Is The Christmas Tree A Pagan Symbol?

(Video Description from YT Channel) Bobby unpacks the history of the Christmas Tree and whether it has pagan roots or not.

To begin this two part series we are looking at if the Bible forbids Christmas or Christmas customs.

This video looks at the history of Christmas and argues there is no evidence it comes from paganism.

(Video Description from YT Channel) Is Christmas pagan? Many Christians celebrate the birth of Christ on December 25, even though Jesus was almost certainly not born on December 25. Since pagan groups in the ancient world had celebrations that coincided with the Christian celebration of the birth of Christ, are Christians who celebrate Christmas today engaging in pagan activities? In this video, Marie Wood discusses the issue. Merry Christmas!

(Video Description from YT Channel) In this video I discuss the origin of the Christmas tree. Some think it’s condemned by the Bible, in Jeremiah 10:3-5. Others think it’s a Pagan idol. There were Pagan cultures that kept tree branches in their homes during the Winter Solstice, including the Egyptians, Druids, Romans (who also celebrated Saturnalia) and Vikings around the time of Christmas. Martin Luther kept a Christmas tree in his home. The Germans brought it to America. Americans at first protested against it, but if afterwards became popular. [Editor’s Note: A decent channel, but do not agree with all his presentations – to be clear]

The above were short presentations… below is an excellent, more in-depth interview detailing Greek Myths and other topics:

  • Is Christmas pagan? Was Christianity based on pagan celebrations on December 25? In this interview, I talk with Dr. Louis Markos, expert on Greek and Roman mythology.

See Dr. Markos’ book: The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes

Discussing History and Faith With A Tow Truck Driver

Met some awesome young believers todays on Main Street in Newhall. I was leaving Smokehouse on Main after my 2-beers and a chapter of reading in a book. They were out witnessing, which was awesome. They are Master’s College students… one young man was from Missouri, the other was a So-Cal dude, and the gal was from Costa Rica. Her English was flawless… but it dawned on me later that her parents are probably missionaries. At ANY RATE, I am reposting this encounter I had from Grace Community to our Valley.

Originally posted April 26th, 2021.

(My Facebook descriptor) The tow-truck driver I hitched a ride with today was probably surprised at the level of conversation in a reasonable and rational way. I enjoyed the challenges, and I am sure Charlie did as well. topics of discussion I engaged:

  • Everything good comes from God, but Priests say when something bad happens, it’s you;
  • Wars caused by religion, most wars not religions;
  • Secular governments that rejected God killed more people in 100 years than all religions previously;
  • Belief in the afterlife creates a worse world;
  • Halloween (yep, I was taken aback as well).

While driving the 5am delivery around, the work van started to give me an “Overheating” warning. I finished my 2-remaining drops and headed back to the shop… but the van would have nothing of it. So I nursed it into Grace Community Church’s parking lot and the office called for a tow truck – which took a little over an hour-and-a-half (they were busy). One of the security guards came out to check on me and I asked him if I could use the restroom. He said yes. I told him I had to retrieve my mask, he mentioned no masks were mandated to wear, that I could if I wished. I chose to support the Church’s “gravitas” and went in mask-less. Awesome. I love Grace. As I was walking around to hit the head, the security guard witnessed to me… I thought that was more awesomer.

So when the tow truck service guy (Charlie, a nice guy) had me loaded up and we were driving out, he asked what the place was I was sitting at. I explained it was a church, one of the better ones. I mentioned a couple more things about it, and then Charlie started to criticize the Christian Faith (mainly Catholicism at first), speaking of greed, how the people say all good things come from God but then when something bad happens like an accident – we are to blame, how rich the Catholic Church is, and all the wars religion started, and how people who believe in an afterlife make the world worse.

(This is a general recalling of our conversation)

I mentioned to him that I cannot speak to his points regarding the Vatican, as, I am not Catholic. But I did choose to address a couple of his broader points. (I had to break into his speaking about one topic and then going to another.)

The first point I made is that the Bible does not promise your life to be “good,” and harm free. On the Contrary, the Bible – from Genesis to Revelations documents man’s fallen nature and that from Genesis to Revelation that mankind needs a savior… someone to step into the place of wretched humanity to save it. I said, we need saving, not comfort.

I also mentioned that Nietzsche said that the death of God in the 19th century would all but guarantee the bloodiest 20th century. I then noted in conversation that this prediction came true… telling Charlie that in less than 100 years, non-God movements in Communism and Marxism through Stalin, Mao, Pol-Pot, Hitler, and others, killed more people than ALL religions previous to the 20th century.

He broke in and said this wasn’t true, and I could tell his language barrier with me was frustrating him. So I jumped in when I had a chance and mentioned that two encyclopedia sets went through 10,000 years of warfare and categorized the reasons for these wars.  I mentioned these encyclopedia sets by name: Encyclopedia of Wars, 3 volumes – and — The Encyclopedia of War, 5 Volumes. I told him that only 7% of all wars were religious, and that if you took out Islamic wars, all other religions cause about 3% of the wars in a 10,000 year period.

DATA POINTS FOR THE READER:

  • A recent comprehensive compilation of the history of human warfare, Encyclopedia of Wars by Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod documents 1763 wars, of which 123 have been classified to involve a religious conflict. So, what atheists have considered to be ‘most’ really amounts to less than 7% of all wars. It is interesting to note that 66 of these wars (more than 50%) involved Islam, which did not even exist as a religion for the first 3,000 years of recorded human warfare. The authors are nine history professors who specifically conducted research or the text for a decade in order to chronicle a time span from 8000 BC to 2003 AD. From over 10,000 years(RPT)
  • (A well known atheist agrees) Atheists often claim that religion fuels aggressive wars, both because it exacerbates antagonisms between opponents and also because it gives aggressors confidence by making them feel as if they have God on their side. Lots of wars certainly look as if they are motivated by religion. Just think about conflicts in Northern Ireland, the Middle East, the Balkans, the Asian subcontinent, Indonesia, and various parts of Africa. However, none of these wars is exclusively religious. They always involve political, economic, and ethnic disputes as well. That makes it hard to specify how much [of a] role, if any, religion itself had in causing any particular war. Defenders of religion argue that religious language is misused to justify what warmongers wanted to do independently of religion. This hypothesis might seem implausible to some, but it is hard to refute, partly because we do not have enough data points, and there is so much variation among wars. — Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Morality Without God? (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009), 33-34 

I then mentioned to him a study (I was wrong about the source, I thought Stanford — it was actually done by a University of Oregon psychologist) that found that a country’s belief in heaven and hell is related to its crime rates, and that a belief in a punitive God equals less crime. So belief in a God where our actions can be morally judged make a better society.

Charlie broke into discussion about Halloween for some reason, wanting a response about why people dress up in costumes. I said I do not know much beyond that it is a Pagan holiday of sorts, and that the Church wanted to evangelize these Pagans and so stuck a holiday close to it – All Saints Eve. (I may be wrong, but what Charlie then followed up with I knew was wrong. He said that the Church killing people had a connection to it.

I said I don’t think that is the case, mentioning the Druids and Irish Paganism being more connected to the issue than anything.*

He again brought up the Vatican, and I again noted I am not Catholic, and that the church I went to spent a lion’s share of their funds on missionaries around the world in tough places (Africa, Middle-East, and even one couple that would try to sneak across the border to North Korea at times), as well as having a large outreach to the poorer Hispanic area of the church’s influence.

We were at our destination finally (the shop that fixes our work truck and van.) I said, “Charlie, remember two things from this conversation. You were wrong, historically about religion and wars, as well as ‘religious’ people making the world worse. I ask you to remember these two examples because they are great examples of how you approach the Christian Faith: with bad facts and evidence. Try to approach these topics from a better starting point and you won’t be disappointed with the outcome.”

At that, we went our separate ways. After some paperwork of course. I did finish with “Charlie, I had a pleasure discussing this with you.” But in the back of my mind, I really was thinking:

*NOTE:

There’s no one explanation for how Halloween costumes originated. Much like the holiday itself, the practice of dressing up is the result of a hodgepodge of traditions from around the world.

Many historians suspect that the tradition has some basis in the Celtic festival of Samhain (also called Calan Gaeaf in Wales). Celebrated between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice, Samhain marks the official start of winter—known to the Celts as the “dark season.” During Samhain, “the world of the gods was believed to be made visible to humankind,” according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

That wasn’t a comfort to the ancient Celts, who believed their deities were prone to playing tricks on human worshippers. Many festival participants disguised themselves as animals or beasts, hoping to hide from malevolent spirits who might bring them misfortune.

Move forward a few centuries and the modern-day practice of dressing up and trick-or-treating has its roots in the European custom of “mumming and guising.” Mummers would dress up in costumes, often woven from straw, and perform plays and songs for neighbors in exchange for food. Scottish and Irish immigrants brought that tradition to North America, where it later morphed into what we now know as trick-or-treating.

Halloween costumes didn’t experience their true heyday until the mid-1900s, though. For that, you can thank New York City entrepreneurs Ben and Nat Cooper, who started a company producing pop culture-themed costumes at a low cost. Ben Cooper, Inc., found a niche in helping kids become the characters they admired from television and comic books, often purchasing merchandising rights before said characters ever became popular. Due in no small part to the Cooper family’s innovation, Halloween costumes became an accessible and even necessary part of holiday festivities…..

(MENTAL FLOSS)

Democratic Myths and Rhetoric Help Create Violence in Teens

The question is — if given a chance to have some time with these kids — what would I do to try and counter these actions? They are based on cultural myths passed on by parents, uncles, and the like. In other words, how would you begin to counter these myths? FIRST the actions, then some thoughts.

Students at Antioch High School in Nashville, Tennessee, tore down the Stars and Stripes during a walkout over gun violence. CHANNEL 4 in Chicago has more on the violence.

Here are the Chicago students being allowed out of school for 17-minutes:


I would start a reading club and meet weekly to discuss the issues in the book we would be currently reading. My first book I would have us read is Out Of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa. At some point I would have the kids listen to the audio chapter from Thomas Sowell’s book regarding slavery. Of course during this time one would be befriending and involved in a loving support of positive outcomes based in truth. As Christians, we should gravitate towards truth in outcomes in all things. Another study and discussion of a topic is the broken home. Something Larry Elder confronts in his own discussion with his father: Dear Father, Dear Son: Two Lives… Eight Hours. There are many resources to counter bad thinking on my page regarding RACIAL MYTHS… but the problem in the inner cities will continue as long as the family is broken and the blame is laid at the feet of historical myths and lies.

But this angst above is what the Left wants. It is how most revolutions happen, and why Barack Obama Tweeted to these student activists a few weeks back: “We’ve been waiting for you. And we’ve got your backs.”

  • High School Protesters Recite Marxist Chant With Communist Fists During The Walkout Against Guns

Slavery Made the South Poor, Not Rich

This is the article Larry Elder was referencing: “INDUSTRY AND ECONOMY DURING THE CIVIL WAR” (Also see “The Truth Behind ’40 Acres and a Mule’) —  here is the excerpt from chapter 22 of MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM:

The reader will be amused at my ignorance, when I tell the notions I had of the state of northern wealth, enterprise, and civilization. Of wealth and refinement, I supposed the north had none. My Columbian Orator, which was almost my only book, had not done much to enlighten me concerning northern society. The impressions I had received were all wide of the truth. New Bedford, especially, took me by surprise, in the solid wealth and grandeur there exhibited. I had formed my notions respecting the social condition of the free states, by what I had seen and known of free, white, non-slaveholding people in the slave states. Regarding slavery as the basis of wealth, I fancied that no people could become very wealthy without slavery. A free white man, holding no slaves, in the country, I had known to be the most ignorant and poverty-stricken of men, and the laughing stock even of slaves themselves—called generally by them, in derision, “poor white trash.” Like the non-slaveholders at the south, in holding no slaves, I suppose the northern people like them, also, in poverty and degradation. Judge, then, of my amazement and joy, when I found—as I did find—the very laboring population of New Bedford living in better houses, more elegantly furnished—surrounded by more comfort and refinement—than a majority of the slaveholders on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. There was my friend, Mr. Johnson, himself a colored man (who at the south would have been regarded as a proper marketable commodity), who lived in a better house—dined at a richer board—was the owner of more books—the reader of more newspapers—was more conversant with the political and social condition of this nation and the world—than nine-tenths of all the slaveholders of Talbot county, Maryland. Yet Mr. Johnson was a working man, and his hands were hardened by honest toil. Here, then, was something for observation and study. Whence the difference? The explanation was soon furnished, in the superiority of mind over simple brute force. Many pages might be given to the contrast, and in explanation of its causes. But an incident or two will suffice to show the reader as to how the mystery gradually vanished before me.

My first afternoon, on reaching New Bedford, was spent in visiting the wharves and viewing the shipping. The sight of the broad brim and the plain, Quaker dress, which met me at every turn, greatly increased my sense of freedom and security. “I am among the Quakers,” thought I, “and am safe.” Lying at the wharves and riding in the stream, were full-rigged ships of finest model, ready to start on whaling voyages. Upon the right and the left, I was walled in by large granite-fronted warehouses, crowded with the good things of this world. On the wharves, I saw industry without bustle, labor without noise, and heavy toil without the whip. There was no loud singing, as in southern ports, where ships are loading or unloading—no loud cursing or swearing—but everything went on as smoothly as the works of a well adjusted machine. How different was all this from the nosily fierce and clumsily absurd manner of labor-life in Baltimore and St. Michael’s! One of the first incidents which illustrated the superior mental character of northern labor over that of the south, was the manner of unloading a ship’s cargo of oil. In a southern port, twenty or thirty hands would have been employed to do what five or six did here, with the aid of a single ox attached to the end of a fall. Main strength, unassisted by skill, is slavery’s method of labor. An old ox, worth eighty dollars, was doing, in New Bedford, what would have required fifteen thousand dollars worth of human bones and muscles to have performed in a southern port. I found that everything was done here with a scrupulous regard to economy, both in regard to men and things, time and strength. The maid servant, instead of spending at least a tenth part of her time in bringing and carrying water, as in Baltimore, had the pump at her elbow. The wood was dry, and snugly piled away for winter. Woodhouses, in-door pumps, sinks, drains, self-shutting gates, washing machines, pounding barrels, were all new things, and told me that I was among a thoughtful and sensible people. To the ship-repairing dock I went, and saw the same wise prudence. The carpenters struck where they aimed, and the calkers wasted no blows in idle flourishes of the mallet. I learned that men went from New Bedford to Baltimore, and bought old ships, and brought them here to repair, and made them better and more valuable than they ever were before. Men talked here of going whaling on a four years’ voyage with more coolness than sailors where I came from talked of going a four months’ voyage

Was The Iraq War About Oil?

  • (CNNMoney.com) — Despite claims by some critics that the Bush administration invaded Iraq to take control of its oil, the first contracts with major oil firms from Iraq’s new government are likely to go not to U.S. companies, but rather to companies from China, India, Vietnam, and Indonesia. ~ via my old site in April of 2007.

SWEETNESS-N-LIGHT points out in their post on the subject that China will get about 80% of the oil from Iraq:

The International Energy Agency expects China to become the main customer for Iraq’s vast oil reserves. Fatih Birol, the agency’s chief economist, recently declared “a new trade axis is being formed between Baghdad and Beijing.” Birol said that about 80 percent of Iraq’s future oil exports were expected to go to Asia, mainly to China.

Iraq’s potential for oil production is huge. The International Energy Agency predicts that Iraqi production will more than double in the next eight years and that the country will be by far the largest contributor to growth in the global oil supply over the next two decades. By the 2030s, the agency expects Iraq to become the second largest global oil exporter, overtaking Russia…

Iraq hasn’t become the bonanza for big Western international oil companies that some might have expected when the U.S. invaded 10 years ago

The below is an update from 2013, 10-years after the war… I am going to highlight something for the reader to emphasize the proclivity of the Professional Left in dumbing down complicated choices and simplifying history. It comes from FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE:

Now that the tenth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom has arrived, the American left has taken another opportunity to revive the trope that going to war in that nation “was all about oil.” The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald is one such revivalist. In a column on Monday he’s magnanimous enough to concede that saying the war in Iraq was fought strictly for oil is an “oversimplification.” Yet just as quickly, he can’t contain himself. “But the fact that oil is a major factor in every Western military action in the Middle East is so self-evident that it’s astonishing that it’s even considered debatable, let alone some fringe and edgy idea,” he contends. The war for oil mantra may be self-evident to Greenwald and his fellow travelers, but the facts say otherwise.

If oil were a major factor for prosecuting war in Iraq, it stands to reason the United States would be getting substantial amounts of it. It may come as a shock to Greenwald as well as a number of other Americans, but with regard to importing oil, the overwhelming percentage of our imported oil does not come from the Middle East. Canada and Latin America provide the United States with 34.7 percent of our imported oil. Africa provides another 10.3 percent. The entire Persian Gulf, led by Saudi Arabia at 8.1 percent, provides us with a total of 12.9 percent of our imported oil.

As recently as December 2012, Iraq provided the United States with approximately 14.3 million barrels of oil out of a total of about 298 million barrels imported, or 4.8 percent of our total imports. And as this chart indicates, we were importing the highest amount of oil from Iraq before we went to war to oust Saddam Hussein.

Furthermore, the United States fully supported the United Nations’ oil embargo against Iraq, imposed when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, despite the reality that we were far more dependent on imported oil then than we are now. We continued to support it even when it was revealed that the eventual softening of those sanctions, known as the oil for food program, revealed that Russia, France and a number of other nations were collaborating with Saddam Hussein to violate sanctions in return for billions of dollars of ill-gotten gains. Of the 52 countries named in a report compiled by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker detailing the scandal, only 28 even wanted the evidence, and the United States led the way in prosecuting those implicated.

In 2010, the UN Security Council lifted most of the remaining sanctions. The Security Council said it “recognizes that the situation now existing in Iraq is significantly different from that which existed at the time of the adoption of resolution 661” in 1990. In other words, they recognized that Butcher of Baghdad and his brutal dictatorship had been tossed on the ash heap of history, and a relatively stable government had taken its place. The Council also voted to return control of Iraq’s oil and natural gas revenue to the government by June 30 of that year. “Iraq is on the cusp of something remarkable–a stable, self-reliant nation,” said Vice President Joe Biden, who chaired the meeting.

It is precisely that self-reliant nation–not an oil-rich client state of America–that Iraq is becoming.

If America went to war in Iraq mostly for oil, it would stand to reason that we would maintain a stranglehold on both their supply and production. Ten years after the war began, China has emerged as one of the main beneficiaries of a relatively stable Iraqi government and a country that, after two decades, is poised to become the world’s third largest oil exporter. Trade between Iraq and China has doubled almost 34 times, soaring from $517 million in 2002, to $17.5 billion by the end of last year. If current trends continue, it will replace the U.S. as Iraq’s largest trading partner.

Furthermore, the first postwar oil license awarded by the Iraqi government in 2008 was to the state-run China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), in the form of a $3.5 billion development contract for Iraqi oil field Al-Ahdab. In December 2009, in the second round of bids to develop Iraq’s vast untapped oil reserves (following a June auction allowing foreign companies the chance to increase production at existing fields), China and Russia emerged with the lion’s share of the contracts. At the time, Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani envisioned a bright future. “Our principal objective is to increase our oil production from 2.4 million barrels per day to more than four million in the next five years,” he said.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL notes more recently that these many myths presented to us by the Left are deserving of being retired:

OK, I had some help from a duplicitous vice president, Dick Cheney. Then there wasGeorge W. Bush, a gullible president who could barely locate Iraq on a map and who wanted to avenge his father and enrich his friends in the oil business. And don’t forget the neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon who fed cherry-picked intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, to reporters like me.

None of these assertions happens to be true, though all were published and continue to have believers. This is not how wars come about, and it is surely not how the war in Iraq occurred. Nor is it what I did as a reporter for the New York Times. These false narratives deserve, at last, to be retired….

(read it all)

See more about the “behind the scenes” machinations that included Alan Greenspan at COLUMBIA JOURNALISM JOURNAL. REUTERS noted the clarification as well…

 

Was Giordano Bruno the First Martyr for Science?

This is a large excerpt from an article that was VERY informative, and lays to rest many of the challenges sometimes presented to the believer regarding Giordano Bruno, the “first scientific martyr.” While this is not the COMPLETE article, it is enough of it to squash any misuse of history.

I start two pages in. If you wish to read the entire article, you can go to CRS’s store to purchase back issues. This is an article found in: Creation Research Society Quarterly 2014. 50:227–236.

Here is the abstract followed by the article:

The martyrdom of the sixteenth-century philosopher and professor Giordano Bruno is widely regarded by scholars as the beginning of the war between science and religion. A review of the case documents that Bruno’s difficulties were not due to his science, but rather to the clear, open theological conflicts he had with Christianity and his attitude toward authority. Bruno also experienced numerous major conflicts with professors and philosophers of his day, which did not help his case.

I held off on posting this article for a while. I wanted the article to run it’s course, but in posting this article I hope to get some apologists plugged into an excellent Journal on various topics dealing with science and creation. I hope to put in the minds of like minded people the consideration of all the resources at CRS to be part of the apologists armory.


Giordano Bruno: The First Martyr of

Science or the Last of the Magicians?

by Jerry Bergman


….The First Scientific Martyr

Bruno is so important to many critics of the church that his death is commonly listed as the “first scientific martyr” and an “example of the inevitable collision between rigid theological dogma and freedom of speculation within natural philosophy, the precursor to modern science” (Shackelford, 2009, p. 60). Its importance is so critical that Bruno’s death is used by historians to mark the transition from the “Renaissance philosophy” era to the “Scientific Revolution” era (Ingegno, 1998). A scientific think tank in Germany committed to debunking religion is named after Bruno (Higgins, 2007, p. A11). Another recent reference penned to support the claim that Christianity has long repressed science and free inquiry concluded that the best examples of this repression were “the religious censorship of Bacon in the 1200s, the burning of the heliocentrist astronomer Bruno and the censure of Galileo in the 1600s” (Aliff, 2005, p. 150). In fact, as I will document, none of these examples supports Aliff’s claim of church suppression of science (see Bergman, 1981).

Repeating the same erroneous claims about Galileo, Kevin Phillips wrote that the “papacy found Galileo guilty of heresy—and placed him under house arrest for seven years until he recanted—for propounding the Copernican argument that the earth revolved around the sun,” and then added that “in 1600 philosopher Giordano Bruno had been burned in Rome for much the same offense” (Phillips, 2006, p. 227). Harvard Professor David Landes wrote that Galileo was not the first, nor will he be the last, to suffer at the hands of the church over science progress:

Equally momentous, if less remembered, was the burning in Rome in February 1600 of Giordano Bruno … whose imaginary concept of the universe came far closer to what we now think than that of Copernicus or Galileo: infinite space, billions of burning stars, rotating earth revolving around the sun, matter composed of atoms, and so on. All heresies, linked to mysteries and magic. In effect, by burning Bruno, the Church proclaimed its intention of taking science and imagination in hand and leashing them to Rome. (Landes, 1999, p. 181)

For an excellent review of why these claims about Copernicus and Galileo are erroneous, see Moy (2001).

Bruno not a Scientist

Although, historically, the lines between what we call science and religion were not clearly drawn, it is clear that few professional science historians, if any, consider Bruno a scientist. Both his masters and doctorate were in theology. The major histories of science, including Dampier (1949, p. 112), Lindberg (1992), North (1995), Heilbron (2003), Grant (2004), and Singham (2007, p. 28), never mentioned Bruno even once. Some historians of science, such as Goldstein (1988, pp. 85–86), mention him as a philosopher.

As far as is known, he never collected data, never did scientific experiments, or made testable scientific observations, as did Galileo; rather, his many books were based solely on philosophical speculation. Although Bruno was neither a scientist nor an astronomer but a theologian and philosopher, he did cover cosmology as part of his lectures. Furthermore, Bruno saw himself as a philosopher of religion, not a scientist (Boulting, 1972, p. 272). His long career as a college professor and as a tutor at several leading universities is extensively documented in a sympathetic biography titled Giordano Bruno: Philosopher, Heretic (Rowland, 2008).

Bruno’s occult involvement especially caused him difficulties with both the church and state. For this reason, “many historians of science have rightly denied to Bruno a place in the history of science” (Peters, 1989, p. 243). Thus, Bruno biographer Dorothea Singer concluded from her extensive study of his life that Bruno was “in no sense a man of science” (Singer, 1950, p. v).

It is commonly implied, or openly stated, that the reason Bruno was executed on February 16, 1600, by the Italian government was because he challenged church dogma, such as claiming that the earth moved around the sun (heliocentrism), and not the sun around the earth (geocentrism). The long paper trail in his case, though, clearly shows that it was not his Copernicanism that got him into trouble, but his theological beliefs, such as his teaching that there is “no personal God” but rather “we are in God, and God is in us” (White, 2002, pp. 7, 48).

In the words of Rowland, Bruno reasoned that “God would be nothing without the world, and, for this reason, God did nothing but create new worlds” (Rowland, 2004, p. 197)—this was the essence of Bruno’s infinite worlds theology. Bruno did support Copernicanism but only to advocate “Hermetic religion as a corrective for the woes of Reformation and Counter Reformation Europe” (Shackelford, 2009, p. 61). This position put him not only in the religious sphere but in the political arena as well, which was central to his later problems.

His rejection of the orthodox Christian view of the Trinity, which he held as a young man, and his conclusion that Jesus “could not have been the son of God” were probably even more important reasons for his troubles and branding as a heretic (Rowland, 2008, p. 57). Nonetheless, Bruno made an extraordinarily difficult defendant because “his uncanny ability to put orthodoxy itself into a historical context made the certainties of dogma look uncertain” (Rowland, 2008, p. 58).

Dorothea Singer (1950, p. 5) concludes that Bruno’s whole philosophy was based on his belief in an infinite universe and infinite inhabited worlds— both ideas widely rejected then and still today, even by most big-bang cosmologists. Bruno believed not only in an “infinite universe,” but also one that “carried the seeds of its own propagation everywhere” (Rowland, 2004, p. 197). Most scientists in Bruno’s day were not supportive of Bruno’s ideas. Many prominent scientists, including Galileo and Johann Kepler, were not sympathetic to Bruno, partly because he espoused a Copernican system for mystical rather than for scientific reasons (Lerner and Gosselin, 1973).

Bruno’s Early Life

A precocious boy, Bruno became a Dominican at age 14 and wrote a total of over 60 works, mostly on theology, metaphysics, philosophy, the art of memory, and esoteric mysticism (Brinton, 1890, p. 12). His writings made him a “maverick, a misanthrope, and an extreme intellectual radical,” who “actually courted danger and controversy” by openly “confronting his enemies head-on” (White, 2002, p. 48, 9). Rowland wrote that “Bruno’s keen wits were never tempered by charity toward his weaker colleagues,” and he often referred to his peers in very disparaging terms (Rowland, 2008, pp. 113–114).

He was “at first welcomed” during his 16 years of wandering over Europe from university to university as a professor, tutor, or author. But it was never for long because he was so radical and uncharitable. Although as a lecturer he held his listeners spellbound, it was not long before “his presence always led to embarrassment” (Rowland, 2008, p. 132; see also, Singer, 1950, p. v).

This view is well recognized by Bruno scholars. Lerner and Gosselin conclude that “the common claim that Bruno challenged an ignorant and obscurantist Catholic church in a modern spirit of freedom” is largely a myth (Lerner and Gosselin, 1986, p. 126). The claim that Bruno was a “failed Galileo” was “congenial to the worldview of the 19th-century liberal” who opposed Christianity (Learner and Gosselin, 1986, p. 126), and it has been enshrined in twenty-first-century mythology. Bruno “regarded himself as … [the] prophet of a new religion,” and interest in his works was especially strong among those trying to fill the “spiritual void” left by their disillusionment with organized religion (Berggren, 2002, p. 30).

Bruno’s Problems in Society

A prolific and popular author (some of his works are still in print today—see Blackwell, 1998), Bruno was also a rebel who, when still a young man, was accused of Arianism, iconoclasm, and the possession of heretical books. After he left the Catholics, Bruno joined the Calvinists at Geneva (De Leon-Jones, 1997). He soon encountered problems with them—evidently mostly because of doctrinal disputes and his strongly worded attacks against Aristotle (White, 2002, p. 105). The church, both Catholic and Calvinist, was so wedded to Aristotle that professors in their lectures rarely deviated “even the slightest bit from the opinions of Aristotle” (Rowland, 2008, p. 100). Brinton reports that when in Geneva, Bruno was “thrown into prison for defamatory libel” (Brinton, 1890, p. 12).

According to Ernan McMullin, the Oxford professors were also outraged because they believed one of Bruno’s lectures was plagiarized from Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499). The “opprobrium of the university dons and many of the students” was so strong in England that Bruno “was all but physically expelled from the city” (White, 2002, p. 110).

Bruno next went to France, where he became a professor at the Sorbonne. Soon problems developed there, and after only two years, he was forced to move to England. After three years, he was also forced to leave England because (among other allegations) he repeatedly insulted the professors at Oxford University, claiming that they “knew much more about beer than about Greek” (Singer, 1950, p. 33; Boulting, 1972, p. 85).

Bruno soon migrated to Germany and was again excommunicated in 1590, this time by the Lutherans. Much, if not most, of Bruno’s problems were with university faculty, one example being the rector of the University of Marburg. The rector wrote that Bruno:

“went so far as to insult me in my home as if I had acted against the public interest, the custom of all the universities of Germany, and the good of knowledge.” The rector erased Bruno’s name from the university register, noting in the margin that the erasure had been done “with the unanimous consensus of the faculty in philosophy.” One of those faculty members, in turn, erased the rector’s note; apparently the faculty was not so unanimous after all, nor the rector so universally popular. (Rowland, 2008, p. 198)

In Marburg “he was obliged to flee in order to escape the ‘malevolence’ of the rector of the University” (Brinton, 1890, p. 14). Brinton opined that Bruno fled from the Lutherans of Marburg and Helmstedt to save his life. Bruno next went to Tübingen University, where he was paid to move elsewhere (Rowland, 2008, p. 209). He was forced to hastily depart from a total of ten cities in ten years, not due to his views on science, but because he managed to alienate not just the Catholic university faculty in both France and Italy, but also their Lutheran and Calvinist counterparts in other countries. His “combative personality, both in public and in print” often was at the center of many of his conflicts (Rowland, 2008, p. 202).

Returning to Rome, he was excommunicated yet again by the Catholic Church, not for teaching the theory of Copernicus, but for heresy and blasphemy by denying the divinity of Christ and asserting that Christ did not perform miracles but was actually a magician who only appeared to work miracles. His teaching that most, if not all, heavenly bodies were populated by life and that all stars and planets were themselves living also caused him major problems (Rowland, 2008, p. 174). He could not have been in trouble for espousing a moving earth and an infinite universe because “Copernicanism was not declared a heresy until 1616 [Bruno died in 1600] and, as for the infinite universe view, he was simply echoing Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa” (Hannam, 2009, p. 309).

Contemporary reports added that Bruno was “quick in temper, bitter in debate, violent in language, impatient with ignorance, full of scorn for prejudices; not a pleasant, easy-going fellow by any means; given at times to vainglorious boasting” and his prose was “so coarse that it sometimes passed beyond buffoonery into what to us seems indecency” (Brinton, 1890, pp. 17–18). The record is clear: his “views brought him into conflict with the Orthodox academics” in the university of his day (Shackelford, 2009, p. 61).

His ideas were not based on scientific observations but on his philosophical worldview. Rather than being a brilliant scientist martyred for truth, Bruno has been described by some as a misguided quack. Lerner and Gosselin describe his most important work, The Ash Wednesday Supper, as follows:

It appears to be a compendium of nonsense—a disorganized display of gross error connected by incomprehensible passages. Bruno has the Copernican model of the solar system wrong. He demonstrates total ignorance of the most elementary ideas of geometry, let alone geometric optics. He throws in scraps of pseudoscientific argument, mostly garbled, and proceeds to high-flying speculations that seem disconnected from the preceding or subsequent arguments. Even the diagrams do not always correspond to the accompanying discussions in the text. (Lerner and Gosselin, 1986, p. 126)

Under the subheading “Strange Cosmologies,” John Grant wrote that Giordano Bruno’s “version of Copernicanism” was really “incidental to his own mystical, theistic cosmology.” In fact, Bruno evidently

despised Copernicus as a mere mathematician, and … accepted the planets’ revolution about the Sun for reasons more associated with magic than with science. Bruno’s cosmology is hard for the modern mind to understand, but appears to have had strong connections to animism. The Universe was of infinite extent, and contained an infinite number of inhabited worlds. There was no deity who could be regarded as an individual; instead, the magic of Nature was the deity, present in all things. This deity was reflected in human beings in the form of the creative imagination. (Grant, 2006, pp. 88–89)

It was clear at his trial that his writings were “purely philosophical” (Boulting, 1972, p. 267). One example was his belief in the “infinity of worlds,” the existence of an endless number of worlds like our earth (Boulting, 1972, p. 268). Bruno’s speculations on an evolutionary theory of the natural world, which he called “progressive development,” were no doubt developed by reading the Latin poet Lucretius, whom he often quoted (Boulting, 1972, p. 139). Brinton wrote that Bruno’s view of evolution was developed

to the full extent of the most advanced evolutionist of to-day. “The mind of man,” he says, “differs from that of lower animals and of plants, not in quality, but only in quantity.” “Each individual,” he adds, “is the resultant of innumerable individuals. Each species is the starting point for the next.” Change is unceasing. … He extended these laws to the inorganic as well as the organic world, maintaining that unbroken line of evolution from matter to man which the severest studies of modern science are beginning to recognize. (Brinton, 1890, pp. 21–22)

In short, “the combination of newfangled and absurd theology with an unerring ability to rub people the wrong way meant that he could rarely stay put for long” (Hannam, 2009, p. 307).

Bruno’s Nonclerical Enemies

Many of Bruno’s problems involved his nonclergy enemies, such as the wealthy Venetian businessman Giovanni Mocenigo. Mocenigo personally strongly disagreed with Bruno’s ideas and was so determined to convince the church to convict Bruno of heresy that he used entrapment and then deception to get the church to act against him (Berggren, 2002, p. 31). White wrote that Mocenigo was actually desperate to convince the Inquisition that Bruno was a first-class enemy of the church. In his second statement to the Inquisition, Mocenigo became so involved in his claims that he told

Bruno he will not report him if the magus will finally submit to teaching him the occult arts. In most ways, though, this second statement is little more than a reiteration of the first [statement], for Mocenigo had clearly run out of ideas or accusations to pin on Bruno. (White, 2002, p. 94)

By this time Bruno had enough enemies, both secular and sacred, that the authorities in Italy were convinced they should imprison him. His “cosmological opinions… were never questioned,” and he was delivered “without the slightest opposition of the civil government… to the Inquisition of Rome” (Brodrick, 1961, pp. 207, 339). Bruno compounded matters by lying to interrogators—during his trial he “denied any link with the mystical arts, but the evidence for his close association with magic could be found in his books and through his known connections with Hermeticists [the followers of Hermes]” (White, 2002, p. 38). Hermes was believed to be an Egyptian priest who lived not long after Moses, though recent scholarship places him after the beginning of Christianity. His works often focused on the occult, especially astrology and alchemy. Bruno’s writings reveal that he rejected many of the scientific advances of the Middle Ages and wanted to return to the ideas of the pre-Mosaic Chaldeans and Egyptians (Heilbron, 2003, p. 718; McMullin, 2005, p. 177; Huxtable, 1997).

Boulting wrote that Bruno’s trial was conducted with moderation, and all of the depositions were “carefully and accurately recorded” (Boulting, 1972, p. 281). A major problem was Bruno’s attitude. Bruno once said, “Often have I been threatened with the Holy Office and I deemed it a joke” (Boulting, 1972, p. 264). A review of the court transcripts makes it clear the whole issue was theology, especially his rejection of the Trinity (Rowland, 2008, p. 265). Bruno was accused of theological heresy, praising religious heretics, and even fraud (Rowland, 2008, pp. 288–289).

Bruno rejected many of the central Catholic doctrines, such as transubstantiation and the virgin birth. He even called the pope the “Triumphant Beast” (Boulting, 1972, pp. 299–300). His morals were also problematic. He once told a friend that the “ladies pleased him well; but he had not yet reached Solomon’s number; the Church sinned in making a wickedness of that which was of great service in Nature, and which, in his view, was highly meritorious,” namely sexual promiscuity (quoted in Boulting, 1972, p. 266).

Bellarmine did draw up a set of eight doctrinal propositions, of which Bruno admitted he violated four—including denying that sins of the flesh were mortal sins (Rowland, 2008, p. 257). The Inquisition in Bruno’s case was at first very lenient. When the charges were proven, all Bruno had to do was show repentance and renounce his heresy, but he steadily refused (Boulting, 1972, p. 297). Of note is the difficulty of proving the Inquisition’s case—at least two witnesses were required and, in this case, both were questionable, requiring more extensive research. Rowland notes the “fact that Bruno’s trial dragged on year after year suggests that Santori and his fellow inquisitors could find no plausible way to obtain a conviction” (Rowland, 2008, p. 252). He was also accused of founding and leading a new sect, a concern then because the Catholic Church was fighting the Protestant schism in several nations (Boulting, 1972, p. 298).

When sentence was pronounced, “his life, studies and opinions were recounted, as well as the zeal and brotherly love of the Inquisitors in their efforts to convert him” (Rowland, 2008, p. 299). Bruno was given eight more days of grace to “repent” but again refused, remaining obstinate, “notwithstanding the theologians visit[ed] him daily” to convince him to mend his ways; and “when the crucifix was held out to him, he turned his face aside in disdain” (Boulting, 1972, pp. 301, 304). Nothing in the surviving record indicates heliocentricity or science had any part in the issues of concern—doctrinal matters were the heart of the church’s concern (Rowland, 2008, p. 258). Adamson wrote that Bruno

possessed no remarkable scientific knowledge, for his own writings condemn him of a degraded materialism and show that he was entangled in commonplace errors. He had no splendid adornments of virtue, for as evidence against his moral character there stand those extravagancies of wickedness and corruption into which all men are driven by passions unresisted. He was the hero of no famous exploits and did no signal service to the state; his familiar accomplishments were insincerity, lying and perfect selfishness, intolerance of all who disagreed with him, abject meanness and perverted ingenuity in adulation. (Adamson, 1903, pp. 307, 23)

In one of the most sympathetic biographies of Bruno, Rowland wrote that his “radical defiance, both of Christian doctrine and of the Inquisition’s right to enforce it and even ‘to acknowledge the inquisitors authority’” is what forced them to “respond by showing him their power” (2008, p. 268, 273).

Bruno was eventually handed over to the secular authorities, and it was the state that burned him at the stake in the style of the times as a traitor, a man judged dangerous to the welfare of the people. Mercati claimed that this decision was not made hastily:

Pope Clement VIII kept him confined for seven years, always in the hope of winning him back to the Church and to the order he had abandoned. He was well treated by the Inquisition, given a comfortable room, all the writing materials he requested, and a change of towels, bed and personal linen twice a week. He was allowed out of papal funds a pension of four crowns a month, which enabled him to order whatever food he liked. (Angelo Mercati, Il sommario del Processo di Giordano Bruno. In, Studi e Teste, 101, 1942, pp. 126 ff., quoted in Brodrick, 1961, p. 207)

 A further problem is that Bruno recanted his major heresies early in his imprisonment and then later reaffirmed his original views, making him a relapsed heretic with immolation the normal penalty. Furthermore, his Spaccio de la bestia trionfante made the pope into the beast of Revelation, an act beyond heresy and into sedition because the pope was also a secular ruler.

A Martyr for Science?

In the end, Bruno’s problems were summarized by Berggren as follows: “There is little doubt that he saw himself as prophet of a new religion—or at least of a new kind of religious insight” (Berggren, 2002, p. 30). Eminent science historian Sir William Dampier wrote that Bruno “openly attacked all orthodox beliefs, and was condemned by the Inquisition, not for his science, but for his philosophy and his zeal for religious reform” (Dampier, 1949, p. 113). Professor Yates, in an entire book on the subject, argued that although often portrayed as a martyr for science, Bruno was no such thing. Rather, he was a magus who traveled across Europe preaching a gospel rooted in mystical Egyptian pantheistic texts, especially the so-called tradition of Hermes (Yates, 1991).

Yates concluded that Bruno’s teaching was neither orthodox Catholic nor Protestant doctrine but rather Egyptian magical doctrines (Yates, 1991, p. 239).

His magical, mystical alchemy probably alienated scientists more than the clergy. Francois Russo concluded that modern science would not “have been possible without the recognition that in nature” exists

certain constants, that natural phenomena are connected by permanent relationships. It will be remembered that sixteenth-century Humanism showed one trend that was in complete opposition to this, and that at one time it almost carried the day—when men like Cardan and Giordano Bruno lapsed into a naturalistic pantheism, a panpsychism, according to which the universe was a hodgepodge of uncoordinated wonders. (Russo, 1963, p. 305)

One explanation for Bruno’s portrayal as a martyr of science lies in postmodern thinking.

The orthodox story portrays Galileo too much as the rational man of modernity for him to be wholly satisfactory as a postmodern hero. Fortunately there is an alternative at hand: Giordano Bruno, who appeals more to postmodern sensibilities. Bruno combines Copernicanism with the cabala and with a supposedly ancient Egyptian form of magic. Moreover, he was executed by the church in 1600, allegedly for teaching Copernicanism, so he makes a good substitute for Galileo. This story of Bruno, the martyr to science, combines science with mysticism and is becoming increasingly popular. In fact, Bruno is even less the martyr than Galileo was. (Sampson, 2001, p. 155)

Bruno was not alone in holding to some, or even many, of his mystical ideas (Rowland, 2008). The best example is Isaac Newton, who indulged not only in alchemy but also in the mystical arts. Johannes Kepler also based some of his astronomy on mystical ideas, such as his belief that the planets and other bodies emitted musical harmonies. One critical difference is that both Newton and Kepler did not stop at philosophical speculations but did empirical research and collected data to support their theories, whereas Bruno did neither; instead, he “relied on mental geometries that are strange to us” (Rowland, 2008, p. 282).

Furthermore, Bruno carried his mystical arts far beyond many, if not most, other men of science in an age when most scientists were abandoning such ideas. Newton and others were able to work on their alchemical ideas in relative obscurity. Only recently has the extent of Newton’s involvement in the mystical arts been documented and become widely known. Kepler’s musical harmonies hypothesis served as a means of developing theories that could be empirically tested. Their philosophical speculations clearly influenced their work but did not dominate it. It was their data that made their reputations as scientists. Ironically, in spite of Bruno’s conflicts with the universities, the scholars, the state, and the church, he claimed

everything he had discovered about the immensity of the universe only strengthened his awe at creation and his joy at coming closer to its source. His attention was fixed not on what he had done wrong in his life but on what he had learned in its course, and he was consumed with eagerness to communicate those discoveries. Furthermore, he observed repeatedly that in deepening his knowledge of the universe, he had also deepened his communion with religion’s most basic truths. He quoted Psalm 19 in support of his philosophy: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handiwork.” (Rowland, 2008, p. 190)

Why the Bruno Myth Persists

The main reason for the perpetuation of the Bruno myth is because “post-Enlightenment historical essayists sought to exalt Bruno as an exemplary figure in the struggle for free thought against the confining authority of aristocratic government supported by religious authority” (Shackelford, 2009, p. 63). Another reason is because his case served as a means of discrediting the Catholic Church in particular and Christianity in general. An example of this is Professor Ira Cardiff, who, first, incorrectly averred that Copernicus “proved the earth NOT to be the center of the universe” by his “mass of astronomical observations,” which were not published until he died, a fact that “certainly saved him from martyrdom.” Then Cardiff claimed that no progress in science occurred for about 50 years, until “Bruno constructed a philosophy embodying the ideas of Copernicus.” Cardiff mockingly concluded that the “Church showed its appreciation of this great work by burning Bruno at the stake” (Cardiff, 1942, pp. 54–55).

Several recent references have endeavored to correct the myth. For example, Grant wrote that “one of the classic tales within the history of science is that of Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), burnt at the stake for his support of the new Copernican cosmology … the story of Bruno as a martyr in the name of science—with the implicit corollary that the Church condemned scientific progress—is false” (2007, p. 151). Grant adds that in “more modern times Bruno would have been regarded as a (probably) harmless lunatic.” Unfortunately, the myth was made secure by many widely read and respected scientists and authors from John Tyndall to Henry Fairfield Osborn (Shackelford, 2009, pp. 63–64).

One positive result of the Bruno affair is that it “influenced the Church away from a policy of punishment toward a policy of persuasion” (Rowland, 2008, p. 283), partly because, in spite of his numerous violations of both church doctrine and moral law, many high-level church leaders saw what happened to Bruno as a major injustice. If Bruno had acknowledged the authority of the church and state, he likely would not have been executed.

Conclusion

The evidence demonstrates that the common belief that Bruno was the “first martyr of science” is historically inaccurate (Pearcey and Thaxton, 1994). One reason for this misperception was the “fact that Bruno had been an advocate and popularizer of heliocentricism [which] may have led to the later perception that he was the first martyr of the new science” (Singham, 2007, p. 28).

University of Wisconsin science historian Ron Numbers in a PBS interview on his research about Galileo stated that not only is there “no reason to believe that Galileo at any point faced the threat of death,” but also there “was never any indication in the court records of death being a possible penalty, and no other scientists were put to death for their scientific views” (PBS, 2006). In answer to the question, “Is it the case then that there have been no scientists killed for their scientific views?” Numbers replied, “I can think of no scientist who ever lost his life for his scientific views” (PBS, 2006). None. Thomas Kuhn stated flatly, “Bruno was not executed for Copernicanism” (Kuhn, 1985, p. 199). Angelo Mercati wrote that Bruno, a former

Dominican friar, had long ceased to believe in Christianity before he was imprisoned by the Roman Inquisition. His cosmological opinions, borrowed anyhow from Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, were never questioned. To make him a martyr of science, as some have done, is merely silly, as he never engaged in any kind of scientific activity. (quoted in Brodrick, 1961, p. 207)

Olson states bluntly that it was “because of his advocacy of Hermetic magic and his claim that Moses and Christ were magi and not for any astronomical views that Giordano Bruno was condemned by the Holy Office of the Inquisition” (Olson, 2004, p. 58). Edward Peters added that the Galileo and Bruno cases became so widely publicized that they

shaped much of the early social and cultural self-perception of modern scientists. The execution in Rome of Giordano Bruno in 1600 and the penance imposed on Galileo Galilei, also in Rome, in 1633 constituted the core of … the myth of the martyrology of science and the role of the Church, specifically The Inquisition, in creating martyrs of science and opposing the progress of scientific discovery. … The names of Bruno and Galileo were frequently linked and the cause for which they both suffered was identified as the cause of reason and science, opposed to superstition and obscurantism, represented by theologians and directed by The Inquisition. (Peters, 1989, p. 243)

This essay shows that the claim (copied below) made by Dr. Tiemen De Vries’, a popular Freethinker author of the early 1900s, is worse than irresponsible:

And almost the last martyrs [of science] were Galilei, Copernicus and Giordano Bruno, the last of whom was burned at the stake in Rome in the year 1600, because of his scientific researches [that were] in conflict with the guesses of the church which were articles of faith. The murder of Giordano Bruno is one of the most atrocious and most blasphemous crimes of the Papacy and we may add of the whole world’s history. Bruno was teaching in accordance with Copernicus that the earth did not stand still but moves on its axis and around the sun, which as the whole world knows now, was right. The Pope was commanding the faithful to believe that the earth stands still, which was not true. (De Vries, 1932, p. 141)

De Vries then condemns the pope for putting the Bible above science.

From a modern vantage point, what Bruno did does not in any way justify either the actions of the state or the Inquisition. Much of Bruno’s fame and influence resulted from the way he met his end, which created both sympathy and much curiosity about him (Singer, 1950). Bruno read widely and synthesized what he read to produce many ideas, some of which can be interpreted as providing insight on scientific ideas accepted today, but much that he wrote was clearly foolish.

If he had died a natural death, his ideas and writings may well have been buried in history, of interest to no one. His inglorious death made him a martyr, even a hero, to many. The event was seized on by the anticlerical movement and anti-Christian rationalistic skeptics to discredit the Catholic Church (Sánchez, 1972).

Many myths still exist about Bruno, including claims about his support for righteous causes. The myth briefly examined in this paper, that Giordano Bruno was the first martyr for science, is not supported by history. The common claim, such as by Stephen Jay Gould that sciences’ “true martyrs—Bruno at the stake, Galileo before the Inquisition—or, in better times, merely irritated, as Huxley was, by ecclesiastical stupidity” is historically false (Gould, 1991, p. 400). The fact is, in the words of Cambridge-trained historian of science James Hannam, “Contrary to popular belief, the Church never … burnt anyone at the stake for science ideas” (Hannam, 2009, p. 3).

References

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