When I was young, I (mostly) assumed that what I learned in school was true. Sadly, much was not. For example, I learned that Galileo was terribly mistreated by the rigid religious leaders of his day for simply speaking the truth about his observations through the telescope. The story was that poor Galileo, a scientist with no real interest in philosophy, was persecuted unjustly for disproving that the sun revolves around the earth - something the Bible does not even say, and that seems so peripheral to the faith. How narrow-minded the religious leaders were! Well, it seems this was a very distorted description of what happened, a view perpetuated by Voltaire for his own purposes.
Galileo said, "The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the Universe to do." That is a lovely thought. But Galileo did not say this out of reverence for the God of the Bible who created the sun. He wrote it in, "Dialogue on the two chief systems of the world" in which he goes on make this analogy: Just as it would be the height of arrogance for a grape to think that the entire purpose of the sun's existence is to ripen it, it is arrogant for humans to think that the entire purpose of God creating the universe was to support mankind.
You can agree or disagree with Galileo's conclusion, but one fact is inescapable: he was purposefully directly challenging the religious leaders of the day. He was in their faces, telling them they were wrong about God considering man special within his creation. Galileo did not believe that the Bible was true, and he was working hard to convince others of this as well. Contrary to what I was taught, Galileo was not an innocent misunderstood disinterested scientist unfairly receiving the unwanted attention of the religious leaders.
(photo from Wellcome Trust via WikiCommons)
