6 ms·
Btw pope is a math phd.
by dhruv3006 8mo ago
Btw pope is a math phd.
- OtomotO 8mo agoImagine the pope being a man of science a couple of hundred years back... How much better the world could be.
- usrnm 8mo agoA lot of very bad things were historically done by men of science
- llbbdd 8mo ago"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department!" says Wernher von Braun.
- somenameforme 8mo agoEven better is, 'I aim at the Stars! (but sometimes I hit London)'. "I Aim at the Stars" was the name of a real biographical movie made about him in the 60s. It feels like that exact title had to have been chosen, at least partly, tongue in cheek.
- keiferski 8mo agoJust wait until you read what people like Von Neumann thought about preemptively using nuclear weapons. It turns out that scientific brilliance has basically zero overlap with ethical wisdom. Science is great, but it’s not a replacement for philosophy.
- wolvesechoes 8mo agoHow much better? Every honest description of Catholic Church, as any institution of this size and history, needs to be very nuanced. One of such nuances is a fact that it was one of the main, and sometimes strictly main, supporters and drivers of education and scientific progress. Other such nuance is that it very often punished and persecuted attempts to bring education and scientific progress. Both views of the Church are true. That's what nuance is.
- OtomotO 8mo agoNo crusades for one populae example. More advancements... No being opposed to actual enlightenment, because it doesn't sit well with the institution of power... I am talking about a real man of science here of course, not some egoistic, smart person that needs to be constantly prove they are the smartest or else their frail ego will collapse... Which there are plenty of in academia and science.
- wolvesechoes 8mo agoBut why man of science would avoid starting crusades? Moral virtue has nothing to do with being a man of science, and many men of science lacked it completely.
- curtisblaine 8mo agoExactly. We tend to forget that the crusades were an efficient way of assigning land (scarce) to the cadet branches of ruling families (abundant), or die trying.
- thevillagechief 8mo agoWhy would a Catholic man of science necessarily oppose the crusades?
- simmerup 8mo agoSo you'd rather have Europe be Islamic I guess, if you're opposing the crusades
- OtomotO 8mo agoI don't care either way to be honest... I'd prefer Satanism for sure, but I don't really care.
- coryrc 8mo agoThe Crusades resulted in Christians being nearly wiped out from the Eastern Mediterranean. Particularly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Crusade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Crusade And started(?) Jews being killed in Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhineland_massacres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhineland_massacres
- numbers_guy 8mo agoYou mean during the Napoleonic wars? Science was already fully embraced by then. Or do you think the Austrians and the French were casting spells against each other instead of firing cannon?
- accidentallfact 8mo agoNapoleonic wars? The Spanish used guns against the Aztecs. >The first use of firearms as primary offensive weapons came in the 1421 Battle of Kutná Hora. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_firearm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_firearm
- somenameforme 8mo agoThey often were. A lot of history has been retold more in a way to fit contemporary narrative than to maintain historical accuracy. For instance Galileo. The typical tale is something like Galileo dared claim the Earth is not the center of the universe, the Church freaked out at the violation of dogma, shunned him, and he was lucky to escape with his life. In reality the Pope was one of Galileo's biggest supporters and patrons. But they disagreed on heliocentrism vs geocentricism. The Pope encouraged Galileo to write a book about the issue and cover both sides in neutrality. Galileo did write a book, but was rather on the Asperger's side of social behavior, and decided to frame the geocentric position (which aligned with the Pope) as idiotic, defended by an idiot - named Simplicio no less, and presented weak and easily dismantled arguments. The Pope took it as a personal insult, which it was, and the rest is history. And notably Galileo's theory was, in general, weak. Amongst many other issues he continued to assume perfectly circular orbits which threw everything else off and required endless epicycles and the like. So his theory was still very much in the domain of philosophy rather than observable/provable science or even a clear improvement, so he was just generally acting like an antagonistic ass to a person who had supported him endlessly. And as it turns out even the Pope is quite human.
- grey-area 8mo agoCover both sides in neutrality???!!! The geocentric position is silly and wrong. There are no two sides here.
- zdragnar 8mo agoThere were definitely two sides at the time in people's minds. He could have presented the geocentric position as being based on theories that were justified only by inductive reasoning, and contrasted that with his own observations and why they provide a more accurate view of the universe. Neutral writing only means that it is not overtly prejudiced, and the weight of the evidence speaks for itself. That's definitely not what Galileo wrote. He was eventually widely considered to be right, but that didn't help him any.
- graemep 8mo agoThere were two sides on the evidence available at the time. The Tychonic model was probably the one best supported by evidence. its worth bearing in mind that the Copernican model is also badly wrong - the sun is not the centre of the universe, just the solar system.
- karel-3d 8mo agoPlease be more specific. Church is 2000 years old.
- Lionga 8mo ago[flagged]
- karel-3d 8mo agoIt will surprise you but we don't literally believe there is a face in the sky looking down.
- Lionga 8mo agoIt will surprise you but almost all religious people I talked to believe that.
- karel-3d 8mo agoThere is no face. The depictions of God the Father are relatively new (in the history of the church; it's still Renaissance). Some people used to have problem with them (Jesus can be depicted, as he was a man, but can be Father?) but then it calmed down. If people think it's literally a face in the sky, they are probably mentally challenged.
- Lionga 8mo agoI think it is a bit rude of you to call most religious people mentally challenged.
- 1718627440 8mo agoIt isn't because he already rejected your premise.
- DonHopkins 8mo ago
- DeepSeaTortoise 8mo agoThe Catholic Church was funding a lot of research for a long time. E.g the Elon Musk of his time, Galileo, was famously sponsored by it and when asked to contrast his theories against the established view, sperged out so hard against the people tasked with reviewing his publications, they tossed him under the carriage.
- watwut 8mo agoGalileo was fascist and liar like Musk?
- DeepSeaTortoise 8mo agoGuess what, he wasn't South African or in the Oval Office, either.
- riffraff 8mo agothe catholic church has traditionally been pro-science, the contrast with science is a modern development. There's a ton of Catholic clergy who were scientists[0], many of those well known (Mersenne, Mendel, Copernicus, Venturi etc). Even the epitome of the science-church conflict, the Galileo story, started from a scientific disagreement before the religious one[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marin_Mersenne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marin_Mersenne [0] https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown.html https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-sma...
- oersted 8mo agoI don’t know about popes, but many prominent mathematicians, philosophers and early scientists were priests or monks: Mendel, Copernicus, Bayes, Ockham, Bolzano... It was pretty much the only way to get the kind of education, intellectual culture, time and focus required for hundreds of years (at least in Europe), until the upper-middle class widened around the enlightenment and industrial revolution. The friction between the church and science is a relatively new phenomenon, at least at the current scale. There are always exceptions like Galileo, but it took science a long time to start answering (and contradicting) some of the key questions about our world and where we come from that religion addresses.
- DonHopkins 8mo ago> There are always exceptions like Galileo Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
- tsimionescu 8mo agoComapring the assassination of a president by a pro-slaver to a scholarly and political dispute that ended up with house arrest in a villa, where he wrote and published his most important work, is a bit wild. The Church has done much, much worse things than the dispute with Galileo.
- DonHopkins 8mo ago[flagged]
- tsimionescu 8mo agoWhile I agree that the various versions of the Bible people are using have many immoral teachings, including slavery, what does that have to do with whether Galileo's trial is a damning example of anti-science work in the Catholic Church?
- 1718627440 8mo agoIs it? I understood it to teach "behaviour" orthogonal to slavery, meaning you treat your fellow the same regardless if the heathen see him as a slave or as the emperor.
- zaik 8mo agoHe did earn a BS degree in mathematics, but his dissertation was a religious one.
- vasco 8mo agoThe Vatican has really smart people in there, regardless of how you feel about the whole thing. I recommend anyone interested in the topic to give a read to: https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20250128_antiqua-et-nova_en.html https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/docu... "ANTIQUA ET NOVA Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence" I was quite impressed at how much they "get it".
- PlatoIsADisease 8mo agoThere must be something missing if they are religious though. Like some sort of critical thinking isnt there.
- Pikamander2 8mo agoSelective reasoning is a hell of a drug.
- whatever1 8mo agoI read the other day that the Roman Empire never fell. Its emperor is the Pope. Which is an exaggeration, but makes you thinking. This institution still has a ton of power.
- JV00 8mo agoThe pope does hold a title, "pontifex maximus", that is older than Christianity itself and goes back to the foundation of Rome. For a while it was unified with the emperor seat.
- wonnage 8mo agoEh, it’s more like they attached themselves to the Romans for marketing purposes. Same with the Holy Roman Empire
- accidentallfact 8mo agoThere is no reason to doubt that Jesus lived in the Roman Empire, once you believe that he lived at all. And there is no reason whatsoever to doubt that the church formed in Rome. All known world was Rome at the time. From Britain to Morocco to the Middle East. (Islam only happened in the middle ages, it isn't that old.)
- PlatoIsADisease 8mo agoIf I was in my early 20s, this would be mad respect. Now that I'm in my 30s and I know PhDs.... They are basically nepo babies who were not good enough for industry.
- tclancy 8mo agoThat is a scorching hot take right out of the gate on a Monday morning! Username really nails the thing.
- Tyumyu 8mo ago[dead]
- p0w3n3d 8mo agoI think you're mistaken where he earned a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in mathematics in 1977 and later His doctoral thesis was a legal study of the role of Augustinian local priors.[64] source:wikipedia