Recent content by Tim ONeill

I'm been reading it very carefully thanks. No. I am only basing that on your responses here. Given that you keep saying things that don't make sense if you had actually read my article and keep saying I need to address things I have addressed in detail, I can only assume you either didn't...

Googling? Gosh. I've been reading everything I can get my hands on on the topic, concentrating on the best scholarship. So I don't think I need your "Googling" to tell me that there is "a range of academic views on Pius XII" (hardly surprising given that there is a "range of academic views" on...

I have repeatedly explained, in some detail, how and why the Galileo Affair is an exception to what I'm saying. Do you really not understand what I've said on this? Forget my last question above: those last statements answer it. You genuinely are not following what I'm saying at all. No, that...

It's not "unfounded". You keep saying things on the topic that I address in detail in the article you claim to be commenting on. And you're doing this via some stuff you've read ... on Wiki. This is pretty clear indication that you're working hard to prop up your biases. And since people tend...

Relying on Wiki is usually a pretty bad idea. The Concordat said that clergy would not be active in politics - i.e. would not be active members of political parties or endorse particular parties or political policies from the pulpit in the name of the Church. But this did not "silence" the...

That is not correct. He was convicted of "being vehemently suspect of heresy" - the lowest grade of heresy. That's why he recanted. Not for this level of heresy it wouldn't. It would have led to a harsher sentence, but not death. You had to be pretty damn "heretical" and totally unrepentant to...

Galileo was indicted for presenting an unproven theory that still had major scientific problems as fact and using that theory to reinterpret the Bible. He agreed not to present it as fact and then proceeded to pretty clearly do so in his 1632 Dialogue. As a result, he was convicted of the lowest...

What I am trying to do is explain why insisting that the science was the primary issue is nonsense. If that were the case, they would have persecuted Copernicus from 1514 onwards, instead of sponsoring his work, encouraging him and offering to help him get his book published. They would have...

Okay. Then it's very strange that your conclusion would be that "Now you could say that accommodation and acquiescence was the most pragmatic (official) policy, but you can't really call it unaccommodation." I don't say that at all. What I note is (i) Pacelli and his predecessor were both...

"Deserved"? Who said that? Not me. I find the idea that anyone was burned for their beliefs horrific. But what has that got to do with me correcting someone on what the beliefs he was executed for were?

Have I called anyone here "idiots"? I'm simply noting that many of the things people think they "know" about these topics are wrong. I'm trying to show why going on common understandings of history is fraught with danger, because on most topics the common understanding is riddled with myths. The...

Yes, an idea that Bruno got from Nicholas of Cusa - a Cardinal of the Catholic Church. An idea that was expanded on, with speculation about alien inhabitants of these many worlds, by William of Vorilong, a French theologian. Strangely, neither the Cardinal nor the Bishop were burned as heretics...

Please list all the people who were burned at the stake or broken on the rack because of science. Let's see how long this list is.

Do I need to remind you again that plenty of people openly accepted it as a physical reality without the Church batting an eyelid? Copernicus himself, for example. Or Kepler - a Protestant working openly as a heliocentrist at Catholic ruler's court. Or Galileo himself, who everyone knew was a...

So why then is the number of people who were burned at the stake for anything to do with science ... zero? Sorry, but actual historians of science disagree with you. Galileo and others before him represent the beginning of the application of the true scientific method and the establishment of...