Author: Abu Raef
Secularism (12th part)
17th century AD and the beginning of opposition of scientific ideas with the church
The first spark and movement of the opposition of the new scientific ideas of Europe to the ideas and theories of the church goes back to the 17th century AD and the emergence of scientists like “Nicolas Copernicus”, “Galileo”, “Bruno” and…
The church’s belief about the heavenly bodies and the system of governing and moving the earth was as follows: “The earth is the center of the universe and is always stationary; because “the second Iqnoom (person)”; It means that Jesus Christ appeared there, and on this ground, his sacrifice took place, and on this ground, he will do the Eucharist.
The Torah also believes that the earth will stand forever, and the sun will rise and set, and after sunset, it will quickly move towards the east again.
Also, the church had denied the “sphericality of the earth” and that “the other corner of it is also a place of residence” and said: One of the wrong opinions is that a person believes in the existence of men who walk on their heads and believes in the existence of plants. have them grow while they are under the ground.
The reason of the church was that if the assumption (that the earth is spherical and that the other corner is inhabited) is correct, then it will be necessary for the Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him) to go to the other corner of the earth and hang on the cross for their salvation.
Copernicus was the first person who in the 17th century had an opinion against the views of the church and shook the church. Contrary to the belief of the church and the belief of Ptolemy, he did not consider the earth to be the center of the universe and did not place it as the center and orbit of the rest of the heavenly bodies.
In this case, he wrote a book called “Movement of Celestial Bodies” and presented his opposing views in it. He was lucky that after the publication of his book, his time came and he passed away, otherwise he would have had a very difficult and dangerous end and future, and he would have been subjected to all kinds of harassment and persecution by the courts of inquiry.
After the publication of his book and his own death, the church banned his book and said that there are countless satanic obsessions in this book that are contrary to the spirit of the Gospel. The church thought that this theory had ended and disappeared with the death of its owner, but soon a person named Giordano Bruno raised the same theory after Copernicus’ death. It wasn’t long before the court of inquiry arrested him and imprisoned him for six years. When he insisted on his opinion and did not back down after enduring prison, the church excommunicated him in 1600. He set fire and left his ashes in the air and set him as a lesson for others.
A few years after Bruno’s death, Galileo invented the telescope and experimentally supported and confirmed what his predecessors had said only theoretically. This incident was a convincing reason for the church to arrest and prosecute him. It was here that seven cardinals decided that he should spend some time in prison, and they decided that he should recite the seven penitential psalms every week for three years.
When Galileo feared that he too would suffer the fate and fate of Bruno, he declared his apostasy from his new opinion and thought and while kneeling in front of the president of the court, he said: I, Galileo, have reached seventy years of age and I am imprisoned and kneeling in front of your Holiness, and while the Holy Bible is in front of me and I touch it with my hands, I abandon the atheistic and wrong theory of the rotation of the earth and I curse and despise it.
In addition to repentance, he pledged to bring to court any atheist who has been tempted by Satan to accept this theory.
Accordingly, these were the leaders and new scientific theories of Europe, and this was also the official position of the church towards them. Of course, this kind of treatment of the church with them was not strange and incomprehensible; Because the thoughts and ideas of the church were in the dark and people were enslaved by superstitions and they presented incomprehensible religious reasons for these superstitions.
Despite all these strictures and harassment that the church did against the founders of new scientific opinions in the seventeenth century, the opinions of Copernicus, Bruno, and Galileo still had a great impact on society and permeated the general philosophy of Europe. In such a way that many people had lost trust in the church and had become suspicious of the truth of its teachings.
The ideas of these people opened new windows of using reason and experience in the field of reaching the truth in front of people and presented them with new ideas and shook the theory of absolute stability that dominated European rationality.
Another conflict that arose in this century was the conflict between “revelation” and “reason”. At first, the rationalists did not dare to completely deny the revelation and ignore it, but they tried to justify their opinions and reconcile them with religious teachings.
One of the famous religions of this era was the philosophical and rational religion of Descartes. He called people to implement a rational approach and method in their thinking and life and to exclude religion and church beliefs and holy texts from this, he believed that the field of science is nature and its subject is the use of natural forces and Its tools are austerity and experience, and religion is specific to the journey of the human soul in the other world, and its reliance is on belief and submission, and there is no conflict between science and religion, and neither has dominion over the other.
This religion was the biggest religion of philosophy in the West and was actually a steppingstone to the absolute denial of revelation. This theory was confirmed by people like Francis Bacon, Spinoza and John Locke. Because Spinoza was a Jew, he believed that religious books should be evaluated in the same way as other human historical books are evaluated, because the books of revelation are also human heritage.
John Locke went even further and said that when reason and revelation conflict, reason should prevail and be used in the context of understanding and implementing revelation. Also, he became the founder of a new theory, which was that every person should have the right to choose religions and religions and accept any one he wanted and reject any one he did not want.
The criticism of this person did not reach the level of outright denial of revelation and heavenly messages, and perhaps they did not do so because of the fear of the inquisition trial or at least the fear of the Christian community. The books of these authors were attacked, confiscated, and set on fire, and they themselves were harassed and persecuted by the church, but the spread of science in every place and the emergence of differences between Christian denominations made the church busy to destroy them.
