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It is a real joy for me to be able to be with you this evening to share some ideas and to engage in some discussion. I’m a Christian and I’m a scientist, and I’ve chosen a topic that blends these two facts. It’s a topic that I hope you will also find interesting.
Besides being a Christian and a scientist, I’m also a dad with a daughter in college. I’m so pleased that Liz is here tonight with a number of her friends. Speaking as a dad, there is something I need to say right away, and right from my heart. On behalf of all of your parents, I want you to know how much we love you, and how much we miss you! Learning to let go of you is just about the hardest lesson we parents are facing. We are so proud of you!
I was raised in a church-going home, and was quite devout and religious as I grew up. Although I believed in God and had been baptized and confirmed, the truth is, I had little knowledge of God or the Bible. It wasn’t until my junior year of high school that a friend challenged me to explain the basis for my faith. When I described it to him, we both realized that I believed I had to constantly earn God’s love, and I needed to bargain with God for everything. I believed, like very many people, that God would bless me if I was good, and punish me if I was bad. Getting to heaven meant being more good than bad. It had never occurred to me that God’s standard might be perfect goodness, or that God might love me unconditionally. My friend shared a small booklet written by Billy Graham. It explained the idea that God’s love for me was extreme, and that Christ had died for my sins, to pay my lifetime of debts once and for all. Accepting that gift creates a bridge back to intimacy with my heavenly father. I was amazed by this offer, and I prayed a prayer of acceptance that changed my life. I am deeply thankful for God’s unconditional love, and for my savior’s willingness to die on the cross in my place.
And I love science. My father was a geology professor at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, so I have always been exposed to science and scientific thinking. I did my undergraduate and PhD training in molecular Biology at UW—Madison, and then I did my postdoctoral fellowship at Caltech. At age 30 I took my first job as an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. I moved my lab here to Mayo Clinic in 1995. I love doing molecular biology research, and I love working with PhD students. I enjoy the vibrancy of young people, about your age, and the crucial questions and decisions and dynamic changes my students face. It is a very exciting time of life, and the chance to invest in my students as their mentor is a joy and a privilege.
I grew up in a world where evolutionary theory and an ancient earth were important scientific truths. When I became a Christian and started to carefully study the Bible, I met loving people who had decided that a high view of the Bible meant rejecting modern scientific views about the origin of our universe and the origin of humans. I temporarily jumped from one side of the fence to the other, assuming that Darwinian theories could not be correct and that I had no choice but to become a creationist or a proponent of what came to be known as Intelligent Design.
What I want to do this evening is to depart from that topic for a while, and talk about something else. I loved the history of science courses I took as an undergraduate, and tonight’s topic will start with history of science before eventually getting us back to where we started. Bear with me.
Two things motivated me to choose this evening’s topic. The first was a series of conversations I’ve had with Liz during her time so far as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota. She has a number of Christian friends, and she and I have both been dismayed to hear that many of them avoid taking college courses in geology or even biology because they are afraid to be taught about evolutionary theory. The concern seems to be that even hearing about this scientific topic is somehow evil and dangerous. What an unfortunate attitude! What does this fear say about curiosity and the search for truth? Why do we go to college anyway? Isn’t it possible that there is more to learn than what we already know? Couldn't some ideas be bigger and more profound than we previously thought? I was disturbed to think that Christians are afraid to learn more about nature and science and technology. How else can we understand what really is true? Shouldn’t we listen and sift, using our minds and our God-given intellect to determine honestly for ourselves what is real? After all, college should be the one time when we get to decide what we believe (and why), so we don’t unquestioningly inherit what our parents believe. Remember, somebody’s paying a lot for you to have this college experience! So I was annoyed.
Second, I read two wonderful books this spring. I recommend both to you with great enthusiasm. You can get them from amazon.com. The first is:
Francis S. Collins. The Language of God: a scientist presents evidence for belief. Free Press, New York, NY. 2006.
This excellent book is by the molecular biologist who managed the publicly-funded human genome project to sequence, for the first time, the 3 billion base pairs of human DNA. Collins is a wonderful and thoughtful Christian believer. Like some of the Christian professors who influenced me at UW—Madison, Collins is committed to the Bible and he is not a creationist. This book is extremely helpful, and I urge all of you to read it. In fact, a section of the book gave me the idea for my talk this evening. It is called “Lessons from Galileo.”
The other book that influenced me is actually about Galileo. It is:
Dava Sobel. Galileo’s Daughter: a historical memoir of science, faith and love. Penguin Books, New York, NY. 2000.
This tremendous book collects actual letters written to the famous Italian scientist, Galileo, from his daughter in her convent. The book gave me the opportunity to review Galileo’s life, and I drew some conclusions that I wish to share this evening.
After we briefly review the historical record of Galileo’s life and scientific contributions, I want to remind us of his spiritual legacy. I’ll let you connect the dots from this discussion to the issue I mentioned at the beginning. Finally I’ll suggest some key principles drawn from the story of Galileo.
I want to emphasize that my comments this evening represent my own opinions. I will quote some famous people, but my presentation is not meant to imply that these views are officially shared by our hosts this evening, or by my church. I feel strongly about these ideas, but I feel even more strongly about other things that I know more certainly. I know more certainly that my savior Jesus Christ loves me, and died for me, and that his death has rescued me, and, amazingly, his death makes me clean in God’s eyes. We can enjoy lively debate about science and origins, but these are not nearly so important as understanding how to come into personal relationship with the God of this universe.
To understand Galileo and the momentous importance of his scientific and spiritual contributions, we need to dust off a bit of scientific history. We’ll start with Ptolemy, a Roman scientific philosopher who, around 83 AD, published his geocentric model for the solar system (and the entire universe, for that matter). The study of cosmology has much more ancient roots, but Ptolemy captured the western thought of his age: both our physical experience and our healthy egos make it clear that the earth is stationary and everything moves around us.
Duh.
This core truth is self-evident, and we just have to work out the details of predicting the movement of sun, moon and stars in celestial spheres that move around us. Those pesky planets (the “wandering stars” whose motions break the rules) were just minor exceptions to Ptolemy.
The geocentric cosmology made sense with experience and with our human perception that the universe is about us. This model was also consistent with the language used by the biblical writers (more on that in a few minutes). Ptolemy’s views held sway for almost another millennium and a half. Then things changed.
To put the matter in context, recall that the brilliant artist and scholar Leonardo da Vinci lived from 1452-1519. Shortly afterwards the equally brilliant Polish scientist, Copernicus, put into writing something that had intrigued other (less daring) western scientists for centuries—the concept of a heliocentric solar system. In fact, Arab, Greek, Indian, and likely Chinese philosophers had been toying with these ideas as well. In 1543 Copernicus argued that a heliocentric model for the solar system could account at least as well as the geocentric view for the phenomena we observe in the sky during the day and night. The sun, not the earth, might be the stationary object.
With hindsight, it is fascinating to read about how the Copernican model was viewed by his contemporaries. One of them was Martin Luther, who was busy inventing Protestantism. Luther, who lived from 1483-1546, was not a fan of Copernicus or his idea that earth orbits the sun. Luther wrote:
"There is talk of a new astrologer who wants to prove that the earth moves and goes around instead of the sky, the sun, the moon, just as if somebody were moving in a carriage or ship might hold that he was sitting still and at rest while the earth and the trees walked and moved. But that is how things are nowadays: when a man wishes to be clever he must . . . invent something special, and the way he does it must needs be the best! The fool wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside-down. However, as Holy Scripture tells us, so did Joshua bid the sun to stand still and not the earth."
What else was going on in 1543? It was a busy time for science, religion, and culture. John Calvin lived from 1509-1564, and William Shakespeare from 1564-1616. They were both contemporaries of Copernicus.
Then we get to Galileo and our story for tonight. Born in the same year as Shakespeare, the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei lived from 1564-1642. More than a philosopher of science, Galileo was an observational scientist. By this I mean that he invented scientific instruments that revolutionized his ability to observe the universe. With the ability to see the universe more clearly came fresh evidence, not just opinions, about truth. It was this evidence, and the conclusions he drew from it, that got Galileo into trouble.
Galileo built a refracting telescope in 1609, when he was 46 years old. This changed everything.
Galileo used his telescope to observe the night sky. Though it wasn’t a very good instrument by modern standards, it revealed evidence that shook the Ptolemeic cosmology. Galileo observed sunspots that challenged the notion of heavenly perfection. More amazing, he observed, for the first time, that there were moons around the planet Jupiter. In a wonderfully detailed set of observations, Galileo discovered that Jupiter’s moons circled…Jupiter! Not everything in the heavens need circle the earth. Maybe our planet isn’t…gulp…the center of everything after all. Galileo’s thorough, and thoughtful, observations and writings helped to establish the Copernican view as very likely. The retrograde planetary motions are easily explained if earth and the other planets are circling the sun at different rates and on different orbits.
In a moment, we’ll review the ecclesiastical arguments that ended up costing Galileo his freedom.
In the tradition of astronomers, the next major figure was Kepler, who in 1571 (during Galileo’s life), deduced that planetary orbits are elliptical rather than circular. It was then the British genius, Isaac Newton, who in 1642 published his massive treatise laying out the laws of motion, gravitation and mechanics. By the 1700s it became plain that the heliocentric view of the solar system was correct. Modern space exploration depends on it. Moreover, our understanding of the universe made possible by observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and other instruments descended from Galileo, prove that we’ve lost our place in the center of it all. In fact, our planet is in the middle of nowhere in a solar system in the middle of nowhere within a galaxy in the middle of nowhere in an unimaginably vast and expanding universe.
In case you missed that—it appears we are in the middle of nowhere.
So we know now that Galileo was right and Ptolemy was wrong. I’m not aware of many Christian students who are afraid to take college astronomy because they might be taught that the sun is the center of the solar system. Galileo was right. The sun IS in the center of the solar system. We’ve stopped arguing about it. We accept it. We can still be Christians and yet believe in heliocentrism.
Duh.
Well not so fast. Galileo paid dearly to teach us this lesson, and it took many decades and bitter arguments with the religious leaders of his day. Let’s remember that there were Bible students in both the Roman Catholic and Protestant establishments who were committed to the view that Galileo’s teaching was heresy of the worst kind. The Catholic Church worked hard to suppress this teaching and censured Galileo. Before we’re too judgmental, remember the quote from Luther about Copernicus. Most leading Christians of the day were not leading scientists of the day.
Thoughtful Jews and Christians have, for centuries, been trying to understand how the Bible is inspired, why it was provided to us, and how to understand the many kinds of literature collected within it. Those wishing for some kind of literal interpretation of all passages struggled violently against heliocentrism. For example, I did a search that found the word “sun” 170 times in the New International Version of the Bible. 55 of those verses involve rising or setting movements. Clearly, if the sun is stationary, these verses are not literally true, right? A number of other famous verses caused particular arguments between church authorities and the new cosmologists. I will mention just seven examples:
Psalm 93:1
The LORD reigns, he is robed in majesty;
the LORD is robed in majesty
and is armed with strength.
The world is firmly established;
it cannot be moved.
Psalm 96:10
Say among the nations, "The LORD reigns."
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.
I Chron 16:30
Tremble before him, all the earth!
The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.
Psalm 104:5
He set the earth on its foundations;
it can never be moved.
Ecc: 1:5
The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
Josh 10:12-14
On the day the LORD gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel:
"O sun, stand still over Gibeon,
O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon."
So the sun stood still,
and the moon stopped,
till the nation avenged itself on [b] its enemies,
as it is written in the Book of Jashar.
The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the LORD listened to a man. Surely the LORD was fighting for Israel!
Job 9:6
He shakes the earth from its place
and makes its pillars tremble.
I think it is tremendously important to think through these seven examples. We now know with great certainty that the earth orbits the sun. We also know that the Bible is an important collection of ancient documents that somehow expresses God’s message for us. So how do we understand these passages?
Well, as we develop our own analysis, let’s look at what Galileo so eloquently said on this very point. In his letter of 1613 to churchman Benedetto Castelli Galileo writes:
“…Holy Scripture cannot err and the decrees therein contained are absolutely true and inviolable. I should only have added that, though Scripture cannot err, its expounders and interpreters are liable to err in many ways…when they would base themselves always on the literal meaning of the words. For in this way not only many contradictions would be apparent, but even grave heresies and blasphemies, since then it would be necessary to give God hands and feet and eyes, and human and bodily emotions such as anger, regret, hatred, and sometimes forgetfulness of things past, and ignorance of the future…I believe the intention of Holy Writ was to persuade men of the truths necessary for salvation such as neither science nor any other means could render credible, but only the voice of the Holy Spirit. But I do not think it necessary to believe that the same God who gave us our senses, our speech, our intellect, would have us put aside the use of these, to teach us instead such things as with their help we could find out for ourselves, particularly in the case of those sciences of which there is not the smallest mention in the Scriptures; and, above all, astronomy, of which so little notice is taken that the names of none of the planets are mentioned. Surely if the intention of the sacred scribes had been to teach the people astronomy, they would not have passed over the subject so completely.”
And so we come to the crux of my presentation. I want to raise five questions for discussion:
1. Why did I choose this topic, and how does it relate to my introductory comments?
2. How do modern Christians treat/understand difficult passages that imply a stationary earth and moving heavenly bodies?
3. Why aren’t Christians fighting with scientists about geocentrism any more? Are there many Christian schools founded on the principle that geocentrism must be taught? Is that the focus of home school curricula?
4. Why aren’t Christian students afraid to take astronomy and physics in college (except if they don’t like math)?
5. What is the point?
[an extended period of discussion ensued as students responded to these questions].
OK. Thank you for your very interesting and thoughtful ideas. You have correctly discerned that I chose this topic because I think the 16th and 17th century battles over Scripture and heliocentrism teach some crucial lessons about how Christians should think about science. These “Lessons from Galileo” have totally changed how we understand our solar system and our place in the physical universe. Galileo taught us that these scientific truths need not force us to abandon Christianity. We owe Galileo huge thanks.
There is, however, remarkable irony. After just a few hundred years, many of us Christians have forgotten the lessons of Galileo. We are afraid to examine scientific evidence that might broaden our horizons, as Galileo’s evidence did. We claim a literal framework for biblical interpretation when we actually have no such framework. Galileo already demonstrated that we must think poetically about some biblical literature, including the astronomy passages of the Bible. And we have accepted this! We have already abandoned a literal interpretation of the Scriptures. As several of you stated so clearly during the discussion time, Galileo reminded us that the Bible contains many kinds of literature, intended for many purposes. This literature includes poetry, lyrics, proverbs, letters, historical accounts, allegory, mythology, and apocalyptic visions. Asking whether a Bible passage is literally true is sometimes (not always) like looking at a painting and asking if it is literally “true,” or hearing the lyrics to a love song and asking if they are literally “true.”
When Christians sign on to the creation/evolution debate, it reflects forgetfulness about the lessons of Galileo, and it also reflects forgetfulness about even more profound lessons. Let me share some remarkable quotes from deep Christian thinkers on the problem of understanding biblical teaching about origins.
Saint Augustine lived from 354-430 AD (long before Galileo). In 408 AD he wrote “The Literal Interpretation of Genesis.” Here is what he writes in Chapter 19:
“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 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 meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.”
Augustine also writes:
“… as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation.”
And finally,
"In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in many different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it."
One of my favorite Christian authors, C.S. Lewis, an expert on mythology and a deeply committed Christian, speaks eloquently about the Biblical record in this passage from his book, The problem of pain:
“For long centuries, God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of himself. He gave it hands whose thumb could be applied to each of the fingers, and jaws and teeth and throat capable of articulation, and a brain sufficiently complex to execute all of the material motions whereby rational thought is incarnated. The creature may have existed in this stage for ages before it became man: it may even have been clever enough to make things which a modern archaeologist would accept as proof of its humanity. But it was only an animal because all its physical and psychical processes were directed to purely material and natural ends. Then, in the fullness of time, God caused to descend upon this organism, both on its psychology and physiology, a new kind of consciousness which could say “I” and “me,” which could look upon itself as an object, which knew God, which could make judgments of truth, beauty and goodness, and which was so far above time that it could perceive time flowing past…We do not know how many of these creatures God made, nor how long they continued in the Paradisal state. But sooner or later they fell. Someone or something whispered that they could become as gods…They wanted some corner in the universe of which they could say to God, “This is our business, not yours.” But there is no such corner. They wanted to be nouns, but they were, and eternally must be, mere adjectives. We have no idea in what particular act, or series of acts, the self-contradictory, impossible wish found expression. For all I can see, it might have concerned the literal eating of a fruit, but the question is of no consequence.”
And so I want to leave you with four principles. I consider these to be lessons from Galileo.
1. The Bible is beautiful, not simple. The Bible contains many kinds of literature. We must work hard to understand each of them, and the purpose for which each was written. We must humbly admit that we cannot be certain about some meanings.
2. The Bible is a collection of documents revealing God’s character and relationship to us. It is apparently not a technical scientific document.
Here I would like to provide a short anecdote. Once upon a time Liz was learning about heredity, and was just starting to be curious about the birds and the bees. One day when she was about 5 years old I commented on her beautiful blue eyes, and how my eyes are also blue. Her mom’s eyes aren’t blue. Liz is smart. She looked at me and said, “how come my eyes are blue when I came out of Mom’s body?” Now that caught me off guard. Being a molecular biologist, I recognized a teachable moment. It was a perfect chance to explain the idea of DNA codes, and how the DNA instructions in my cells specified how to make blue eyes, while the DNA in mom’s cells had instructions for making gray-green eyes. I proudly steered clear of trouble while explaining some molecular biology and how children reflect hereditary information from both parents. Liz stared at me. “OK, so how did YOUR DNA get into MOM’s body!?”
Wow.
I faced a choice. She was five years old! I had no problem some years later talking with her about human sexuality in pretty thorough detail. But such a conversation in such detail would have been neither appropriate nor helpful for a little five-year-old girl with blue eyes. She wasn’t ready for it, and she wouldn’t have understood it had I provided the detail. A loving father communicates what is needed in terms that can be understood. Rather than a continued science lecture, I told my little girl that I loved her very much and I loved her mom very much. “When a mom and dad love each other, they long to have kids to share their love. So moms and dads share their DNA.” There were two seconds of silence. “OK” she said, “do you want to do a puzzle with me?”
And that was that. Why do I share this story along with principle 2? I think God gave us a beautiful story to express to us what we need to understand about our origins. A technical explanation wasn’t necessary and would not have been helpful. The beginning of Genesis is, to me, more like poetry or lyrics or a painting than a scientific manuscript. I think I was imitating God when I had that conversation on origins with my five-year-old daughter. As Bible readers, our challenge is to understand the different forms of literature we encounter, and to do our best to understand the purpose for which each was written.
3. Galileo teaches us that Christians must discern that there is poetry in scripture. When scientific observation appears to contradict the “plain teaching” of scripture, it is sometimes the “plain teaching” of scripture that is wrong.
4. By wrapping Christianity in single issues like the creation/evolution debate, or moral issues like gay rights, we diminish Christ and make it harder for unsaved people to accept him.
Thank you for your interest and for your discussion. Please don’t hesitate to email me at maher@mayo.edu with your comments and questions.
And remember, we parents love you so very much, and we are intensely proud of you!
06/08
