Thanks to the History Channel I discovered that on April 12, 1633:
Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei [went] on trial in Rome for challenging Church orthodoxy, postulating that the Earth revolves around the sun. Chief inquisitor Father Vincenzo Maculano da Firenzuol found Galileo guilty of heresy. The astronomer spent the remainder of his days under house arrest.
If you’ve spent any time around the debate between science and religion, you’ve heard this story at least once. We’re told Galileo was a man whose scientific discovery went against the backward understanding of the Church, which led to his persecution. The problem is that this is not the full story and twists what really happened in unnecessary ways. It is unfortunate that the History Channel has decided to go along with the partial story, and not the full story.
So what exactly happened? Galileo, who was a Christian and believed in Scripture, did postulate that the Earth revolves around the sun. Yet this was first controversial with the philosophers and academic élite who held to an Aristotelian model (the Earth is the center of the universe), not the Church. The Aristotelian view had first been adopted by science, and then the Church. Isn’t it interesting that the scientists of the day were the first to take offense to Galileo’s findings because it challenged their long-held beliefs?
John Lennox, in a lecture he gave at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics, astutely summarized what happened:
Here was Galileo, who challenged science that the Church had bought into. A believer [in the Bible] challenged a scientific paradigm that Christians [had] believed… it wasn’t the Bible he was arguing with, but a particular interpretation of Scripture, adopted because of the dominant world picture (Aristotle’s view) which people were reading into the Bible.
In other words, Galileo first challenged the understanding of science and then the Church. In the process he irritated many people due to his biting rhetoric and willingness to mock those who disagreed with him, most notably the Pope. Yet he eventually helped both scientists and the Church to interpret natural and special revelation more accurately.
The main point is that the issue at stake was never science vs. religion.
If you want to learn more of the historical details surround the Galileo controversy I recommend God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God, by John Lennox.
*Cross-posted at Penny of a Thought
Sarah, you state The main point is that the issue at stake was never science vs. religion.
This ‘main point’ you state is factually wrong. The Galileo affair is exactly about science vs. religion.
This affair began to reveal why religion and science as methods of inquiry into figuring out how reality works and by what mechanisms it operates are simply incompatible.
Sorry to be the bearer of such bad news.
But this incompatibility is made clear when there is a conflict in claims. The ‘main point’ illuminated by the Galileo affair was that religious belief then as now has no means at its disposal to demonstrate the truth of its claims and religious authorities will use coercion in place of compelling evidence adduced from reality to suit not what’s true, not what’s knowable, but its own dogmatic authority.
This is the danger religious belief brings to the table of seeking knowledge. The danger is ubiquitous and yet in spite of millennia of evidence to show us this everlasting danger, people continue to peddle the notion that there is no incompatibility, no danger at all! In fact religion and science are friends who work well together and help inform each other… in spite of the fact that all knowledge about reality is always a one way street – from science to religion. This is a clue…
Although Galileo was not particularly sympathetic toward the Catholic Church, he was not an atheist or secular humanist. He in fact believed in God and this belief most definitely inspired him. There have always been those who have found their self estranged from the religious powers that be and Rome certainly had it’s share of dissenters. Galileo stated, “God is known by nature in his works, and by doctrine in his revealed word.” That was not only a declaration of faith, it was a declaration of revealed Truth. Such a comment by itself, would have been enough to rile Rome, whose “traditions” were declared to have authority over Scripture. But the interesting detail here is that it was Galileo himself that accused the secular philosophers of his day of opposing him, and he claimed that it was actually they who aroused the Church to put an end to his work. You can read it in his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina. The whole notion of pitting religion against science is nothing but pure atheist propaganda born in the bowels of ignorance and fueled by pop culture. Heliocentrism itself was neither derived from the Bible or Rome, it came from Aristotle. Rome found itself (as usual) in cahoots with the elites of it’s day and made their tradition the Gospel. In the meantime, the heathen continue to rage and so do the atheists.
I find it interesting that how one understands this event (religion versus science) is predictive of one’s belief in creationism (and denying human caused climate change).
I translate this post into Portuguese: http://logosapologetica.com/historia-informada-galileu-igreja-ciencia/#axzz2jIMNvNep
Really, really good article and in need of attention. But, this too is only part of the story. In his book, God’s Undertaker, Lennox also points out that it was the secular elite who brought their complaint to the church in the first place.
Secular elites. I like that phrase. As in, people economically and politically independent of being influenced by such a trivial concern as the Church and its paltry influence. Yes, Europe in the late 16th, early 17th century was just teeming with these secular elites! And they had such influence in the hierarchy of the Church, too… perhaps enough to suggest that Galileo was too threatening to leave alone. And that Lennox – a mathematician – clarifies what so many historians have muddled – including Galileo’s muddled writings on the matter and the muddled ‘court’ documents – is not just long overdue but a real breath of fresh air. Thank goodness his perspective is so untainted by – oh I don’t know, maybe… his christian allegiance? Naw. Unlike those secular elites who continue to suggest that Galileo’s trial might have had something to do with his findings contrary to scripture in order to promote secularism and vilify the Church for stuff it actually has done, his religious belief elevates him by fiat to be at least an equivalent historian we should take seriously.
Right. Good call.
Well, tlideb, since you seem to know so much more than the historians, why aren’t you writing your own book rather than wasting your time on such irrelevant blogs with petty comments and ignorant readers. Oh, and please, spare us your prattle! Go find yourself a good history book. And, do yourself another favor, stop believing everything your college professor says.
I agree with Dee. But surely there is another issue here, and it comes close to the present ( and almost constant ) desire to bash the Catholic Church at every turn.
Sure the priestly hierarchy of the day got it wrong and placed dogma before reality – and find me a generation in which this has not happened.
The other issue is programmes on both TV and radio that use ‘sound bites’ that are only but tiny capsules of history to get their message across asap. This may make for exciting, sometimes sensational, filming et al, but in popularising – ‘sexing-up’ even – to catch an audience, the truth and reality of history is so often lost. At best it is tacky broadcasting, at worst it is appalling education.
When the catholic church supports and protects those who commit crimes – especially abusing children in their charge – it becomes not just a criminal organization but a transnational criminal organization. Don’t you think it has earned a bit of ‘bashing’ when those who made these decisions are then turned today into saints? What message does this send to those tens of thousands of victims around the world? That the church issorry? Really, really sorry?
Yeah, right.
I didn’t realize, Michael, that in your mind the the real crime here is criticizing the church.
Surely in this case the issue at stake was science vs.
religion. On what other grounds was Galileo convicted as a heretic except on
the grounds of religious dogma.
Her (and Lennox’s) point is that it was a matter of upsetting the establishment, and it started with the academic elite, not the Catholic Church. The church was merely a victim of its culture and pride. Notice, they did not condemn him to death as they did William Tyndale or let him rot in a cold damp prison, rather they gave him the lenient sentence of house arrest. But, notice, it was the result of pressure from the secular elite that roused them to take any action at all. And, the initial problem stemmed from Aristotelian science, NOT the Bible. Therefore, it was in fact, the establishment vs. science, for the love of pride and power.