er those questions deals with miracles, life, and other “truths” that cannot be demonstrated.Galileo also argues that the same God that gave us senses, reason, and intellect would not give us answers to questions that could be solved using them. He feels this is even truer with sciences such as astronomy, where so little of which is found in the Bible, pointing to the fact that the only other planet even mentioned is Venus. Continuing, he argues that since the Bible doesn’t seem to answer the questions of the shape of Heaven or its location in relation to the Earth, why would it state the matter of an earth-centered universe. Quoting a high-ranked priest, he states: “That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes.”Towards the conclusion of Galileo’s letter he offers an argument of truths. The argument basically states this: if the truth of the Bible conflicts with the truth of fact, and two truths cannot contradict, then one or the other is wrong. Since the truth of fact cannot be wrong, except for ignorance, then the scientific interpretations found in the Bible may therefore be in err. Galileo’s doesn’t exactly feel that the Bible is wrong, he is just providing one more argument towards the difference in science and the Bible. The errors themselves, he states, are most likely due to the inability to “affirm that all interpreters of the Bible speak by divine inspiration.” It is no doubt that Galileo reached much opposition on both his Copernican views of the world and his views on the Bible and science. But its probably that most of his opposition was from Catholic people who never studied science themselves. This made it very simple for them to disregard Galileo’s scientific findings, and therefore, not pay too much attention to his feelings of the Bible. Galileo makes much attempt to not give his critics the upper hand...
