," only approximately 4% were actually due to the virus(63) and the facemasks and "social distancing" were magical potions designed to hold off a sea of known science that already knew they were useless.
The Bastille was stormed to release thousands of political prisoners.? When the Bastille was stormed, it contained seven people.? Not one of them was a political prisoner.(64) And Marie Antoinette, a benevolent and loving (Catholic) Queen who built hospitals and schools, never said "Let them eat cake."
Black mold in your house is dangerous. ?Facts - 1) There is no such thing as "toxic black mold."? 2) Every occupied structure in North America contains black mold including the much maligned Stachybotrys atra.(65) If one collects a large enough sample for "black mold," one will find black mold.
Indoor radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer.? False – This is a truism based without any scientific validity and supported exclusively by junk science.(66)
Climate Change is real.? "Climate Change" (anthropomorphic Global Warming) is not science, it is another Malthusian Myth-driven nonsense.(67,68,69,70,71,72)
I could go on, but my point is made.? The citizens of Western Civilization swim in a sea of myths and misinformation.? That, by itself, is not new, but what IS new is that never before has humanity had readily available authoritative information at their fingertips, and never before has a society ever so proclaimed its freedom from ignorance and its pride that it is a rational society making rational decisions that are better informed by the past than any other time.?
Even that is a myth.
References:
1) Koestler A, The Sleepwalkers, (1959), p.476
2) Il Saggiatore (1623) (abridged, translation by Stillman Drake) No pages can be cited since this is the common theme which runs through the diatribe.
3) Koestler A, The Sleepwalkers, p. 438
4) The available record on whether Galileo actually claimed to have invented the telescope is obscure because Galileo himself vacillates on the issue which seems to allow for a valid argument either way.? Koestler (Sleepwalkers (1959), p. 373), explicitly states Galileo never claimed to have invented the telescope but goes on to confirm that two of Galileo's own contemporaries George Fugger, (1453-1506) as well as Francis Stelluti (1577-1652) both mention that Galileo laid claim to the invention of the telescope.? Importantly, Stelluti was, like Galileo, not just a member of the Lincean Academy, Stelluti was a founding member.? Certainly, common myth frequently identifies Galileo as the inventor of the telescope.? However, definitively, Galileo himself, in his own words in Il Saggiatore (1623) during a discussion of the telescope, in his usual equivocal dissimulative manner, clearly lays claim to the device as his while off-handedly mentioning that he got the idea from a careless Flemish spectacle-maker (probably Hans and Zacharias Janssen (see https://phys.libretexts.org/Courses/Lumen_Learning/Book%3A_Astronomy_Lab_(Lumen)/06%3A_Optics_and_Telescopes/6.04%3A_The_Telescope).? I believe that in light of Galileo's many false claims to boost his sense of importance, one can confidently conclude that he made the claim not only in Il Saggiatore but also elsewhere.
5) Il Saggiatore (1623) (abridged, translation by Stillman Drake)
6) Galileo G. Against the Calumnies and Impostures of Balthasar Capra, etc. (Venice 1607)
7) Connell E.S., Aztec Treasure House (2001) Counter Point Publishing (Perseus Books)
8) Il Saggiatore? on gilding
9) Il Saggiatore on heat
10) Redondi in Galileo Heretic cites Vincenzio Viviani in "Raeconto istorico della vita di Galileo Galilei" (1634), in S. Salvini, Fasti consolari de' Accademia Fiorentina, Florence 1717 (post.); critical edition by A. Favaro in Works, XIX, pp. 597-632.? Redondi states that his quote was from the next edition, that by F. Flora, Milan 1954, p. 47 (Works, XIX, p. 616).
11) The actual number of Protestant sects (which includes all "denominations" - that is, all Non-Catholic sects), is unknown, since according to the principle of Protestantism, any person regardless of their theology or belief system can merely declare themselves a "Christian" and elevate themselves to "Pastor" and hang a shingle over their garage and announce they have created a new "church."? Whereas the actual number of Protestant (Evangelical/Fundamentalist) churches in the United States is well over 30,000, the number 40,000 is often bantered about in Christian communities as a way of expressing the enormity of disagreement between the Protestant denominations.
12) ?Copernicus' Revolutions was put on The Index until corrections could be made.
13) Shackelford J, That Giordana Bruno was the First Martyr of Modern Science (Chapter Eight in Galileo Goes to Jail, and Other Myths About Science and Religion), Ronald Numbers Ed. (2009), Harvard University Press.
14) March 21, 1615, Letter from Ciampoli to B. Landucci, quoted by Karl Von Gebler Galileo Galilei und die R?mische Curie (1879) (my copy is the Mrs. George Sturge English translation).
15) Connell E.S., Aztec Treasure House (2001) Counter Point Publishing (Perseus Books)
16) Galileo G, Opere, from the National Edition by A. Favaro et al. Florence, p. 327, op cite, Redondi P, Galileo Heretic, 1987
17) Tratto della Sfera, Opere, Ristampa? della Ediz. Nazionale, op cit. Koestler A,? Sleepwalkers p. 357?
18) Koestler A, The Sleepwalkers, (1959), p.148
19) In fact, even this is a simplification since, the center of Copernicus' system was NOT the Sun, but was in fact the center of the Earth's orbit.
20) This is the sharp demarcation between the Western (Latin) Church and the Eastern Church; the philosophical differences between the Latin Mind and the Greek Mind.? Excellent discussions on this profound and fundamental difference are discussed from the Orthodox perspective by His Eminence Metropolitan John D. Zizioulas (of eternal memory) in "Being as Communion" (1985) St. Vladimir's Seminary Press and from the Roman perspective in "Rome and the Eastern Churches" (1992), by John Christopher "Aidan" Nichols (Ignatius Press).
21) Feyerabend P. Against Method, (4th Ed.), p. 43
22) Arthur Koestler The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe, 1959, p. 454
23) Georgio de Santillana Dialogue on the Great World Systems, by 1953, University of Chicago
24) Arthur Koestler The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe, 1959, p. 353
25) Although most people, especially Americans, think that "The Catholic Church," "the catholic church" and "Catholic" are all synonymous and all refer to the same thing: "Roman Catholic Church," the Catholic Church is not a monolithic organization and there are no fewer than 24 distinct and autonomous Churches in communion with Rome, consisting of numerous "rites," of which the Roman Rite is but one (albeit the largest).? The Catholic Church (upper case letters), includes the Malankarese, Chaldean, Byzantine, Braga, Maronite, Melkite and many other Rites, all truly catholic and all in Communion.? Similarly, "catholic" (lower case letters) includes the Ethiopian Church, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and others.?
26) Connell CP Holding Science Hostage, https://forensic-applications.com/misc/Holding_Science_Hostage.pdf??
27) Koestler A, The Sleepwalkers, (1959), p.409
28) Redondi P, Galileo Heretic, p.229 (translated by Raymond Rosenthal), 1987 Princeton University Press
29) See the Arriaga Affair (Rodrigo de Arriaga S.J)
30) Koestler A, The Sleepwalkers, (1959), Notes: p.603
31) Redondi P, Galileo Heretic, (translated by Raymond Rosenthal), 1987 Princeton University Press
32) Redondi P, Galileo Heretic, (translated by Raymond Rosenthal), 1987 Princeton University Press
33) Bird, Kai and Sherwin, Martin American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, 2006, Vintage Books ISBN: 9780375726262
34) Engelbrecht,? Torsten Virus Mania: How the Medical Industry Continually Invents Epidemics, Making Billion-Dollar Profits At Our Expense, 2007, Trafford Publishing ISBN-13 978-1425114671
35) Gregory, Brad S, The Unintended Reformation – How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society, 2012, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-674-04563-7 One would have thought that Dr. Gregory at least would have gotten it right, he is a Catholic and a professor of History at Notre Dame University.
36) Kennedy Jr, Robert F. The Real Anthony Fauci, 2021 Skyhorse Publishing ISBN 978-1510766808
37) Lewis, David L. Science for Sale: How the US Government Uses Powerful Corporations and Leading Universities to Support Government Policies, Silence Top Scientists, Jeopardize Our Health, and Protect Corporate Profits, 2014, Skyhorse Publishing ISBN-13 : 978-1626360716
38) Midgley, Mary Evolution as a Religion, 2002 Routledge Publisher ISBN 9780415278331
39) Mullis, Kary B. Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, 2000 Vintage Books ISBN 0679774009
40) Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – but Some Don't, 2012, Penguin Group ISBN 978-1-59-420411-1
41) Edward Feser The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, 2010 St. Augustine's Press ISBN-10: 1587314525
42) Paul Feyerabend Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge, 1975, New Left Books, ISBN 0-902308-91-2
43) Galileo's letter to Dini: Trattato della Sfera, Opere, Ristampa della Ediz. Nazionale, Op cit. Koestler The Sleepwalkers
44) Galileo Il Saggiatore (1623) (Drake translation)
45) ?Stove, D Darwinian Fairy Tales, (1995) Encounter Books
46) Darwin C, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), my version is the Barnes & Noble Classics publication, 2004 and the pertinent passages are found on pp.14 and 62
47) Robert Malthus TR, An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798)
48) Filippo Bruno, 1548-1600, libertine and adulterer
49) Draper JW, History of the Conflict between (sic) Religion and Science (1874)
50) White AD, The Battlefields of Science (1869)
51) Why Only Us: Language and Evolution (2016)The MIT Press
52) Why Only Us: Language and Evolution (2016)The MIT Press
53) Evolution: A Theory in Crisis 1986 Adler & Adler
54) What Darwin Got Wrong? (2011) Picador
55) Wonderful Life - The History of the Burgess Shale … Norton Publishing 1989
56) Evolution as a Religion: Strange Hopes and Stranger Fears (Routledge Classics) 1985
57) What Darwin Got Wrong? (2011) Picador
58) Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity and Other Fables of Evolution 2007 Encounter Books
59) Meyer Stephen C, Darwin's Doubt, Harper (2013)
60) Wells, J Icons of Evolution, Regnery, (2000)
61) Joyce Gerald F, Orgel LE, Prospects for Understanding the Origin of the RNA World, "The RNA World, Second Ed. Gesteland, Cech and Atkins, Eds. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (1999)
62) Moczar D, Seven Lies About Catholic History: Infamous Myths about the Church's Past and How to Answer Them (2010), TAN Books
63) Connell CP, How to peddle backwards, https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/how-peddle-backwards-caoimh%25C3%25ADn-p-connell
64) Connell CP Celebrating the Grand Opening of Auschwitz, https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/celebrating-grand-opening-auschwitz-caoimh%25C3%25ADn-p-connell
65) Connell CP, Health Effects of Moulds – State of Knowledge, https://www.forensic-applications.com/moulds/sok.html
66) Connell CP Radon, A Brief Discussion, https://www.forensic-applications.com/radon/radon.html
67) Ball, T The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science (2014), Stairway Press
68) Durwall R. The Age of Global Warming, (2013) Quartet Books
69) Knappenberger PC Lukewarming, with PJ Michaels (2016) Cato Institute
70) McKitrick R, Balling RC, Christy J, Legates DR, et al Shattered Consensus: The True Story of Global Warming (Patrick J Michaels, Ed.), 2005, Rowman & Littlefield Pubs.
71) Michaels PJ Meltdown (2007), Cato Institute
72) Singer SF Hot Talk, Cold Science (3rd Ed. 2021), Independent Institute
It's interesting to consider how the pursuit of reason can sometimes lead to the acceptance of unchallenged assumptions. What role do you think critical thinking should play in our society?