What do you make of Tim O'Neil's "History for Atheists"?

[ruby sparks]

This is pretty clear indication that you're working hard to prop up your biases. And since people tend not to recognise their biases, it's hardly surprising you don't see it that way.

More projection and cheap mind reading.

I’ve done enough googling to find out that there appears to be a range of academic views on Pius XII, some more critical than others. It (what he did about and/or his dealings with the Nazis) is clearly a controversial and unresolved issue.

For example:

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/01/02/04/reviews/010204.04duggant.html

 

[Tim ONeill]

This is pretty clear indication that you're working hard to prop up your biases. And since people tend not to recognise their biases, it's hardly surprising you don't see it that way.

More projection and cheap mind reading.

I’ve done enough googling to find out that there is a range of academic views on Pius XII, some more critical than others. It is clearly a controversial and unresolved issue.

For example:

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/01/02/04/reviews/010204.04duggant.html

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 pretty much any historical topic you care to mention). In fact, if you had actually read my article, you would have seen that I refer to this range of views several times - see my references to "the Pius Wars". And on matters where there is no consensus or where the evidence is unclear, I note that too. But my article addresses the specific claims that he was "pro-Nazi", that the Concordat was some kind of cosy and friendly accommodation, that the Centre Party was "ordered to disband" and that German Catholics were ordered "to abstain from any political activity on any subject the regime chose to define as off-limits". These claims are all nonsense. That is not "controversial".

 

[ruby sparks]

You don’t appear to have been reading what I’ve been saying. I think that you’ve been assuming you’re arguing against the sort of new atheist that annoys you.

Hence the dubious claims about my supposed biases and emotional desires. Coupled with the repeated suggestions that I haven’t read your article.

 

[Tim ONeill]

You don’t appear to have been reading what I’ve been saying.

I'm been reading it very carefully thanks.

I think that you’ve been assuming you’re arguing against the sort of new atheist that annoys you.

No.

Hence the dubious claims about my supposed biases and emotional desires.

I am only basing that on your responses here.

Coupled with the repeated suggestions that I haven’t read your article.

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 read it or didn't pay much attention to it.

 

[ruby sparks]

Ok so to recap. Because you seem to be getting hold of the wrong end of the stick.

I am not disagreeing with you saying that Pacelli was not pro-Nazi and was anti-Nazi. I hope that's abundantly clear now. Similarly, I am not saying that the medieval church did not support the sorts of free enquiry associated with what we would later call science.

What I am saying is that these are questions (myths to some) that are limited in scope and complexity. If for example, you want to say (as you have) that Pacelli was generally in opposition to the Nazis, then the wider question is whether he (and the church) to some extent hid behind neutrality and passivity, for whatever reasons (which are surely complicated and likely to involve RCC self-interest).

I go back to my analogy with child abuse. It's a piece of cake to say that the RCC and possibly every Pope is/was against it, and that most discouraged it or did something about it, but the question of culpability for not doing enough can still be raised.

Regarding the middle ages, it is clearly the case, as I have discovered by googling around the subject, that your take is only one among many historians, so for a relatively uninformed person such as myself, it is not convincing for you to suggest that 'if I read Tim's stuff' (which by the way I had) I will get the Truth^TM from it. It seems clear to me that there is controversy and disagreement, in other words. You agree that this is normal and usual in the study of history. Fine. Well, perhaps you should then acknowledge that yours is only one of a number of perspectives and not get all prissy by mild suggestions to the contrary. You know, resorting to calling people biased and emotional.

Finally, you appear to have an agenda, an anti-anti-theism agenda. That's fine. I'm no fan of the sort of 'new atheist anti-theism' that one sees a lot of online and elsewhere these days. My personal opinion is that I think you may be leaning slightly too far the other way. I have a feeling that the question of how much the religious dogma of the middle ages held back free enquiry in Western Europe is not easily answered, and I think you are trying to answer it too easily.

 

[ruby sparks]

"The further the universities were away from direct papal control, the more productive their work.."

https://newhumanist.org.uk/2416/why...to-be-shortlisted-for-the-royal-society-prize

The impression I'm getting is that while it may be a myth that the medieval church was anti-'science', it may also be a myth that it was pro-'science'. I suspect the truth is complicated and somewhere in between those two, and dependent on particularities and qualifiers, and possibly on blurred or artificial distinctions between 'theology' and 'science'. It is quite possible in principle, and to me seems plausible, that religion in the middle ages in Europe in some ways at some times enabled the growth of knowledge and free enquiry, and in other ways at other times hindered it, since the two are not exclusive.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

"The further the universities were away from direct papal control, the more productive their work.."

https://newhumanist.org.uk/2416/why...to-be-shortlisted-for-the-royal-society-prize

The impression I'm getting is that while it may be a myth that the medieval church was anti-'science', it may also be a myth that it was pro-'science'. I suspect the truth is complicated and somewhere in between those two, and dependent on particularities and qualifiers, and possibly on blurred or artificial distinctions between 'theology' and 'science'. It is quite possible in principle, and to me seems plausible, that religion in the middle ages in Europe in some ways at some times enabled the growth of knowledge and free enquiry, and in other ways at other times hindered it, since the two are not exclusive.

I have very vivid memories of my Roman Catholic parents and their generation regularly praying for the conversion of the Jews and of Russia. They clearly feared and were prejudiced against both groups and were expressing the dictates of their church. If anything they were anti-jewish and anti-russian, but this did not mean they actively went about trying to purge these elements from their culture. The vast majority of their generation knew few if any russian and jewish people anyway, so it was a target easily demonized.

Because the vast majority did not actively go about discriminating against russian and jewish people in their lives does this mean they were pro-russian and pro-jewish? Of course it doesn't, and it would be both silly and innacurate to claim that simply because they weren't regularly burying corpses that they were pro-russian and pro-jewish.

So I think your point is right on.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

The problem for the RCC was that the RCC cut deal with twin devils, German Nazis and Italian Fascists. They got their concordats with these two, but it turned out that in the end, they got cheated by Hitler most thoroughly. The stink of all of this still lingers after all these years. Of course, these were not the only things the RCC did that rankles. The RCC supported Franco in Spain. And we had Catholic support for evils in Yugoslavia, the Ustase. All together, a bad showing.

 

[ruby sparks]

I am not familiar in much detail with the role of the RCC and Italian Fascism, or as regards Yugoslavia and Ustase, but it is my understanding that their record in Spain during the civil war is pretty bad indeed. Openly condemning, for example, the interventions of the USSR, but staying silent, I believe, on the interventions of the Nazis and Italian Fascists. And a lot more, so I have read. And this was happening at the same time as the events discussed in relation to Pacelli, and not far away.

 

[ruby sparks]

Here in Ireland, people have drifted away from the RCC in droves over the last 50 years. What was, even during my lifetime, arguably the most loyal and devout catholic country in the world has entered the top 10 most atheist nations. A steady flow of dodgy stuff of all varieties from the 20th C has come to light. Many people are fed up with RCC shapeshifting and excuses. The RCC looks after its own interests first and foremost and probably always has done and is/was, as far as I can see, primarily concerned with things like power, influence, and control, all wrapped up in woo dogma and indoctrination. It's not just the dodgy stuff itself, it's the not doing very much, or the inaction and doublespeak and the covering up, the conservative tardiness and the holding up of progress. Obviously, there's also been elements of a strain of anti-socialism and indeed anti-Judaism in the mix.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

The Council of Trent

...
Celebrated on the eighth day of the month of April, in the year 1546.
The sacred and holy, ecumenical, and general Synod of Trent,--lawfully assembled in the Holy Ghost, the Same three legates of the Apostolic See presiding therein,--keeping this always in view, that, errors being removed, the purity itself of the Gospel be preserved in the Church; which (Gospel), before promised through the prophets in the holy Scriptures, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, first promulgated with His own mouth, and then commanded to be preached by His Apostles to every creature, as the fountain of all, both saving truth, and moral discipline; and seeing clearly that this truth and discipline are contained in the written books, and the unwritten traditions which, received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ himself, or from the Apostles themselves, the Holy Ghost dictating, have come down even unto us, transmitted as it were from hand to hand; (the Synod) following the examples of the orthodox Fathers, receives and venerates with an equal affection of piety, and reverence, all the books both of the Old and of the New Testament--seeing that one God is the author of both --as also the said traditions, as well those appertaining to faith as to morals, as having been dictated, either by Christ's own word of mouth, or by the Holy Ghost, and preserved in the Catholic Church by a continuous succession.
...

To understand the Galileo affair, one has to understand the dogmas of the Council of Trent The Bible is literally authored by God himself. That means that the claims made by the magisterium of the RCC are dogmas that cannot be challenged. When Galileo challenged the science of his day, it forced him to deal with this problem. How to reconcile dogma and observations he was making.

In 1613, the Grand Duchess Christina of Florence raised the issue of Biblical dogmas that did not support heliocentrism. This prompted a friend of Galileo's Benedetto Castelli to write Galileo about the issue. Galileo replied in a letter, widely circulated that the Bible was an authority about faith, and not scientific fact. and here, Galileo ran up against dogmas set in concrete by the Council of Trent. The out was he was not to state the theory of heliocentrism as fact. The inquisition found that heliocentrism was "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture".

Galileo realized that was indeed fact. It was therefore something that the RCC had to accept and to find a way to reconcile scientific fact with the Bible. It turned out that the RCC had no intention of doing that.

The RCC stuck with outdated and wrong science in face of facts because they had decided that they could not reconcile scientific facts developed by Galileo with the Bible. The reasons that were used to cast doubt on heliocentrism were old, wrong and obsolete, but due to theological dogmas, could not be gracefully abandoned.

We see the same dynamics with today's fundamentalist young Earth creationists. In the end, Galileo was right and the biblical based dogmas quite wrong. Since there was no way that the RCC could ban telescopes or astronomers looking through telescopes at the heavens, that was a Pyrrhic victory. The facts of heliocentrism would be well known and testable, and the biblical claims of the Council of Trent demonstrated as nonsense. Religious dogma and fact based science are sometimes a disaster.

The underlying real cause of the Galileo affair was the dogmatic statements of the Council of Trent that left the church with little room for
dealing with Galileo in a more rational fashion. It is also notable that the RCC confined Galileo to house arrest and forbade publishing any of Galileo's works, including any he might write in the future.

Better to stop the progress of science coming from Galileo than wrestle with scientific findings that called Bible revelation into question.