By Selwyn Duke

I responded today to an American Thinker piece by fellow AT contributor James Lewis titled "The Epicycles of Global Warming."  While Lewis’ article was very well done, it included a recapitulation of the Galileo myth, and I was moved to address it.  Here is my response:

I’m writing in reference to James Lewis’ piece on global
warming epicycles. First, I will say
that it’s very well done; it’s well-written and I could not agree with its
thesis more. However, I must take
exception to his use of the Galileo myth, as the Galileo affair has been
misunderstood, mischaracterized and used to impugn the Church and
Christianity in general. 

As I’m sure you realize, the heliocentric belief did not originate with Galileo
but the ancient Greeks.  It was lent further credibility by the Polish
astronomer Nicholas Copernicus in his treatise, "The Revolutions of
Heavenly Orbs."  And it’s instructive here to note that, as writer
George Sims Johnston wrote in "The Galileo Affair," "Copernicus,
a good Catholic, published his book at the urging of two eminent prelates and
dedicated it to Pope Paul III, who received it cordially."  Moreover,
the Church protected Copernicus from Calvinists and others who would have
persecuted him.

It’s also important to understand that the Church did not view such
theories as the threat modern critics would suppose they would have taken them
to be.  In point of fact, churchmen were largely uninterested in such
things.  As Cardinal Baronius once said, the Bible "is intended
to teach us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go."

So why did Galileo encounter such problems?  While it seems there
certainly was enough blame to go around, it should be obvious that he was not
punished for propounding a theory that had been around for thousands of years
and entertained by the Church (the Church regarded it to be a hypothesis);
there was more to it.  For one thing, Galileo was an irascible man
who insisted that the Church accept his theory wholesale, without adequate
proof; he could not even refute Aristotle’s objection pertaining to stellar
parallaxes.   Moreover, the Church was correct in its circumspection,
as some of Galileo’s theories were later disproven; for instance, he was
wrong in saying that the tides were caused by the rotation of the Earth and on
the nature of comets.

A parallel can be seen today with respect to evolution, in that Pope John Paul
II called it "one of a number of possibilities."  Now, should
man endure for a few hundred more years and should the theory in toto
be proven correct, it wouldn’t be surprising if critics of the Church found
ways to cast her as having been adamantly opposed to it.  This is possible
when an entity doesn’t jump on bandwagons heading in the right direction; however,
what is often overlooked is when it doesn’t jump on those going in the wrong
one.

And that is the point.  The Church thinks not in terms of years, but
centuries.  She doesn’t jump on any bandwagon; rather, she
considers positions in a sober fashion, searches for Truth and waits till the
facts are in.  Wouldn’t it be great if the global warming crowd were so
disposed?  Moreover, the Church is especially reluctant to jump on
scientific bandwagons because she isn’t a scientific body.  And, although
it seems strange to say it today, 400 years ago heliocentrism was a
bandwagon. 

And we should all be thankful that the Church exercises such wisdom.  Note
that the current Pope has not jumped on the global warming bandwagon;
instead, he recently made a pronouncement wherein he emphasized that one should
not do such things and that the current global-warming alarmism was not a
reflection of a sincere search for Truth but, rather, was motivated by a desire
to advance an agenda. 

Thus, in some measure, Galileo was actually more like the global warming
alarmists than the Church was.  He was a man who insisted on trying
to ram an unproven theory down people’s throats, a theory containing elements
that were, in fact, incorrect.  This isn’t to say that there is a direct
equivalence between Galileo’s theories and today’s anthropogenic global
warming thesis (AGWT).  While the former were basically sound with a few
flawed elements, I believe the latter to be basically flawed with, at best, a
few sound elements.  Regardless, just as the AGWT is a bandwagon
today, so was heliocentrism at the time of Galileo. 

Accepting unproven scientific theories as fact isn’t the practice of good
scientists any more than that of good theologians.  And just because
certain rash and brash individuals embrace that practice and have been right in
a few instances doesn’t change that fact. 

Again, all in all I love Lewis’ piece, and I would encourage others to read
it.  But we mustn’t fall into the same trap as the global warming
dogmatists.  That is, accepting something as fact simply because it’s
fashionable to say it is so.

The AT version is found here.

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