I've started reading Michael Ruse's book Atheism: What Everyone Needs to Know, published by Oxford University Press earlier this year. Ruse is a philosopher at Florida State University, but he has turned himself into something of a crackpot over the last ten years. He's edited two books with ID proponent Bill Dembski, has picked foolish fights with his colleagues, and has engaged in laughably over-the-top rhetoric towards the New Atheists. Most memorably, he once said in an interview: “And this is why I think the New Atheists are a disaster, a danger to the wellbeing of America comparable to the Tea Party.” In a later interview he confirmed that he meant this literally, and was not just exaggerating to make a point. I would think that such a statement simply places you outside the bounds of honest discussion. The Tea Party has taken over Congress and has a real shot at picking the next President, while the New Atheists have published a few books no one is forced to read and maintain a few websites no one is forced to visit. The former development seems like a bigger danger to the wellbeing of America than the latter.
That said, I was curious to see how Ruse does an atheism book. My view on the New Atheists is that the world is a better place for them, and that atheism is in a much healthier place today than it was before they published their books, but that doesn't mean I don't also think they sometimes make life too easy for their critics. So when Ruse's book showed up in the New Books section of the university library, I quickly checked it out.
I'm only thirty pages in, but I'm not optimistic that it's going to get any better. Here's what he says about Galileo:
That Galileo ran into problems with the church because he endorsed Copernicus's heliocentric (sun-centered) worldview does show that there were significant tensions. But the clash was never quite what later anti-religious zealots made it out to be. It occurred a hundred years after Copernicus, during the Counter-Reformation, when the Catholics were firmly shutting the stable door after the fleeing of the Protestants. It should never have happened, but students of the episode all stress that much of the problem was brought on Galileo by himself. To say he was tactless is a bit like saying Hitler had a thing about the Jews. He set out to rub the authorities the wrong way, and having been parodied as a near-moron in Galileo's writing--writings in the vernacular so everyone could read them--it is hardly surprising that the pope reacted badly and strongly. (p. 20)
That's pretty vile.
I'm sure Ruse intended his Hitler analogy to be funny, but it's an obscene comparison. Hitler's thing about the Jews was that they were evil and deserved to be genocided. Galileo just thought the Pope was wrong on a question of astronomy and made fun of him in a book. The equivalency is lost on me.
And the Pope did not just react “badly and strongly.” He had Galileo hauled before the Inquisition, which threatened him with torture and imprisonment unless he read the most humiliating recantation, and then sentenced him to life imprisonment anyway before later commuting the sentence to house arrest. I'd say that's very bad and very strong.
But it's even worse than that. The premise of Ruse's argument is that Galileo's tactlessness is some sort of mitigation for the Church's actions. As he tells it, anti-religious zealots try to make the Galileo affair into a straightforward story of science vs. religion, but serious students understand that Galileo largely brought it on himself by being a dick. The modern version of the argument is that Charlie Hebdo had it coming for publishing offensive cartoons or that Salman Rushdie deserved what he got for being insensitive to Muslims. This is a pernicious and evil argument that amounts to an apology for terrorists, or, in the Galileo case, for an authoritarian religious institution.
The fact is that the Galileo story is exactly what Ruse's “anti-religious zealots” say it is. It so perfectly expresses the conflict between science and religion that the most hard-core atheist could not have scripted it better. Galileo got into trouble not just because he advocated heliocentrism, but because he argued that scientific questions should be answered by science and not by scripture. That was anathema to The Church. Church authorities spent years lecturing Galileo on precisely what he was and was not allowed to say. They exercised near-total thought control over acceptable opinion at that time. What does Ruse think a conflict between science and religion looks like?
Of course, the revisionists in the “science and religion” industry tell it differently. They have concocted a story in which the Catholic Church positively loved science, with Galileo being a weird, easily ignored, aberration. But this is just nonsense. The Church did encourage certain systematic investigations into nature, because such investigations could further religious ends, but that is a far cry from saying they were supportive of science. Their attitude was that revelation as understood by the Church authorities was supreme, and that science existed only to service the needs of religion. Indeed, that is still their view, and it is one they would enforce today were they suddenly returned to the sort of power they had in the Middle Ages. And if that happened, would Ruse or his fellow apologists really be inclined to defend them against the charge of being anti-science?
I've relegated Ruse's book to the status of bathroom reading. I'm still morbidly curious about what he has to say, but I doubt if the book is going to get any better.
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Can you recommend authoritative biographies of Galileo in the following categories?
1) Easy introduction
2) Serious but readable
3) Standard in the field
By the way, if you read Ruse's book and continue to comment on it then we don't have to.
Per Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter and other books, I have the impression that the person Galileo made fun of in the book that got the Pope mad was not the Pope himself, but a much-lower-level functionary. However, Galileo's (and freethinkers of any stripes') sworn enemy Cardinal Bellarmino persuaded the Pope to take it as a personal slur - and the rest quickly became history.
@1 I think Jacob Bronowski did an excellent job recounting the story in a chapter in his book "The Ascent of Man".
This is a reliable source on Galileo and the affair edited by a well-respected philosopher.
http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Companion-Galileo-Companions-Philosophy…
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This is a new book that covers the science at the time of Galileo and issues with new data from telescopes.
"Christopher M. Graney, Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo, University of Notre Dame Press; Notre Dame Indiana, 2015"
Here's what everyone needs to know about atheism: atheists don't believe in any of the gods which humanity has proposed, because atheists don't see any good evidence for their existence and atheists don't see that they add any explanatory value as a philosophical concept.
Everything else about atheists they hold in common with the rest of humanity, i.e., a mixture of good and bad and indifferent traits, and a range of opinions on most other subjects. So in my opinion, a book with Ruse's title should be very short (if the title is valid).
In addition, the Vatican placed the works of Copernicus and Galileo on their Index Librorum Prohibitorum (list of banned books) for centuries. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum was not abolished until within my life time. IMHO, if an institution wants to claim to be science-friendly, they don't even get to have a list of banned books.
It’s by any means an extenuating circumstance, but the Catholic Church at the time of GG’s second trial was threatened as never before. This was the middle of the Thirty Years’ War, remember. The Protestant forces were doing very well, and even France (!) had entered on the Protestant side. The fact remains that all the dicks in this story were wearing cassocks.
Ruse is a moron. I gave up on him after reading, Can a Darwinian be a Christian?: The Relationship between Science and Religion, and Taking Darwin Seriously: A Naturalistic Approach to Philosophy.
@1
Galileo Heretic, Pietro Redondi
The Crime of Galileo, Giorgio Santillana
Galileo: Watcher of the Skies, David Wootton
==========
Somewhat revisionist:
Galileo in Rome: The Rise of a Toublesome Genius, William Shea
Very revisionist:
Galileo's Mistake: A New Look At the Epic Confrontation Between Galileo and the Church, Wade Rowland
======= quirky, hagiographic and highlights the conflict
Galileo: His Science and His Significance for the Future of Man, Albert DiCanzio
It's certainly true that the Catholic Church was feeling pretty beleagured by the time of Galileo's trial, and that in happier political times they might not have come down so hard on him. But I don't see that as altering the basing narrative that what happened to Galileo was a straightforward tale of science vs. religion. That the Church devoted much of its time to deciding which books people were allowed to read, and to lecturing people like Galileo which ideas they were and were not allowed to defend is enough to establish the basic narrative. That they ultimately overreacted to Galileo's provocation adds drama and an exclamation point, but the story was there right from the start.
Galileo considered himself a good Catholic, and he argued that the Holy Spirit tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go, among similar arguments. That ought to make him a hero of liberal religion, but it hasn't.
So I don't think that it was science vs. religion in an absolute religion, but science vs. the sort of religion that insists on making factual claims.
Oops, I made a mistake in the last sentence. It ought to be:
So I don’t think that it was science vs. religion in an absolute sense, but science vs. the sort of religion that insists on making factual claims.
Loren - "the sort of religion that insists on making factual claims" - what other sort of religion is there?
Just in case I am offered the book as a Christmas present, how are you finding the paper?
#15 - There's always "sophisticated theology", which, on careful analysis, says nothing at all.
@13: I've always considered the events reflective of science vs. the organized religion represented in this case by the RCC, not "religion" in its broadest sense of belief in the supernatural. However I think Phil B.'s point is still on target: religion in the broadest sense is most/very often represented by organizations that are opposed to any discipline which is going to threaten their authority to issue judgments or undermine what they say about the world. If you're religious in that you believe in God but yet you don't ascribe any authority to scripture, revelation, etc. and have no interest in telling people what they ought to believe about the world, then you probably aren't anti-science to begin with.
Something else everyone needs to remember about atheists:
The difference between an atheist and a Christian is that the Christian disbelieves in the existence of just one fewer god than does the atheist.
I have been reading Jim Holt's "Why does the World Exist?" and he has a chapter with the unabashed theist Richard Swinburne. Swinburne claims evil exists because his god gave us free will. Seriously? - a benevolent god has to turn a blind eye to the terrorists in Paris so we can learn from our mistakes? It couldn't come up with something with a bit less pain and suffering? Only from a comfy chair in an Oxford flat could you propose something that inane and not be laughed at. That of course doesn't mean that a god couldn't exist - it means that only by changing the definition of good can the Swinburne's god exist.
Let's revisit a translation of a primary text here:
You know what's missing from this? Any renunciation of the Simplicio text. You know what is in there? Lots of repudiation of scientific discoveries. For an organization that supposedly loved science and progress and really only hated Galileo for being a jerk, they sure have a funny way of making him recant. Though upon reading this it looks like Galileo might have gotten in a good bit of snark with that "...arguments of great cogency in its favor, without presenting any solution..." bit.
I've seen similar for theists. I've never really understood why theists take this strategy, because it amounts to torturing an old man for disobeying the Church. Yeah, that's much better...
Yet another purveyor of the Catholic Church vs Science myth misses the delicious irony of the fact that their entire case is built upon a single episode nearly 400 years ago.
@23: Well yeah Rosenhouse is referencing a 400 year old incident, because he's responding to Ruse's reference of that incident.
In any event, Copernicus's De Revolutionibus and Galileo's Dialogue were not dropped from the RCC's index of forbidden books until 1835. Ratzinger (pre-papacy) defended the Church's treatment of him in 1990. It was only in 1992 that PJPII finally admitted the church may have made a mistake. "The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture..." So this 'one error' does not represent a single mistake by one or a few historical figures in Catholic history, it represents 10-15 generations of Catholic authority institutionally supporting that initial decision. There were 28 popes between Urban II and PJPII, and all of them at least tacitly supported Urban II's decision because they chose not to repudiate it or even comment on it.
Its also worth noting than when JPII got around to stating that the church might have made a mistake, his comments about the incident don't line up with Ruse's claims, either. PJPII saw the church's authoritarian beat-down just as Jason does, as a response to Galileo's physics claims, not his Pope-as-Simplicio insult.
@24
1) I was referring to Rosenhouse's attack on the Catholic Church not his attack on Ruse's stupid polemics.
2) PJPII's comments which you quote actually reflect what was stated way back in 1909 in the Catholic Encyclopaedia, referring to the 1616 decree that heliocentrism was heretical:
"In thus acting, it is undeniable that the ecclesiastical authorities [the Pope and the Congregation of the Index] committed a grave and deplorable error, and sanctioned an altogether false principle as to the proper use of Scripture"
Way back in 1909? So your counter to my point is that the church really only suppressed science for 13 generations and 22 successive Popes, not 15 and 28? That's so much better!
@23 Really? One episode? The RCC is not actively denying science today? human evolution? birth control? homosexuality? women?
I realize that people are trying to make a case that the science in the 17th c supported geocentrism over heliocentrism - given the quality of the optics for early telescopes (see Graney's book I mentioned earlier) - but this still doesn't address that the Bible supports geocentrism. The RCC is in the religion not the science business and not surprisingly theology takes precedence over everything else. I would contend that if heliocentrism hadn't contradicted the Bible, then no one would have cared about how the heavens go. This doesn't mean that the RCC hasn't and doesn't support science - only that it has blindspots like we all do.
#28 Cool. Part of that post is a defense of monogenism, the idea that there was a literal Adam and Eve, sole progenitors of modern humans.
For insight into the extensive network of thought policing the Catholic Church used to engage in, the book _The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller_ is instructive. The twentieth century totalitarians only advance over the RC Church was in technology.
Multiply wrong.
Along with the works of Galileo, the works of Copernicus and Kepler were also placed on the Index Librorum Prohibidum. The works of Galileo and Copernicus were not removed until 1835, so they were banned for over 200 years, which ended less than 200 years ago.
I won't get into the case of St. George Jackson Mivart here, or the lies about birth control (condoms pre-infected with HIV) spread by upper level clergy in Africa, or the church's stance against polygenism.
A link:
Ratzinger's 1990 remarks on Galileo
In which Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who was not yet pope but was President of the International Theological Commission (1981–2005), Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1981–2005), and President of the Pontifical Biblical Commission (1981–2005) (citation Wikipedia) basically said that the church was more right than Galileo, because relativity. He also used his noxious tactic of making his argument in quotes of others, rather than stating his position outright, in order to preserve deniability. This is a tactic he continued into his papacy.
Or Ratzinger's protege Christoph Schoenborn on evolution:
Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense – an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection – is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.
Might be? obviously has no understanding of which he speaks - RM + NS is perfectly good at design.
"In any event, Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus and Galileo’s Dialogue were not dropped from the RCC’s index of forbidden books until 1835."
Correct, but also a fine example of the method advocates of the religion vs. war prefer to use: cherry picking.
1. It was a prominent RC clergyman who urged Copernicus to publish the book.
2. The contemporary pope welcomed it.
3. It was put on the index in the early 1600's, ie many decades after publishing.
Perhaps the issue is a bit more complicated indeed.
@34
I don't think you can equate a priest's encouragement of Copernicus as representative of the Church's position. Many people became priests for less than religious reasons (especially back then). One need only think of the priests involved in the Pazzi conspiracy in Renaissance Florence to understand how little religious scruples meant to many priests. Then there is the 'pornocracy' ( rules of the harlots )of the 10th century popes.
Johann Schreck, a Jesuit missionary to China, was a member of Accademia dei Lincei to which Galileo belonged. He referred to his leaving as a big loss - although he continued his scientific research in India and China.
Bruno of course is an example of a priest ( Friar ) who ran afoul of the Church. The war is not against religion per se...that can be defined to be anything - hell there are thousands of versions of Christianity and Hinduism, etc - there's even an atheist Rabbi who has an atheist synagogue for Jewish atheists - there was Auguste Comte's Religion of Humanity, etc, etc, The war is over by what means will 'truth' be determined.
"God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it." Pope Leo X
The first quoted paragraph in eric #21 has unfortunately suffered what I assume is a copy/paste error. You will find it easier to read if you mentally move the words "of these, and for this" from their current place to a little later in the sentence, between "solution" and "reason".
@Michael Fugate, 27,
Well, let's look at your purported examples:
human evolution: The RCC mostly supports it and has been an ally in ensuring that it is taught in science classes. The most they disagree with it is wrt theistic evolution, and in particular in development of mind ... which science hasn't actually demonstrated or ruled out yet, and mostly rules out by assumption. If you think that disagreeing with a scientific presumption means that you're denying science, then let's toss out a lot of philosophy, too, so the RCC is in good company.
birth control: The RCC thinks it works. In fact, that's their objection to it. Their objection is moral, which means that it can't be a denial of science -- at least to the level where you can compare it to Galileo -- since science of that stripe doesn't make moral claims. So the most you can say is that their moral stance stops people from using it when it would be a benefit to their lives TO use it ... but this is also a moral claim, not a scientific one.
homosexuality: Again, this is a moral conflict. The most you can argue is that they have to accept it as a choice and not as something you're born with, but they only have to accept it as being as much of a choice as being heterosexual and they pretty much agree with all of the science, and since they restrict heterosexual practice as well it then again comes down to a moral question.
women: I have no idea what you're trying to refer to here.
It really looks like you've conflated "liberal thinking" with "science", which is not correct.
Perhaps the fact that the church views women as important only as long as they agree to crank out babies but not when they try to take responsibility for reproductive issues or speak on serious matters.
VS - you might actually want to acquaint yourself with the RCC's arguments before trying to dismiss me. You have conflated ignorance with morality. Religions try to use science to bolster their apologetics all the time - science has a cachet that gives it authority - something authoritarians crave. Moral? - child rape is moral no doubt. I love moral arguments from authority - so believable.
Souls implanted by God? - right! Science all the way down. God intervening in the process of evolution - yeah that could happen and it would be science if it did! If I send you a human genome, I am sure you can me tell which bases are God's doing and which are random mutations, right?
Condoms increase HIV infections? - right! Science again. Women are more likely to die of pregnancy than abortion or using contraception. It is not a moral issue it is oppression. What could be moral about killing women? And making them have children against their will? Not to mention the ever true - God will provide - just keep pumping out baby Catholics...
Homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality - it is neither a mental illness nor a psychiatric disorder. Choice my ass. Morality my ass. Next you are going to tell me it is a "lifestyle." Snort!
Women can't be priests because the disciples were men?!?! - seriously I have had numerous Catholics tell me this. Why else couldn't they be? Nothing about being a priest is dependent on being male. There is so much overlap between the sexes that this is a joke. Why aren't priests required to be illiterate fishermen, or Jewish, or from the area surrounding Jerusalem or any other thing that only the disciples possessed?
Well, this paragraph is pretty much a word salad bordering on gibberish, but let me wring a couple of points out of this mess:
1) An argument that religion uses science to buttress its apologetics is NOT an argument that support the idea that science and religion are in conflict.
2) You seem to be assuming that when I say that the argument is over morality, that the Catholic side is morally correct. I'm not. I'm pointing out that the debate is not over what the science says, but over what the moral implications of that are, regardless of who is right or even what _I_ think is morally right.
Now, onto your reply:
Thus if they were right, there would be no conflict with science because their answer would BE science. This ... is not a good argument for you to try to demonstrate an incompatibility between the two, or that religion is even denying science here.
Would not being able to do that RIGHT NOW mean that science says it can't happen or have happened? Because that's what you need to get to an argument that they are denying science, which is what we're arguing about here, no?
Of course, the most reasonable interpretation of his stance there is that they promote a harmful lifestyle that leads to more infections, which might not even be wrong:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_HIV/AIDS
So he's not denying that condoms block the transmission of the virus, which is pretty much the only thing the science demonstrated there.
No one denies the first part, and calling it "oppression" absolutely makes it into a moral issue, meaning a disagreement over morality. You just think your side is morally right, but science, as I said, doesn't have much to offer to moral discussions, at least not at that level.
This is a moral question over how much you can frustrate nature -- as per their MORAL view -- before it becomes morally wrong. Since Catholics restrict heterosexual practices that do the same thing -- similar sex acts, using contraception -- they pretty much agree with the scientific part, but just disagree over what counts as natural for moral purposes. So, again, a debate over what's moral, not about what the scientific facts are.
This is an argument over tradition, and doesn't conflict with science, by your own argument here. Heck, even just appealing to traditional ROLES wouldn't violate the science here; it'd just be a matter of, again, moral reasoning.
You were supposed to demonstrate actual clashes with science. You seem to have failed.
@#40 - "Thus if they were right, there would be no conflict with science because their answer would BE science. This … is not a good argument for you to try to demonstrate an incompatibility between the two, or that religion is even denying science here"
Well yes. And if the story of Noah was true and God was just testing our faith with fossils, then Ken Ham would BE a scientist. So....?
VS:
But this is not true in several cases, as we have pointed out to you. As one example, the RCC takes it as a point of unarguable theological fact that there was a genetic bottleneck of one couple, from whom we are all descended. This is not a "moral" question, its an empirical question, and the evidence we have says the RCC is wrong. They are arguing a point of evidence.
I may disagree with the other posters here, but I think you were wrong. If I drew random ascii characters out of a hat and formed the phrase "E = mc^2," would I have "done" science simply because I got a correct factual answer? No. Science is not just result, it is process too. So if they turn out to be right about souls and their methodology for determining the existence of souls is revelatory/authority-based, then no they are not doing or supporting science. They are doing/support an alternative methodology, that of using divine revelation to answer questions about the world.
And this ties back to my first example, about Adam and Eve. They are not doing or supporting science when they make claims like that, they are undermining it. Because they are implying to their followers the same unstated basic message that they made with Gallileo's house arrest: that when empirical methods conflict with divinely revealed doctrine, one ought to prefer doctrine. This is not pro-science, it is anti-science.
@27 Where does the Catholic Church deny human evolution?
And what science does it deny in regard to birth control, homosexuality and women?
@42 The Catholic Church says absolutely nothing about a genetic bottleneck, on the contrary it explicitly says that there may have been other human type beings around at the time of Adam and Eve with whom Adam and Eve's offspring may have coupled.
What it says is that all humans with a soul - are descended through a particular couple. That does not contradict any science, On the contrary, whilst not the same as Michondrial Eve, it does share some similarity - they both are based on the fact that people can be descended from a particular progenitor without that progenitor being their only progenitor.
eric,
This is your first reply to me in this thread, and the others I've already shot down. So what have YOU pointed out to me, hmmm?
So, you found ONE example ... and what was the Catholic reaction to that? To see if they can make it fit theologically while accepting the scientific evidence, as AlwaysAskingQuestions pointed out. They aren't denying science, and are at most a) finding loopholes in the science to make their theology still work and b) trying to adjust the theology to make it work with the scientific evidence. This would be a conflict between the two that isn't worth mentioning.
Then why don't you take it up with the person WHO ACTUALLY MADE THE CLAIM instead of with me who simply pointed out how it was a terrible argument?
If your argument for the conflict between science and religion is merely that they use different methodologies, then let me express my deep and sincere apathy towards that sort of conflict or incompatibility. Yeah, and so does philosophy. And so does everyday reasoning. So what?
Except that as with the evolution case, their ACTUAL approach is to try to reconcile the two.
If your prime example of their religious conflict with science is merely that they are wrong and used a different method than science, then colour me deeply unimpressed by the purported conflict.
#42 You claim that the Catholic Church position is that"when empirical methods conflict with divinely revealed doctrine, one ought to prefer doctrine"
The Catholic Church actually takes the exact opposite position. For example, in regard to science and Scripture:
"If, then, apparent contradiction be met with, every effort should be made to remove it. Judicious theologians and commentators should be consulted as to what is the true or most probable meaning of the passage in discussion, and the hostile arguments should be carefully weighed. Even if the difficulty is after all not cleared up and the discrepancy seems to remain, the contest must not be abandoned; truth cannot contradict truth, and we may be sure that some mistake has been made either in the interpretation of the sacred words, or in the polemical discussion itself; and if no such mistake can be detected, we must then suspend judgment for the time being."
Providentissimus Deu, Encyclical Of Pope Leo Xiii On The Study Of Holy Scripture, 1893
You really need to learn to do a bit of homework before you spout off about things were your bias clearly exceeds your knowledge.
The basic conflict between science and most religions, as I see it, is that science evolved to attempt to distinguish causation from correlation and random coincidence, in order to determine what is most likely to be true, whereas religion makes little or no such effort. For example, one or two people go into remission from critical health problems after being blessed by a Pope. Science would ask, how many other ill people were blessed by the Pope and what are the odds that one or two or more would randomly experience remissions. Religion declares that miracles have occurred and canonizes the (deceased) Pope.
The basic approach of religion is to maintain the ability to claim that "you can't prove my god does not exist" at all costs. Thus, as stated above, when some of their traditional dogmas are challenged by scientific consensus, they attempt to rescue their claim by appealing to translation errors, new revelations, and so on. Rather than seeking the truth, they are seeking to maintain their religious authority.
Science recognizes that coincidences happen, and "miracles" (as defined by Littlewood's Law of Miracles - a million-to-one chance of occurrence) happen to everyone on the average of once per month. Feynman gave the example of the time he dreamed that his mother had just died. He telephoned her the morning after and she was okay. He then speculated that such anxiety dreams might occur fairly often, and if a few million people have them each night, some of them will turn out to seem to be prophetic. The average religious persons (as conditioned by my 19 years of Sunday School, Sunday Morning Church, Sunday Evening Youth Service, Daily Vacation Bible School, etc.) would conclude it was a personal message to them from their god.
Science is willing to admit the flaws in existing theories and replace them continuously with better ones, based on new evidence. Religions only attempt to fit new evidence into their existing theological structures (once the new evidence cannot convincingly be denied).
By seeking the truth, science has provided everything you see around you (unless you live in a cave). Religion has produced no breakthroughs in our understanding of the universe that I know of, and none of the stuff I see around me. (No religious tracts are in sight as I type.)
As for the Catholic Church specifically, it seems very telling to me as an outsider that their highest authorities -Bishops, Cardinals and at least one Pope - men who dedicated their lives to their God and supposedly communed with it each day - all received the same communication from their god: "Stonewall. Cover it up. Move the priest to a different parish."
It makes one wonder what else they may have done over the last 2000 and some odd years to maintain and bolster their religion at the expense of truth.
Mild disclaimer: my best friend at GE Power Systems Engineering was a Catholic. Many of them are fine people, although deluded, as no doubt I am about some things.
@44:
You're wrong on the first, and your second statement is not exactly the same thing. The church has stated that everyone is descended form a single couple, but that can be true whilst that couple's descendents interbreed with other humans. However the first claim of the church (everyone descended from a single couple) is, based on current evidence, wrong.
Here's the relevant theology:
Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, 1950, paragraph #37.
Now I'll agree that the RCC has also made statements claiming to want to reconcile the two, but it seems to me if one Pope says 'try to reconcile' and another more recent Pope says 'the faithful cannot embrace...', they've decided that in some theological cases reconciliation is not going to happen and in those cases, scripture trumps empiricism.
I would say a fundamental divide is between those who are sure there is an agent God and those who aren't. As soon as you are sure, you start looking for things God did or does, but how can you know? You only make yourself look silly tying your God's actions to science because science is incomplete and changes with the availability of new information.
So if you want to declare a creator God, then leave it at that. Don't comment on what, when, how, where, or why because as soon as you do you will inevitably provide evidence against said God. Don't try to justify it with empirical evidence - like the church did with heliocentrism - the evidence was on their side in the 17th c. - it is not now.
If you want to declare something immoral - like marriage equality, birth control, abortion, women's equality, etc., just say my God or my holy book says it is immoral. Again don't try to justify it with any empirical evidence, stick with theology and leave science out. Too many religious organizations can't resist the authority of science and look like buffoons in the process. Don't tell us that homosexuality is a mental disorder or a choice, don't tell us that same-sex marriages are worse for children. Don't tell us that sex education or birth control leads to more promiscuity, STDs, divorce, teen pregnancies, etc. Don't tell us that women can't be priests or anything else because they are "fundamentally" different than men.
Leave empiricism out of your morality pronouncements and you're good to go. Hate all you want, but don't try to use science to back your hate.