I don't make a big deal out of these movies. I know some people do. Dan Brown is a Catholic basher who hates the church. That's not earth-shaking news. The methods of his anti-catholicism are what concern some people. I know from experience that there are people who read Dan Brown's books and watch the movies who actually believe as 'fact' the garbage he is selling. He is good at what he does....mixing half truths with fiction. I just tell people who believe the nonsense to produce some evidence from
legitimate sources or just simply wait a few months until some decent Christian historians and apologists write some books of their own destroying Dan Brown's claims.
Here's part of an article I found
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/angels&demons/I'll post a favorite topic of Church bashers...science and Galileo! Catholic kryptonite? Not quite. It's funny how in discussions I have had with people claiming the church to be "anti-scientific progress" this is the only example they give. The church is 2,000 years old and they have one example and they don't even get that one right.
* Brown elevates science to the position of God: On p. 31, one of Brown’s characters delights in saying, “Soon all Gods will be proven to be false idols. Science has now provided answers to almost every question man can ask.” So what’s left? “There are only a few questions left,” writes Brown, “and they are the esoteric ones.” Like the very meaning of existence! On p. 218, Brown gets so excited by the promise of science that he uses italics to exclaim, “Science is God.” On p. 474, he really gets into orbit: “Medicine, electronic communications, space travel, genetic manipulation…these are the miracles about which we now tell our children. These are the miracles we herald as proof that science will bring us the answers.” Then he goes for the gold: “The ancient stories of immaculate conceptions, burning bushes, and parting seas are no longer relevant. God has become obsolete. Science has won the battle.”
Is there anything science can’t do? Evidently not. Here is Brown at his wackiest (p. 658): “Science has come to save us from our sickness, hunger, and pain! Behold science-the new God of endless miracles, omnipotent and benevolent! Ignore the weapons and the chaos.” It’s even an elixir for personal problems: “Forget the fractured loneliness and endless peril. Science is here!”
*The fact is that Catholicism promoted science & astronomy: Science would not have progressed as it has. “For the last fifty years,” says professor Thomas E. Woods, Jr., “virtually all historians of science…have concluded that the Scientific Revolution was indebted to the Church.” Sociologist Rodney Stark argues that the reason why science arose in Europe, and nowhere else, is because of Catholicism. “It is instructive that China, Islam, India, ancient Greece, and Rome all had a highly developed alchemy. But only in Europe did alchemy develop into chemistry. By the same token, many societies developed elaborate systems of astrology, but only in Europe did astrology lead to astronomy”.
The Catholic role in pioneering astronomy is not questioned. J.L. Heilborn of the University of California at Berkeley writes that “The Roman Catholic Church gave more financial aid and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment than any other, and, probably, all other institutions.” The Jesuits scientific achievements alone, reached every corner of the earth.
What was it about Catholicism that made it so science-friendly, and why did science take root in Europe and not some place else? Stark knows why: “Because Christianity depicted God as a rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being, and the universe as his personal creation. The natural world was thus understood to have a rational, lawful, stable structure, waiting (indeed, inviting) human comprehension.”
*Church & Galileo - many untruths: The myths about Galileo are so rich that few bother to consult the historical record to learn what really happened. Brown exploits this ignorance to the hilt. When he says on p. 41 that Galileo’s “data were incontrovertible,” he is not even close to telling the truth. For instance, we know that the tides are explained by the gravitational forces of the moon. But Galileo’s fixation on the earth revolving around the sun did not allow him to see this - he believed that the tides were understood by the earth’s revolutions around the sun. More important, what got Galileo into trouble was less his ideas than his arrogance: he made claims that he could not scientifically sustain.
If Galileo was punished for maintaining that the earth revolves around the sun, then why wasn’t Copernicus punished? After all, Copernicus broached this idea before Galileo toyed with it, and like Galileo, he was also a Catholic. The difference is that Copernicus was an honest scientist: he was content to state his ideas in the form of a hypothesis. Galileo refused to do so, even though he could not prove his hypothesis.
If the Catholic Church was out to get Galileo from the get-go, then how does one explain why he was celebrated for his work in Rome in 1611? Why did Pope Paul V embrace him? Why did he become friends with the future pope, Urban VIII? Quite frankly, Galileo never got into trouble before he started insisting that the Copernican system was positively true. When he first agreed to treat it as a hypothesis, or as a mathematical proposition, he suffered not a whit.
In 1624, Pope Urban VIII gave Galileo medals and other gifts, and pledged to continue his support for his work. According to Woods, “Urban VIII told the astronomer that the Church had never declared Copernicanism to be heretical, and that the Church would never do so”. This, of course, is not what Brown wants us to believe. Eight years later, Galileo wrote his Dialogue on the Great World Systems; he did so at the urging of the pope. But this time he made the leap of asserting that the Copernican theory was empirically true. Moreover, he presented himself as a theologian, not simply as a mathematician, as he agreed to do. The Church was not pleased, and indeed felt double-crossed by him. Just as important, the scientific community was unimpressed. His hubris was appalling to as many outside the Church as within it.
It is easy for us today to say that the Church overreacted in its treatment of Galileo. This is true. But it is also important to note that he was never tortured and never spent a day in prison. He was confined to house arrest in a modest home for nine years. He even stayed for a while in the home of the archbishop of Siena. Not exactly the Gulag-type experience we’ve been led to believe. It would be interesting to know how Brown would explain the fact that the first leader of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences was none other than his favorite “martyr,” Galileo Galilei!
If the Catholic Church was so anti-science, why did Pope Benedict XIV grant an imprimatur to the first edition of the complete works of Galileo? He did this in 1741. And if further proof is needed to demonstrate that Galileo’s abrasiveness had something to do with the Church’s response, consider that scientists like Father Roger Boscovich continued to explore Copernican ideas at the same time Galileo was found “vehemently suspected of heresy.” It should also be noted that Catholics were never forbidden from reading Galileo. Moreover, scientific books of all kinds circulated freely during and after his censure.
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