People Believes About Church Essay, Research Paper

The Way People Thought

The way man viewed the universe in which he lived, the world of nature that surrounded him, and even his own physical anatomy changed right before him. Scientists, like Galileo, disproved the geocentric model as new instruments like the telescope were invented. This was a serious concern of the Church. There are many reasons why the Church cannot accept new science.

First came the Geocentric model that showed the earth as being the center of the universe, the sun and other planets were shown revolving around the earth, with heaven shown beyond the crystalline shell. It wasn’t until Nicholas Copernicus published his writing, “On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres,” that people began to question this idea. The writing was so complicated that the vast majority of the population of Europe could not understand its meaning and ideas that it contained. This writing stated that the earth was not the center of the universe, and the sun and other planets did not revolve around it. The writing did state, however, that the earth and other planets revolved around the sun. Since very few Europeans could understand the writing, it was not considered a threat to the Catholic Church at the time. To be safe the Catholic Church did ban Copernicus’ ideas.

It was not until an Italian scientist named Galileo Galilei published a book and redisplayed the idea of a heliocentric universe. This time the idea was expressed using simple language, and this time the Church felt an immediate threat. “Science is the legitamate and beloved daughter of the Church. She must have confidence in the Church” (Brecht 79). Here, Bellarmin is speaking to Galileo of the threat of what he is suggesting. The Catholic Church believed that Galileo was mocking the Church-approved ideas of Ptolemy and their geocentric model. The Catholic Church sentenced Galileo to house arrest for the remainder of his life, but his ideas of a heliocentric universe remained strong.

This idea changed man’s whole view of his significance and place in the universe. Now, man was no longer the center of everything. Man was not as important as he originally thought. This also meant that the Church was not preaching the truth, and that the Bible and Aristotle were wrong. The Church had to do things in retaliation because this went against everything that the Church had taught and believed in. This raised questions about the validity of the rest of the Bible and Aristotle’s teachings. The questions the people had gave doubt to the Church and its teachings.

Later came along different and more evolved ideas. The Church held strong in the belief of time as being relatively short. The Church believed that the earth was only a couple of thousand years old. John McPhee’s phase of “deep time” (Gould 2), todally contridicted the Church’s beliefs. This notion that the earth was billions of years old disrupted the Church. To think that the earth was made long before humans and that we were just a spec of history was very disturbing. This gave doubt to the logic that the earth was made by God for humans. This was uneasy for the Church to deal with. To think that man was simply a “millesecond” (Gould 5), was in itself an intimidation of the Church. This suggested that the earth was not made for humans. For the Church to admit that these thoughts were correct and what they were teaching was wrong, was something that the church would never do. This was the main conflict that the Church has fought since these beliefs have been suggested.

1. Beasley, James R., Clyde E. Fant, E. Earl Joyner, Donald W. Musser, Mitchell G. Reddish. An Introduction to the Bible. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991.

2. The Bible. King James Version.

3. Fowler, Michael. “Isaac Newton” Lecture Series. 1995. 4 February, 2000. www.phys.virginia.edu/classes/109n/lectures/newton.html.

4. Newton, Isaac. Theories of the Universe. Ed. Milton K. Munitz. New York: The Free Press, 1957.