The Church actively persecuted science while the Pope denounced Islam as reasonless.
Evidence
It is also significant that Pope Benedict, in denouncing Islam for lacking reason, failed to bring up the Catholic Church’s hostile opposition to the scientific revolution and to the birth of nonreligious and rational ways of understanding the world. The scientific revolution, and more broadly, the Enlightenment, stood in opposition to Christian dogma and were viewed as a threat by the Church. Scientists who employed reason and rationality to explain the physical world were severely punished. Perhaps as significantly, Giordano Bruno, who extended the Copernican model, was imprisoned for eight years by the Roman and Venetian Inquisitions for refusing to recant his beliefs around the same time that Akbar published his treatises on reason and nondenominational rule in India. Bruno was later burned at the stake. Galileo was similarly brought before the Inquisition and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life after he recanted his scientific theories. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 342 (
#expands, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: The Catholic Church violently repressed scientific reason exactly as it accused Islam of doing; Pope Benedict’s attack on Islamic irrationality ignored Christianity’s own persecution of reason — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 342; Scientific persecution was more systemic under Christianity than Islam (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- The Catholic Church violently repressed scientific reason exactly as it accused Islam of doing
#corroborates(0.92) - Pope Benedict’s attack on Islamic irrationality ignored Christianity’s own persecution of reason
#expands(0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 342 - Scientific persecution was more systemic under Christianity than Islam
#expands(0.75) - Christian Europe persecuted scientific dissenters far more systemically than Islamic empires did
#expands(0.75) - The Pope feared Copernicanism would undermine the Church’s authority.
#qualifies(0.72) — Hawking, Stephen, A Brief History of Time, 353