Ch-3 Science and Religion

The contradiction between science and religion is actually an ancient conflict. Back in 1277, Pope  John 21 felt so threatened by the idea of laws of nature that he decreed them a harass. Unfortunately, that did nothing to change the law governing the gravity. A few moths later the palace roof collapsed and fell on Pope’s head.

But organized religion soon found a solution. For the next few hundred years, it was simply stated that the laws of nature were the work God, and God could break them if he wished to. This view was reinforced by the idea that our perfect blue planet was quite still at the centre of it all. And all the stars and planet rotated around the Earth by some carefully designed clockwork. Aristotle’s idea to the contrary had been long forgotten.

By humans are naturally acquisitive and some such as Galileo Galilei couldn’t he;p by look at god’s clockwork once more. I was 1609 and this time the results would change everything. Galileo is the founder of the modern day science and one of my heroes. He thought  as Id did if you look at the universe closely enough you could discern what was really going on. He was so determined that he perfected lenses that for the first time could magnify the night sky 20 times. But he wasn’t the one assembled them into a telescope instead it was Hans Lippershey who did so.

Even though Galileo was the first to use telescope for astronomical observations. From his house he used his telescope to study Jupiter night after night and made a wonderful discovery – three tiny dots very close to the giant planet. To begin he thought that the dots must be very faint stars but then as he watched for a few nights he saw that they moved and then a fourth dot appeared. Sometimes one of them would vanish behind Jupiter and reappear. He realized they had to be moons circling the vast planets. Here was proved positively that at least some objects do not orbit the Earth. Inspired by this discovery Galileo went on to prove that the Earth must in fact orbit the Sun. Aristotle had been right all along.

Galileo’s discovery triggered a revolutionary thought that would ultimately loosen the grip of the religion over Science. But back in the Seventeenth century they got him in a lot of trouble with the church. He narrowly avoided execution and was confined to house arrest for the last nine years of his life. Legend has it that even has he confessed his sin he muttered “BUT IT DOES MOVE”. Over the next 300 years as more and more laws of nature were discovered Science began to explain all kind of things form lightning, earthquakes and storms to what makes the stars shine. Each new discovery further removed the need for a God. After all if you know the Science behind an eclipse you much less likely to belief in wolf Gods that live in the Sky.

Science does not deny religion it just offers a simple alternative. But several mysteries remain after all if the Earth moves could it be God that moves it. Ultimately did God create the universe in the first place. In 1985 a conference was held on Cosmology at the Vatican in Rome. The gathering of scientists had audience with the Pope John Paul II. He told the scientist that it was okay to study the workings of the universe but we should not ask about the origins of the universe for that was the work of God.