Dispelling Nonsense With Science

GALILEO GALILEI invented the telescope, which he called his "optick tube" at about the ame time that Hans Lippershey invented it further north in the Netherlands. Another one of those Darwin-Wallace, Newtwon-Leibnitz situations. Simultaneous inventors, splitting credit. When its time for an idea to come to fruition, its time, it seems. The men who got most of the credit for evolutionary theory, for calculus, and for the telescope were the ones who talked the most about their respective inventions and discoveries, early and often. Publicity matters. "I betook myself to observations of the heavenly bodies, and beheld the moon as if it were scarce two semi diameters of the Earth distant", he famously wrote. He bragged a bit too, making damned sure that everybody knew that nobody before him had ever done what he was doing, which was, as far as we can determine, true. But as we all learn one way or another, when one talks too much, one usually gets into trouble. Galileo learned the hard way. Being in Italy, he was an easy stone's throw away target for the super dogmatic seventeenth century Catholic church, and they came down on him hard, for having the blasphemous audacity to assert that the Earth is not the center of the universe, and that, cogito, ergo sum, the Holy bible was, how dared he say, wrong. His trial and house arrest are, as we say, history, the rest of the story. Legend has it that as he walked out of his inquisistion, he uttered, not quite beneath his breath, "I still know what I saw". Maybe his extended stay at home was extended further for that departing wisecrack. That remains unclear. What is clear is that he was never given an opportunity to prove to all concrned that his tiny weak litle optick tube actually worked; noboody was willing to have a look through see, nobody wanted to have their eyes bewitched by some devil may care devil. What Galileo did actually write was: "I do not feel obligated to believe that the same God who endows us with sense, intellect, and reason has intended us to forego their use." And that, as they say, says it all. Like most profound remarks made by great people, this one holds up today, always, and forever. It shouldn't apply today. It should be outdated, a relic of a benighted past. But, alas, it isn't. Its continuing applicability is testament (no pun intended) to our continuing early twenty first century languishing in darkness, when an invitation to see the light of reality is staring us straight in our confused faces, glaringly. At the precise time, or well beyond the precise time in human history and advancement of knowledge when science and reason should have long since asserted themselves, taken hold in the human mind, and dispelled superstition and religious nonsensical dogma, alas, it has not. Far from it. Instead, relgious nonsensical doctrine and dogma and superstitious nonsense seem almost to hold the human heart and mind almost as captive as ever. Almost, but not quite, for verily, religion is releasing its iron grip on humanity and the human intellect, if only grudgingly, only painfully slowly. Like lava spreading and cooling as it flows outward from the volcano, the enlightening power of science is creeping ever slowely but still perceptably into our sleepy, slowly awakening minds. Lord willing and the creek don't rise, may the creep continue, unabated, with all due haste.