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last updated 24th September 2007
In 1600 a Dominican monk was burnt at the stake. His interest in Plato and Hermes Trismegistus brought him to the attention of the Inquisition. He published a book defending the new heliocentric theory of Copernicus. He had some doubtful intrepetations about Copernican theory and adhered to a belief that every planet was inhabited by intelligent beings. A Sirius mystery on amphibians from Sirius?
This certainly was a heretical belief, given that Christians believed their God made them alone in his image. Because his intrepetation of Copernicus was doubtful, other scientists of the day who did support Copernican theory did not in their writings support Bruno. Bruno aroused controversy where ever he spoke and he often had to make a hasty exit after upsetting church authorities in France, England and Germany. He was arrested by the Inquisition in Venice in 1591 and was jailed in Rome from 1592 until 1600. He refused to recant his beliefs, was declared a heretic and was burnt at the stake in 1600.
In Victoria Australia, the Labor Bracks/Brumby government in 2005 introduced repressive religious vilification laws against free speech on religion. Ridicule of a religion can be punished with six months jail.
Bruno's heresy was to teach that our Sun was just another star in an infinite space. The church considered this a blasphemy, because they believed Aristotle's model that the earth was the center of the universe, with the fixed stars in their crystal spheres revolving around the earth. They believed in a childish egotistic way, like a child before it can appreciate the viewpoint of anyone else, that humans were the pinnacle of creation and all life on earth was put there by God for human amusement and exploitation. Some theories on possible alien life forms. Bruno's confident and prophetic last words were that "In the future all men will believe as I believe" . Maybe we don't believe in the aliens, but many planets have been discovered around other suns and the heliocentric Copernican model is correct, but we are still looking SETI and also see the story of the amphibians from Sirius.
Apology posted March 30 2000. In March 2000 Pope John Paul II issued a 31 page Memory and Reconciliation document giving a blanket apology for the sins of the church over the last 1,000 years. The burning of Bruno is now deplored and regretted. That's one thing valuable about Christian teaching, they can apologise hundreds of years after an event and take responsibility for the actions of those who proceeded them in the position. Christians are advantaged in that confession, practicing saying sorry for not being the best person you can be, is a cathartic moment of self knowledge. Christians can cast off their egotistical defence mechanisms at times. Islamic Sufi schools also have a similar teaching for self-observation of chief faults and flaws, the STOP exercise.
The former Pope John Paul centralised church authority in Rome by appointing 96% of the current college of Cardinals at the expense of the established Catholic Church in many countries. Some western countries where religion is in decline, will be having priests sent to them from Africa and South America. What opportunity have they had to get their hands on an textbook of evolution, zealot missionaries spreading ignorance everywhere.
The Prime Minister of Australia John Howard could learn from Pope Paul II and issue a blanket apology (and $$$) to Iraq for being part of the coalition of the ignorant and also to Aboriginal Australians (and $$$) for two hundred years of domination, exploitation and abuse. They should take responsibility for their immediate predecessors actions and financially compensate the sorry generation of aboriginal children removed from their mothers in a white Australia assimilation policy.
One of the most annoying qualities about human beings is their egocentricism as a species. They think everything in the universe exists for them and was made for their benefit and exploitation by divine right.
Many of the human belief systems contain fundamental flaws that help foster that superior attitude that, human beings were made by a GOD. The history of human religions is a study of egocentric self preservation. The dogma is usually associated with imposing a hierarchical and financial connection with GOD which reached its zenith with papal indulgences, paying for crimes in advance which Martin Luther rebelled against.
Xenophanes of Colophon thought that man made God in his own image. He ridiculed the human nature of the Greek Olympian Gods stating that, "If cattle could draw, they would make their own Gods in the likeness of cattle".
It is partially through the actions of unrecognised heretics over the millennia that humanity has had the possibility of perceiving reality as it really is. Unfortunately for the heretic who exposes the egocentric flaws in religion it is a case of "shoot the messenger". Some patron saints of heresy include the most revered, but slightly eccentric Bruno Giordano, last words on refusing to recant his herecy "One day all men will believe as I do"
Some agitators of their day are not heretics, Socrates was a nuisance to officials of his day when he questioned and exposed flaws in the status quo. "What is love"? "Piss off ya stupid old git Socrates" I would say. Why did you marry such a difficult woman as Xanthippe, ya stupid git. "Only the wearer of the shoe knows where it pinches" he would say. Human society is built on strict regulated order, founded in revenge and pay back for a perceived wrong and deviance. Humans do not "know themselves" let-a-lone how to behave decently to each other as individuals, they have little co-hesion as ethnic groups, except as national continental groupings and religious superstitions.
If individual humans have suffered in trying to wake humankind from their egocentricity, they disserve to be in the revered order of heretics, if we may be so presumptous as to define some criteria for inclusion in the Heretics Hall of Fame. Determination, certainty in their judgement and conviction to follow a truth against the accepted dogma is their most holy virtue.
Definition: The Australian Oxford Dictionary 2nd Edition 2004 heresy/ n. (pl -ies) 1 a belief or practice contrary to the orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church. b an instance of this 2 a opinion contrary to what is normally accepted or maintained Old French heresie Latin haeresis = school of thought Greek hairesis
heretic/'heretik/ n. 1 The holder of an unorthodox opinion. 2 hist. a person believing or practicing religious heresy. heretical adj. heretically adv. [ORIGIN] Middle English via Old French heretique and ecclesiastical Latin haereticus from Greek hairetikos "able to choose" (as heresy)
We think this definition is very broard and could include as heretics many unorthodox eccentric opinions which are nothing to do with the real world. To become a heretic, you need some environmental stimuli to get you away from orthodoxy, but there is also some evidence for a risk taking genetic personality trait. It is easy to be a heretic on the Oxford definition. We propose other criteria, perhaps even a rating scale of heretical belief.
The discovery of DNA is an example of a Type 2 heracy, the argument of transubstantiation, whether the body of Christ is really in the wafer is a trivial type 1 heracy of little consequence. Some small type 1 heracies though, like that of Galileo or Newton's laws, did not seek to change, but provided evidence that change was needed. You could be a unproductive heretic, a type 1 or 2 or a clever heretic types 1 or 2. Type 1 heretics cannot contribute much to the body of knowledge or rapid change by themselves in isolation, until other developments support them. Type 2 heretics can bring about more rapid change, but not without social division from the status quo. Almost every modern discovery about real world natural processes, especially biology, but all science is a heracy to religious views. How could you navigate a rocket to the moon if you held the biblical view of crystal spheres orbiting the earth. Your rocket could smash the spheres. Great Comets disproved the church as well as the evidence of heretical astronomers like Brahe and Copernicus.
Archimedes could be considered a Heretic, murdered by a Roman soldier, while he was contemplating mathematics in the sand, drawing in the sand. He was not persecuted by the King of Syracuse but honoured for keeping Marcellus the Roman at bay. Socrates could not be a Heretic; however much you would want him to be included, for he took his own life on the orders of others, which is not standing your ground in the face of adversity, as we know it! I believe some of his behaviours like questioning people on the streets of ancient Athens was mild anti-social behaviour without emotional conviction. HAD he fought for his life, maybe his student's student Alexander (The mediocre egotistical), may have moderated his behaviour and aggression. No control over his own destiny Socrates, an external locus of control. Go kill yourself then. OK I'll take Hemlock. Likewise all the Christian martyrs would never qualify as Heretics as they in death supported the Christian dogma of the day. Not an original thought between them.
Darwin could also not be a heretic, because he was reluctant to publish until 1859 and Wallace, Lamark, his own grand-father Eurasmus and others were developing arguments along similar lines. Einstein was just following others like Michaelson and Morley and the Lorenz transformations. A heretic must not be one of many involved in convergent evolution of ideas and knowledge, but unique in their time, perhaps many centuries ahead of their time. The human race is human from its head down to its arse, for those who are coming first, others are coming last. Both those who are coming first and last are as lonely and isolated as each other, so we should all do some volunteer work for those less capable than ourselves and be tolerant of the eccentric difficult to deal with heretics, as they are often living in the future and those who hinder them with prejudice are like Neanderthal appealing to the past.
Quadrant Article Sydney's Vinegar Hill Uprising by Robert Murray
Giordano Bruno and The Hermetic Tradition Francis A Yates. Routledge (1964) University of Chicago Press 1991 SBN-10: 0-226-95007-7 (Paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-226-95007-5 (Paper)