GALILEO, ARISTOTLE AND RELIGION
by Adam Harbinson
Isn’t it refreshingly honest when people say, ‘I don’t know,’ for what they’re really saying – usually – is that they haven’t yet made their minds up, they’re prepared to consider the possibility that there’s more to learn about the subject. The other side of that coin of course is when you say, ‘I know,’ because when you ‘know’ something, you’re mind is closed. You’re saying, ‘Don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind’s made up.’
Galileo, the father of modern astronomy, is a good example. In the late sixteenth century he suggested that Earth and the planets revolve around the sun. He had evidence, but his theory ran aground because it challenged the accepted belief that the whole universe revolves around Earth. After all, it was Aristotle who taught that, and who was he to contradict Aristotle? Sure everybody ‘knows’ that the sun could not be at the centre of things. And Galileo was stripped of his professorship and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
But the interesting thing is this; he was charged with heresy. Those who ‘knew better’ were religious people, Pope Urban VIII no less, a one-time friend of Galileo. And what charge was levelled against him? ‘The proposition that the sun is in the centre of the world and immovable from its place is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical’ – and listen to this – ‘because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scriptures.’
Things don’t change much, do they? Often, all someone has to do to convince and control the masses is to sound pious or biblical. Like Rev Jeremiah White, the pastor of the church that Barak Obama used to be part of – I wonder why he left? According to him God is punishing America because of the social injustices in the Land of the Brave and Home of the Free. Well, maybe that’s the way his god conducts his business, but mine certainly doesn’t.
But then, everybody knows that AIDS is his god’s vicious punishment on Gays. Everybody knows that poor people are poor because they’re feckless. Everybody knows that wealthy people are wealthy because Jeremiah White’s god rewards them for their squeaky-clean self-righteous lives. And that’s illogical because the only righteousness the true God recognises is his son’s, which he gives freely to the likes of you and me, and he’s not about to reward anybody for a gift he has given them – is he? And everybody knows that the Bible is a big black book of laws that nobody can keep but everybody pretends to because God prowls about with his celestial truncheon and God help you if he catches you with your pants down or your fingers in the till.
I used to believe that stuff, until there came a point when I rejected every religious thing I had ever been taught by anybody; I had hit rock bottom and I realised my life was built on a load of tosh. And I blame nobody but myself because I had chosen to believe what others said without checking it out for myself.
Let me quote Waldo Emerson: ‘The highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men thought, but what they thought.’
People who allow their opinions to be determined by others live in the land of ‘I Know.’ The truth is such people don’t know because they’re feeding on the regurgitated thoughts of others. That’s why the prophet, speaking of the coming of Jesus wrote, ‘I will write my law in their minds, no longer will a man teach his neighbour…saying, “Know the Lord,” because they will all know me.’
That’s why Jesus warned against teachers in the church when he said; ‘Don’t let anyone call you “Teacher” for you have only one Teacher, and all of you are equal as brothers and sisters.’ And that’s why he had to send the Spirit of Truth to guide us, for men cannot be trusted.
Doesn’t show religion up in a very good light, does it? |
