Essay On Galileo Heretic

Galileo’s Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina argues that Nicholas Copernicus’ idea about the Earth’s rotation orbiting the sun once a year does not in fact have anything to do with the scripture in the Catholic Bible. Galileo is simply stating a theory that he believes is true and scientifically proven. His ideas came to life in a time when many were questioning their beliefs surrounding the church and ideas that they have had in the past. Galileo was very science- oriented and many of his ideas and teachings did not align, and in some cases directly conflicted, with what the Catholic Church preached. The Catholic religion as a whole has a long history of promoting decision- making based on religious ideas or faith.

Augustine of Hippo was a Christian philosopher who played a big part and impacted Christianity greatly. Augustine helped Christianity by helping the Church by finding answers to questions that could have damaged the Church if they went unanswered. He explained to the Church original sin, the Trinity, and clarified the concept of predestination. Augustine was the bishop in the city of Hippo located in North Africa. He was the son of the famous Saint Monica, but despite his mother being a devout Christian his father believed in paganism.

Without religion we have no morality, without morality we are beings of evil. “The Evil Empire” speech by Ronald Reagan, is verbal dissent of the Soviet Union and his supports for abolishment of abortion. Reagan’s speech was held in 1983 at the Convention of the National Association of Evangelicals, seemingly a tactical decision to have a crowd susceptible to a religious appeal. Using word choice and repetition, Reagan rallies the public’s support with arguments of morality using religion, a pathos and ethos appeal. Reagan begins his speech with a religious joke, though seemingly just an ice breaker, this is how Reagan beings his pathos and ethos appeal.

Therefore, causing great concern that the prince would become a threat to his people by not following the moral beliefs of a Christian and following Machiavelli’s unethical theory. Hundreds of years after the banning, not much had changed. Men still believed and acted as they pleased. Rulers followed the ways that Machiavelli mentioned in The Prince, making the banning hypocritical to the way that good Christian rulers would have attained

The infamous new Atheists have taken this form of argumentation and use it to argue for the merits of atheism over theism. This is a development that seems to be rooted in this new militant form of atheism, and goes something like this: If atheism is true, then I will have freedom and intellectual honesty, and it won’t matter if I’m not a Theist, because God doesn’t exist. If a good god does turn out to exist, he will forgive me. On the other hand if I’m a Christian, I must be sexually and morally constrained, and believe in a God I find to be morally abhorrent. The cost of being wrong is losing my whole life.

A man can create such things as electronics, statues and buildings but can’t design the world and all the living things. Teleological argument is the argument for God’s existence based on the evidence of design in the world (Lawhead 327). It is also known as the argument from design, it is the idea that our world and the universe is so complicated to understand that the world was no accident in fact it was designed by someone, but who? Growing up in a catholic church and learning from the bible about how everything first started is how I learned that God does exist. William Paley was another person who had a famous version of the watchmaker argument.

In the 1st century, Christianity spread throughout Rome causing differing views on the religion. At first Christianity was disapproved of by the upper class, then in later years it was embraced. The spread of Christianity throughout Rome eventually caused Rome to split and lead to the fall of the Roman empire. Christianity challenged the government, believing in a higher power then the Emperor. With this mindset, the government feared for it’s future in Rome and it was disapproved of, much like the Tang Emperor Wu in document 6, who stated that it will cause disorder in society.

I believe the reason why science and religion are so focused on is because these are two things that are very different from eachother. In Cat’s Cradle science is a form of truth and religion is a form of lies. His humor is used in many ways to show the dangers of combining human stupidity and uninterest with humanity’s technological capacity for destruction. Vonnegut satirizes science in Cat’s Cradle by showing it as a rival with religion, truth and knowledge. An example of this is when Dr.Asa Breed whom was Felix Hoenikker’s supervisor at the research laboratory states “Nothing generous about it.

Chaucer is sending them a slap in the face with this example because he is showing that the world knows they are not as perfect and pious as they seem. Religion is a theme in many works of literature throughout the ages. In the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer is no different. In the Miller’s Tale, Chaucer uses the most unlikely character to reveal the hypocritical ways of the Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages. He shows that they are all materialistic, using religion to trick people, and not honestly having the heart of a true believer.

He believed that “the Bible “ gave a ‘ manifestly false history of the world.’” ( Textbook 752). Thus, in his journal, he was trying to disprove and argued that the Bible is false, and his theory however, is a “fact”. In Darwin’s “The Descent of Man” he stated that “the grounds upon this conclusion rest will ever be shaken, for close similarity between man and the lower animals in embryonic devolvement… are the facts which cannot be disputed” (

Galileo Galilei was an Italian astronomer who disagreed with the Roman Catholic theory of geocentrism. He was not a heretic because he was a Christian and had similar beliefs to the Roman Catholics, but he did not agree with the Church’s theory of the position and movement of Earth in the Solar System. Document A is an excerpt of a letter to Duchess Christina of Tuscany written by Galilei, counter-arguing the heresy claims. In the letter, Galileo wrote, “Can an opinion be heretical and yet have no concern with the salvation of souls?” Although he did not believe in the astronomical theory of the Church, he believed that his scientific thoughts should not interfere with his religious beliefs. According to Document D, Pope John Paul II said

He published these observations in the book Sidereus Nuncius (1610). The Catholic Church had formerly opposed Copernicus already in 1543, and met Galileo with the same opposition. The Church declared any documents on heliocentric theory were to be banned and considered heretical in 1616. That same year, Galileo proposed a new theory regarding tides, and three years later one regarding comets, claiming these as proof of the earth’s motion. Eventually in 1632, Galileo published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which became very popular, much to the alarm of the Catholic Church.

In a letter to Cristina of Lorraine, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Galileo gives a perfectly sound and rational argument as to why the church should not be charging him as a heretic for his belief in the heliocentric model when the bible is going against what they see with their own eyes. Furthermore, Galileo argues that, contrary to popular belief at the time, the bible should only be used to help us understand abstruse concepts and what is needed for salvation, not to explain the natural world. In a lot of ways, Galileo’s argument paves the way for separation between church and state, as well as the age-old conflict between science and religion that is still discussed even till today. However, what I found interesting here is that Galileo actually believed that his beliefs went hand in hand with the bible. He tries to justify his beliefs according to the bible by arguing that God gave us a brain in order to

Luther went on to question the Church, reasoning if Christian practices had came to be corrupted, then it was possible its teaching were as well. In 1520 he wrote three political tracts that attacked the many practices of the Church which did not correspond to the Bible; topics include transubstantiation, the 7 sacraments and iconoclasticism in On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, the right of a secular state to reform the Church (thus limit the latter’s power) in Address to the Christian Nobility, and lastly the Bible as the

The 95 theses is a list of questions and propositions for debate. Legend has it that on October 31, 1517 Luther defiantly nailed a copy of his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle church. In essence, his Theses called for a full reform of the Catholic church and challenged other scholars to debate with him on matters of the church policy. The 95 thesis were to be used by as the basis for a discussion on this topic.It challenged the teachings of the Catholic Church on the nature of penance, the authority of the pope and the usefulness of indulgeneces. The 95 theses are important because he helped start a little movement called the protestant reformation.It challegend the power of the Catholic Church and severly limited their control of Central and Northern Europe.