RELIGION AND ASTRONOMY
In the early Church, astronomy, like other branches of science, was
looked upon as futile, since the New Testament taught that the earth was
soon to be destroyed and new heavens created.
The heavenly bodies were looked upon by the theologians as either living
beings possessing souls, or as the habitation of the angels. However, as
time passed, the geocentric doctrine, the doctrine that the earth is the
center of the universe and that the sun and planets revolve about it,
was the theory that held the highest respect.
Copernicus, in 1543, was first to bring clearly before the world the
then astounding theory that the earth and planets revolve about the sun.
But not until he was on his deathbed did he dare to publish it, for he
well knew the opposition with which it would be met. Even then he
published it with an apologetic lie by a friend Osiander, that
Copernicus had propounded the doctrine of the earth's movement not as a
fact, but as a hypothesis.
"Thus was the greatest and most ennobling, perhaps, of scientific
truths--a truth not less ennobling to religion than to science--forced
in coming before the world, to sneak and crawl." (_White: "History of
Warfare of Science with Theology."_)
During the next seventy years the matter slumbered, until Galileo upheld
the Copernican doctrine as the truth, and proved it to be the truth by
his telescope. Immediately the Church condemned the statements of
Copernicus and forbade Galileo to teach or discuss them. All books which
affirmed the motion of the earth were forbidden, and to read the work of
Copernicus was declared to risk damnation. All branches of the
Protestant Church, Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican, vied with each other
in denouncing the Copernican doctrine.
One man, Giordano Bruno dared to assert the truth in the hearing of the
Papacy. For this heresy he was hunted from land to land, finally trapped
in Venice, imprisoned at Rome, burned alive, and his ashes scattered to
the winds!
Against Galileo, the war against the Copernican theory was concentrated.
His discoveries were declared to be deceptions, and his announcements
blasphemy when, in 1610, he announced that his telescope had revealed
the moons of the planet Jupiter.
In 1615, Galileo was summoned before the Inquisition at Rome, and forced
to promise that he would "relinquish altogether the opinion that the sun
is the center of the world, and immovable, and that the earth moves, nor
henceforth to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatsoever verbally
or in writing."
Pope Paul V solemnly rendered the decree that "the doctrine of the
double motion of the earth about its axis and about the sun is false and
entirely contrary to Holy Scripture."
The climax of this instance of the infallibility of the Church occurred
when in his seventieth year Galileo was again brought before the
Inquisition; he was forced to abjure under threats of torture and
imprisonment by command of Pope Urban a truth which, in this day, is
taken for granted by the youngest of children. Galileo was then kept in
exile for the rest of his days, died, and was buried ignobly, apart
from his family, without fitting ceremony, without monument or epitaph.
As late as 1873 there was published, in St. Louis, a work by a president
of a Lutheran teachers' seminary in which he stated that the earth is
the principal body of the universe, that it stands fixed, and that the
sun and moon only serve to light it.
Astronomy brings forth a noble array of men who have, by their intense
desire for the truth, persevered against the Church, and in spite of the
vilest opposition of that Church, brought to the attention of man laws
that have given a meaning and order to our universe.
Copernicus escaping persecution only by death; Bruno burned alive;
Galileo imprisoned; Kepler reviled, and Newton bitterly attacked. In
this manner has religion aided astronomy!