Galileo Galilei — "I hold it to be an error to believe that the truths of faith and the truths of s…"
I hold it to be an error to believe that the truths of faith and the truths of science are contradictory.
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More from Galileo Galilei
"The two books from which I draw my knowledge are the book of the created world and the book of the Holy Scripture."
"It is not in the power of any created being to make things true or false, but only to discover what is true or false."
"By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox."
"Who would set a limit to the mind of man? Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?"
"I hold the sun to be situated motionless in the center of the revolution of the celestial orbs while the earth revolves around the sun."
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Science and religion don't have to fight each other. Genuine religious truth and genuine scientific truth both point toward reality, so a real conflict between them signals a misunderstanding of one or the other — not an inevitable war between two opposing systems of knowing the world.
Relevance to Galileo Galilei
Galileo spent years defending his heliocentric findings before the Inquisition, yet remained a believing Catholic. He argued scripture was written for salvation, not astronomy. His Letters to Castelli and the Grand Duchess Christina explicitly developed this reconciliation, making it a hard-won personal conviction, not mere diplomacy.
The era
The Counter-Reformation Church treated doctrinal authority as absolute, and Copernican astronomy threatened a cosmos scripturally anchored to Earth's centrality. Galileo lived through the 1616 prohibition of Copernicus and his own 1633 trial — moments when the institutional Church actively declared science and faith incompatible, giving this belief its urgent, defiant weight.
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