Block / Freeman God and Galileo

What a 400-Year-Old Letter Teaches Us about Faith and Science
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4335-6292-1
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten

'A devastating attack upon the dominance of atheism in science today.' Giovanni Fazio, Senior Physicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics The debate over the ultimate source of truth in our world often pits science against faith. In fact, some high-profile scientists today would have us abandon God entirely as a source of truth about the universe. In this book, two professional astronomers push back against this notion, arguing that the science of today is not in a position to pronounce on the existence of God-rather, our notion of truth must include both the physical and spiritual domains. Incorporating excerpts from a letter written in 1615 by famed astronomer Galileo Galilei, the authors explore the relationship between science and faith, critiquing atheistic and secular understandings of science while reminding believers that science is an important source of truth about the physical world that God created.

David L. Block (PhD, University of Cape Town) is a professor in the School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. His research has twice been featured on the cover of Nature, the world's most prestigious scientific journal. He is the author of several books, including Starwatch and Shrouds of the Night. He has been a visiting research astronomer at Harvard University, the Australian National University, and the European Southern Observatory, among other institutes.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Block, David L.

Freeman, Kenneth C.

Leseproben

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.1

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.2

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.”3

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...