Galileo - wiser than your averege man

I was intending to take Physics as one of my ‘O’ level subjects in school and then I got 25% in my end of year three exam. They suggested I did Art instead. So you should be aware of how little knowledge and understanding I have of science as you read this post today. But Stephen Hawking’s latest foray into the world of religion has got me thinking – or rather the Christian response to his comments has done so.

That response has been typically of the ‘a fool says in his heart there is no God’ variety and while I understand this reaction I have this gut feeling that it won’t do – not by a long way. Science and those who study it in all its forms has far too much to teach us and far too much to offer this world in terms of the good it can do for us to be so dismissive. Yes there are some who use their knowledge to give us Christians the odd slap or two – but we need to leave those guys be. They do far less harm to the faith than those from within our own ranks who use their knowledge of religion to slap others.

It is often claimed – by scientists and people of faith – that as our understanding of how this world works increases then our need for ‘God’ to help us in our understanding has lessened. God has been pushed out of the picture. This, of course, is entirely correct if we have been using God to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. It was never a good idea to have a ‘God of the gaps’. We still do it, mind you. He comes in very handy when science is silence about a particular issue.

But here’s a question: should science be one tool with which to interpret scripture? It’s a tough one, isn’t it? What if science says that there is an alternative life system out there in ‘space’? Would that change our Christian understanding of God’s view of us? Or what if they definitively find the ‘gay gene’? Could we still say that homosexuality is a sinful lifestyle choice?

Some will react to these questions by saying, ‘They won’t. The Bible is clear about these things and we should stick with the Bible. The science must be wrong.’

The problem is that’s what the Church said to a certain Galileo in the 17^th century. He was certain that the earth moved around the sun. The Church, based on the Bible, believed differently. He was right; they were wrong, but that didn’t stop the Church from keeping him under house arrest for the remainder of his life.

So what happened? It wasn’t so much that the Bible was ‘wrong’; it was the interpretation that was mistaken. And to be fair to the Church a simple reading of some of the texts involved does suggest that the sun indeed revolves around the earth – as does a simple observation of the skies every morning and night from our earthly viewpoint. But that interpretation was very wide of the mark. Science has taught us what the truth is and today we read verses like Ps 93:1 and Eccl 1:5 very differently compared to the Medieval Church. Our interpretation of the Bible has changed because of science. We should bear that in mind the next time we dismiss a scientist as being foolish.

Post-script

As part of his punishment, Galileo was sentenced to read 7 Psalms once a week for three years. Hardly onerous, but in order to save him from this ordeal his daughter, Maria Celeste, gained the Church’s approval to take the punishment upon herself. An instance of science interpreting Scripture you might say.

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