Beyond the surface of history myths

[Neonanocyborgasm]

Hmmm, I'm always surprised when people use the word "technicality" to mean "uncomfortable truth"! If you cite Bruno as a victim of oppression of heliocentrists, and I point out that he wasn't persecuted for his heliocentrism at all, then I don't see how that's a technicality.

That's because the Church didn't draw distinction between science and theology. As you said, it considered the two to be harmonious. This is why both Bruno and Galileo were persecuted. It did so happen that Bruno had theological disagreement, but the same wasn't true for Galileo. In fact, he was sure that he could talk the Vatican into accepting heliocentrism for the same reason you cited -- he bought into this whole crap that science and religion should be harmonious. He got more than he bargained for.

And it is clear that scientists of the time feared persecution by the Church, because Copernicus waited until he was dead to publish his theories.

The most obvious example is the use of the Jesuit order to collect astronomical data from around the world with the aim of determining the truth (to the extent that it could be determined, bearing in mind that the Catholic Church in those days adopted the same position towards scientific claims as modern scientists, namely that they are only models) about cosmology. Riccioli, Grimaldi, Kircher, and so on.

I looked into those guys and there's no indication that they did their research at the command of the Church. Rather, they were interested in science before they even became priests and simply continued doing it thereafter. Btw, Riccioli discovered a lunar crater that he named Copernicus crater. Funny how a priest of the time would do that.

The Church has been the center of scientific opposition throughout history. In the Renaissance, it was heliocentrism. In the 19th century, it was evolution. Now, it's genetic engineering.

In fact, you really could find all those things today. There are certainly plenty of Gnostics. But I don't see what that has to do with the issues at hand. I didn't deny that the orthodox party in the church set about trying to eliminate those it regarded as heretical. My point was that that attempt did not begin with Constantine.

Not until his support did any Christians have the means to destroy their own "heretics." The numbers of gnostics are few and isolated. Of course you will find some, but you will also find Zoroastrians despite the Muslims' best efforts.

I'm not sure how that really addresses the dispute. Yes, orthodox Christianity did indeed turn upon both pagan religions and heretical versions of itself (or, at least, what it regarded as heretical) after being officially sanctioned by the empire. However, I don't see any reason to reduce this simply to "revenge" for anti-Christian persecution; rather, it arose quite naturally from the understanding of orthodoxy and religious history that people had in those days.

Naturally they would rationalize it this way.

 

[Louis XXIV]

You have it exactly backwards. The Emancipation Proclamation applied to all slaves in the United States but was unenforceable in the Confederate states due to the state of war. It was meant more as a demoralizing effort against the Confederacy than a law, since the 13th ammendment was later enacted. So it only practically applied to the few slave-holding states left in the Union, which were Tennessee, Missouri, and Kentucky. I suspect they didn't have much slaves as it was for I don't recall much protest.

Nope. The Emancipation Proclamation applied only to the states actively in rebellion. Lincoln didn't want to offend border states that had slaves (Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri. Tennesse was a Confederate state, not a union state). It did end the practice of turning escaped slaves away to go back to their confederate masters. To Americans, it was presented as a practical wartime measure (to deny the south their labor force). To Europeans, on the other hand, it was seen how it is seen today, as an attempt to use the Civil War to end slavery.

 

[Plotinus]

That's because the Church didn't draw distinction between science and theology. As you said, it considered the two to be harmonious. This is why both Bruno and Galileo were persecuted. It did so happen that Bruno had theological disagreement, but the same wasn't true for Galileo. In fact, he was sure that he could talk the Vatican into accepting heliocentrism for the same reason you cited -- he bought into this whole crap that science and religion should be harmonious. He got more than he bargained for.

And it is clear that scientists of the time feared persecution by the Church, because Copernicus waited until he was dead to publish his theories.

You're quite wrong. The church did draw a distinction between science and theology. In fact, medieval scholasticism regarded different disciplines as completely distinct, with their own methods and standards of truth (this goes back to Aristotle). The point was that these very different disciplines nevertheless all agreed with each other, because truths cannot conflict. This remained the case in the Renaissance. Bruno was not persecuted for his heliocentrism at all. And the reason why Galileo thought he could argue the church into accepting his views wasn't simply that he thought science and religion are harmonious, but that he thought cosmological theories could be proved. In his case, he thought that his theory of the tides completely proved heliocentrism. In fact he was wrong in that (his theory of the tides was completely mistaken in itself). Galileo was basically an arrogant self-promoter who happened to be right on the issue of heliocentrism, but had far less evidence for it than he thought he did, and managed to alienate all the people he should have been able to persuade. Mocking a hitherto sympathetic pope as "Simplicio" in his "Dialogue" was the last straw.

You must remember that opposition to heliocentrism was hardly confined to church authorities. Even in Galileo's day, the evidence for the theory was hardly overwhelming and most philosophers were not convinced by it. This was even more the case with Copernicus, who had virtually no evidence for it at all. Why should the church have accepted such a minority crackpot theory? The fact that Copernicus had his works published posthumously doesn't entail that he feared ecclesiastical persecution. Perhaps he just feared general ridicule.

I looked into those guys and there's no indication that they did their research at the command of the Church. Rather, they were interested in science before they even became priests and simply continued doing it thereafter. Btw, Riccioli discovered a lunar crater that he named Copernicus crater. Funny how a priest of the time would do that.

The Jesuit order did make a particular effort to contribute to science and philosophy during this period (they opened many free, excellent schools open to children from all religious backgrounds, which taught all the latest material); obviously its greatest luminaries would have been interested in the subject even before joining. The fact that Riccioli named a crater after Copernicus ought to indicate to you that the situation was not quite as simplistic as you suggested before.

The Church has been the center of scientific opposition throughout history. In the Renaissance, it was heliocentrism. In the 19th century, it was evolution. Now, it's genetic engineering.

That statement has more to do with rhetoric than fact. The facts are these. The church opposed heliocentrism while that theory was unproven, but it did not oppose research into the field which sought to discover what was true. When heliocentrism was proven to be true (inasmuch as such a theory can be proven at all), it withdrew its opposition. What's wrong with that? In the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church (at least) didn't actually have much of a problem with evolution per se, although it didn't like what it regarded as the atheistic and materialistic consequences of Darwinism in particular. This is an interesting article in the Catholic Encyclopaedia, published right at the start of the twentieth century, in which the authors are quite happy with evolution. Most of the opposition to evolution then (and now!) came from Protestants. And it's very misleading to list genetic engineering in with heliocentrism and evolution, because genetic engineering is not a theory which may be disputed but a practice. When it opposes genetic engineering, the church isn't denying something that scientists know to be true, it's saying that certain practices which scientists may wish to engage in are unethical. And that's a completely different issue.

The notion that "the church" (which people who say this sort of thing always leave ill-defined anyway) has been an eternal opponent of scientific progress is a myth, and a myth with an identifiable origin, too - the work of figures such as John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White in the late nineteenth century. What basically happened is that they looked at the arguments then raging about Darwinism and made the assumption that these were typical of the relationship between religion and science throughout the ages. They seized upon Galileo as a parallel case, ignoring the true facts and complicating details of that case, and turned Galileo into a sort of martyr for science, victimised by religion. They then declared, with no evidence at all, that these two figures (Galileo and Darwin) were typical of all interaction between science and religion. Of course the claim is ludicrous when you spell it out like that. Even if the analysis of the Galileo and Darwin cases had been accurate, you can hardly draw a conclusion about thousands of years of history from just two incidents! Modern historians reject the entire account - both the analysis of the individual cases which provided its "evidence", and the general conclusion about eternal antagonism.

Naturally they would rationalize it this way.

Ah yes, "rationalise", that's another word like "technicality". It means "I'm going to ignore the actual reason why someone did something, because I prefer the reasons that I think they should have had!" Seriously, if you think it was just "rationalisation" then you should say why. You can't just assume that the given reasons are dishonest. Besides, it doesn't make sense to call it a "rationalisation" in this case. The theory behind the orthodox/heretical distinction was laid down in the second century. The actual attempt to physically suppress "heretics" didn't really begin until the Middle Ages, centuries later. So I don't really see how the former can be dismissed as a "rationalisation" of the latter. On the contrary, isn't it more reasonable to see the latter as, in large part, a natural development from the former?

 

[Verbose]

The Church didn't oppose heliocentricism, Aristotelian physics and Ptolemaic astronomy did. And these provided well functioning, durable, intellectually consistent systems of explanation for the oberserved phenomena. Basically Galileo made up a new set of criteria of proof for heliocentricism, and asked everyone to just ditch the established system.

There's a cardinal reputed to have refused to look at the mountains of the moon through Galileo's telescope — well, it might look like mountains, but looking like and being like is not necessarily the same thing. According to Aristotelian physics the heavenly bodies obey a different set of laws from the terrestrial, so there's really no way of knowing what the devil you're really looking at on the moon. Galileo just dismissed this and arbitrarily, without actual proof, decided that these were mountains because they looked like mountains. That conflict wasn't theological but philosophical, over the status of visual observations.

There's a huge shift in the 17th c. from proof through logical deduction in the Aristotelian tradition of scholastics, to a new set of critera based on visual observation and experiment. Empircism acknowledges that scientific work has rather precise limits in space and time. Scholasticism goes straight for eternal principles.

"On 12 June 2007 I dropped this stone. It fell to the ground" is an okay scientific statement according to empiricism. To Scholasticism it's a meaningless, trivial statement. A scientific statement is more like "Stones fall to the ground as they strive to assume their correct position in the universe, at the centre of the earth."
So Galileo stating "On this day, observing through my telescope, I saw mountains on the moon" really wouldn't have to be regarded as terribly significant at the time.

The shift in scientific criteria was quite dramatic, but the pioneers of the new ways of doing scince started doing their stuff well before they had somehow directly refuted the old ways. There was no compelling evidence to dismiss Aristotelian physics and Ptolemaian astronomy just on the say-so of Galileo.

 

[1889]

Thanks Plotinus. I was under the impression that the Roman Catholic Church became very defensive about its position in response to the reformation and so began to suppress science in general in a desperate bid to hold on to the status quo. I see that that explanation isn't going to do any longer, which is a shame because it’s so convenient.

 

[Plotinus]

[Verbose] Thanks for that helpful summary, which really gets to the nub of the matter. Though I must point out that, as far as I know, the story of the cardinal refusing even to look through Galileo's telescope is actually a myth.

[1889] Alas, convenient ways of looking at history tend not to be true, or at least not the whole truth. Of course, the convenience of such views is one of the reasons they become abiding myths. The reason so many people today believe the myth currently being discussed isn't because it's true, or that there is good evidence for it, but simply because it conveniently fits in with many people's prejudices. I think this is the case with most myths. Of course I use "prejudice" here in a value-neutral way - that is, a myth may pander to a positive prejudice as well as a negative one.

 

[Verbose]

[Verbose] Thanks for that helpful summary, which really gets to the nub of the matter. Though I must point out that, as far as I know, the story of the cardinal refusing even to look through Galileo's telescope is actually a myth.

Yup, I know that too.

The argument was that looking at the moon through a telescope at the time didn't produce evidence the way people have later thought. It's one of these later stories that radically misunderstood the different epistemologies involved at the time.

The really interesting bit in the controversy isn't that Galileo was disbelieved, but that he decided to treat celestial bodies as obeying the same laws as terrerstrial bodies, and as accessible through visual observation at all.

 

[Julian Delphiki]

One history related myth (folk etymology, actually but..) is misunderstanding about english word "history" and its origins. Common (feminist) claim is that its chauvinist word, as in "his-story". I dont know if they actually dont know that it comes from Greek word "historia", perhaps they are just using it for their own gain. I've seen this claim quite a few times.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

Just as the word "human" doesn't derive from "man". Of course, the word "man" used to not refer to adult males only, but humans in general.

 

[sabo]

And hurricanes aren't himicanes if they have a male name

 

[ParkCungHee]

Likewise, the study of history is not a statistical analysis to label or differentiate events based upon the number of murder victims. To say that Dachau and the British camps "are actually quite similar" because about the same number of people died is not historically accurate.

That wasn't the reason, it was because they died of malnutrition, overcrowding and disease, in camps where people who the government found undesirable were packed into in order to seperate and Isolate from society. This is exactly what the term "Concentration Camp" implies and entails.
They were similar in a lot more ways then Numbers. The reason I brought up numbers was to highlight the very different use and intention of auschwitz: A center designed not to hold a great deal of people but instead to physically destroy them, in an industrial manner with the eventual goal of whiping out entire races. This is not what is entailed by the term concentration camp, and to call it that is a misnomer.
You're argument thus far has used nothing but emotional invective, and attempts to claim the emotional weight of the holocaust onto your side. I have pointed out the massive difference in the scale of killing, which, despite you denials, does show a radical shift in the nature of what was going on in the camps. I have pointed out that while there was never any releases from Auschwitz, because its sole intent was to kill. I have pointed to the very different ways in which they deaths resulted, one from malnutrition, disease and overcrowding, the other from specifically constructed gas chambers. I would still point out that the construction of the Vernichtungslagen did not begin until 1941, and required the highest level of authorization to begin work on. Tell me, If there was no fundemental difference between the two, why did it require a meeting from officials from the RHSA, General Government, Race and Ressetlement Main Office, Ministry of Justice, NSDAP Chancellory, The SD in Latvia, Ministry for Occupied Territories, Foreign Office, Ministry for the Eastern Occupied Territories, The Head of the Gestapo, The SD in the General Government, the Ministry of Interior and the Head of Section B4 of the Gestapo, and them be signed off by the Reichsfuhrer-SS and Riechsmarschall, simply to build camps no different from the 41 others throughout the territory Germany controlled?
Why shouldn't we not make these distinctions, that all academics do, aside from your apparent fear that somehow by thinking about the matter, we're somehow lessening the horror?

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

You're quite wrong. The church did draw a distinction between science and theology. In fact, medieval scholasticism regarded different disciplines as completely distinct, with their own methods and standards of truth (this goes back to Aristotle). The point was that these very different disciplines nevertheless all agreed with each other, because truths cannot conflict.

That's quite a feat of mental compartmentalization. They're distinct, but they're both truth so they agree.

And the reason why Galileo thought he could argue the church into accepting his views wasn't simply that he thought science and religion are harmonious, but that he thought cosmological theories could be proved. In his case, he thought that his theory of the tides completely proved heliocentrism. In fact he was wrong in that (his theory of the tides was completely mistaken in itself). Galileo was basically an arrogant self-promoter who happened to be right on the issue of heliocentrism, but had far less evidence for it than he thought he did, and managed to alienate all the people he should have been able to persuade. Mocking a hitherto sympathetic pope as "Simplicio" in his "Dialogue" was the last straw.

Who cares how he tried to prove it? He was still persecuted for heliocentrism by the Catholic Church.

You must remember that opposition to heliocentrism was hardly confined to church authorities. Even in Galileo's day, the evidence for the theory was hardly overwhelming and most philosophers were not convinced by it. This was even more the case with Copernicus, who had virtually no evidence for it at all. Why should the church have accepted such a minority crackpot theory? The fact that Copernicus had his works published posthumously doesn't entail that he feared ecclesiastical persecution. Perhaps he just feared general ridicule.

And that means that the Church didn't persecute Galileo for heliocentrism?

The Jesuit order did make a particular effort to contribute to science and philosophy during this period (they opened many free, excellent schools open to children from all religious backgrounds, which taught all the latest material); obviously its greatest luminaries would have been interested in the subject even before joining. The fact that Riccioli named a crater after Copernicus ought to indicate to you that the situation was not quite as simplistic as you suggested before.

It means he believed Copernicus. You don't name your discoveries after a man you disagree with.

That statement has more to do with rhetoric than fact. The facts are these. The church opposed heliocentrism while that theory was unproven, but it did not oppose research into the field which sought to discover what was true. When heliocentrism was proven to be true (inasmuch as such a theory can be proven at all), it withdrew its opposition. What's wrong with that?

It didn't withdraw opposition until the 20th century, when Pope John Paul II admitted that it was in the wrong for persecuting Galileo Galilei. What actually happened was that scientists simply went to those parts of Europe where the Church had less influence, to do their research. Also, the influence of the Church began to decline after the 17th century, due to the Enlightenment movement, as a result of the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants. It never formally renounced its opposition to heliocentrism until the 20th century, but its influence long before then was so low that it was irrelevant to science.

In the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church (at least) didn't actually have much of a problem with evolution per se, although it didn't like what it regarded as the atheistic and materialistic consequences of Darwinism in particular. This is an interesting article in the Catholic Encyclopaedia, published right at the start of the twentieth century, in which the authors are quite happy with evolution.

That article is a classic reading of more into evolution than there really is. It is nothing but a scientific theory, not a philosophy. Any attempts to apply science as a guide to civilized human life is erroneous. The article also claims that "Darwinism" is erroneous. So obviously it did have problems with both the science and the "atheistic and materialistic consequences".

Most of the opposition to evolution then (and now!) came from Protestants.

It wasn't until later in the 20th century that the Church reconciled evolution with Genesis, and it did it in the time honored religious tradition of REINTERPRETATION. Now, the Genesis account cannot be taken literaly! It's PR genius! I think what actually happened was that they noticed Fundamentalists turned into a laughingstock as scientific and public acceptance of evolution increased, and they didn't want to be a laughingstock. Hard enough to get people to go to church as it is.

And it's very misleading to list genetic engineering in with heliocentrism and evolution, because genetic engineering is not a theory which may be disputed but a practice. When it opposes genetic engineering, the church isn't denying something that scientists know to be true, it's saying that certain practices which scientists may wish to engage in are unethical. And that's a completely different issue.

Ahhh, stem cells! Well, rest assured that there will be reinterpretation with that position in due time.

The notion that "the church" (which people who say this sort of thing always leave ill-defined anyway) has been an eternal opponent of scientific progress is a myth, and a myth with an identifiable origin, too - the work of figures such as John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White in the late nineteenth century. What basically happened is that they looked at the arguments then raging about Darwinism and made the assumption that these were typical of the relationship between religion and science throughout the ages. They seized upon Galileo as a parallel case, ignoring the true facts and complicating details of that case, and turned Galileo into a sort of martyr for science, victimised by religion. They then declared, with no evidence at all, that these two figures (Galileo and Darwin) were typical of all interaction between science and religion. Of course the claim is ludicrous when you spell it out like that. Even if the analysis of the Galileo and Darwin cases had been accurate, you can hardly draw a conclusion about thousands of years of history from just two incidents! Modern historians reject the entire account - both the analysis of the individual cases which provided its "evidence", and the general conclusion about eternal antagonism.

In other words, they're right.

Ah yes, "rationalise", that's another word like "technicality". It means "I'm going to ignore the actual reason why someone did something, because I prefer the reasons that I think they should have had!" Seriously, if you think it was just "rationalisation" then you should say why. You can't just assume that the given reasons are dishonest. Besides, it doesn't make sense to call it a "rationalisation" in this case. The theory behind the orthodox/heretical distinction was laid down in the second century. The actual attempt to physically suppress "heretics" didn't really begin until the Middle Ages, centuries later. So I don't really see how the former can be dismissed as a "rationalisation" of the latter. On the contrary, isn't it more reasonable to see the latter as, in large part, a natural development from the former?

It's faith dressed up as reason. Rationalization is using reasoned argument to explain unreasoned positions, such as those from emotion.

 

[ParkCungHee]

That article is a classic reading of more into evolution than there really is. It is nothing but a scientific theory, not a philosophy. Any attempts to apply science as a guide to civilized human life is erroneous.

Then you're complaint shouldn't be with the Catholic church. Philosophy pulled out of Darwin not only existed, but was mainstream.

 

[Plotinus]

Nanocyborgasm, I'm not going to continue the argument since I don't want to drag the thread OT. So I'll just be brief this time. But I really think you need to read more about the periods in question and about the intellectual traditions which they inherited.

That's quite a feat of mental compartmentalization. They're distinct, but they're both truth so they agree.

There's no "feat" about distinguishing between different disciplines whilst still thinking they agree. On the contrary, it happens in every university today. We distinguish between (say) chemistry and physics, each of which had a different subject area and a different method of study. But their findings don't - or shouldn't - contradict each other, on the assumption that those findings are true. Similarly, medieval philosophers believed that study of the natural world and study of God's revelation were completely different fields, but their findings would not contradict each other, because obviously if two statements are true, then they can't contradict each other. If you really find that such a peculiar position then I'm not sure what to say.

Who cares how he tried to prove it? He was still persecuted for heliocentrism by the Catholic Church.

For the last time, Galileo was not persecuted for heliocentrism by the Catholic Church. He was "persecuted" (and even the use of that word is pretty tendentious) for breaking a personal guarantee to the pope that he would stop insisting that he could prove heliocentrism. That is why Galileo's purported proofs, and not the theory itself, are central to the whole case. If you really can't understand that then there's no point arguing about it any further.

It means he believed Copernicus. You don't name your discoveries after a man you disagree with.

Riccioli also named lunar craters after Ptolemy and Brahe. Does that mean that he thought that Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Brahe were all right?

In fact Riccioli didn't agree with Copernicus. He believed that heliocentrism was an interesting and viable theory which happened to be wrong. And he thought that Copernicus was an important figure in astronomy, even though he thought that Copernicus was wrong. There is no inconsistency in respecting an earlier thinker whilst also thinking that he is wrong. This happens all the time in science and philosophy. I think most scientists today respect Copernicus although they now know he was actually wrong on pretty much every count apart from his basic belief that the sun is at the centre of the solar system (for example, he wrongly believed that the planets revolve around the sun in circular paths).

It didn't withdraw opposition until the 20th century, when Pope John Paul II admitted that it was in the wrong for persecuting Galileo Galilei. What actually happened was that scientists simply went to those parts of Europe where the Church had less influence, to do their research. Also, the influence of the Church began to decline after the 17th century, due to the Enlightenment movement, as a result of the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants. It never formally renounced its opposition to heliocentrism until the 20th century, but its influence long before then was so low that it was irrelevant to science.

You're quite wrong again, because you still can't see that the condemnation of Galileo was not a condemnation of heliocentrism. Rescinding the former was therefore not the same thing as rescinding the latter. In fact, the Catholic Church formally withdrew its rejection of heliocentrism in the eighteenth century - certainly late, but hardly twentieth century. The church wanted to be sure about the matter before changing its views. Of course most Catholics had de facto accepted heliocentrism some time before 1757 (which is when Pope Benedict XIV removed heliocentric books from the Index).

It wasn't until later in the 20th century that the Church reconciled evolution with Genesis, and it did it in the time honored religious tradition of REINTERPRETATION. Now, the Genesis account cannot be taken literaly! It's PR genius! I think what actually happened was that they noticed Fundamentalists turned into a laughingstock as scientific and public acceptance of evolution increased, and they didn't want to be a laughingstock. Hard enough to get people to go to church as it is.

I don't really see your point here. Plenty of Christian theologians had interpreted the book of Genesis allegorically, and non-literally, long before the theory of evolution had even been proposed (Origen is the obvious example). When the theory of evolution was proposed, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Catholic Church didn't have much of a problem with it, and it never has.

Ahhh, stem cells! Well, rest assured that there will be reinterpretation with that position in due time.

This makes no sense and doesn't address what I said before.

In other words, they're right.

This also makes no sense. Who are right - the nineteenth-century anti-religious writers or modern historians? Are you being sarcastic?

It's faith dressed up as reason. Rationalization is using reasoned argument to explain unreasoned positions, such as those from emotion.

This doesn't address the question at hand and is just bald assertion anyway. Whom exactly are you accusing of "rationalisation" - Irenaeus and Tertullian, or the later Christians who used their development of the notion of orthodoxy to persecute those they considered heretical? What is your evidence that the positions of those you criticise were based solely upon emotion? The point we were meant to be debating was whether the suppression of heresy was an invention of Constantine and his heirs. I provided reasons to suppose that it was not. You haven't given any good response to those reasons.

 

[Evie]

Also, and for the record, as far as being "persecuted" goes, are we thinking about the same Galileo Galiei who, after his trial (and after NOT saying his alleged "E pur si muove" - that's another historical myth), was "sentenced" to being housed by a personal friend and ally, said sentence soon commuted to house arrest (and was never bothered at all when he tried to publish further works)?

Geez. If that's persectution, I'm sure Paris Hilton wish she could be persecuted right now.

 

[LightSpectra]

Plotinus covered everything I had intended to say, but let me just address this.

Well, rest assured that there will be reinterpretation with that position in due time.

Like how the Church changed its position on abortion, right? Anyhow: scientists have discovered how to research embryonic stem cells without damaging the potential life, which is as far as I know, acceptable in the eyes of the Church.

Edit: also, another point of contention with Galileo. His house arrest was for continually insulting the Pope even after a resolution was made. Though that seems somewhat unreasonable now, the freedom to criticize powerful political entities really did not exist until the 16th - 17th centuries, and was not just an issue of the Catholic Church.

 

[Conroe]

aside from your apparent fear that somehow by thinking about the matter, we're somehow lessening the horror?

Don't recall saying that we should fear thinking.

As for your detailed description of the creation of Auschwitz, how does that relate to your original thesis that Dachau was similiar to the British Boar camps?

Your style of debate appears to be one that shifts the focus away from your original thesis on to a slightly related but different subject. And I must say that I did fall victim to your trap. I concede that there are differences between Auschwitz and Dachau. To imply that there was not was erroneous on my part. I agree that the Nazis did change the focus of their camps between 1933 and 1942. And their camps were generally specialized as to their intended purpose.

How all of that relates to the Boar war, I have no clue.

If you can show me where the British conducted medical experiments on their prisoners, then maybe I will believe you. But until then, I will stand by my original statement that Dachau should not be compared with the British Boar camps.

 

[ParkCungHee]

How all of that relates to the Boar war, I have no clue.

If you can show me where the British conducted medical experiments on their prisoners, then maybe I will believe you. But until then, I will stand by my original statement that Dachau should not be compared with the British Boar camps.

No True Scotsman Falacy.

 

[Evie]

Just because both Dachau and the British C. Camps in South Africa were both concentration camp doesn,t mean you can compare them or put them on the same level.

By any strict definition of the world, both were concentration camps. This, from a purely logical standpoint, is a simple fact. (Note that "medical experiment" is not a criteria for or against describing something as a concentration camp). Auschwitz, which was built for systematical mass-murder, does not fit the strictest defition of concentration camp (even though this is what it is in public perception) ; extermination camp would describe it rather well.

However Dachau, even though *in itself* it was a concentration camp, also was a critical part (in its later years) of the Nazi extermination machine - something that none of the British camps ever were.

And that's two critical points about history. You cannot let emotions and outrage get in the way of a cold, logical thought process in establishing the facts about history (otherwise you get hysterical myths such as we've been discussing here), BUT you cannot simply ignore the context of a thing. Put back in context, Dachau, as part of the Nazi extermination machine, is indeed something entirely different from any of the Boer camps, even though, taken individually, there aren't that much difference between them (although even then Dachau would be worse).

 

[ParkCungHee]

Just because both Dachau and the British C. Camps in South Africa were both concentration camp doesn,t mean you can compare them or put them on the same level.

By any strict definition of the world, both were concentration camps. This, from a purely logical standpoint, is a simple fact.

But Dachau, even though *in itself* it was a concentration camp, also was a critical part (in its later years) of the Nazi extermination machine - something that none of the British camps ever were.

And that's one critical point about history; while you shouldn't let emotions affect your logical judgement (otherwise you end up with immensely biased history), you also should never take something outside of its context.

But just because they're both concentration camps doesn't mean they were identical, or comparable.

Identical? No, of course not. Nothing is Identical in history?
Comparable? Morally? Of course not, I never made that claim. The deaths in the Boer war were largely a result of negligence and callousness, not the system of oprresion we see at work in Dachau.
My claim was that concentration camp was not a euphemism, that people at the time were aware of what the term meant, aware of the conditions that would be entailed, and the results would be entirely unsurprising. You can compare the Camps at other levels however, they are similar in structure and functioning, similar in design and intent. You can certainly compare the two, in those respects. They are similar in that they are both Concentration Camps, as I made clear in my original post, that does not mean that they are equal. Dachau was worse then the Boer War was worse then the Irish Civil War.
I'm entirely surprised that there is such an outcry on this forum on what is the incredibly orthodox, mainstream view.