Lazy Myth: Christianity oppresses scientific truth and is closed-minded, aka the Galileo case
Posted by Mathew | August 26, 2008 | 1 Comment
As Christians, it seems we are forbidden to ever broach the topic of who the Western world’s fathers of science were. Heaven forbid, especially, that we mention that many of them were faithful, Bible-believing Christians and then follow this up with the bold (but factual) claim that the methods employed by modern science today, and that science as an established and sustainable institution, happened within only one period – and in one part of the world – in history: that of Europe, in the period then known as Christendom.
I made the fatal mistake of dropping this claim into a little discussion on a related topic and it wasn’t long before someone piped in with their contrary piece of wisdom: “Just ask Galileo what he thought about Christendom [sic] great open mindedness in the pursuit of HOW to think instead of WHAT to think.”
Well, apparently it is beyond us Christians to point to anything that actually casts Christianity in a positive light, let alone associates Christianity directly with beneficial legacies such as what the institution of science has achieved during its history. Oh, and for good measure, it is equally apparent that Christians are solely concerned about what to think, instead of thinking for themselves. Yes, Christianity, that institution that places the Bible as its authority and is commanded by that authority to subdue and rule over (Genesis 1:26-28) and also maintain (Genesis 2:15) the things of the earth is oft labeled by anti-theists as irrational, baseless and without substance.
Funnily enough, it was out of the well spring of scripture passages like these, as well as the notion that the order of the universe and all within it is rational because God, its creator, is rational, that scientific methods were developed by Bible-believing scientists. (Incidentally, can science function at all without the assumption of a rational universe? After all, you cannot empirically prove rationality, right? And if it didn’t appear to rational, how could you understand it to be so?) So I don’t know why it is that myths abound that Christianity and science are mutually exclusive – one does not necessarily cancel the other out and nor does one debunk the other.
So what about our friend, Galileo? According to the author of the quote I gave above, Galileo deemed the Church as full of bigots and closed-minded men. Further, and using some paraphrase and poetic-license, I could then also say that the author of the same quote would label Christianity as being incompatible with science, that it refutes scientific truth, and that Christians have blind-faith – yadda yadda yadda. It is people like this who may also be attributed as saying that absolute faith in the Bible prohibits and clouds the scientific mind, stifling and hindering true scientific progress!
At which point, I wonder, if such ‘open-minded’ people understand the phrase of ‘pot – kettle – black’? For we all start with our own presuppositions, overlaying them onto the evidence we have at hand, do we not?
Lifelong atheist Arthur Koestler wrote an interesting account of the Galileo case. Utilising many historical records containing letters and papers written by Galileo himself, as well as official Vatican records and other 3rd party sources, Koestler came to the conclusion that the vaunted ‘persecution’ of Galileo by the fifteenth-century Catholic Church was farcical.
I believe the idea that Galileo’s trial was a kind of Greek tragedy, a showdown between blind faith and enlightened reason, to be naively erroneous (Koestler, The Sleepwalkers: A Histroy of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe).
So, unlike today’s militant atheists, and certainly unlike my friend who screamed that Galileo wouldn’t have thought much of the Church’s open-mindedness towards science, Koestler reckons that not only has a mountain been made out of a mole-hill, but that Galileo’s story has been mythologised almost beyond any recognition of fact.
On reading Dinesh D’Souza’s summation of the affair in his book, What’s so great about Christianity, he quotes Historian Lindberg as saying: There was no warfare between science and the church. In fact, continues D’Souza, “historians are virtually unanimous in holding that the whole science versus religion story is a nineteenth-century fabrication” (p.102).
It would seem, then, that only the likes of Hitchens, Dennett and Dawkins would disagree with learned historians. One can only imagine they believe this because facts really shouldn’t get in the way of a good story – and, tongue-in-cheek, we may also ask the same of Darwinian evolution theory. What’s a few facts between friends when personal accountability can be done away with by a few stretches of the imagination, eh?
The whole crux of the so-called Inquisition against Galileo was really based around Galileo’s insistence that his heliocentric theory (that the earth and other planetary bodies orbited around the sun) was actual fact, despite there being absolutely no evidence in his day to support it. Indeed, the prevailing scientific community of Galileo’s day held the Ptolemic system (the geocentric theory, that all heavenly bodies, including the sun, orbit around the earth). The Ptolemic system was further bolstered by the fact that, as observers on earth, the sun does rise and set and that we do not feel the earth as moving but rather as stationary beneath our feet. While Galileo’s theory (actually, it was Copernicus’s theory, but Galileo built on it) was correct, he had absolutely no proof and, in his arrogance, for many years he refused to offer proof to the Inquisition that his theory was correct. In short, Galileo was obnoxious and vain and above all very stubborn in character.
It might suprising to learn of this whole affair that Galileo had admirers within the Catholic Church, let alone the Jesuits who were leaning towards heliocentricity (and apparently taught this to the Chinese on missionary trips to China). One of these admirers, who was in a very influential position himself in the Vatican, was none other than Cardinal Bellarmine – who headed the Inquisition against Galileo. Bellarmine, in regards to heliocentricism, is on record as saying:
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 does not go round the earth but that 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 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 (Robert Bellarmine: Saint and Scholar, James Broderick, p.360-361).
Notice there is no charge of heresy against Galileo. Nor is the Church simply insisting that Galileo’s theory is wrong on the basis that it refuses and chooses to believe otherwise to remain in harmony with Biblical teaching, but it is the fact that during the whole trial of Galileo, there was no sufficient proof of the heliocentric view. (Even the scientific community of the day clung to the Ptolemic view – it wasn’t just the Church.) Further, Bellarmine is very above board and is charitable toward Galileo that should Galileo’s theory be proven to be true, then the Church would need to re-evaluate its interpretation of the scriptures. The reason for this latter stance is simple: the whole presupposition of the Christian in the field of science is that it (science) can never contradict what is in scripture.
So here’s our ‘pot calling kettle black’ situation: the atheist demands that Christians be coherent and follow sound scientific methodologies when performing science or any investigative study … but grossly neglect the fact that this is precisely the manner in which the Catholic Church addressed the claims of Galileo in the fifteenth-century, and that this continues to be the manner in which Christian scientists go about their fields of study today!
Oh, if only some atheists would take their own advice and look into the whole ‘church vs science’ nonsense to see it for what it really is: ignorance of a high order.
For some more, in-depth, online resources/articles regarding the story of Galileo, I would encourage you to browse through the following:
- The Galileo affair: history or heroic hagiography?
- Medieval Synthesis: Modern Fragmentation
- SCIENCE AND FAITH (a nice, short and succinct summary)
On a closing note, Galileo did eventually relent and attempted to prove his theory and provided evidence in support. Unfortunately, his method of proof was grievously flawed (he claimed that the tides were influenced by the earth’s movements, not the moon), which further undermined his claim. Evidence did eventually surface to support heliocentricity, but this did not become available until some 50 to 100 years after Galileo’s case.
The so called contradictions of heliocentricity portrayed in the Bible are nothing more than a man’s common day observations of the world in which in inhabits. We certainly don’t go calling up television networks when the weather man tells us that the sun will rise at 5.45am tomorrow morning … so the vernacular is still in use.
Read some previous Lazy Myths:
Related Thoughts out !oud posts
Tags: atheist > christian > Christianity > church > Dawkins > Dennett > evidence > Hitchens > lazy myth > Religion
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May 11th, 2009 @ 11:47 pm
[...] and don’t bother with the mythical accounts of Galileo; it’s well documented that modern day retellings are horribly biased and nonfactual in many [...]