It’s quite possible to have the prior that the Catholic Church was not out to quash science and spread ignorance without knowing most of the arguments of the article.
There are atheists who believe “the pre-modern Catholic Church was opposed to the concept of the Earth orbiting the Sun with the deliberate purpose of hindering scientific progress and to keep the world in ignorance” as their prior belief but I don’t think that’s the prior of a majority of LW. There are reasons why two people called it a strawman.
“it successfully challenged some of the biases I held about it.” has some quality of “I have stopped beating my wife” to it.
The core issue is the prior.
It’s quite possible to have the prior that the Catholic Church was not out to quash science and spread ignorance without knowing most of the arguments of the article.
There are atheists who believe “the pre-modern Catholic Church was opposed to the concept of the Earth orbiting the Sun with the deliberate purpose of hindering scientific progress and to keep the world in ignorance” as their prior belief but I don’t think that’s the prior of a majority of LW. There are reasons why two people called it a strawman.
“it successfully challenged some of the biases I held about it.” has some quality of “I have stopped beating my wife” to it.