Tomorrow, February 17, 2013, marks the 413th anniversary of the superstition based brutal murder of the freethinking philosopher Giordano Bruno who was burned alive by the Catholic Church. Bruno's crime/sin was that he openly embraced and used his God-given reason and he openly encouraged others to do the same. Since Christianity exists in strong and obvious violation of our innate God-given reason the Catholic Church had Bruno arrested for heresy, kept him in deplorable conditions locked up in a prison for eight long years before burning him alive.
Some of the ideas Bruno had that so upset the Christians was that he agreed with Copernicus that the Sun does NOT orbit the Earth but that the Earth orbits the Sun. Bruno went even further than Copernicus and believed and taught that the Sun is simply one star of countless other stars in the vast Universe. Bruno rightly believed that the Universe is full of stars like our Sun which have planets orbiting them. He also believed that we are not the only intelligent life in the vast Universe. All of these ideas greatly upset the Christians, from the Protestants in the north of Europe to the Catholics in the south.
Bruno's ideas and teachings directly tied to theology which greatly upset all Christians including the Roman Inquisition included the belief that Jesus is not God and that Mary was not a virgin. His rejection of the Catholic superstition of transubstantiation (that the communion wafer literally turns into the body and blood of Jesus after it is swallowed by the faithful) put Bruno beyond redemption in the eyes of the Roman Inquisition. As recently as the year 2000, which was a jubilee year of forgiveness for the Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II refused to pardon or forgive Bruno as he had Galileo seven years earlier. The Catholic Church said that Bruno had deviated too far from Christian doctrine to receive a Christian pardon. And on top of this, Bruno's inquisitor, Cardinal Bellarmine, was made a saint by the Catholic Church in 1930.
A teaching of Bruno's which is important for all Deists and freethinkers to keep in mind and to act upon is, "Whoever waits for time is wasting time. If I wait for time, time does not wait for me." This is a profound call to action for all Deists and freethinkers! Make it a point to bring Bruno up in conversation with your family and friends, especially on February 17th, and let them know what a true God-loving hero Bruno was and the example he has given us all to stand for what is right in the face of "revealed"/hearsay religions and popular opinion. The future of Deism depends upon it!
God gave us reason, not religion; Deism: A Revolution in Religion, A Revolution in You; An Answer to C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity; The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition
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