Sunday, November 25, 2007
the use of reason
Catholic Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), who’s findings, while condemned by the church (blush), forged the backbone of modern astronomy as he discovered that the earth moved around the sun, not the sun around the earth, had this to say concerning the Christian’s use of the mind and science:
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. . . . In the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations.
-- The Submerging Influence
