(August 23, 2019 at 7:08 pm)Belaqua Wrote: 500 years ago, in 1519, in Florence and educated parts of the Vatican, an intellectual Christianity influenced by Ficino and Pico was strongly influential. Though controversial, with opponents, it was nonetheless important in making Christianity even less literalist and more open to non-Christian ideas. Many high-level Christians from this school supported Galileo
"Influenced by strongly influential" and yet they were so "influential" in Vatican that it took Vatican until the year 1992 to admit that Galileo was right. So, good job - or not, you decide.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
