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There are a few things worthy of note here. First, “Dead flies make the perfumer’s ointment give off a stench; so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor” (Ecclesiastes 10:1). Unbelievers like to use the persecution of Galileo as a way to frighten Christians away from using the Bible to contradict evolution or Big Bang theories, and they have gotten a lot of mileage out of this one incident. But who among humans is infallible? What human is never wrong on anything? Our first response should be, OK, the clergy were wrong; do you never make a mistake?
Second, Galileo was persecuted by the Inquisition; that same notorious Inquisition that persecuted anybody who disagreed with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Galileo was just one victim of many. Against Galileo, Roman Catholic scholars used passages such as: “Tremble before him, all the earth; yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved” (1 Chronicles 16:30). Now suppose you are having a flat front tire fixed. The mechanic, while torquing (precisely tightening) the lug nuts, assures you, “It is good and tight. It is not going anywhere.” Is this a literal statement? As you steer, the wheel moves left or right and the wheel and hub go around and around. We give human authors poetic license; do we presume to revoke God’s poetic license? God speaks to us in His Word so as to be understood by all, not just astronomers with PhDs, who, like the rest of us, speak of pretty sunsets. God frequently mentions or describes things as they appear to us so that everyone will recognize the thing or phenomenon immediately. This is an example even to us today—it is important to be aware of the genre of the passage we are reading. Galileo was a victim of people taking poetic passages as literal statements. Framework Hypotheses take straightforward narrative passages as though they are poetic, and many secular scientists believe the whole of Scripture is fiction.
Third, Galileo faced opposition from secular sources as well. Some people refused to look through his telescope, and not for the reason you might think. Stage magicians and charlatans were well known to use lenses and mirrors for their tricks. Further, most people of the day believed in geocentrism,52 including astronomers and, in the face of still apparently contradictory evidence, were reluctant to change to a new and unproven theory.
52geocentrism: the theory that the sun and planets revolve around the Earth.
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