William Tyndale, Joan of Arc, Galileo, Hawking, Dawkins

by dgp 6 Replies latest jw friends

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  dgp

  I first knew about William Tyndale reading a Watchtower (or Awake!; I don't remember too well). Of all the things I have read in Watchtower publications, that is the one I remember the most. I found it awful that someone should be prevented from translating the Bible. It was perhaps the first time I doubted the Catholic Church. The witnesses aparently had no problem recognizing the fact that the clergy of the time had been wrong, and Tyndale had been right.

  Galileo wasn't killed. He was just forced to recant. It took 800 years for the Catholic Church to apologize about Galileo and his saying that the earth revolved around the sun, not the other way around. Realistically speaking, the Catholic Church had to apologize. How can you not apologize if you forced a man to recant, when he was only telling the truth?

  Joan of Arc was burned at the stake by the burgundians, supposedly because she was heretic. She was supposed to have been sent by God. Then she was burned as heretic. She was later made a saint. That, however, didn't save her from the flames or rape.

  In my humble opinion, this should tell the reasonable person that quite often our religious beliefs are simply not right, and we should not be so quick to kill dissenters. And then, I wonder, is there an official Watchtower story about Galileo? If a geologist came and claimed that the earth is not seven thousand years old, what would the Watchtower say? What is the way they would see, say, Richard Dawkins or Stephen Hawking?
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  VM44

  I would like to hear Stephen Hawking sing "The Major General" song.
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  GLTirebiter

  Galileo's case was more politically motivated than doctrinal. The heliocentric theory was introduced by Aristarchus (for which he was accused of impiety by the Greeks). Copernicus, who was a priest as well as scientist, published his version about a century before Galileo. Galileo's observations supporting the heliocentric theory and subsequent dispute with Fr. Orazio Grassi of Collegio Romano made enemies of powerful clerics, leading to the inquisition for "vehement suspicion of heresy." Galileo had a public dispute with the powerful, Copernicus was one of them and did not: that explains how publishing the same idea produced two different outcomes.
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  wobble

  "If a geologist claimed the Earth was not 7000 years old" do you mean not just 7,000 years old ?

  The WT would have no problems with that, they many times have stated that they have no argument with scientific estimates of the age of the Earth, or indeed the Universe.

  Despite that sensible attitude, they do dispute Evolution Science, offering no proof for Creationism that stands up, of course.

  Evolution as Scientific Theory,is a "good" theory that stands up to assault and scrutiny, and as such is a direct equivalent to the Helio-centric Theory.

  In its attitude the the WT is as benighted as the Catholic Church of Galileo's time. They might as well teach a flat-earth, after all ,their Bible does.
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  Broken Promises

  Dpg,

  The 7000 years you’re thinking of, is that the WT claims that mankind is 7000 years old (counting back to the days of Adam) and as that period since creation is considered to be “1 day”, then each creative day would also be 7000 years long.
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  VM44

  The Watchtower just makes things up.

  Watchotwer "Truth" is really Watchtower dogma.

  Beware to those JW's who do not believe everything that The Watchtower tells them to believe!
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  BurnTheShips

  What Tirebiter said. The University system of the time was a Catholic institution. What happened was an old, more imperfect form of peer review.

  We've seen it happen since. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ignaz Semmelweis, Joseph Goldberger, Jenner, Alfred Wegener.

  We see it happen today too. Consensus is a powerful thing to buck.

  BTS