The Giordano Bruno case is interesting. He was
Dominican friar. A minor authority in a minor branch of the Holy Roman Empire
Church (or whatever they called it then), so no significant threat to the Pope.
Until he started shooting his mouth off, claiming he understood the ways of God
better than the top man, whose authority rested entirely on being the closest
man to God on earth. Then he would have to be taken out, mercilessly, I would
have thought.
Galileo's dad had been the keeper of the sacred
music which, in those days, would have put him on the Pope's right hand. A
similar kind of relationship as a tribal Witch Doctor might have with the
Chief. So it's not hard to imagine that, when the Witch Doctor's son converted
to Bruno's branch of the Holy Roman Religion, the Pope would be in a bit of a
fix. How easy would it be for him to burn the Witch Doctor's son at the stake?
So it would be fair to say that Galileo wasn't
so much one of the first guys to invent a new religion that threatened to kick
the old one out. But one of the last guys in a much vilified, fringe branch of
the old religion, that had infiltrated so far into the inner-circle it was
about to go mainstream.
Seen in that context, Galileo was less of an
original thinker and more of a young chancer, in the right time and place. He
chanced that, amongst all the other heretics that had preceded him, he was the
only one the Pope wouldn't dare crucify. If he took that chance, he would have
his day in court and his place in the history books. History books written by
the only people who could write, the scribes of the Holy Roman Empire Church.
Who would most likely record that many of the ideas Galileo had gathered from
the underground movement he had hung out with, belonged to him.
If the Pope had got the Bruno's branch of the
Holy Roman Religion before Galileo, as the Emperor Constantine had got
Christianity more than a millennium before (paving the way for re-branding the
Roman Empire as the Holy Roman Empire), then Galileo would have been more likely
to be charged with plagiarism or copyright theft than heresy.
So, all in all, it's fair to say that science
was born from Christianity and has been largely nurtured by it ever since.
H.G. Wells took it even further in “A Short
History of the World,” where he argues that the development of science was only
made possible by the teachings of Jesus Christ. Christ stood against all
authorities, from the Roman Empire to the Jewish Church. At the beginnings of
the European Intellectual Revival in the 11th century, it was Christ's teaching
of a direct relation between the conscience of the individual and the god of
righteousness (not ordinary righteousness, but pure righteousness as a
fundamental ideal) that gave an individual "the courage to form his own
judgement upon prince or prelate or creed:
"As early as the eleventh century
philosophical discussion had begun again in Europe, and there were great and
growing universities at Paris, Oxford, Bologna and other centres. There,
medieval 'schoolmen' took up again and thrashed out a series of questions upon
the value and meaning of words that were a necessary preliminary to clear
thinking in the scientific age that was to follow.
[...]
And the stir in men's minds was by no means
confined now to the independent and the well-educated. The mind of the common
man was awake in the world as it never had been before in all the experience of
mankind. In spite of priest and persecution, Christianity seems to have carried
a mental ferment wherever its teachings reached.”
In" H. G. Wells. A Short History of the
World, p.231)
Filling a black space is not bad in itself,
provided there is a way to test the assumptions. (In the case of our possible
lions, looking down from higher ground may reveal the truth. The expanding base
of tested theory provides the elevation to see further, and so some of the
lions can be either seen or shown to be something else. The problem is, we
still have a horizon, albeit an expanded one, and there may be more lions out
there also.)
The religious problem results from creating
fixed forms in the black spaces. Imagining is one thing, creating mythic tales
is fine, but making of imagination a fixed a priori first cause, and then
insisting that the universe conform to it is a vexing problem. Religion needs to
learn from science to hold its views tentatively, to allow the narratives and
beliefs to morph as human understanding and scientific evidence reveal further
into the mystery. God must always be beyond comprehension, or as the German
theologian Meister Eckhart ascribed to Augustine: "If I had a God I could
understand, I would no longer consider him God." We need to refrain from
saying what God is, and continue exploring the mystery, appreciating the
complexity, beauty, and awe which we experience in reflecting upon the universe
in which we exist.
That's the problem with pouring scorn on
Christianity and driving it out of town. Science was born from it and nurtured
by it. Throw out the bathwater of Christianity and we risk throwing out the
baby of Science toot.
