{"id":3462,"date":"2017-11-05T16:20:10","date_gmt":"2017-11-05T13:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/?p=3462"},"modified":"2020-09-02T14:52:42","modified_gmt":"2020-09-02T11:52:42","slug":"an-atheist-fable-reopening-the-galileo-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/3462\/an-atheist-fable-reopening-the-galileo-case\/","title":{"rendered":"An Atheist Fable: Reopening The Galileo Case"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dinesh D Souza, The Greatness of Christianity: Table of Contents<\/a><\/p>\n

Cf. Dinesh D’souza, What’s So Great About Christianity<\/a>, at Amazon<\/p>\n

<\/a>\t<\/p>\n

“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.” <\/em>\u2014Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers<\/em><\/p>\n

D<\/strong>ESPITE THE ROLE OF CHRISTIANITY <\/strong>in the origin and development of science, the theme of the warfare between science and religion persists. What gives this narrative its enduring power? It is the reported cases of church persecution of scientists like Copernicus and Galileo. Atheist writers have taken up this theme with a vengeance. Daniel Dennett singles out the Catholic church and faults “its unfortunate legacy of persecution of its own scientists.\u201d Bruce Jakosky writes, “Copernicus’s views were not embraced by the church; the history of his persecution is well known.” Carl Sagan portrays Galileo “in a Catholic dungeon threatened with torture” for his “heretical view that the earth moved about the sun.” Noting that Galileo was “not absolved of heresy until 1992,” Sam Harris recalls the Christian tradition of “torturing scholars to the point of madness for merely speculating about the nature of the stars.”<\/p>\n

There is a Star Wars <\/em>quality to the science versus religion narrative. It is typically portrayed as a battle between good and evil: The goodguys developed a new way of acquiring knowledge based on testing and evidence. The forces of darkness were captive to old doctrines derived from sacred books, such as the long-held belief that earth is flat. Despite their ignorance, the forces of darkness occupied the seats of political power. Fearful that their old way of superstition was threatened, the dark forces suppressed and persecuted those who dissented from orthodoxy. A terrible battle ensued. Many good people were accused of heresy merely for advancing valid scientific theories. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for saying the universe is infinite. Copernicus and Galileowere persecuted for showing that the earth revolves around the sun. Fortunately, this sad history now is behind us; the forces of light have prevailed over the forces of darkness. Today science is on the advance and religion is on the retreat. Scientists can now work unmolested and the Catholic church has even apologized for its treatment of Galileo. The moral of the story is that we should always be grateful for the rise of science and vigilant in guarding against the fanaticism of religion.<\/p>\n

This thrilling drama suffers from only one limitation: it is not true. Historian David Lindberg writes, “There was no warfare between science and the church.” Indeed, historians are virtually unanimous in holding that the whole science versus religion story is a nineteenth-century fabrication. The names of the fabricators are known. The first is John William Draper, who introduced the “warfare” model in his popular 1874 book History of the Conflict between Religion and Science. <\/em>This book is full of whoppers and lies, and is today read mostly as a case study in fin de siecle <\/em>anti-religious prejudice. The second source is Andrew Dickson White, the first president of Cornell University, whose 1896 two- volume study History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom <\/em>is a more sophisticated warfare account, but no less misleading than Draper’s.<\/p>\n

The source documents have now been discredited, but their tune continues to be sounded by leading atheist writers. This tune is now hummed throughout our modern culture, even by people who know very little about the details of the issues involved. To this day many people believe that the medieval church held that the earth was flatuntil modern science demonstrated to an exasperated clergy the roundness of the globe. In reality the ancient Greeks and the medieval Christians all knew that the earth was round. They observed that the hull of a ship sailing from shore disappears before the top of the mast. They also saw that during a lunar eclipse the earth casts a circular shadow on the moon. Dante’s medieval cosmology was based on the idea of a spherical earth. So the idea that the church or educated Christians believed in the flat-earth theory is a concoction of the nineteenth- century “warfare” propagandists.
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\nOther well-known episodes in the great war also require serious revision. Do you recall hearing about the famous debate between the bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, and Darwin’s ally Thomas Henry Huxley, in which the ignorant bishop taunted Huxley and Huxley shot back with a crushing rebuttal? “The exchange quickly became legendary,” notes Edward Larson in his book Evolution. <\/em>As Larson and others tell the story, Wilberforce inquired of Huxley whether it was through his grandfather or grandmother that he was descended from a monkey. Huxley replied with great dignity that he would rather have a miserable ape for a relative than a bishop who used the authority of his office to ridicule scientific debate on a serious question. So widely reported was this exchange that historians who checked the transcripts of the British Association were surprised to discover that it never happened. Darwin’s friend Joseph Hooker was present at the debate, and he reported to Darwin that Huxley made no response to Wilberforce’s arguments. Larson’s use of “legendary” acquires a quite literal meaning in this context.<\/p>\n

For most people, no single episode more dramatically illustrates the conflict between science and religion than the Galileo case. In the late 1930s Bertolt Brecht wrote a brilliant play, Life of Galileo, <\/em>that was made into a film in 1975 by American director Joseph Losey. Brecht’s play is the account of priestly malevolence and scientific virtue. It is a canonization of Galileo as a secular saint. And this is the place that Galileo has come to occupy in our culture today, a martyr for the cause of science.When atheist writers speak of the church’s “history” of persecution of scientists, they are usually referring to the Galileo case. Copernicus was never persecuted by the church. The freethinker Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake, but as historian Thomas Kuhn points out, “Bruno was not executed for Copernicanism but for a series of theological heresies centering on his view of the trinity.” Bruno’s execution was a terrible injustice, but it has nothing to do with the conflict between religion and science. Prior to the twentieth century and the purges of Stalin and Hitler, only one noted scientist was executed by government decree. That was the great chemist Antoine Lavoisier, a devout Catholic who was guillotined by the Jacobins during the French Revolution.<\/p>\n

So we are back to Galileo. In this chapter I want to draw on historical scholarship to reopen the Galileo case. If the atheist version of this case cannot withstand scrutiny, then the whole melodrama of science in conflict with religion is exploded as a farce. Prior to the sixteenth century, most educated people accepted the theories of the Greek astronomer Ptolemy, who held that the earth was stationary and the sun revolved around it. The geocentric universe was a classical, not a Christian, concept. The Christians accepted it, though not because of the Bible. The Bible never says that the sun revolves around the earth. It is silent on this scientific question. There are a few passages that refer to the sun rising and setting, but these can be understood as a spiritual text using ordinary understandable language. (Even your local weatherman, who knows all about the earth going around the sun, employs the same colloquial terminology: “Sunrise tomorrow will be at 5:00 Am”) The reason the Christians accepted Ptolemy was because he had a sophisticated theory that was supported by common sense and that gave reasonably accurate predictions about the motions of heavenly bodies.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, there was a Greek thinker, Aristarchus of Samos, who had proposed the heliocentric theory as far back as the third century BC. “Aristarchus has been celebrated for his anticipation of Copernicus.” historian David Lindberg writes. But were Aristarchus and his followers good scientists? To avoid the retroactive fallacy of using current knowledge to judge the merits of past scientific claims, we have to examine the data available at the time. As Lindberg puts it, “The question is not whether we <\/em>have persuasive reasons for being heliocentrists, but whether they <\/em>had any such reasons, and the answer is that they did not.”
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\nThe data right up to Galileo’s day favored Ptolemy. Kuhn notes that throughout the Middle Ages there were people who proposed the heliocentric alternative. “They were ridiculed and ignored,” Kuhn writes, adding, “the reasons for the rejection were excellent.” Consider some examples he gives. The earth does not appear to move, and we can all witness the sun rise in the morning and set in the evening. If the earth moves at high speeds around the sun, then birds and clouds and other objects not attached to the ground should be left behind. A stone hurled into the sky would land many miles away from the spot at which it was thrown, as the earth would have traveled a considerable distance while the object was in the air. Human beings standing on the ground would be flung about. As none of this was observed, the earth was held to be stationary.”<\/p>\n

Galileo was a Florentine astronomer highly respected by the Catholic church. Once a supporter of Ptolemy’s geocentric theory, Galileo became persuaded that Copernicus was right that the earth really did revolve around the sun. Copernicus had advanced his theory in 1543 in a book dedicated to the pope. Copernicus admitted that he had no physical proof, but the power of the heliocentric hypothesis was that it produced vastlybetter predictions of planetary orbits. Copernicus’s new ideas unleashed a major debate within the religious and scientific community, which at that time overlapped greatly. The prevailing view half a century later, when Galileo took up the issue, was that Copernicus had advanced an interesting but unproven hypothesis, useful for calculating the motions of heavenly bodies but not persuasive enough to jettison the geocentric theory altogether.<\/p>\n

Galileo’s contribution to the Copernican theory was significant but not decisive. This is a crucial point to keep in mind because of the elaborate mythology surrounding Galileo, mostly based on incidents that never occurred. Kuhn takes up the story we all learned in school about how Galileo went to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa and dropped light and heavy objects to the ground. He supposedly discovered that, contrary to intuition, the objects all hit the ground at the same time. One simple experiment, the story goes, had refuted a millennium of medieval theorizing.<\/p>\n

In reality, Galileo didn’t perform the experiment in Pisa or anywhere else; the experiment was done by one of his students. Moreover, the heavier bodies did actually hit the ground first. Today we understand why this was the case. Only when such experiments are conducted in the absence of air resistance do all bodies fall at the same speed. “In the everyday world,” Kuhn writes, “heavy bodies do fall faster than light ones…. Galileo’s law is more useful to science … not because it represents experience more perfectly, but because it goes behind the superficial regularity disclosed by the senses to a more essential, but hidden, aspect of motion. To verify Galileo’s law by observation demands special equipment. Galileo himself got the law not by observation … but by a chain of logical arguments.”<\/p>\n

Having developed a more powerful telescope than others of his day, Galileo made important new observations about the moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, and spots on the sun that undermined Ptolemy and were consistent with Copernican theory. Galileo took these observations to the Jesuits, who were among the leading astronomers of the day, and they agreed with him that his sightings had strengthened the case for heliocentrism. The Jesuits told Galileo that the church was divided, with many clergy supporting Ptolemy but others holding that Copernicus was right. Even so, the Jesuits concluded that the question was still open and they did not think that Galileo had clinched the case. Tyco Brahe, the greatest astronomer of the period, agreed that Galileo’s proofs were insufficient and continued to support the geocentric theory. So great was Brahe’s reputation that it prevented the conversion of many astronomers to Copernicanism until after his death.
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\nIt may surprise some readers to find out that the pope was an admirer of Galileo and a supporter of scientific research that at the time was conducted mostly in church- sponsored observatories and universities. So was the head of the Inquisition, the learned theologian Cardinal Robert Bellarmine. When Galileo’s lectures supporting the heliocentric theory were reported to the Inquisition, most likely by one of Galileo’s academic rivals in Florence, Cardinal Bellarmine met with Galileo. This was not normal Inquisition procedure, but Galileo was a celebrity. In 1616 he came to Rome with great fanfare, where he stayed at the grand Medici villa, met with the pope more than once, and attended receptions given by various bishops and cardinals.<\/p>\n

What Bellarmine observed in connection with Galileo is both memorable and telling. “While experience tells us plainly that the earth is standing still,” Bellarmine wrote, nevertheless “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 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.”<\/p>\n

This is a model of sensible procedure. Bellarmine assumed that there could be no real conflict between nature and scripture, which is what Christianity has always taught. Consequently, he argued, if we have been reading scripture one way and the natural evidence shows that we were wrong, then we need to revise our interpretation of scripture and acknowledge our mistake. But first let us make sure that there is in fact conclusive scientific proof before we start changing scriptural interpretations that have been taught for a very long time. Bellarmine proposed a solution. Given the inconclusive evidence for the theory and the sensitivity of the religious issues involved, Galileo should not teach or promote heliocentrism. Galileo, a practicing Catholic who wanted to maintain his good standing with the church, agreed. Bellarmine issued an injunction and made a record of the proceeding that went into the church files.<\/p>\n

For several years Galileo kept his word and continued his experiments and discussions without publicly advocating heliocentrism. Then he received the welcome news that Cardinal Maffeo Barberini had been named Pope Urban VIII. Barberini was a scientific “progressive,” having fought to prevent Copernicus’s work from being placed on the index of prohibited books. Equally significant, Barberini was a fan of Galileo and had even written a poem eulogizing him. Galileo was confident that now he could openly preach heliocentrism. But the new pope’s position on the subject was a complicated one. Urban VIII held that while science can make useful measurements and predictions about the universe, it cannot claim to have actual knowledge of reality known only to God. This theory, which sounds a bit strange, is actually quite close to what some physicists now believe, and as we shall see, it is entirely in line with Kant’s philosophical demonstration of the limits of reason.<\/p>\n

So when Galileo in 1632 published his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, <\/em>the church found itself in a quandary. First, Galileo claimed to have demonstrated the truth of heliocentrism, but in fact his proof was wrong. One of Galileo’s main arguments was that the rapid motion of the earth around the sun was responsible for the ocean tides. This was questionable at the time, and we now know that the moon is primarily responsible for tides. Galileo also assumed, as did Copernicus, that planets move in circular paths, even though by Galileo’s time Kepler had shown that the planetary orbits are elliptical. Galileo contended that Kepler was wrong.
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\nSecond, Galileo embarrassed the pope by constructing his “dialogue” between two figures, one representing himself and the other representing the pope. To dramatize the contrast, Galileo gave his pope character the name Simplicio, which in Italian means “simpleton.” The dialogue basically consists of foolish claims by Simplicio elegantly refuted by the character speaking for Galileo. The pope was not amused.<\/p>\n

Galileo’s third mistake was that his writings were not confined to scientific issues; he also advanced his own theory of scriptural interpretation. Galileo argued that the Bible was largely allegorical and required constant reinterpretation to excavate its true meaning. The Jesuits had warned him not to venture into this territory. Scripture, they told Galileo,is the province of the church. With the hubris and imprudence not unknown among great men of science, Galileo ignored this counsel. So when he was again reported to the Inquisition, his opponents were able to fault him not only on scientific grounds but also on the grounds that he was undermining the religious teaching of the church.<\/p>\n

Finally, this was the age of the Reformation. Protestant thinkers were attacking the Catholic church for not taking the Bible seriously enough. Urban VIII was eager to demonstrate the Vatican’s fidelity to scripture, and geocentrism was an interpretation on which there was agreement in the official positions of both Catholics and Protestants. Had the Reformation occurred a century before or after, Richard Blackwell writes, “the Galileo affair would probably not have happened.\u201d Under the prevailing circumstances, however, the pope agreed to let the Galileo case proceed.<\/p>\n

In 1633 Galileo returned to Rome, where he was again treated with respect. He might have prevailed in his trial, but during the investigation someone found Cardinal Bellarmine’s notes in the files. Galileo had not told the Inquisition\u2014actually he had not told anyone\u2014of his previous agreement not to teach or advocate Copernicanism. Now Galileo was viewed as having deceived the church as well as having failed to live up to his agreements. Even his church sympathizers, and there were several, found it difficult to defend him at this point.<\/p>\n

But they did advise him to acknowledge that he had promoted Copernicanism in violation of his pact with Bellarmine, and to show contrition. Incredibly Galileo appeared before the Inquisition and maintained that his Dialogue <\/em>did not constitute a defense of heliocentrism. “I have neither maintained or defended in that book the opinion that the earth moves and that the sun is stationary but have rather demonstrated the opposite of the Copernican opinion and shown that the arguments of Copernicus are weak and not conclusive.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has been widely repeated that Galileo whispered under his breath, “And yet it moves.” But the remark is pure fabrication. In fact, there are no reports that Galileo said anything of the sort. One should be charitable toward Galileo’s motives here. Perhaps he made his statement denying heliocentrism out of weariness and frustration. Even so, the Inquisitors can also be excused for viewing Galileo at this point as a flagrant liar. Galileo’s defense, Arthur Koestler writes, was so “patently dishonest that his case would have been lost in any court.\u201d The Inquisition concluded that Galileo did hold heliocentric views, which it demanded he recant. Galileo did, at which point he was sentenced to house arrest._
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\nContrary to what some atheist propagandists have said, Galileo was never charged with heresy, and he was never placed in a dungeon or tortured in any way. After he recanted Galileo was released into the custody of the archbishop of Siena, who housed him for five months in his magnificent palace. Then he was permitted to return to his villa in Florence. Although technically under house arrest, he was able to visit his daughters at the convent of San Matteo. The church also permitted him to continue his scientific work on matters unrelated to heliocentrism, and he published important research during this period. Galileo died of natural causes in 1642. It was during subsequent decades, Kuhn reports, that newer and stronger evidence for the heliocentric theory emerged, and scientific opinion, divided in Galileo’s time, became the consensus that we share today.<\/p>\n

What can we conclude about the Galileo episode? “The traditional picture of Galileo as a martyr to intellectual freedom and a victim of the church’s opposition to science,” writeshistorian Gary Ferngren, “has been demonstrated to be little more than a caricature.” The case was an “anomaly,” historian Thomas Lessl writes, “a momentary break in the otherwise harmonious relationship” that had existed between Christianity and science. Indeed there is no other example in history of the Catholic church condemning a scientific theory.<\/p>\n

Galileo was a great scientist who had very little sense. He was right about heliocentrism, but several of his arguments and proofs were wrong. The dispute his ideas brought about was not exclusively between religion and science, but also between the new science and the science of the previous generation. The leading figures of the church were more circumspect about approaching the scientific issues, which were truly unsettled at the time, than the impetuous Galileo. The church should not have tried him, but his trials were conducted with considerable restraint and exemplary treatment. Galileo himself acted badly, which no doubt contributed to his fate. Even so, his fate was not so terrible. Alfred North Whitehead, a noted historian of science, concludes from the case that “the worst that happened to men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof, before dying peacefully in his bed.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dinesh D Souza, The Greatness of Christianity: Table of Contents Cf. Dinesh D’souza, What’s So Great About Christianity, at Amazon “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.” \u2014Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers DESPITE THE ROLE OF CHRISTIANITY in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_disable_autopaging":false},"categories":[6702,6707],"tags":[7380,7381,7382,7383,7384,7385,7284,7285,78,7386,7387,7363,7388,7389],"class_list":["post-3462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thechrist","category-studies-thechristcontents","tag-arthur-koestler","tag-blind-faith","tag-carl-sagan","tag-copernicus","tag-daniel-dennett","tag-dark-forces","tag-dinesh-d-souza","tag-galileo-case","tag-greek-tragedy","tag-heresy","tag-sacred-books","tag-sam-harris","tag-science-versus-religion","tag-sleepwalkers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}