Debunking the Galileo Myth

We find this war advertised in many of the leading atheist tracts such as those by Richard Dawkins, Victor Stenger, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Every few months one of the leading newsweeklies does a story on this subject. Little do the peddlers of this paradigm realize that they are victims of nineteenth-century atheist propaganda.

About a hundred years ago, two anti-religious bigots named John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White wrote books promoting the idea of an irreconcilable conflict between science and God. The books were full of facts that have now been totally discredited by scholars. But the myths produced by Draper and Dickson continue to be recycled. They are believed by many who consider themselves educated, and they even find their way into the textbooks. In this article I expose several of these myths, focusing especially on the Galileo case, since Galileo is routinely portrayed as a victim of religious persecution and a martyr to the cause of science.

The Flat Earth Fallacy: According to the atheist narrative, the medieval Christians all believed that the earth was flat until the brilliant scientists showed up in the modern era to prove that it was round. In reality, educated people in the Middle Ages knew that the earth was round. In fact, the ancient Greeks in the fifth century B.C. knew the earth was a globe. They didn’t need modern science to point out the obvious. They could see that when a ship went over the horizon, the hull and the mast disappear at different times. Even more telling, during an eclipse they could see the earth’s shadow on the moon. Look fellas, it’s round!

Huxley’s Mythical Put-Down: We read in various books about the great debate between Darwin’s defender Thomas Henry Huxley and poor Bishop Wilberforce. As the story goes, Wilberforce inquired of Huxley whether he was descended from an ape on his father or mother’s side, and Huxley winningly responded that he would rather be descended from an ape than from an ignorant bishop who was misled people about the findings of science. A dramatic denouement, to be sure, but the only problem is that it never happened. There is no record of it in the proceedings of the society that held the debate, and Darwin’s friend Joseph Hooker who informed him about the debate said that Huxley made no rejoinder to Wilberforce’s arguments.

Darwin Against the Christians: As myth would have it, when Darwin’s published his Origin of Species, the scientists lined up on one side and the Christians lined up on the other side. In reality, there were good scientific arguments made both in favor of Darwin and against him. The British naturalist Richard Owen, the Harvard zoologist Louis Agassiz, and the renowned physicist Lord Kelvin all had serious reservations about Darwin’s theory. Historian Gertrude Himmelfarb points out that while some Christians found evolution inconsistent with the Bible, many Christians rallied to Darwin’s side. Typical was the influential Catholic journal Dublin Review which extravagantly praised Darwin’s book while registering only minor objections.

The Experiment Galileo Didn’t Do: We read in textbooks about how Galileo went to the Tower of Pisa and dropped light and heavy bodies to the ground. He discovered that they hit the ground at the same time, thus refuting centuries of idle medieval theorizing. Actually Galileo didn’t do any such experiments; one of his students did. The student discovered what we all can discover by doing similar experiments ourselves: the heavy bodies hit the ground first! As historian of science Thomas Kuhn points out, it is only in the absence of air resistance that all bodies hit the ground at the same time.

Galileo Was the First to Prove Heliocentrism: Actually, Copernicus advanced the heliocentric theory that the sun, not the earth, is at the center, and that the earth goes around the sun. He did this more than half a century before Galileo. But Copernicus had no direct evidence, and he admitted that there were serious obstacles from experience that told against his theory. For instance, if the earth is moving rapidly, why don’t objects thrown up into the air land a considerable distance away from their starting point? Galileo defended heliocentrism, but one of his most prominent arguments was wrong. Galileo argued that the earth’s regular motion sloshes around the water in the oceans and explains the tides. In reality, tides have more to do with the moon’s gravitational force acting upon the earth.

The Church Dogmatically Opposed the New Science: In reality, the Church was the leading sponsor of the new science and Galileo himself was funded by the church. The leading astronomers of the time were Jesuit priests. They were open to Galileo’s theory but told him the evidence for it was inconclusive. This was the view of the greatest astronomer of the age, Tyco Brahe. The Church’s view of heliocentrism was hardly a dogmatic one. When Cardinal Bellarmine met with Galileo he said, “While experience tells us plainly that the earth is standing still, if there were a real proof that the sun is in the center of the universe…and that the sun goes not go round the earth but the earth round the sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and rather admit that we did not understand them than declare an opinion to be false which is proved to be true. But this is not a thing to be done in haste, and as for myself, I shall not believe that there are such proofs until they are shown to me.” Galileo had no such proofs.

Galileo Was A Victim of Torture and Abuse: This is perhaps the most recurring motif, and yet it is entirely untrue. Galileo was treated by the church as a celebrity. When summoned by the Inquisition, he was housed in the grand Medici Villa in Rome. He attended receptions with the Pope and leading cardinals. Even after he was found guilty, he was first housed in a magnificent Episcopal palace and then placed under “house arrest” although he was permitted to visit his daughters in a nearby convent and to continue publishing scientific papers.

The Church Was Wrong To Convict Galileo of Heresy: But Galileo was neither charged nor convicted of heresy. He was charged with teaching heliocentrism in specific contravention of his own pledge not to do so. This is a charge on which Galileo was guilty. He had assured Cardinal Bellarmine that given the sensitivity of the issue, he would not publicly promote heliocentrism. Yet when a new pope was named, Galileo decided on his own to go back on his word. Asked about this in court, he said his Dialogue on the Two World Systems did not advocate heliocentrism. This is a flat-out untruth as anyone who reads Galileo’s book can plainly see. Even Galileo’s supporters, and there were many, found it difficult to defend him at this point.

What can we conclude from all this? Galileo was right about heliocentrism, but we know that only in retrospect because of evidence that emerged after Galileo’s death. The Church should not have tried him at all, although Galileo’s reckless conduct contributed to his fate. Even so, his fate was not so terrible. Historian Gary Ferngren concludes that “the traditional picture of Galileo as a martyr to intellectual freedom and as a victim of the church’s opposition to science has been demonstrated to be little more than a caricature.” Remember this the next time you hear some half-educated atheist rambling on about “the war between religion and science.”

Twisting the Knife
How Galileo Brought His Troubles with the Church on Himself
By Wil Milan

If you ask people what Galileo Galilei is famous for, most will say that he invented the telescope, used it to prove the earth goes around the sun, and that the Catholic Church condemned him for his discoveries. That much is common knowledge, no?

In fact, none of those things is true.

Galileo did not invent the telescope. When and where the telescope was invented is not certain, but what is certain is that in 1609 Galileo heard about the new invention and made one for himself. Soon he turned it on the heavens, and it was at that moment that his destiny turned to fame.

Every night brought new discoveries. He discovered that the Milky Way is not a soft band of light but a cloud of millions and millions of stars, that the moon is covered with craters, that Venus has phases like the moon, even that the sun has spots on its face. (Looking at the sun through a telescope is probably what doomed Galileo to blindness later in his life.) Excited beyond measure by his discoveries, Galileo in 1610 published a little book, Siderius Nuncius (The Starry Messenger), detailing his discoveries.

The Starry Messenger made Galileo an overnight celebrity, and his discoveries did not go unnoticed by officials of the Catholic Church, many of whom were scholarly individuals with an interest in the sciences. Some of the leading cardinals of the Church were fellow members of the scientific society to which Galileo belonged and took great interest and pride in the discoveries of their most famous member.

The Church also lauded Galileo publicly. He had a friendly audience with Pope Paul V, and in 1611 the Jesuit Roman College held a day of ceremonies to honor Galileo. When in 1614 a Dominican monk criticized Galileo from the pulpit, the leader of the Dominicans reprimanded the monk and apologized to Galileo on behalf of the entire order.

What did get Galileo into a bit of hot water with the Church was a conclusion he drew from one of his telescopic discoveries: He discovered that Jupiter has four moons that orbit around it just as the moon does the earth. He was fascinated by this, and from this and from observing the phases of Venus (which indicated that Venus orbits the sun, not the earth) he concluded that the earth goes around the sun (a view known as heliocentrism), not the sun around the earth (known as geocentrism).

Today Galileo's conclusion seems obvious. But it was not obvious at the time, and the truth is that Galileo was jumping to conclusions unsupported by the facts. The fact that four moons orbit Jupiter does not in any way prove that the earth goes around the sun and neither does the fact that Venus shows phases as it orbits the sun.

A popular theory at the time (known as the Tychoan theory after Tycho Brahe, the famous Danish astronomer who had formulated it) proposed that all the planets orbit the sun, and the sun with its retinue of planets then orbits the earth. This theory explained Galileo's observations quite well, and many pointed that out to Galileo. But Galileo insisted that what he had found was proof of the earth orbiting the sun. He eventually turned out to be right, but what he had at the time was not proof.

It was that lack of proof, along with his own abrasive personality, that precipitated his troubles with the Church. Galileo was known for his arrogant manner, and during his career there were a great number of people whom he had slighted, insulted, or in some way made into enemies. In 1615 some of them saw a chance to get back at Galileo by accusing him of heresy for his assertion that heliocentrism was proven fact. And so it was that the Church was prompted to inquire whether Galileo was holding views contrary to Scripture.

It must be pointed out that at the time the Church did not have an official position on whether the sun goes around the earth or vice versa. Though geocentrism was the prevailing view, both views were widely held, and it was a matter of frequent debate among the science-minded.

Indeed, most of the resistance to heliocentrism came not from the Church but from the universities. Within the Church some believed heliocentrism to be contrary to the Bible, others believed it was not. In fact, Galileo had wide support within the Church, and Jesuit astronomers were among the first to confirm his discoveries.

So when Galileo was accused of statements contrary to Scripture, the matter was referred to Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, the Church's Master of Controversial Questions (quite a title, isn't it?). After careful study of the matter and of Galileo's evidence, Cardinal Bellarmine-who was later canonized and made a doctor of the Church-concluded that Galileo had not contradicted Scripture. But he did admonish Galileo not to teach that the earth moves around the sun unless he could prove it. Not an unreasonable admonition, really, but it had the effect of muzzling Galileo on the matter, because by then he realized he really did not have proof, though he still thought he was right.

And so it was that Galileo chafed under the cardinal's admonition for most of a decade, until in 1623 the luckiest event in his life occurred: Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, a member of Galileo's scientific society and a great fan of Galileo, became Pope Urban VIII.

This was Galileo's dream come true: a pope who was learned in the sciences, who had not only read all of Galileo's works but was a friend and admirer as well. Galileo was soon summoned to Rome for an audience with the Pope to discuss the latest in astronomy, and Galileo took the opportunity to ask the Pope for his blessing to write a book about the motions of the solar system.

Pope Urban VIII readily agreed to Galileo's request, with one condition: The book must present a balanced view of both heliocentrism and geocentrism. The Pope also asked Galileo to mention the Pope's personal view of the matter, which was that bodies in the heavens perhaps move in ways that are not understood on earth (not an unreasonable view at the time). Galileo agreed, and set forth to write his book.

Had Galileo written his book as promised there would have been no problem. But as he had many times before, Galileo was bent not only on arguing his case but on humiliating those who disagreed with him, and he wrote a book far different from what he had promised.

As was common at the time, he wrote the book in the form of a discussion among three men: one a proponent of heliocentrism, one a proponent of geocentrism, and an interested bystander. Unfortunately, the "dialogue" was one-sided-Galileo portrayed the proponent of heliocentrism as witty, intelligent, and well-informed, with the bystander often persuaded by him, while the proponent of geocentrism (whom Galileo named "Simplicius") was portrayed as slow-witted, often caught in his own errors, and something of a dolt. This was hardly a balanced presentation of views.

But Galileo's greatest mistake was his final twisting of the knife: He fulfilled his promise to mention the Pope's view of the matter, but he did so by putting the Pope's words in the mouth of the dim-witted Simplicius. This was no subtle jab-the Pope's views were well-known, and everyone immediately realized that it was a pointed insult. This was too much for the Pope to bear. He was furious, and Galileo was summoned to Rome to explain himself.

This time things did not go well for Galileo. He was charged with a number of offenses, and though he was not imprisoned or tortured, he was shown the implements of torture. Galileo, by then an old man, was terrified, and agreed to something of a plea bargain: In return for publicly recanting his heliocentric view, he was allowed to return home with a sentence of permanent house arrest. He lived out his remaining years in his home, eventually going blind. Curiously, it was during his years of house arrest that he wrote his finest work, a book dealing with motion and inertia that is a cornerstone of modern physics.

It's interesting to note that during all of Galileo's conflicts with the Church, other astronomers, including the equally famous Johannes Kepler, were openly writing and teaching heliocentrism. Kepler even worked out and published the equations that describe the orbits of the planets about the sun. Yet he never had the problems Galileo did, in part because he had less to do with the Catholic Church but also because he did not have Galileo's biting arrogance.

So it was that Galileo's spiteful manner, his knack for turning even his best friends into enemies, repeatedly got him in trouble. His accomplishments cannot be overstated-Galileo is truly one of the giants of science-but in recounting his famous run-in with the Church, it's also important to remember that the root of his problems were not his scientific views but his own unbridled arrogance.

Wil Milan is an astrophotographer based in Arizona.Though he is not a Catholic, he takes great interest in the history of astronomy. Some of his work can be seen on the World Wide Web at www.astrophotographer.com.

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Many people have uncritically accepted the idea that there is a longstanding war between science and religion.