JMC@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU (John McCarthy) (08/25/88)
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 88 01:12 EDT From: John McCarthy <JMC@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> Subject: Burning Bruno To: AIList@AI.AI.MIT.EDU [In reply to message sent Mon 22 Aug 1988 22:21-EDT.] Burning Giordano Bruno presents problems for many religions that Hiroshima doesn't present for science. Science doesn't claim that scientific discoveries can't be used in war. There would be problems for anyone who claimed that 1930s science would avert World War II. As far as I know, not one person in the world made that claim. There are also problems for people who claimed that Marxism was a science, that countries ruled by Marxism would not commit crimes and that the Soviet Union was ruled by Marxism. Plenty of people believed that and denied that, for example, the millions murdered as kulaks were murdered. A religion that claimed that the Catholic Church was protected from doing evil by God, that the Catholic Church was responsible for the killing of Bruno and that killing Bruno was a crime have problems. Many other religious people who believe that God will prevent their leaders from certain crimes and errors have problems every time one of them is caught. To have problems of this kind requires a certain complex of beliefs, but such complexes are relatively common. If certain people were found to have committed certain crimes, it would disconcert me a lot.