Scientists On Trial For.... Earthquakes?

[Scout Tactical]

While I see where you're coming from, yes. Yes the Catholic Church -did- suppress science. Not all science. But anything that contradicted their world view. Surely the fact that there was a fairly large... dispute, over whether the Earth orbits the Sun or vice versa. The church had a few people executed/permanently imprisoned because of this. Galileo & Giordano Bruno to name but two. So, whilst I can see where you're coming from, the Catholic Church -did- suppress certain scientific theories. Not all, probably not many, but they still did it. Basically what I'm trying to say is, yes, there kind of is evidence.

Galileo was only brought to trial over his heliocentric viewpoint as a pretense. The real reason he was tried was because he personally insulted the Pope himself. If it was about the heliocentric theory, he would have been executed much earlier, or at least brought to trial earlier. He was allowed to publish two books on heliocentricism without even a censure. It was only after he had directly insulted the Pope that the Pope called him a heretic and had him arrested. This had more to do with insulting a man with poor self esteem than it did defending a world view. Take SPECIAL note of the fact that Nicolaus Copernicus, who was the progenitor of heliocentric theory, was never punished at all for it. Pope Clement VII and his cardinals were actually very interested in the possibility of the theory of heliocentricism. Copernicus himself did not believe his model conflicted with scripture, either.

As for Mr. Bruno, he was executed by the Inquisition for being a heretic, not for having any particular scientific viewpoint different from the church. To say that religion was suppressing science with Giordano's death would be like saying atheism was suppressing science with the deaths of millions of Russians under the Stalin regime while religion was stamped out in Communist Russia.

These are important details. The context of situations will always be ignored by those who only want to see things one way. I'm not saying this is your fault, either. The media in America has taken a VERY anti-Catholic stance for the entire existence of the nation, because we are so rooted in Protestantism. Still, if you want the whole story, you often need to dig a bit deeper.

This is actually an area of particular interest to me, and I've done quite a bit of independent research on the matter. I confess, though, Galileo is one of my favorites to study, so I have you at a slight disadvantage.

 

[Sonicron]

Is it wrong of me to want to inflict bodily harm on these prosecutors by hitting them with my really, really heavy geography books?

Yes. Perhaps you should hit them with geology books instead.

Well, as a geographer I'm expected to know my way around all of the geo-sciences to a certain extent, so I've got books on all subjects; I think of all the subject literature on my shelf as 'geography books', but for the sake of correctness I'll make sure I whack those bozos with the extra-heavy geology reference guide.

 

[kebab4you]

hihi, a good reason to use this ^v^

OT: Well they can't really punish mother nature so I guess scientists is close enough for them.

 

[joecool5000]

The stupid. It hurts so much.
I totally expected this to be coming from some religious nuts in the US.

So when some stupid ignorant angry people do and say stupid ignorant angry things, that automatically makes them "religious nuts"? Prejudiced much?

 

[AlloAllo]

hihi, a good reason to use this ^v^

OT: Well they can't really punish mother nature so I guess scientists is close enough for them.

I'll try not to comment on the rest (CONTEXT! THE PROSECUTORS ARE WRONG, BUT IF YOU LOOK AT THE GODDAMN CONTEXT THEN THE WHOLE PREDICAMENT ISN'T AS STUPID AND RIDICULOUS AS THE OP MAKES IT SOUND!!!! IT, JUST, GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!) , but- THE NOSTALGIA CRITIC!

I'm a fan too *____*

 

[Jonluw]

The stupid. It hurts so much.
I totally expected this to be coming from some religious nuts in the US.

So when some stupid ignorant angry people do and say stupid ignorant angry things, that automatically makes them "religious nuts"? Prejudiced much?

Nono.
When extremely religious people do stupid things, that automatically makes them "religious nuts".

What I saw before reading the article was "Scientists are being prosecuted for sciencing". And seeing how I have sort of a mental link between "religious nuts" and "hating science" my first thought was "Oh, what bullshit are those extremists up to now?".
Seeing how the American kind is the religious nut I'm most familiar with, and this site mostly reports US-relevant news, the natural assumption to make was that they were American.

And it turned out it wasn't so much "hating science" as "relying on science without understanding how it works"

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

this sounds like people who watch hollywood movies and think they're real.

 

[The-Epicly-Named-Man]

That's an.. interesting web journal you read there. So factual and unbiased that I can hardly tell if they support or if they're against the trial.

OT: It is pretty ridiculous, but this is a nation where Burlesconi is in charge, so I guess logic isn't a common trait there. Lord knows it's absent here.

 

[deckai]

Not only is predicting eartquakes *not* the job of seismologists, there isn't even any way to predict earthquakes to begin with, aside from telling people they've built their cities on fault lines, and even then there's no way to determine when an earthquake will strike there.

This trial would be the equilvelent to trying to sue a private eye for failing to read a psychopath's mind and arresting him/her before they get the chance to get their hands on a knife in order to stab someone, even though it isn't even a private eye's job to arrest criminals. In other words; utter bullshit. It's a goddamn shameful that the prosecuters weren't tossed out on their asses the instant they brought this case to court.

Well, I'm no geologist or seismologist for that matter, so my knowledge is rather limited. "But" if they were employed/payed to predict earthquakes (Which is possible to a certain point as far as I know) and ignored certain warning-signs, the whole case should be inspected. Again, I don't know much about the circumstances, but the earthquake happened over 2 years ago, enough time to gather some evidence and prepare the charges.

The source-link is extremely biased, so I try to put a bit of my own logic to justify the whole thing(At least in my mind) and hope that the jurisdiction has enough common sense to prosecute the whole trial without drifting into a witch-hunt.

 

[Jamous]

While I see where you're coming from, yes. Yes the Catholic Church -did- suppress science. Not all science. But anything that contradicted their world view. Surely the fact that there was a fairly large... dispute, over whether the Earth orbits the Sun or vice versa. The church had a few people executed/permanently imprisoned because of this. Galileo & Giordano Bruno to name but two. So, whilst I can see where you're coming from, the Catholic Church -did- suppress certain scientific theories. Not all, probably not many, but they still did it. Basically what I'm trying to say is, yes, there kind of is evidence.

Galileo was only brought to trial over his heliocentric viewpoint as a pretense. The real reason he was executed was because he personally insulted the Pope himself. If it was about the heliocentric theory, he would have been executed much earlier, or at least brought to trial earlier. He was allowed to publish two books on heliocentricism without even a censure. It was only after he had directly insulted the Pope that the Pope called him a heretic and had him arrested. This had more to do with insulting a man with poor self esteem than it did defending a world view. Take SPECIAL note of the fact that Nicolaus Copernicus, who was the progenitor of heliocentric theory, was never punished at all for it. Pope Clement VII and his cardinals were actually very interested in the possibility of the theory of heliocentricism. Copernicus himself did not believe his model conflicted with scripture, either.

As for Mr. Bruno, he was executed by the Inquisition for being a heretic, not for having any particular scientific viewpoint different from the church. To say that religion was suppressing science with Giordano's death would be like saying atheism was suppressing science with the deaths of millions of Russians under the Stalin regime while religion was stamped out in Communist Russia.

These are important details. The context of situations will always be ignored by those who only want to see things one way. I'm not saying this is your fault, either. The media in America has taken a VERY anti-Catholic stance for the entire existence of the nation, because we are so rooted in Protestantism. Still, if you want the whole story, you often need to dig a bit deeper.

This is actually an area of particular interest to me, and I've done quite a bit of independent research on the matter. I confess, though, Galileo is one of my favorites to study, so I have you at a slight disadvantage.

Alright then, I'll happily concede to someone who knows their facts so well. Though I was fairly certain that the heresy was because Bruno was still advocating the heliocentric universe from De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium after it was blacklisted, and then pushing further with the claim that even the Sun didn't have a particularly special place in the universe. Ah well. Well played good sir, well played.

 

[aashell13]

oh italy, y u so stoopid?

Around here we have a saying: 98% of lawyers give the rest a bad name...

 

[Draconalis]

We need to put the pope on trial for not warning us about "Acts of God"

That's how insurance classifies alot of these natural disasters... so the church is at fault.

ARREST THE CHURCH!

 

[Random berk]

I mean today we have Berlusconi. A couple of decades ago they were in cahoots with Adolf Hitler. Before that we're talking Christian Catholic supression of science and witch-hunts, and before that! The roman empire, pretty much equally bad if not WORSE than Hitler.

Yeah, the Romans sucked, with all their stupid aqueducts, and paved roads, architecture, sewage systems, Monty Python sketches etc. Fuck those guys!

Ah, geologists. Evil bastards, the whole lot of us. The Italian government must feel like real life superheroes for saving you all from our evil plans to kill you with earthquakes.

 

[CrimsonBlaze]

I guess Mother Nature is starting to frame scientists in order to kill off the reasonable people of this world as revenge for what humans have done to the environment. I can see the meteorologists going to court for their bad weather predictions and ruining thousands of peoples' day. Soon there will be no more "reasonable" people in the world and the planet shall swallow the idiots with a massive earthquake-hurricane-blizzard-tropical storm combo finisher.

Seriously though, either know what the f*** you're blaming someone for or throw yourself into a giant, bottomless crater.

 

[Nabirius]

Maybe they think that they are mad scientists and made an earthquake device.

 

[Outlaw Torn]

I hope those damned scientists rot in a prison cell. Maybe one day someone will catch the scientists who make the fiery sky-ball vanish every night. Luckily some kind people find it and bring it back just in time for morning, but it always get stolen. Bastards.

I'm sort of suprised that they are having a trial. Not becacuse it is so ludicrously stupid but because I'm quite sure that cavemen didn't hold trials or any other kind of legal proceedings for that matter. Did they have to form an angry mob with torches and pitchforks to track down the seismologists?

 

[twaddle]

Ugh, really?

That's just...

I can't...

If anyone needs me, I'll be in the angry dome.

Is there room in there for two?

Government on trial should be a new reality series, right? Wouldn't that be one of the highest rated programs ever? I'd think so.

Better make it three.

we're gonna need a bigger dome....

 

[BabyRaptor]

What the balls? This sounds like something Faux Noise would cook up!

I can't even form a coherent answer to this.

This needs to be spread around. Maybe if enough pressure is put on these idiots, they'll drop the case. As much as I'd like to see the government laughed into oblivion for trying this, I'm more concerned about those mens' lives being ruined.

 

[Zetatrain]

While I see where you're coming from, yes. Yes the Catholic Church -did- suppress science. Not all science. But anything that contradicted their world view. Surely the fact that there was a fairly large... dispute, over whether the Earth orbits the Sun or vice versa. The church had a few people executed/permanently imprisoned because of this. Galileo & Giordano Bruno to name but two. So, whilst I can see where you're coming from, the Catholic Church -did- suppress certain scientific theories. Not all, probably not many, but they still did it. Basically what I'm trying to say is, yes, there kind of is evidence.

Galileo was only brought to trial over his heliocentric viewpoint as a pretense. The real reason he was executed was because he personally insulted the Pope himself. If it was about the heliocentric theory, he would have been executed much earlier, or at least brought to trial earlier. He was allowed to publish two books on heliocentricism without even a censure. It was only after he had directly insulted the Pope that the Pope called him a heretic and had him arrested. This had more to do with insulting a man with poor self esteem than it did defending a world view. Take SPECIAL note of the fact that Nicolaus Copernicus, who was the progenitor of heliocentric theory, was never punished at all for it. Pope Clement VII and his cardinals were actually very interested in the possibility of the theory of heliocentricism. Copernicus himself did not believe his model conflicted with scripture, either.

As for Mr. Bruno, he was executed by the Inquisition for being a heretic, not for having any particular scientific viewpoint different from the church. To say that religion was suppressing science with Giordano's death would be like saying atheism was suppressing science with the deaths of millions of Russians under the Stalin regime while religion was stamped out in Communist Russia.

These are important details. The context of situations will always be ignored by those who only want to see things one way. I'm not saying this is your fault, either. The media in America has taken a VERY anti-Catholic stance for the entire existence of the nation, because we are so rooted in Protestantism. Still, if you want the whole story, you often need to dig a bit deeper.

This is actually an area of particular interest to me, and I've done quite a bit of independent research on the matter. I confess, though, Galileo is one of my favorites to study, so I have you at a slight disadvantage.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Galileo placed under house arrest until his death which was due to natural causes?

 

[Private Custard]

Ugh, really?

That's just...

I can't...

If anyone needs me, I'll be in the angry dome.

Is there room in there for two?

It's gonna get fucking cramped in there, I'm coming too!

I simply can't believe the sheer wall of stupidity that's crashing down on top of us from all corners of the globe recently.