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jackgoss 's review for:
I found Galileo's Daughter to be both slow and fascinating. Or rather, it lead me to several fascinating thoughts, mostly more about the time period than the actual book/story, and mostly rage-filled. Everything I have to say is more about the time period described in the book than about the book itself.
The book itself: not a page-turner.
Let me just be strait and say: I'm really glad that it is 2010 and not 1610.
I'm really grateful that I live in the US and not a church-state. And I really really am motivated to continue supporting the separation of church and state in every single aspect of life.
I am thankful for freedom of speech. Thankful that writers and scientists and thinkers are not censored by a church.
I am thankful that it is no longer deemed acceptable (and celebrated even by the writer of this book) to imprison pre-teens in convents where they will be forced to live in abject poverty, endure malnourishment, perform unlimited manual labor, Catholicism, imprisonment and alternating celibacy/sexual abuse by priests for the rest of their lives!
I am shocked by the gall of someone who would imprison his daughters and then ask those daughters to do his damn laundry and manage his household and feel compassionate that he's on house arrest on his estate with plenty to eat and visitors and servants. And that his daughter did those things happily.
I don't understand the concept of doing someone's penance for them.
I don't understand the concept of respecting a church/organization that refuses to acknowledge the obvious just because it disagrees with something someone said once.
I don't understand the concept of being kicked out of believing something. In fact, this idea of religion as something you can be kicked out of is a huge and interesting concept.
I don't understand the concept of taking the Bible as fact.
I am horrified by the plague.
I do not and will not believe that church officials are particularly religious/good/spiritual...
What on earth were they teaching in universities before the understandings of physics that Galileo introduced. They even had complicated degree programs and credit requirements and all that stuff we have now... But they taught engineering without the concept of gravity, and medicine without the concepts of germs and with the nonsense of astrology! Makes you wonder what kind of bogus we're teaching each other these days.
I am amazed that anyone lived to be 70 years old when they were treating major diseases with candied oranges.
The book itself: not a page-turner.
Let me just be strait and say: I'm really glad that it is 2010 and not 1610.
I'm really grateful that I live in the US and not a church-state. And I really really am motivated to continue supporting the separation of church and state in every single aspect of life.
I am thankful for freedom of speech. Thankful that writers and scientists and thinkers are not censored by a church.
I am thankful that it is no longer deemed acceptable (and celebrated even by the writer of this book) to imprison pre-teens in convents where they will be forced to live in abject poverty, endure malnourishment, perform unlimited manual labor, Catholicism, imprisonment and alternating celibacy/sexual abuse by priests for the rest of their lives!
I am shocked by the gall of someone who would imprison his daughters and then ask those daughters to do his damn laundry and manage his household and feel compassionate that he's on house arrest on his estate with plenty to eat and visitors and servants. And that his daughter did those things happily.
I don't understand the concept of doing someone's penance for them.
I don't understand the concept of respecting a church/organization that refuses to acknowledge the obvious just because it disagrees with something someone said once.
I don't understand the concept of being kicked out of believing something. In fact, this idea of religion as something you can be kicked out of is a huge and interesting concept.
I don't understand the concept of taking the Bible as fact.
I am horrified by the plague.
I do not and will not believe that church officials are particularly religious/good/spiritual...
What on earth were they teaching in universities before the understandings of physics that Galileo introduced. They even had complicated degree programs and credit requirements and all that stuff we have now... But they taught engineering without the concept of gravity, and medicine without the concepts of germs and with the nonsense of astrology! Makes you wonder what kind of bogus we're teaching each other these days.
I am amazed that anyone lived to be 70 years old when they were treating major diseases with candied oranges.