"and nobody knows that he assumes it." (Application, Galileo)

First, this may seem irrelevant, but this is statistics from yesterday:

France
131 + 20 + 151 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 4 + 39 + 6 + 4 + 6 + 22 + 1 + 23 + 10 + 39 = 459 (14:36, 27—28.VI)

Second, to the topic:

Galileo and the Bible
https://www.museumofthebible.org/book-minute/galileo-and-the-bible

The End of the Galileo Affair: Galileo's Theological Contributions
by Cory Hayes | February 15, 2024
https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/the-end-of-galileo-affair-galileos-theological-contributions/

Galileo and the Interpretation of the Bible
Published: March 1999 | William E. Carroll
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1008657104961

More than one of above cite the famed quote that Galileo put into the mouth of Eminence or Monsignor Anon. : "the Bible doesn't tell us how the heavens go, but how to go to heaven" ... that on Springer even repeats a usual misattribution to Cardinal Baronius. Now, this made me think somewhat of a certain essay collection by Chesterton: The Thing. Or rather, I thought of the connection when on FB I saw a part of below quote:

Curiously enough, I find this sort of thing rather specially widespread in our age, which claims to possess a popular culture or enlightenment. There is everywhere the habit of assuming certain things, in the sense of not even imagining the opposite things. For instance, as history is taught, nearly everybody assumes that in all important past conflicts, it was the right side that won. Everybody assumes it; and nobody knows that he assumes it.

For instance, everyone assumes that if scientists settled on the world being older than 6000 to 7500 years, as different Biblical chronologies would indicate, it's because it's "good science" ...

A curious and amusing instance comes from America; in connection with Mr. Clarence Darrow, the somewhat simple-minded sceptic of that land of simplicity. ... And one of his arguments for that is that if they did believe in certain happiness beyond the grave, they would all kill themselves. He says that nobody would endure the martyrdom of cancer, for instance, if he really believed (as he apparently assumes all Christians to believe) that in any case the mere fact of death would instantly introduce the soul to perfect felicity and the society of all its best friends. A Catholic will certainly know what answer he has to give. But Mr. Clarence Darrow does not really in the least know what question he has asked.

Mr. Darrow is the lawyer of Scopes, in the famous State of Tennessee v. Scopes trial. Note, Chesterton doesn't mention State of Tennessee as simpleminded. What Clarence Darrow seems to have recommended, Chesterton may have heard of as rumoured that Germany was going to apply it and later applied it to the "simple-minded" in T4.

But first mention of "assumes" in The Thing:

Every leader-writer who thunders "Galileo" at us assumes that we know even less about Galileo than he does. Every preacher of popular science who throws a long word at us thinks we shall have to look it up in the dictionary and hopes we shall not study it seriously even in the encyclopaedia. Their use of science is rather like the use made of it by the heroes of certain adventure stories, in which the white men terrify the savages by predicting an eclipse or producing an electric shock.

OK, Chesterton read Tintin adventure Prisoners of the Sun ... or Hergé imitated the topos from other adventure stories, earlier than this album. But anyway, he had read some people Gish Gallopping against Catholicism with Galileo as a probable third to fifth word in an early sentence. Maybe even the first one.

Yesterday also, I came across someone speaking on a certain patristic position arguing that Israel would have been impossible, but he also mentioned the opposite position, of Israel coming back right in the end times. Anyway, he said ... (beginning after 10:22 and ending before 10:48) this little thing:

... we have become ideologically captured rather than formed by the unbending sturdiness of reality. Okay? We used to believe that the earth was the center of the solar system. Then upon new data, we realized it was in fact the sun. So when our presuppositions toward reality are falsified, the least we can do is be honest enough to admit it.

I commented on it and the comment was taken away, not sure if by him or on the cyber.

Now, he assumes people before ... Copernicus? Galileo? Newton? ... believed that the Sun was the centre of ... the solar system. Not of the universe, as correctly representing their belief (on most issues also mine), but of the solar system. Because what goes around us each night from East to West is absolutely only the Moon and Jupiter and Venus and things, while Sirius and Orion totally stay in the same place? In fact, the position he, and presumably his history teacher attributed to pre-Copernicans would have been refuted by me simply when I measured that Orion had moved 30° (or twice the 15° of using my outstretched arm and dispersed thumb and fingers as measure) during the two hours I had been away from S. to D. in a certain city scarce and village dense part of Sweden.* Because 2 * 12 hours = 24 hours. And 30° * 12 = 360° Orion, which no one ever took as "part of the solar system" moves 360° (or full circle) in 24 hours (or actually a few minutes less than that). No, no one ever believed a theory which would be such easy to refute, if he was a learned man.

Also, he assumes that we got "new data" and that becoming Heliocentric was the honest and only adequate adjustment to new data.

He didn't say which ones, not sure if his history teacher or even science class ever taught him that. Or if he retained what they tried to teach him.

Like, for Earth being round we have Magellan and modern flight routes. Do you propose Luke Starwalker and the maps Han Solo uses for Heliocentrism? Will you be very, very, very disappointed if I tell you that shots "on Tatooine" are actually from North Africa, like Mos Eisley on Tatooine is Ajim, Tunisia for outdoor and Elstree Studios on Shenley Road, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire for indoor shots of the Cantina. The 1977 film no more proves Heliocentrism than the Ganges' East bank reminding someone of Gibraltar actually proved Round Earth, in Aristotle's time. Try again.

But those who won't try are the guys who assume that in every important armed or intellectual conflict "the right side won" ... and who assume it so hard, they don't even know they assume it.

Like pretty many of the 459 page views I had from France in 24 hours, and also the videast Christopher Kuehl. As to Church Fathers who very early on gave some kind of mitigated support for some kind of Zionism, that would also involve Jews converting to Christianity. I support Jeff Morgan, not Netanyahu. Also not a fan of Hamas reducing Christians in Gaza (with soft bullying involving alcohol band but not limited to them, no doubt).

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Sts. Peter and Paul
29.VI.2026

Romae natalis sanctorum Apostolorum Petri et Pauli, qui eodem anno eodemque die passi sunt, sub Nerone Imperatore. Horum prior, in eadem Urbe, capite ad terram verso cruci affixus, et in Vaticano juxta viam Triumphalem sepultus, totius Orbis veneratione celebratur; posterior autem, gladio animadversus, et via Ostiensi sepultus, pari honore habetur.

* Some old lady, who had helped the Norwegian resistance, back in her youth, may have taken my gesture as a NS salute, as Orion was c. 45° above the horizon ... it wasn't one. I'm pro-Franco and pro-Dollfuss. As to pro-Hitler, that's for art schools, not politics.