ANN ALTHOUSE NOT IMPRESSED WITH JAMES FALLOWS’ TAKE ON GALILEO.
You know, when you’re calling somebody “a flat-out moron,” you’d better be sure you’re not missing something. It’s extremely common to portray environmentalism, as practiced in present-day America, as the equivalent of a religion. Just the other day, for example, I wrote: “enviromentalism is the religion taught in public schools, and it’s the kind of religion done with shaming young people.” Here’s a World Net Daily article from back in 2008 called “The Climate Change Religion.” The Freakonomics blog had an item in 2009: “Is Climate-Change Belief a Religion?”(“Actually, yes…”). Here’s a piece in Forbes from last April: “Climate Change As Religion: The Gospel According To Gore.”
In this context, Perry’s invocation of Galileo makes perfect sense, and if anybody’s a flat-out moron here, it’s Fallows.
Too many people think that, because they consider themselves scientific somehow, everything they believe in is science.
Plus, from the comments:
Besides the churchmen who repressed Galileo, there were also the scientists who upbraided him for going against Aristotle’s ideas on moving bodies: they insisted that the science was settled! — had been for 2 millennia! Some of these learned gentlemen even refused to look thru his telescope (in which he claimed to see moons circling Jupiter– how ridiculous!) So I agree, it’s Mr. Fallows who comes across as… well, kind of ignorant of the history of science.
Yes, Galileo’s colleagues were not any more interested in unorthodox ideas than was the Church.