Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
This time Galileo had gone too far. His support for the Copernican system was labeled
atheistic, and he was denounced to the Inquisition in Rome.
Attempting to defuse the controversy, Galileo wrote to his friend Grand Duchess
Christina of Lorraine and argued that literal interpretations of the Bible should not be ap-
plied to scientific questions. His critics were missing the point and needed to think more
liberally.
Contrary to the sense of the Bible and the intention of the holy Fathers… they would have us altogether abandon
reason and the evidence of our senses in favor of some biblical passage, though under the surface meaning of its
words this passage may contain a different sense.
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Galileo further argued that the study of nature reveals facts about the way the world
works—but that the Bible is notoriously difficult to interpret.
If anyone shall set the authority of Holy Writ against clear and manifest reason, he who does this knows not what
he has undertaken: for he opposes to the truth not the meaning of the Bible, which is beyond his comprehension, but
rather his own interpretation; not what is in the Bible, but what he has found in himself and imagines to be there.
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Galileo was saying that the problem lay in how one read scripture rather than in anything
one could observe and study about the world. To his way of thinking, apparent conflicts
between scripture and reason could be resolved if one reinterpreted the Bible on the basis
of careful observation of nature, on the basis of natural facts. New discoveries could guide
biblical interpretation on matters pertaining to the natural world.
Galileo further defended Copernican theory and his own thinking by arguing that Moses
adapted his language to his audience. Today one generally does not try to teach quantum
physics in high school, or James Joyce to the illiterate. You can't teach someone something
he or she lacks the background to learn.
Although the Inquisition could not condemn Galileo for observing something, interpret-
ing scripture was a different matter. The Council of Trent had forbidden interpretations
that contradicted the traditional commonsense views of the church fathers. And an Earth-
centered universe was enshrined in Catholic tradition. To argue otherwise was heresy.
When informed of Galileo's correspondence in 1615, the Inquisition convened a hand-
picked panel of theologians who were ordered to judge propositions extracted from his let-
