At least you have the good grace to put the word between quotation marks, relda.

>>I’m claiming the medieval Church held the prevailing ‘scientific’ view of the time<<

I would only remind you that you earlier pointed out that:

>>At the time of Galileo the Church, the recognized scientific authority of its time and soil from which modern Western science grew, could not see beyond its dogma.<<

You clearly understand that the Church's position was based on dogma, but at the same time claim that they were "the recognized scientific authority of its time"

The only way that this circle can be squared is by equating dogma with science.

Which even you must recognize, relda, is a step too far.

You continue to ignore that in situations such as this, religion and secularism are fundamentally irrelevant.

>>Today we have similar dogma but now draped in secular authority<<

Science, and scientific disciplines, do not rely upon dogma of any kind. That was the mistake made by the Church back in Galileo's time - their assumption that dogma overruled properly managed observation and diligently unemotional conclusions.

Removing dogma allows something wonderful and miraculous to occur. Namely, that any theory, however competently arrived at and cogently argued, may be disproved or replaced by a more informed series of endeavours at a later date, where "later date" may mean tomorrow or the day after.

The "secular authority" that you have just dreamed up has no place in the process whatsoever. Science and scientific authority is only derived from, and confirmed by, their own disciplines.

>>I certainly don’t narrow Christianity down to one ‘cerebral compass’<<

I'm sorry, relda, but this is exactly what you do. You may be able to have a learned discussion with Sells about, say, the Trinity. But your views are completely circumscribed and limited by being informed, entirely and uniquely, by your very specific faith in one single branch of religious belief.

It is similarly impossible, for example, for a member of the flat earth society to maintain an intelligent conversation on cosmology, with anyone other than a fellow flat-earthist.

Bushbasher

If you are ignorant of such historical facts as the Hellenization of both the Jewish and Christian faiths and the effect on the process of theology - faith seeking understanding - then I suggest you are simply unable to offer any illuminated comment on the intersection of faith and reason. Certainly not on Sell's work. You can off course snipe away at fundamentalist thoughts, expressions and practice as they seem to nourish your ignorance and prejudices.

Habermas's contribution in the passage you claimed as impenetrable essentially says Christianity, born out of Judaic faith and tradition , and Greek metaphysics informed each other of truths and expressions of truths. Just as Habermas is proposing as being necessary in this post-secular time - inform each other and recognise each one's limits.

The legacy of such early "informing" is rich meaning in previous abstract terminology and practice such as "responsibility, autonomy, and justification; or history and remembering, new beginning, innovation, and return; or emancipation and fulfillment; or expropriation, internalization, and embodiment, individuality and fellowship.." These are core roots of the civilisation that saw the emergence the Enlightenment. You cannot enjoy the look and scent of the flower without regard for the root and plant.

Regarding the Galileo discussion. It appears to me as the Tower of Babel revisited.

Cheers

ah, more obfuscation and oneupmanship.

boxgum, please keep your snide intellectual superiority to yourself. i offered to have you work through the habermas quote, which i needn't have done. but that means i want specifics, examples that i can latch onto in order to understand what, if anything, habermas is talking about. your latest serving of word soup and smug "you're not worthy" insults add nothing. all it demonstrates is your love of cheap rhetoric is much greater than your love of reason.

more to the point, you completely ignored pericles' and my criticism of your purported example of the value of religious thinking. you should either defend your example, come up with a new one, or concede the point.

hundreds of posts, thousands of words, and not one single example. ever.

I totally agree Pericles, “Science, and scientific disciplines, do not rely upon dogma of any kind”, and that the Church was in error of this. Your following paragraph on science is also cogently put., namely, “Removing dogma allows something wonderful and miraculous to occur…”

With my phrase “secular authority” the key word here, I suppose, is authority and the dogma which might underwrite it. Copernicus, the French philosopher Descartes and Isaac Newton overturned the ‘authority’ of the Middle Ages and the classical world. The Copernican system offended the medieval sense that the universe was an affair between God and man – Ptolemy was also challenged. The ultimate ‘authority’ challenged, of course, was the Holy Writ. The ‘Illusion of Reality’ (BBC program) showed challenge to the‘Holy Writ’ currently stifling Science, saying there is in fact a return of inquisitional dogmatism to science. It cannot grasp the ‘measurement problem’ nor the metaphysical speculation it might imply.

The removal of dogma, as you put it, and the Revolution in science certainly overturned the authority, not only of the middle ages, but also of the ancient world - it eclipsed scholastic philosophy and also caused destruction of Aristotelian physics. As you would probably agree, this revolution was primarily an epistemological revolution as it changed man's thought process. It was an intellectual revolution - a revolution in human knowledge.

The extent to which medieval ‘science’ led directly to the new philosophy of the scientific revolution is a subject for debate but it certainly had a significant influence – but that isn’t the point of our discussion. My ‘faith’, as you put it, is not circumscribed by the specifics of any particular religion. That I have offered a defense of religion, particularly Christianity is totally irrelevant to any intelligent conversation we might have on matters scientific.

Thank you, relda, that was very gracious.

>>I totally agree Pericles, “Science, and scientific disciplines, do not rely upon dogma of any kind”, and that the Church was in error of this.<<

and this...

>>That I have offered a defense of religion, particularly Christianity is totally irrelevant to any intelligent conversation we might have on matters scientific.<<

That is a very fair and reasonable basis upon which to continue discussion.

I will make equally certain that I do not pretend that atheism has any bearing on scientific enquiry, interpretation or conclusions.

Bushbasher

I display no intellectual superiority as there is none. But you really should know the basics of matters you reject.

You ask me for an example of the value of religious thinking from within a civilisation that formed through millenia of of religious revelation and thought.

As a foundation for such thought : man is a creature of God with the special attribute of being made in His image - man through his desire for power and control extended beyond a specific limit placed upon Him by the Creator God - as a consequence he knew hunger, thirst, pain, death amidst the goodness of the Creation in which he works at the arrow head of evolution - The Law was passed onto him through Moses - generations of kings, prophets and psalmists wrote a canon of stories of this God revealing His ways to His people - from among them the Incarnate God in the form of Jesus Christ was born on our planet earth amongst us to reveal and proclaim as flesh and blood the Word of God as Logos - he died on a cross and is now Risen to be with us as the Risen Lord who is found when sought even today - a small group of frightened people became alive with His spirit and overcame their fears and ignorance to proclaim what they saw and pass on what Jesus preached - and on into the history of man informing him of his role and responsibility and sustaining him towards bringing the world to a final state of Love with all things being in Christ - the Parousia. Since mid 20th Century man has had the power to rise to it or to obliterate ourselves with the tools of science.

With such a foundation man is still unfolding truths that are captured in the properties of ( as quoted from Habermas) "responsibility, autonomy, and justification; or history and remembering, new beginning, innovation, and return; or emancipation and fulfillment; or expropriation, internalization, and embodiment, individuality and fellowship".

All of these are informed with religious thinking