Is empirical science in direct opposition to Christianity and the Bible?
There are many today who would argue that the obvious answer is yes, the Bible and Christianity are completely incompatible with modern science. The Bible's claim that almighty God created the universe in six days flies in the face of Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution, which in many ways has become the very foundation of modern science. Likewise, it was the Roman Catholic Church who banned the writings of Nicolaus Copernicus and condemned Galileo Galilei to house arrest for daring to challenge the Holy Word of God. How then can the Bible be justified?
In the hopes of shedding some light on the topic, I have compiled the following comparison between the scientific theories, personal histories, and spiritual beliefs of two of the great fathers of Modern Science mentioned above: Charles Darwin and Galileo Galilei. While the following is in no way an exhaustive examination of the two men, I feel that it may help to better understand the nature of both individuals, their contributions to science, the controversies surrounding their theories, and the relationship between science and God's Word.
Charles Darwin
1809-1882
1809-1882
Charles Darwin was raised in the Unitarian tradition of the Church of England, though even as a young man he held views that were widely regarded as non-conformist. He attended the University of Cambridge with the intention of joining the clergy in the Anglican Church, at which time he became fascinated with natural history and geology. It was this passion for nature that lead Darwin to embark on his famous voyage of discovery aboard the HMS Beagle from 1831-1836.
Initially, Darwin remained orthodox in his Anglican beliefs. However, in the face of growing criticisms from his peers aboard ship, he soon became skeptical of the Bible's validity as a historical account and by 1836 he wondered why all religions should not be equally true.
A chief cause of Darwin's growing skepticism was the question of how a benevolent God could create creatures specially designed to cause pain and suffering in others. As Darwin himself said in a letter to his American collaborator, Asa Gray in 1860:
"There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice."
In spite his doubts Darwin did not challenge Christianity outright, and still believed that God existed and was both the "ultimate lawgiver" and "original cause" of the natural world.
However, Darwin's personal belief in the existence of God began to waver over the years, and by 1849 he had ceased attending church, choosing instead to go for long walks while his wife and children worshiped.
In 1850 Darwin's daughter, Annie, died. This proved to be the critical tipping point at which time Darwin abandoned his belief in the Christian God, salvation, and the afterlife. However he never claimed to be an atheist, saying in 1879, "an agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind."
Nine years later, in 1859, Darwin published his theories on natural selection. In his book On The Origin of Species, Darwin presented the evidence he had gathered through careful study of biological adaptation within species. Having proved that such adaptation (micro-evolution) was possible through natural selection, Darwin theorized that larger adaptations leading to the transmutation of species (macro-evolution) was possible. Given enough time, he theorized, a fish would become an amphibian, an amphibian a reptile, a reptile a bird etc. Thus all life originated from a common primordial ancestor and adapted to survive in a specialized capacity through random chance and natural selection, completely independent of intelligent design.
Despite the atheistic ramifications of his claim, Darwin insisted that it was not his intent to write aesthetically. (As stated in the 1860 letter to Asa Gray sited above) Furthermore, many Christians believed—and continue to believe to this day—that there is no conflict between Darwin's Theory of Evolution and the Biblical account of creation. In the words of noted author and Christian Socialist, Charles Kingsley:
"(The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is) just as noble a conception of Deity, to believe that He created primal forms capable of self development... as to believe that He required a fresh act of intervention to supply the lacunas which He Himself had made."
Astonishingly, a creationist reading of the Biblical account does appear to show some support of Darwin's initial observations. According to this understanding of Genesis 1 God created all life on earth, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, plants and land animals "each according to its kind." In this sense Darwin was absolutely correct in saying that each species originated from a single progenitor of that species. (ie. Darwin's finches were all descended from a common finch ancestor. The variation he observed in the individual populations of the Galapagos Islands came through breeding and natural selection.)
However, contrary to the opinion of Darwin and his contemporaries, who held to the common belief that the Bible explicitly taught that each species had been independently created in its ideal environment and had existed in its present form since creation, the Bible makes no such claim. The Bible simply states that God created each kind of animal. The Bible does not say that the highly specialized forms we see today were created as such.
That said, Darwin's theory of adaptation through natural selection is completely consistent with scripture. It is Darwin's theory on the transmutation of species through natural selection that is debatable.
The Bible's claim of special creation was not the only challenge to Darwin's theory. Geology and the absence of transitional forms in the fossil record presented an equally convincing argument.
Recognizing this inherent weakness, Darwin wrote:
"The main cause, however, of innumerable intermediate links not now occurring everywhere throughout nature depends on the very process of natural selection, through which new varieties continually take the places of and exterminate their parent-forms. But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.
"In the first place it should always be borne in mind what sort of intermediate forms must, on my theory, have formerly existed. I have found it difficult, when looking at any two species, to avoid picturing to myself, forms directly intermediate between them. But this is a wholly false view; we should always look for forms intermediate between each species and a common but unknown progenitor; and the progenitor will generally have differed in some respects from all its modified descendants. To give a simple illustration: the fantail and pouter pigeons have both descended from the rock-pigeon; if we possessed all the intermediate varieties which have ever existed, we should have an extremely close series between both and the rock-pigeon; but we should have no varieties directly intermediate between the fantail and pouter; none, for instance, combining a tail somewhat expanded with a crop somewhat enlarged, the characteristic features of these two breeds. These two breeds, moreover, have become so much modified, that if we had no historical or indirect evidence regarding their origin, it would not have been possible to have determined from a mere comparison of their structure with that of the rock-pigeon, whether they had descended from this species or from some other allied species, such as C. oenas."
Despite Darwin's skepticism towards the Bible and religion, much of what is written in The Origin of Species caries with it a strong undertone of theism and the need for an original cause. Though originally open to the possibility of spontaneous generation of life from non-living matter, (as evident in his now famous letter to Joseph Hooker, in which Darwin speaks of life originating in a "warm little pond.") Darwin later felt that such a likelihood was "beyond the confines of science."
Thus, Darwin chose to avoid addressing the question of how life on earth came to be, stating on numerous occasions that studying the origin of life was, at that time, "mere rubbish thinking."
He would maintain this view until the end of his life, as evidenced in a letter mailed to George Wallich in 1882:
"You expressed quite correctly my views where you say that I had intentionally left the question of the Origin of Life uncanvassed as being altogether ultra vires in the present state of our knowledge, and that I dealt only with the manner of succession. I have met with no evidence that seems in the least trustworthy, in favour of the so-called Spontaneous generation. I believe that I have somewhere said (but cannot find the passage) that the principle of continuity renders it probable that the principle of life will hereafter be shown to be a part, or consequence of some general law; but this is only conjecture and not science."
Nonetheless, the paradox of the origin of life confounded Darwin. In 1873, nine years before his death, he wrote in a letter to a colleague at the University of Utrecht:
"I may say that the impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God; but whether this is an argument of real value, I have never been able to decide. I am aware that if we admit a first cause, the mind still craves to know whence it came from and how it arose. Nor can I overlook the difficulty from the immense amount of suffering through the world. I am, also, induced to defer to a certain extent to the judgment of many able men who have fully believed in God; but here again I see how poor an argument this is. The safest conclusion seems to me to be that the whole subject is beyond the scope of man's intellect; but man can do his duty."
In the end Darwin's grand conclusion was that there may very well be a "god", but that such things were so far beyond the scope of human intellect as to be beyond hope of understanding.
Like Charles Darwin, Galileo Galilei was born and raised in the Christian faith. However, unlike his 19th Century counterpart, Galileo believed that the Bible was the authoritative Word of God, given to man for the redemption of human souls. A belief he shared with many of the earliest fathers of modern science such as Francis Bacon, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Sir Isaac Newton.
Galileo likewise believed that God had given humanity logic and reason with the intent that we use both to understand the natural world, as show in his letter to Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany in 1615:
"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 would not require us to deny sense and reason in physical matters which are set before our eyes and minds by direct experience or necessary demonstrations. This must be especially true in those sciences of which but the faintest trace (and that consisting of conclusions) is to be found in the Bible."
That said, Galileo also thought that, while the Bible could not speak untruth so long as its true meaning was understood, human interpretation of passages could be in error when the empirical study of creation produced evidence contrary to the commonly held interpretation of the Holy Word of God.
For this reason, he boldly claimed that the scriptures should apply only to spiritual matters, and should be interpreted through the eye of science. The Bible's true purpose, after all, is the salvation and redemption of mankind, with the ultimate goal of restoring man's relationship with God through the death and resurrection of his son, Jesus Christ. The Bible therefore was never intended to be an authoritative book of science, and actually says very little in that regard. As Galileo himself was keen to point out:
"Of astronomy; for instance, so little is found that none of the planets except Venus [The Morning Star] are so much as mentioned, and this only once or twice under the name of "Lucifer." 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 in comparison with the infinite number of admirable conclusions which are demonstrated in that science. Far from pretending to teach us the constitution and motions of the heavens and other stars, with their shapes, magnitudes, and distances, the authors of the Bible intentionally forbore to speak of these things, though all were quite well known to them."
While true in most respects, Galileo's views and brash, sometimes abrasive personality gained him little favor in the eyes of his peers or the dogmatic religious hierarchy of medieval Europe. Even so, Galileo's heliocentric theories were not a veiled attack on the Bible's validity, but rather a direct assault on the ancient geocentric doctrines of the Greeks and Romans.
The Ptolemaic geocentric theory and Aristotelian doctrines on physics gained popularity among scientists and church leaders in the Second Century AD when Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria accurately predicted the movement of the celestial bodies with a greater degree of accuracy than that presented by existing heliocentric models. By the 1600s the church had intertwined scientific dogmatism with religion. As a result passages of scripture were found, wrenched from their context, and used to support the commonly held belief that the earth, not the sun, was the center of the solar-system. However, many of the passages used to in defense of the geocentric model were nothing more than poetic verse describing God's majesty and power (as seen in Psalm 93:1, 96:10 and 1 Chronicles 16:30) or, in the case of Ecclesiastes 1:5, figures of speech not unlike those we continue to use today. For example: No one living today would marvel at a sunset and declare: "The earth is rotating on its access." They would say, "What a beautiful sunset." We say that the sun is going down (setting) or coming up (rising) on a daily basis. Does this mean that the sun is moving? Of course not! The sun merely appears to move based on our relative position here on earth.
A further example used to defend the geocentric theory was Joshua 10:12-14 which records how God miraculously lengthened one day to allow the Israelis to win a major victory over the Amorites. This is an exception to the previous passages in that while the language used in Joshua's prayer is poetic, the events recorded are presented as historical fact, not poetry.
Since the event recorded in Joshua 10 is a miracle, it cannot be proven scientifically. A miracle by its very definition defies the laws of science. This of course in no way implies that it is beyond God's ability to lengthen a day. God created the laws of nature, space, and time and is therefore not bound by such laws. Thus it is completely within the realm of God's power to stop time for a time, even if science cannot explain how such a miracle is possible.
In light of this, Galileo's heliocentric theory was not an attack on the Bible so much as it was a challenge to Greco-Roman science and dogmatism. Nothing in his theory conflicted with the scriptures. The foremost authority on Catholic theology of the day, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine—who was himself an admirer of Galileo's work—even went so far as to say that, "If there were a real proof that the Sun is in the center of the universe, that the Earth is in the third sphere, 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."
If the leading theologian of the day was willing to reconsider his interpretation of scripture in light of scientific evidence, where then did the accusations of heresy against Galileo originate?
Surprisingly, the first challenge brought against Galileo came from his colleagues in the University, specifically those belonging to the Aristotelian school of thought. As Arthur Koestler pointed out in his book, The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe:
"But there existed a powerful body of men whose hostility to Galileo never abated: the Aristotelians at the Universities. ... Innovation is a twofold threat to academic mediocrities: it endangers their oracular authority, and it evokes the deeper fear that their whole laboriously constructed edifice might collapse. The academic backwoods-men have been the curse of genius ... it was this threat—not Bishop Dantiscus or Pope Paule III—which had cowed Canon Koppernigk [ie. Copernicus] into silence. ... The first serious attack on religious grounds came not from clerical quarters, but from a layman—none other than delle Colombe, the leader of the league. ... The earthly nature of the moon, the existence of sunspots meant the abandonment of the Aristotelian doctrines on perfect and unchanging nature of the celestial spheres."
The first people to accuse Galileo of challenging God were not the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, but scientists! The geocentric theory challenged by Galileo's observations originated not in the Bible, but in the minds of ancient pagan philosophers. Jealous scientists espousing the ideas and theories of Plato, Aristotle and other pagan philosophers accused Galileo of challenging God and the Bible with science! The irony cannot be over-exaggerated.
It was not Galileo's intent to deny the existence of God or the validity of the Bible. On the contrary, he was himself a devout Christian who believed that both "...the holy Bible and the phenomena of nature proceed alike from the divine Word the former as the dictate of the Holy Ghost and the latter as the observant executrix of God's commands."
Regardless of Galileo's faith, he was called before the inquisition in 1616 to defend the heliocentric views he published six years earlier in his short treatise Sidernus Nuncius.
Contrary to the popular narrative, Galileo was not interrogated at this first summons. Instead, after a short deliberation, the inquisition concluded that Galileo's heliocentric model was "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture." They then warned Galileo not to teach heliocentric theory as physical truth, demanding that he "... abandon completely... the opinion that the sun stands still at the center of the world and the earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing."
This warning, however, did not forbid Galileo from exploring heliocentricity as a philosophical theory. Sixteen years later, in 1632, Galileo once again published his theories in his book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, this time with official permission from the Inquisition and the support of Pope Urban VIII, who was a great admirer of Galileo's work. However, Galileo was soon called before the Inquisition on grounds of heresy when it was discovered that he had placed the words of Pope Urban VIII into the mouth of the fictional character Simplicio—a name which means simple or simpleton. Furthermore, Galileo used Simplicio to make the arguments for an earth-centered solar system look foolish while promoting his own heliocentric theories. It was this literary blunder and not his scientific theories that placed Galileo under suspicion of heresy and alienated him from his closest allies within the church.
In closing, I believe that the greatest difference between the two men and their contributions to science lies upon the matter of faith.
Charles Darwin viewed Christianity—and religion in general—as little more than a social characteristic of highly evolved culture, and dismissed the Bible as a "manifestly false history of the world." For this reason he was forced to seek out some other explanation for the origin of life as an alternative to the will of an omnipotent creator. Because of the manifest suffering he witnessed in this fallen world, Darwin rejected the notion of a benevolent God and abandoned all hope in the afterlife. In so doing he lost sight of God's ultimate plan of salvation for mankind and the restoration of all creation. Thus Darwin was forced to expand his theory in an attempt to explain the absence of God, sin, and redemption; pushing the laws of adaptation through natural selection far beyond the point of empirical evidence and into the realm of philosophical speculation and conjecture. Even though his initial observations were not in conflict with the Bible, Darwin's skepticism lead him down an unstable path where he could neither accept nor deny the existence of God, and ultimately left him with more questions than answers.
Galileo, on the other hand, retained his belief in the sovereignty of God and the infallibility of scripture in spite of his unjust treatment at the hands of his peers. He was not forced to reconsider his understanding of the natural world, nor did he lose sight of God's redemptive plan: The salvation of mankind through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Galileo did not attempt to use science to disprove the Bible or the existence of God because that was not his intent. Instead he used science to challenge the majority consensus of his day and exposed both a scientific and theological falsehood without contradicting the scriptures.
Thus, while the theories and observations of both men did not conflict with the Bible, personal bias towards the scriptures determined their motivation for study and ultimately influenced their conclusions. Both men saw what they wanted to see. One recognized God's hand in nature and was falsely accused by his academic peers, while the other saw no such evidence and was praised as a genius in his time.
It is my conclusion therefore that science correctly practiced cannot be in conflict with properly interpreted scripture and serves to strengthen one's understanding, while the misinterpretation or misuse of either the scientific method or the Word of God leads only to chaos, confusion, and the concealment of truth.
Recognizing this inherent weakness, Darwin wrote:
"The main cause, however, of innumerable intermediate links not now occurring everywhere throughout nature depends on the very process of natural selection, through which new varieties continually take the places of and exterminate their parent-forms. But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.
"In the first place it should always be borne in mind what sort of intermediate forms must, on my theory, have formerly existed. I have found it difficult, when looking at any two species, to avoid picturing to myself, forms directly intermediate between them. But this is a wholly false view; we should always look for forms intermediate between each species and a common but unknown progenitor; and the progenitor will generally have differed in some respects from all its modified descendants. To give a simple illustration: the fantail and pouter pigeons have both descended from the rock-pigeon; if we possessed all the intermediate varieties which have ever existed, we should have an extremely close series between both and the rock-pigeon; but we should have no varieties directly intermediate between the fantail and pouter; none, for instance, combining a tail somewhat expanded with a crop somewhat enlarged, the characteristic features of these two breeds. These two breeds, moreover, have become so much modified, that if we had no historical or indirect evidence regarding their origin, it would not have been possible to have determined from a mere comparison of their structure with that of the rock-pigeon, whether they had descended from this species or from some other allied species, such as C. oenas."
In short, Darwin believed that subtle changes between different species and their ancient, common ancestors would not be preserved in the fossil record. Since these slight modifications happened over so great a span of time with fossilization being a relatively rare occurrence, it would therefore be very unlikely that direct intermediate links would be preserved in the fossil record. Instead, the fossil evidence would appear to preserve two distinct forms rather than a gradual line of succession between ancestors and descendants. This is further evidenced by Darwin's pigeon analogy. Both the fantail and pouter pigeon are pigeons. They are different breeds of the same species with wildly different physical characteristics brought about through intelligent design. (ie. Selective breeding by humans with a specific purpose in mind.) However, the physical remains of each breed could be easily misidentified as belonging to two distinct species if their lineage were unknown.
With this in mind, Darwin theorized that, given the great span of time between the unaltered progenitors of each major class of organism and their highly adapted descended, fossil evidence of direct intermediate forms between species (ie. a ground-dwelling dinosaur with the traits and characteristics of a feathered, perching bird.) as well as unchanged forms existing through multiple geological eras, even to the present day, would be virtually non-existent. "...such a case" He argued, "would imply that one form had remained for a very long period unaltered, whilst its descendants had undergone a vast amount of change; and the principle of competition between organism and organism, between child and parent, will render this a very rare event; for in all cases the new and improved forms of life will tend to supplant the old and unimproved."
Despite Darwin's skepticism towards the Bible and religion, much of what is written in The Origin of Species caries with it a strong undertone of theism and the need for an original cause. Though originally open to the possibility of spontaneous generation of life from non-living matter, (as evident in his now famous letter to Joseph Hooker, in which Darwin speaks of life originating in a "warm little pond.") Darwin later felt that such a likelihood was "beyond the confines of science."
Thus, Darwin chose to avoid addressing the question of how life on earth came to be, stating on numerous occasions that studying the origin of life was, at that time, "mere rubbish thinking."
He would maintain this view until the end of his life, as evidenced in a letter mailed to George Wallich in 1882:
"You expressed quite correctly my views where you say that I had intentionally left the question of the Origin of Life uncanvassed as being altogether ultra vires in the present state of our knowledge, and that I dealt only with the manner of succession. I have met with no evidence that seems in the least trustworthy, in favour of the so-called Spontaneous generation. I believe that I have somewhere said (but cannot find the passage) that the principle of continuity renders it probable that the principle of life will hereafter be shown to be a part, or consequence of some general law; but this is only conjecture and not science."
Nonetheless, the paradox of the origin of life confounded Darwin. In 1873, nine years before his death, he wrote in a letter to a colleague at the University of Utrecht:
"I may say that the impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God; but whether this is an argument of real value, I have never been able to decide. I am aware that if we admit a first cause, the mind still craves to know whence it came from and how it arose. Nor can I overlook the difficulty from the immense amount of suffering through the world. I am, also, induced to defer to a certain extent to the judgment of many able men who have fully believed in God; but here again I see how poor an argument this is. The safest conclusion seems to me to be that the whole subject is beyond the scope of man's intellect; but man can do his duty."
In the end Darwin's grand conclusion was that there may very well be a "god", but that such things were so far beyond the scope of human intellect as to be beyond hope of understanding.
Galileo Galilei
1564-1642
1564-1642
Like Charles Darwin, Galileo Galilei was born and raised in the Christian faith. However, unlike his 19th Century counterpart, Galileo believed that the Bible was the authoritative Word of God, given to man for the redemption of human souls. A belief he shared with many of the earliest fathers of modern science such as Francis Bacon, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Sir Isaac Newton.
Galileo likewise believed that God had given humanity logic and reason with the intent that we use both to understand the natural world, as show in his letter to Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany in 1615:
"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 would not require us to deny sense and reason in physical matters which are set before our eyes and minds by direct experience or necessary demonstrations. This must be especially true in those sciences of which but the faintest trace (and that consisting of conclusions) is to be found in the Bible."
That said, Galileo also thought that, while the Bible could not speak untruth so long as its true meaning was understood, human interpretation of passages could be in error when the empirical study of creation produced evidence contrary to the commonly held interpretation of the Holy Word of God.
For this reason, he boldly claimed that the scriptures should apply only to spiritual matters, and should be interpreted through the eye of science. The Bible's true purpose, after all, is the salvation and redemption of mankind, with the ultimate goal of restoring man's relationship with God through the death and resurrection of his son, Jesus Christ. The Bible therefore was never intended to be an authoritative book of science, and actually says very little in that regard. As Galileo himself was keen to point out:
"Of astronomy; for instance, so little is found that none of the planets except Venus [The Morning Star] are so much as mentioned, and this only once or twice under the name of "Lucifer." 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 in comparison with the infinite number of admirable conclusions which are demonstrated in that science. Far from pretending to teach us the constitution and motions of the heavens and other stars, with their shapes, magnitudes, and distances, the authors of the Bible intentionally forbore to speak of these things, though all were quite well known to them."
While true in most respects, Galileo's views and brash, sometimes abrasive personality gained him little favor in the eyes of his peers or the dogmatic religious hierarchy of medieval Europe. Even so, Galileo's heliocentric theories were not a veiled attack on the Bible's validity, but rather a direct assault on the ancient geocentric doctrines of the Greeks and Romans.
The Ptolemaic geocentric theory and Aristotelian doctrines on physics gained popularity among scientists and church leaders in the Second Century AD when Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria accurately predicted the movement of the celestial bodies with a greater degree of accuracy than that presented by existing heliocentric models. By the 1600s the church had intertwined scientific dogmatism with religion. As a result passages of scripture were found, wrenched from their context, and used to support the commonly held belief that the earth, not the sun, was the center of the solar-system. However, many of the passages used to in defense of the geocentric model were nothing more than poetic verse describing God's majesty and power (as seen in Psalm 93:1, 96:10 and 1 Chronicles 16:30) or, in the case of Ecclesiastes 1:5, figures of speech not unlike those we continue to use today. For example: No one living today would marvel at a sunset and declare: "The earth is rotating on its access." They would say, "What a beautiful sunset." We say that the sun is going down (setting) or coming up (rising) on a daily basis. Does this mean that the sun is moving? Of course not! The sun merely appears to move based on our relative position here on earth.
A further example used to defend the geocentric theory was Joshua 10:12-14 which records how God miraculously lengthened one day to allow the Israelis to win a major victory over the Amorites. This is an exception to the previous passages in that while the language used in Joshua's prayer is poetic, the events recorded are presented as historical fact, not poetry.
Since the event recorded in Joshua 10 is a miracle, it cannot be proven scientifically. A miracle by its very definition defies the laws of science. This of course in no way implies that it is beyond God's ability to lengthen a day. God created the laws of nature, space, and time and is therefore not bound by such laws. Thus it is completely within the realm of God's power to stop time for a time, even if science cannot explain how such a miracle is possible.
In light of this, Galileo's heliocentric theory was not an attack on the Bible so much as it was a challenge to Greco-Roman science and dogmatism. Nothing in his theory conflicted with the scriptures. The foremost authority on Catholic theology of the day, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine—who was himself an admirer of Galileo's work—even went so far as to say that, "If there were a real proof that the Sun is in the center of the universe, that the Earth is in the third sphere, 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."
If the leading theologian of the day was willing to reconsider his interpretation of scripture in light of scientific evidence, where then did the accusations of heresy against Galileo originate?
Surprisingly, the first challenge brought against Galileo came from his colleagues in the University, specifically those belonging to the Aristotelian school of thought. As Arthur Koestler pointed out in his book, The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe:
"But there existed a powerful body of men whose hostility to Galileo never abated: the Aristotelians at the Universities. ... Innovation is a twofold threat to academic mediocrities: it endangers their oracular authority, and it evokes the deeper fear that their whole laboriously constructed edifice might collapse. The academic backwoods-men have been the curse of genius ... it was this threat—not Bishop Dantiscus or Pope Paule III—which had cowed Canon Koppernigk [ie. Copernicus] into silence. ... The first serious attack on religious grounds came not from clerical quarters, but from a layman—none other than delle Colombe, the leader of the league. ... The earthly nature of the moon, the existence of sunspots meant the abandonment of the Aristotelian doctrines on perfect and unchanging nature of the celestial spheres."
The first people to accuse Galileo of challenging God were not the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, but scientists! The geocentric theory challenged by Galileo's observations originated not in the Bible, but in the minds of ancient pagan philosophers. Jealous scientists espousing the ideas and theories of Plato, Aristotle and other pagan philosophers accused Galileo of challenging God and the Bible with science! The irony cannot be over-exaggerated.
It was not Galileo's intent to deny the existence of God or the validity of the Bible. On the contrary, he was himself a devout Christian who believed that both "...the holy Bible and the phenomena of nature proceed alike from the divine Word the former as the dictate of the Holy Ghost and the latter as the observant executrix of God's commands."
Regardless of Galileo's faith, he was called before the inquisition in 1616 to defend the heliocentric views he published six years earlier in his short treatise Sidernus Nuncius.
Contrary to the popular narrative, Galileo was not interrogated at this first summons. Instead, after a short deliberation, the inquisition concluded that Galileo's heliocentric model was "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture." They then warned Galileo not to teach heliocentric theory as physical truth, demanding that he "... abandon completely... the opinion that the sun stands still at the center of the world and the earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing."
This warning, however, did not forbid Galileo from exploring heliocentricity as a philosophical theory. Sixteen years later, in 1632, Galileo once again published his theories in his book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, this time with official permission from the Inquisition and the support of Pope Urban VIII, who was a great admirer of Galileo's work. However, Galileo was soon called before the Inquisition on grounds of heresy when it was discovered that he had placed the words of Pope Urban VIII into the mouth of the fictional character Simplicio—a name which means simple or simpleton. Furthermore, Galileo used Simplicio to make the arguments for an earth-centered solar system look foolish while promoting his own heliocentric theories. It was this literary blunder and not his scientific theories that placed Galileo under suspicion of heresy and alienated him from his closest allies within the church.
Unlike his previous trial, this time Galileo was questioned—though only for the span of half a day. In his defense Galileo said quite falsely: "I have neither maintained or defended in that book (Dialogue) the opinion that the earth moves and that the sun is stationary but have rather demonstrated the opposite of the Copernican opinion and shown the arguments of Copernicus are week and not conclusive."
Having been caught in this lie, Galileo was threatened with torture, and ultimately recanted.
It is important to note here that, according to the standard practices of the Inquisition, Galileo's lie should have resulted in an intimidate examination under torture to determine the validity of his faith. However Pope Urban VIII had issued an official order in advance of the trial stating that Galileo was not to be harmed in any way. This allowed for intimidation, but ultimately limited the Inquisition to empty threats.
Without enough evidence to condemn Galileo as a heretic, the Inquisition's final ruling instead found him "vehemently suspect of heresy." Galileo was then released into the custody of Archbishop Siena who allowed Galileo to live in his palace for five months before he was permitted to return to his own villa in Florence. Galileo would remain under house arrest for the majority of his remaining years, though he was permitted to travel to visit his daughters in the convent of Saint Matteo.
Galileo was also allowed to continued his scientific pursuits and made many more contributions to science and astronomy during this time. However, he never fully abandoned his heliocentric theories. Nor did he forsake his faith in God.
Having been caught in this lie, Galileo was threatened with torture, and ultimately recanted.
It is important to note here that, according to the standard practices of the Inquisition, Galileo's lie should have resulted in an intimidate examination under torture to determine the validity of his faith. However Pope Urban VIII had issued an official order in advance of the trial stating that Galileo was not to be harmed in any way. This allowed for intimidation, but ultimately limited the Inquisition to empty threats.
Without enough evidence to condemn Galileo as a heretic, the Inquisition's final ruling instead found him "vehemently suspect of heresy." Galileo was then released into the custody of Archbishop Siena who allowed Galileo to live in his palace for five months before he was permitted to return to his own villa in Florence. Galileo would remain under house arrest for the majority of his remaining years, though he was permitted to travel to visit his daughters in the convent of Saint Matteo.
Galileo was also allowed to continued his scientific pursuits and made many more contributions to science and astronomy during this time. However, he never fully abandoned his heliocentric theories. Nor did he forsake his faith in God.
In closing, I believe that the greatest difference between the two men and their contributions to science lies upon the matter of faith.
Charles Darwin viewed Christianity—and religion in general—as little more than a social characteristic of highly evolved culture, and dismissed the Bible as a "manifestly false history of the world." For this reason he was forced to seek out some other explanation for the origin of life as an alternative to the will of an omnipotent creator. Because of the manifest suffering he witnessed in this fallen world, Darwin rejected the notion of a benevolent God and abandoned all hope in the afterlife. In so doing he lost sight of God's ultimate plan of salvation for mankind and the restoration of all creation. Thus Darwin was forced to expand his theory in an attempt to explain the absence of God, sin, and redemption; pushing the laws of adaptation through natural selection far beyond the point of empirical evidence and into the realm of philosophical speculation and conjecture. Even though his initial observations were not in conflict with the Bible, Darwin's skepticism lead him down an unstable path where he could neither accept nor deny the existence of God, and ultimately left him with more questions than answers.
Galileo, on the other hand, retained his belief in the sovereignty of God and the infallibility of scripture in spite of his unjust treatment at the hands of his peers. He was not forced to reconsider his understanding of the natural world, nor did he lose sight of God's redemptive plan: The salvation of mankind through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Galileo did not attempt to use science to disprove the Bible or the existence of God because that was not his intent. Instead he used science to challenge the majority consensus of his day and exposed both a scientific and theological falsehood without contradicting the scriptures.
Thus, while the theories and observations of both men did not conflict with the Bible, personal bias towards the scriptures determined their motivation for study and ultimately influenced their conclusions. Both men saw what they wanted to see. One recognized God's hand in nature and was falsely accused by his academic peers, while the other saw no such evidence and was praised as a genius in his time.
It is my conclusion therefore that science correctly practiced cannot be in conflict with properly interpreted scripture and serves to strengthen one's understanding, while the misinterpretation or misuse of either the scientific method or the Word of God leads only to chaos, confusion, and the concealment of truth.
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