God and Galileo: What a 400-Year-Old Letter Teaches Us about Faith and Science
224
God and Galileo: What a 400-Year-Old Letter Teaches Us about Faith and Science
224Hardcover
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781433562891 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Crossway |
| Publication date: | 05/31/2019 |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Kenneth C. Freeman (PhD, Cambridge University) is Duffield Professor of Astronomy in the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University in Canberra. He is a Fellow of the UK Royal Society and the Australian Academy of Science, a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences, and one of the first to discover that spiral galaxies contain a large fraction of dark matter.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Is There Grace in Space?
The Two Books
Galileo began his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany as follows:
A few years ago, as your Highness well knows, I discovered many things in the heavens which had been invisible until this present age. Because of their novelty and because some consequences which follow from them contradict commonly held scientific views, these have provoked not a few professors in the schools against me, as if I had deliberately placed these objects in the sky to cause confusion in the natural sciences.
A recurring theme in this letter, and a source of great concern to Galileo, was this tension between what he observed through his telescope and the opinions of the theologians. Cherished by the theologians of the day was Aristotle's geocentric model of the universe, wherein all bodies, including the sun, orbited the earth. The earth was perceived to be the center of the universe. At the time of Galileo, the book of Scripture was used by many as the only source of truth, and the concept of a non-earth-centered world, as revealed by Nicolaus Copernicus's and Galileo's new observations, was seen as a huge threat.
The shoe is now on the other foot; to many today, the living truths are found only in the book of science, and the book of Scripture is regarded as mythological and irrelevant. Our personal horizons since the time of Galileo have completely changed. Authority has moved from the church (which so dominated everyday life in Galileo's time) to the individual. Many now choose to follow the book of science exclusively, with God beyond the fringe of their horizon. Does science not explain everything? No, there are two realms of knowledge. Everything is not science. Above all, spiritual revelation is not science. As Pope John Paul II elucidates,
There exist two realms of knowledge, one which has its source in revelation and one which reason can discover by its own power. To the latter belong especially the experimental sciences and philosophy. The distinction between the two realms of knowledge ought not to be understood as opposition.
We refer to these two realms of truth as the two books. For us, as astronomers and Christians, the book of Scripture is the revelation of God to humanity over thousands of years. Whether one accepts these revelations is up to the individual; it depends ultimately on faith, not on bare reason, experiment, or observation (although the faith we are describing does not jettison these either). In contrast, the book of nature encompasses our transient knowledge of science, both observational and theoretical, and its goalposts are ever moving.
Galileo seems to have had a better sense of the two books than his antagonists. He was not threatened by new findings in the book of nature (which may at first appear to contradict the Bible), because Galileo did not see the Bible as a scientific textbook. He saw how progress in the book of nature enables further progress. This is not the role of the book of Scripture: that book emphasizes our place in the universe as spiritual beings and the focus of God's plan for us.
Galileo himself saw the two books as if in balance. He saw the nearby universe with his telescope, and he understood that the Scriptures are about God's relationship with man. In our time, the balance is skewed: the book of nature carries the weight, and the book of Scripture is seen as peripheral or even totally irrelevant.
In the book of nature, astronomers find themselves living in a universe that is calculated to be about 92 billion (i.e., thousand million) light years across, filled with billions of stars and galaxies, in which mankind seems insignificant to many (see fig. 1). In contrast, in the book of Scripture, we see mankind sustained by God's grace (his love and undeserved favor toward us). God exists outside space and time; his love is timeless. On the one hand, the book of Scripture does not address all that we can know about space, but on the other hand, it is completely beyond the domain of science to infer that mankind has no central focus in the universe.
God's focus is on his people. The incarnation, God becoming man, is a wondrous sign of spiritual man's focal place in our vast universe. The book of nature is ever changing. As Nigel Brush explains, "From the inside, science does not provide a great deal of confidence in the accuracy and completeness of scientific truth at any one point in time. Far from providing a finished product — the truth and nothing but the truth — science is a work in progress."
In contrast, the world of God's Spirit is not subject to any equations. The book of Scripture is a book with its own context. How can science prove or disprove the revealed grace and love of God? Our receptivity to God and to his Word is inextricably linked to the condition of our hearts as described by Jesus in Matthew 13:3–11 (ESV):
"A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil, and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears [to hear], let him hear."
Then the disciples came and said to him, "Why do you speak to them in parables?" And he answered them, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given."
Theologians in the early days of modern science were faced with a double dilemma that to some extent is still with us today. On the one hand, there is a dangerous temptation to directly invoke the hand of God when our knowledge in science is limited (the "God of the gaps"). On the other hand, most of these unsolved problems will be solved in the fullness of time, and proposing a divine solution may not in the long run be to the glory of God.
The aurora borealis, or northern lights, is a simple example (see fig. 2): in medieval Europe, before the aurora was scientifically understood, it was thought that heavenly warriors were at work; as a sort of posthumous reward, the soldiers who gave their lives for their king and their country were allowed to battle in the skies forever. There was a gap in our scientific knowledge at the time, and mythologies in the heavens were invoked. Then came a correct scientific understanding of the cause of the aurora borealis involving the sun and the magnetic field of the earth, and the necessity of those heavenly warriors disappeared.
Science is an evolving discipline. Science is never the truth but only a set of partial truths. This is the very nature of the scientific method. New observations and new theories develop with time. As Saint Paul writes, "We see through a glass, darkly" (1 Cor. 13:12 KJV).
The Sociology of Science
In Galileo's situation, the discoveries of science apparently came into conflict with the literal interpretation of Scripture. What were the theologians to do?
Galileo articulated the problem in his letter:
Those who were expert in astronomy and the natural sciences were convinced by my first announcement, and the doubts of others were gradually allayed unless their scepticism was fed by something other than the unexpected novelty of my discoveries or the fact that they had not had an opportunity to confirm them by their own observations.
Galileo then suggested that his critics would have benefited from listening to an ancient church father:
They might have avoided this error [of prescribing the geography of the heavens] if they had paid attention to a salutary warning by St Augustine, on the need for caution in coming to firm conclusions about obscure matters which cannot be readily understood by the use of reason alone.
Saint Augustine (AD 354–430) suggested that the biblical text should not be interpreted literally if it contradicts what we know from science and our God-given reason. From an important passage in his De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim, or The Literal Meaning of Genesis (early fifth century AD), we read,
It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.
Augustine's words resonate with us, as they did with Galileo. If the church had heeded Augustine's advice not to impose itself in matters in which it was unskilled, and if power and control had not been such a focus for the church at the time, then this long battle between the church and science may never have taken place.
Theologians failed miserably at the time of Galileo in that they misinterpreted Genesis, sprinkling their writings with what Galileo called "vain arguments." Their opinion was that the earth was the center of the universe, and no evidence would change their mind. Gaps in knowledge of matters astronomical were attributed directly to the intervention of God or explained by appealing only to the theologians' own interpretation of verses in the Bible. But as Galileo emphasized, these people show "a greater fondness for their own opinions than for truth." Not even evidence through a telescope would change their minds. In a letter to Johannes Kepler dated 1610, Galileo referred to such people as stubborn "asps":
My dear Kepler, I wish that we might laugh at the remarkable stupidity of the common herd. What do you have to say about the principal philosophers of this academy who are filled with the stubbornness of an asp and do not want to look at either the planets, the moon or the telescope, even though I have freely and deliberately offered them the opportunity a thousand times? Truly, just as the asp stops its ears, so do these philosophers shut their eyes to the light of truth.
What is an asp? We found Galileo's use of the term "asp" puzzling in the context of stubbornness. After much digging, it became clear that he was talking about a "deaf adder" (Lat. aspis).
Serious prejudices against the book of nature often stem from those whose exposure to the scientific method is limited. To be "well grounded in astronomical and physical science" requires as much training as does psychiatry or neuroscience in the medical world. Astronomers would be foolish to pronounce on discoveries in neuroscience or psychiatry; we have not been trained in those specialties. Galileo's letter demonstrates how crucial it is to be thoroughly grounded in astronomy before pronouncing on scientific discoveries. Paraphrasing Augustine's message rather bluntly, don't pontificate about matters that you do not understand.
Galileo's scientific discoveries were never a threat to the book of Scripture, although they were certainly perceived as being so. The book of nature can never be in conflict with the book of Scripture because both have the same author. The one book deals with the universe, the other with God and how he relates to fallen mankind, in need of grace and forgiveness. In the words of Saint Augustine, referring to the book of Scripture, "It was not the intention of the Spirit of God ... to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation."
In Galileo's situation, the issue ultimately revolved around authority. The prime agenda of those opposing him was to uphold thegeocentric model of the universe as a key to maintaining the power of the church. That was their intention and design. They thus forgot the careful distinction between the realms of the two books as Augustine articulated it.
These tensions reach back to Copernicus, who, in the annals of astronomy, is remembered as the first in Renaissance times to propose a systematic cosmology in which the earth revolves around the sun. His famous treatise De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), published in 1543, is often regarded as the birth of modern astronomy and the beginning of the Scientific Revolution. The telescope had not yet been invented: the instruments that Copernicus used were ancient devices like astrolabes, going back to the time of Hipparchus and Ptolemy. Copernicus studied liberal arts in Bologna, then medicine in Padua. In 1497 Copernicus was elected a canon at the cathedral of Frombork in Warmia, and in 1503 he obtained a doctorate in canon law from the University of Ferrara. Although he was not in fact an ordained priest, he was held in high esteem by the Catholic Church, as Galileo emphasized in his letter:
They pretend not to know that its author — or rather the one who revived [a moving earth] and confirmed it — was Nicolaus Copernicus, a man who was not just a Catholic but a priest and a canon, and so highly esteemed that he was called to Rome from the furthest reaches of Germany to advise the Lateran Council under Pope Leo X on the revision of the ecclesiastical calendar.
The church had no problem with celestial measurements and observations, and even with using calculations based on Copernicus's heliocentric model, as long as it could go through the fiction of regarding them as based on a theory, so that they didn't have to face the issues raised by the apparent clash with the text of the Scriptures. This was fine, until Galileo began to promote the Copernican model as fact and forced the church's hand.
Although the scientific establishment of Galileo's day pretended to be objective and only interested in discovering the truth, Galileo perceived the presence of hidden agendas and craven ambitions. Speaking of Copernicus's On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spaces, Galileo wrote,
But now that the soundness of its conclusions [a sun-centered world, as proposed by Copernicus] is being confirmed by manifest experiments and necessary demonstrations, there are those who, without even having seen the book, want to reward its author for all his labours by having him declared a heretic — and this solely to satisfy the personal grudge they have conceived for no reason against someone whose only connection with Copernicus is to have endorsed his teachings.
Galileo's observations ring true today. Just like any other field, science suffers from personal agendas and motivations that can cloud objective reason. Even today it is the personal agenda of some to discredit the work of others. Some of those held in the highest esteem by the establishment (whether in the sciences or in theology) may try to impede the work of others. Astronomers seeking to publish their research articles may encounter peers appointed by the editor of a journal who may reject an article, only to find those ideas to subsequently emerge as the peer reviewer's own. Priority in scientific discoveries makes for a riveting read. The progress of science can still be modulated by personal agendas, as it was in Galileo's day. The establishment has profound authority, as Galileo points out.
Do the Trees Move the Wind?
Human beings often bring with them great subjectivity, whether they are reading the book of nature or the book of Scripture. In Galileo's day, people hid "under the mantle of false religion and by invoking the authority of Holy Scripture." Their eyes were closed to the book of nature. The Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter implied that there were bodies moving around Jupiter and not the earth; the earth was not the center of the universe. In his letter, Galileo complained about men who use the book of Scripture to discount scientific discoveries. He spoke of those "persisting in their determination to use all imaginable means to destroy me and my works." Judgment was passed on matters scientific by scientifically ignorant theologians who delighted in exposing "heresy." Their goal was to destroy Galileo and everything that was his (including his observations), rather than to contemplate the new astronomy. The book of Scripture was their weapon. Galileo could not accept this. Science in Galileo's mind was never intended to elevate one book above the other. To Galileo, both books had their well-defined foci — as in a coin with two sides, both revealing truth.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "God and Galileo"
by .
Copyright © 2019 David L. Block and Kenneth C. Freeman.
Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations 11
Preface 13
Acknowledgments 17
Part 1 Grace and Space
Setting the Stage 23
1 Is There Grace in Space? 27
2 Misunderstanding Truth 39
3 Understanding the Universe and Scripture 49
4 What Grace and Space Cannot Tell Us 63
5 The Fraud of Scientism 71
6 An Illusion of Conflict 93
7 Discerning the Truth 109
8 The Two Cathedrals 121
Part 2 Historical Vignettes
9 A Moon of Glass from Murano, Venice 139
10 A Troubled Dinner in Tuscany 149
11 Winning Back Trust: Astronomy and the Vatican 155
Part 3 Personal Experiences of Grace
12 Grace in the Life of Blaise Pascal 163
13 Grace alongside a Telescope in South Africa 167
Appendix: Galileo's Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany 179
Bibliography and Additional Readings 214
General Index 220
Scripture Index 224
What People are Saying About This
“These two eminent astronomers, one from Australia and one from South Africa, bring a unique perspective to the faith and science arena. What they reveal about Galileo—who is often cited as an example of the great divide—demonstrates instead that strong faith and expert science can go together. Indeed, the authors themselves follow in Galileo’s path, approaching both fields with a spirit of humility and wonder.”—Philip Yancey, author, What’s So Amazing About Grace? and The Jesus I Never Knew
“Galileo showed us how to write in the book of nature, but his world read only from the book of Scripture—thus descended a debate that tore Galileo’s world apart and has never been reconciled, even to our time. God and Galileo is a personal journey through the world of two books, nature and Scripture, guided by leading astronomers who have wondered, like many others, why we cannot seem to read clearly from both books at the same time. Their conclusion is that we can and, to reach our fullest understanding, we should. Galileo concluded the same but was not allowed to speak it. God and Galileo finally gives him a voice.”—Bruce Elmegreen, Astrophysicist, Thomas J. Watson Research Center, IBM; recipient, Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics (2001)
“With so many scientists seeing Christian faith as irrelevant to scientific truth and so many Christians seeing science as contradictory to Christian truth, this unique, groundbreaking, and deeply researched book by two believing, distinguished, and top-drawer astronomers is one that had to be written. It makes clear that the totality of truth has to be drawn on the one hand from the book of Scripture, with its story of grace and incarnation, and on the other hand from the book of nature, with its story of space and matter. Both books are vital to the full comprehension of reality, and the authors show this with convincing clarity. We dare not be blind either to nature or Scripture, whose respective truths are complementary, not contradictory, because both have the same author. God and Galileo brings us unique perspectives and insights related to faith, grace, and astronomy not evident in any other contemporary writing. My prayer is that it will be a landmark contribution to this debate and a classic both for today and for generations to come.”—Michael Cassidy, Founder, African Enterprise; Honorary Cochair, Lausanne Movement; author, The Church Jesus Prayed For
“God and Galileo needed to be written. The majority of scientists today are either atheist or agnostic, and there is rarely any discussion about the relationship between the physical and spiritual realms of knowledge. In scientific circles, these subjects mix like oil and water. Yet the relationship between a Creator and the origin of the universe is an important subject of fundamental interest to everyone. Is there a connection between science and religion, or are the two in conflict as completely independent realms of knowledge? This book addresses this question head-on. Written by two leading international researchers in astronomy, the book reflects extensively on the interaction between the universe of space and the God of grace. To make their point, the authors offer personal and contemporary reflections on a 1615 letter written by Galileo Galilei, in which he addresses this very conflict between revelation and reason. God and Galileo is a devastating attack on the dominance of atheism in science today. It is a must-read, offering proper perspective on life and why we exist in the universe.”—Giovanni Fazio, Senior Physicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Fellow, American Physical Society; recipient, Henry Norris Russell Lectureship (2015)
“In a world growing increasingly hostile to Christianity, clarity is our first and best defense. Indeed, the challenge for the believer today is to tread fearfully in such a world and to remain true—that, and to be well informed. Among other things, that means exercising caution when choosing whom to listen to. This is one of the great payoffs of this book. God and Galileo is about clarity in its best and most attractive sense. Using the words of Galileo Galilei as a prop, and with language accessible to the general reader, astronomers Block and Freeman conduct an intimate dialogue with history. Tampering with deep cultural memory, they explore the harmonies and agreements that exist between the book of nature and the book of Scripture, being, as they were, according to Galileo, crafted by the same author.”—David Teems, author, Tyndale: The Man Who Gave God an English Voice