True Accounts In The Bible example essay topic

Galileo took one of the first steps leading toward the death of biblical belief of the universe by mounting a systematic challenge to the biblical notion that the earth was the center of the universe. The centrality of Earth had long been associated with the beliefs of Aristotle and Ptolemy that had been adopted as the official teaching of the church. Aristotle and Ptolemy believed that the Earth was immovable and was orbited by concentric spheres in which the various planets and stars were rooted. Galileo sought to confirm the theory, presented in the sixteenth century by Copernicus, that the sun was the center of the universe.

Galileo believed that mathematics is a guide to truth. He used mathematics to account for the heavenly motions. When Galileo proved that the sun is the center of the universe and that the earth revolves around the sun, the church reacted against such challenges regarding them as contrary to the bible and heretical. His first argument is that when Copernicus came up with the theory that the sun was the center of the universe, he was not only a Catholic, but also a priest and a canon. He's saying that if an esteem member of the church was able to conceive and to believe that there is a possibility that the sun is the center of the universe, then why can't the entire church. He writes in his "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina", that the reason why the church is condemning the opinion that the sun moves and the earth stands still is because in many places in the bible, it states that the earth stands still and the sun moves (p. 181).

Since the bible cannot be wrong, then anyone who believes otherwise then what is stated in the bible is guilty of committing heresy. Galileo goes on to say that it is very ignorant of people to think that the bible can never be wrong. He says that people don't really try to understand the true meaning of things written in the bible. Most people just read it for what it is and believe that it is what God meant by it. In the "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina" in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, he writes: "Hence I think that I may reasonably conclude that whenever the Bible has occasion to speak of any physical conclusion (especially those which are very abstruse and hard to understand), the rule has been observed of avoiding confusion in the minds of the common people which would render them contumacious toward the higher mysteries. Now the Bible, merely to condescend to popular capacity, has not hesitated to obscure some very important pronouncements, attributing to God himself some qualities extremely remote from (and even contrary to) His essence". (p. 182) By this he's basically saying that the Bible wasn't meant to be taken literally and that common people are stupid for doing so.

He argues that the reason why God gave people senses, reason, and intellect was for people to use it and not put it to waste. God would not want people to deny what they see and what they " ve discovered through experimentation. There are some true accounts in the bible relating to astronomy. There are accounts in Genesis 22: 17 and Jeremiah 33: 22 that refer to the stars in the heavens and that they cannot be counted.

In Genesis 22: 17, it is written as follows: "Blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall posses the gate of their enemies". This is sating that there are stars in the heavens. In Jeremiah 33: 22, it is written as follows: "As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, nor the sand of the sea measured, so will I multiply the descendents of David My servant and the Levites who minister to Me.) This is stating that the stars in the heavens cannot be counted. There are many other passages in the Bible that is correct with the findings of astronomy, such as in 1 Corinthians 15: 41 that states that each star is unique, and in Jeremiah 31: 35: 36 also describes the movement in the universe. I agree with Galileo's argument that the Bible was not meant to be taken literally word for word. I believe that there is a deeper meaning to the words in the Bible and that Galileo is right to fight for his what he believes is true.

His discoveries were a break through in the field of astronomy and it lead to way to many new discoveries later on. His discoveries of the stars of Jupiter gave way for future astronomers to make further discoveries. Though Copernicus was the first to ever mention the theory that the sun was the center of the universe, Galileo went as far as to prove that the theory is true.