rob117

Can you post a link?

As for the Ben Franklin story being a myth, do you have a reference?

All this revisionism and no references...

As it's been said, nobody's claiming that the Church opposed every scientific advance, but it certainly opposed some.

Johann_Kaspar

Insulting. Because you are short of an argument. :rolling: :rolling: :rolling: :rolling: :rolling: :rolling: This is not the humour forum, or am I mistaken
Sure one millenium is worth a "rarely".Lack of knowledge is not an argument.So you do not know Vésale and what he wrote, and what happened to him...Autogoal, yes.

Clivedurdle

From Nicholl Da Vinci p240 -

Bede

Park K ‘The Criminal and Saintly Body - Autopsy and Dissection in Renaissance Italy’ Renaissance Quarterly 47:1 (1994)
Grant, E 'God and Reason' (Cambridge, 2001) p. 112

The Leonardo quote above shows us that amateurs were not allowed to source corpses from the black market and dissect tham at home. Dissections had to take place only in licensed Medical schools and universities. In fact, Leonardo was allowed to get away with it. Today he'd be locked up PDQ.

Cohen IB, 'Prejudice against the introduction of lightning rods'
Journal of the Franklin Institute, Volume 253

I gave two to my own articles above. There is a lot more at my site.

I see a line of retreat being prepared here... Certainly, the church did oppose some science (although Mr Lawyer did use the word all) but it encouraged a great deal more. On top of that, most of the examples of opposition that people think they know are myths. Thus the case looks completely different to what the OP and the site he linked to believe.

Best wishes

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

GakuseiDon

Bede has covered this already.

I looked, but couldn't find any quotes from officials within the Church declaring that studies of A or B were banned because it clashed with Christian doctrine. How do you know that the Church opposed those things?

Some Christians, yes, but that can hardly translate to "the Church opposes every advance in science".
Again, some Christians, yes. But even for evolution, some Christians never had a problem once it became accepted. Do you know of where the Church officially opposed the advance of science, except for Galileo?

So, how did Christianity stop the development of lightning rods? There doesn't seem to be anything more than that some Christians opposed the rods. But then, other Christians accepted them.

Clivedurdle

Cutler's biography of Steno describes a brilliant person in the mid seventeenth century in the classic mold of the renaissance man.

Steno forced the change from a static to a dynamic evolutionary view of the world. he lived a generation after Galileo and was well aware of the power of the Church.

"His seventy eight page masterpiece De Solido was originally intended as an abstract of a much longer dissertation. But that work never materialised. De Solido was his last published geological work. A few years later he entered the priesthood and gave up scientific research altogether. While in Italy he had made a controversial switch from Lutheranism to Catholicism."

Steno is an example of the Church killing scientific progress by giving Steno a then insoluble psychological problem - is my brain right or the Church right? He took the way out that was common them and hid the issues that Darwin faced up to later.

Bede

Rubbish Clive. Steno is a great example of a devout man doing great science. The popular book tries to dress up a conflict where none existed. He jointed the priesthood not to escape but because he realised it was his true vocation. Worse, for the conflict hypothesis, it shows how most of the founders of modern science, were not just averagely religious for their time, but especially devout. Witness, Keplar, Newton, Steno, Descartes, Pascal Boyle right up to Priestley and Faraday. Mersenne and Gassendi were both Catholic priests. What is impressive is how Christianity is what unites these men and almost nothing else.

Best wishes

Bede

Johann_Kaspar

Complete silly comparison. Currently students can have all material they need, in books and otherwise. In the time of Vésale it was far from it. Authorisations were scarce in some cases one corpse for one year, even for reknowned anatomists. And those authorisations were granted despite the church.
Well, anatomy was proving then that men and women have the same number of ribs... disproving the Bible as it was understood... :rolling:

Wads4

"Originally Posted by Bede
Hi Trexmaster,

I think you are probably wrong about this. Many historians today realise that the Church was a major sponsor of science and that Christianity might well have been an important factor in the rise of modern science."

It is easy for the Christian Church to claim they sponsored science;-this was after all opposition to the Church had been eliminated on pain of torture and the stake. As a consequence, all men of any culture and learning were Christian, and having become rich and leisured as a result of the general rapaciousness of their Church as it "encouraged" the poor to give to the Church, it was then able to pursue scientific interests,--but only as far as it supported God and Church;--inconvenient findings were suppressed, and still are,--hence the continued row over Evolution. There was science and learning before the Church ever existed.

Johann_Kaspar

And our xians here are still keeping silent about the millenium gap between the rise of xianity and Renaissance. Renaissance despite xianity...

Only to give a look at the EC forum to understand how xians are sticking to revealed truths...