Galileo Trial
Daily Archives: February 8, 2008
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Galileo
Faith and Doubt not Doubt vrs. Faith
It is commonly held that doubt and faith are one of the contradictory opposites resulting from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil but they are not necessarily enemies. Doubt is the friend of faith pressing it on to new places and depths serving as it’s compliment as much as contrarian. As Alan Jones, the Dean of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco once put it, “The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.” And it is so!
What many view with suspicion in the religious, I suspect, may be certainty, not faith. The rigidity of certainty will give you fits over thermal theory if you happen to worship the sun. The church gets into trouble when we embrace any theory as the truth. The plight of poor Galileo is proof enough of that. The Pope who apologized for the whole silly mess was John Paul II.
No let our faith be challenged by doubt to a better place and let our doubts be calmed by the faith that is within us so that we are are better soul and our place a better hostel for all that enter in.
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tree stump
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I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
Wison Mizner U.S. playwright, 1876-1933
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The anatomy of the sun
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Where it is a duty to worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.
A Biographical Critique of Voltaire ch. i (1872)
John Morely, Viscount Morley of Blackburn
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The Sun