Adam+Mistretta+week+3

From his letter to the Grand Duchess, I gather that Galileo was clearly a man of remarkable intelligence and objectivity. Nowhere in the letter is any significant mention made of his actual in depth research into math and astronomy, but his prowess with words and his ability to rationally turn his opponents’ weapons against them demonstrates his impressive intellect. It is almost as if he is able to scientifically argue politics, something I have never seen before. His backing argument is of course that the bible is a very vague collection of stories and as such any conclusions about sciences derived from it is open to interpretation. In his own words he puts it, “If the sacred scribes had had any intention of teaching people certain arrangements and motions of the heavenly bodies, or had they wished us to derive such knowledge from the Bible, then in my opinion they would not have spoken of these matters so sparingly...” This is a very important point for him to make, but to me it also raises a question. When and why did the church start using the bible as leverage to claim they knew things about such exotic concepts as the solar system? The bible can certainly be used to facilitate power, but what power is to come from claiming knowledge about astronomy in the 17th century. To me the entire plot against Galileo makes no sense. Would it not be easier for the church to simply point out that bible does not explicitly state the sun goes around the earth, and as such science and religion do not contradict, and there’s no problem? Is it purely pride on behalf of the clergy that they cannot even slightly adjust their interpretation of a concept completely irrelevant to the validity of god? His second argument is one I find far more profound, that being the idea of why God would give us senses and the ability to learn if He only wanted us to blindly believe what we read in His holy scripture? He says, “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.” He also quotes an ecclesiastic as saying, “’ "That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven. Not how heaven goes.’" This is essential to the relationship between science and religion. According to most any religion, God created human beings in the same form we are now. We have eyes and ears and most importantly we have brains. If God gave us these brains, He gave them to us because he wanted us to learn, He wanted us to discover the laws and realties of the universe He created. Therefore by simple logic, we can conclude that if evidence exists suggesting that the church is wrong and the sun is at the center of our solar system, it should in fact be embraced as the word of god, and the church should immediately wish to correct their flawed belief, so as to please God. In this deduction we see Galileo use an impressive mix of logic, science and religion to create a bulletproof argument in defense of allowing his research to continue. Galileo also makes it very clear that he not only respects religion, but is in fact a devout believer himself. His knowledge of the saints and the gospels make it clear that it is not a charade, but that he is in fact every bit as much a believer in God as any of the clergy who denounce him. He also states that Copernicus, whose writing are banned, was a //priest// and was called upon by the Pope for his knowledge of time keeping. This so called heretic used the skills he learned through science to //strengthen// the church by putting his knowledge to practical uses. They call Galileo a heretic, when all he has done is try to understand the ways of the universe God created. In what is one small personal letter, Galileo manages to completely define the relationship which will exist between science and religion for the next several centuries. There will be those who say it is a trespass on God’s ways, and those who say they only wish to learn so that they can be closer to the God they love.