Scientifically Seeing, Biblically Blinding

 AMONG THE MANY AMAZING MARVELS revealed by modern science are black holes, whose existence was predicted by Einstein and confirmed not long after his death. They're hard to see, because they're invisible.  A black hole is a former large star which has collapsed in upon itself in old age, in the process of dying, and has become so extremely condensed and dense, and its gravity so great, that nothing can escape it, not even light. Hence its invisibility. Since the speed of light is one hundred and eighty thousand miles per second, an escape velocity greater than that is truly a huge gravitational field. Amazing.  Amazing as black holes are, there are innumerable equally wondrous and incredible objects throughout the universe, stars, planets, galaxies in numbers too large to contemplate, all revealed since teh nineteen sixties by modern astronomy. Your run of the mill astronomy picture of the day, which you can see by typing in "astronomy picture of the day", taken from orbiting telescopes, is a breath taking panoramic vista of explosive color, and explosion of stars, we now know that just about every star we can see has planets orbiting it, and with them, maybe life. We know all this because of our modern science. All this wonder, beauty, and knowledge because of modern science of astronomy, which arguably was founded by Galileo in 1609 when he "betook himself" to looking through his primitive "optik tube" heavenward, at the moon, the Planet Jupiter, and its four largest moons, which through a small telescope sit close to the giant planet like four babies close to their adoring mother, as my mother once said. She thought they were cute, and they are. Galileo was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to house arrest for daring to tell us that there are objects in the universe which do not orbit the Earth, the birth place of Christ, but, rather are dutifully orbiting mother Jupiter. Galileo's mistreatment by the Catholic church is the perfect symbol of the contrast between science and religion, of humanity's never ending war between the pursuit of truth and the preservation of superstition, a war ongoing today, as heated as ever. according to the bible, the Earth is flat, has four corners, rests upon four pillars. The stars are either tiny hols in the dome of heaven through which the light of heaven shines, or shiny trinkets hanging from the dome, depending on which poetic but primitive passage you believe. Carl Sagan once said that his primary objection to the Bible is that the universe it describes is so very small and uninteresting compared to the real deal. If the bible is the word of God, God could use a class in basic astronomy.