Posted on 02/23/2019 4:49:34 PM PST by pcottraux
The Truth About Galileo
By Philip Cottraux
Galileo. His name invokes the image of a brave scientist standing up against religious authority. The story goes that he discovered the earth is revolving around the sun, proving we are not the center of the universe. The Catholic church, threatened by this, had him arrested and burned at the stake until he recanted his findings. Galileo is remembered as some sort of atheist folk hero, suffering the consequences for his heroic stance against superstition.
This is the version most people learn in school. I remember it from high school world history class. Galileo has become a go-to accusation against Christianity, as if his findings represent the first step in the inevitable demise of religion. But like many atheist rewrites of history, this is largely a myth.
Galileo Galilei was born in Italy in 1564. The part of the story most atheists leave out is that the brilliant astronomer was a devout Catholic his entire life. In 1608, word got out of Hans Lippershey’s invention of the telescope in the Netherlands, opening up a never-before seen window to the heavens. Not content to repeat Lippershey’s results, Galileo invented his own more advanced telescope.
To say that Galileo’s subsequent discoveries weren’t revolutionary would be wrong. For centuries, mankind believed that the celestial bodies were perfect, governed by different physical laws than Earth. Galileo was the first to observe sunspots (Isaac Newton would take this further, proposing that the law of gravity is universal). But perhaps more significantly, he found four moons orbiting Jupiter (we now know Jupiter actually has sixty moons), and proposed that Earth itself is logically revolving around the sun, not the other way around.
This idea wasn’t really new. In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus proposed a similar heliocentric model. Galileo only proved it. There is some atheist lore about Copernicus also being a “martyr for science,” but this is even less credible. Copernicus was also a devout Catholic and his proposal was hardly controversial; in fact, the church barely noticed it. Since he died of natural causes the same year his theory was published, there is obviously no evidence of any persecution.
So why was Galileo’s discovery so upsetting? According to the atheists: “Because Christianity is superstitious and religion=bad, ha ha.” But there’s far more to the story that needs to be unpacked. The first problem for Galileo was that his findings couldn’t have come at a worse time because of a recent seismic change: the Reformation. Protestants felt a heliocentric model contradicted the following Bible verses:
-Psalm 93:1: The Lord reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; the Lord is clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself: the world also is established, that it cannot be moved.
-Psalm 104:5: Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed forever.
-Ecclesiastes 1:5: The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
Since these scriptures are in poetic books, Christians today have no trouble interpreting them as mere expressions by ancient people with limited knowledge of the cosmos. But in Galileo’s time, the Catholic church was on edge about losing members, and there was a great fear that his findings would cause more defections.
The other question that needs addressing is why the church believed in an earth-centric solar system in the first place; and it’s not because of the preceding Bible verses. The back-story is even more complicated. While atheists laugh at Medieval Christianity for believing the sun revolves around the earth, they ignore that this came from the influence of the Greek philosopher Aristotle.
Aristotle is one of history’s greatest thinkers; his contributions to scientific philosophy are immeasurable. He also more or less created the field of biology; his rigorous classification of organisms was so ahead of its time, it’s still in use 2,300 years later. Aristotelian theory was incorporated into Christianity by Thomas Aquinas, another of history’s great theologians, in thirteenth century.
However, most of Aristotle’s astronomical ideas haven’t held up as well. He thought the celestial bodies were perfect, revolved around the earth, and were governed by separate laws of physics. One has to take into consideration that ancient Greece was limited in its observations of the heavens. Pragmatically accepting new findings and unemotional abandoning disproved ideas is crucial to scientific philosophy. This approach makes science constantly self-correcting, leading to the wonders it has given us for the past millennia. Sadly, Aristotle himself would have likely been thrilled at Galileo’s discovery and would want the world to abandon his astronomical model in favor of it. To label new evidence heresy was completely missing the point.
Even still, Galileo wasn’t denounced initially, but met with mixed reactions. Jesuit astronomers accepted the heliocentric model. But the next problem on Galileo’s were enemies in the church with a vested interest in his downfall now had the perfect opportunity to strike. Chief among these was Father Caccini, who publicly insisted “Geometry is of the devil and mathematicians should be banished as the authors of all heresies.” Interestingly enough, while the charge of “atheistic discoveries” would come later, at first Galileo was accused of witchcraft.
Despite the controversy, the church allowed Galileo to publish his findings as long as he presented a balanced approach. His book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, was framed as a dialogue between a geocentrist and heliocentrist, moderated by an impartial narrator. But the author’s bias was obvious, to say the least. The book just added fuel to the fire.
In 1633, Galileo was tried before the Roman Inquisition. He was ordered to “abjure, curse, and detest” his life’s work. His publications were banned and he was placed under house arrest. While this is certainly unfortunate, the degree to which he was persecuted has been largely exaggerated over the years. He was paid full pension and the story of him being burned at the stake until he renounced his views is pure fiction (this was actually the fate of Giordano Bruno in 1600 for teaching pantheism).
The long-term effect on humanity is also misrepresented; the traditional claim is that egomaniacal mankind thought the universal revolved around us until science said otherwise. But while the sun revolving around the earth seems to have been common, typically Christians viewed God at the top of the universe and the world being just above hell at the bottom. Earth was viewed as a sort of cosmic dumpster. Far from “putting man in his place” Galileo demonstrated that the celestial bodies are imperfect, and finding our place in the solar system actually elevated mankind to a higher state.
Ultimately, Christianity was not harmed by Galileo. Like most scientific discoveries, the church overall adapted and survived. Other than some fringe groups (such as the appalling recent flat-earth movement), few are left who question the scientific consensus of the earth’s tiny but special place in the universe. Sadly, because of historical misconceptions and downright lies about cases like Galileo, the battle lines have been drawn now more than ever. Religion should not be afraid of science, or vice versa nor science religion. The two coexisting in harmony will make a better world for us all.
I saw Galileo’s finger preserved in a jar in Florence (Italy, not SC).
I heard that might be Scaramouche’s thing, but you’d have to ask him.
Real life or fantasy???
I love history when it has been modified, revised and sanitized.
The Heliocentric solar system was discovered by Aristarchos in 200BC. Copernicus and Galileo only made it popular in the Renaissance.
I don’t know.... Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see.
Any way the wind blows doesn't really matter....
This thread is fine where it is.
If it was in the Religion Forum, your post would have to be removed.
I am not impressed by this piece. Anyone who doesn’t know who Galileo was and can’t keep him straight from Giordano Bruno who actually was burned at the stake isn’t qualified to say anything about the true story of anybody. And secondly it’s been 600 years so most of it is hearsay and not admissible in court. And thirdly it resembles a huge wall of words which you can’t be sure are even true since a glaring error in the very beginning throws off any sense of credibility. And it’s too long. And we know how bad Trump is but let’s stick to his deeds and not the words he is quoted as saying. Same with Galileo.
Just to be clear, the center of the universe is precisely where I am at any given moment. Thank you.
Galileo merely used existing tech (lenses) to recreate something that had long been in use - the telescope which dates back at least to Greek times possibly to Old Kingdom Egypt.
His actual crime was speaking out in a time when the Church was vehemently anti-science and had a vested interest in its particular meme of the Universe.
You start out with a false statement. He was never burned. Not even a little bit.
He was imprisoned, and then given house arrest.
“Since these scriptures are in poetic books, Christians today have no trouble interpreting them as mere expressions by ancient people with limited knowledge of the cosmos”
Christians today have been blinded. The Bible is a flat earth book from Genesis to Revelation.
"...The Catholic church, threatened by this, had him arrested and burned at the stake until he recanted his findings...."
There is no historical document that asserts that Galileo was ever burned at the stake, even partially. His inquisition was held in the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, which is about half a block from the Pantheon. There's a lovely Michelangelo statue of Jesus on the Altar, and an obelisk on the back of an elephant done by Bernini out front. Catholics don't as a rule light bonfires to roast even heretics inside of a church. It wasn't the theory of heliocentricity that put Galileo's butt in a crack, it was his preaching that heliocentricity was a fact that contradicted the Bible. He'd have got by fine, as Copernicus did, if he just had taught that it was scientific "theory" and refrained from insisting that it was a "fact" that contradicted the divinity of the Bible.
A pity, as the earth is demonstrably not flat. What now?
You start out with a false statement. He was never burned. Not even a little bit.
am not impressed by this piece. Anyone who doesn’t know who Galileo was and can’t keep him straight from Giordano Bruno who actually was burned at the stake isn’t qualified to say anything about the true story of anybody. And secondly it’s been 600 years so most of it is hearsay and not admissible in court. And thirdly it resembles a huge wall of words which you can’t be sure are even true since a glaring error in the very beginning throws off any sense of credibility.
Hmmm...maybe you guys should read a post in its entirety before judging it? Just sayin'...
*Fist pump*
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