Galileo And The Pope: Perspectives

Check out this brief inter­view with Pro­fes­sor Lind­berg (his­to­ry of sci­ence prof at Wis­con­sin-Madi­son) Did Mar­tin Luther Get Galileo in Trou­ble?

How did the church respond to Galileo’s the­o­ry?
There was a com­mit­tee estab­lished called the Holy Office, which had the respon­si­bil­i­ty to deter­mine the truth in mat­ters of faith. Charges were lev­eled against Galileo, and so the helio­cen­tric ques­tion came before them.

We don’t know much about what went on in their con­sid­er­a­tions. But it’s impor­tant to look at the whole pic­ture. And one part of that pic­ture is that the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty is over­whelm­ing­ly opposed to Galileo. That is, the evi­dence that Galileo has is not par­tic­u­lar­ly pow­er­ful. It’s not over­pow­er­ing. He was looked on as a crack­pot by lots of sci­en­tists.

If we com­bine this pic­ture with the author­i­ty of the Catholic Church to inter­pret the Bible—and their new atten­tion to lit­er­al interpretation—it’s just clear what the answer is going to be. They’re not going to vio­late their own hermeneu­tic exeget­i­cal stan­dards in order to adopt this crack­pot minor­i­ty opin­ion of the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty.

So then he goes before a papal court. It was­n’t his sci­ence that was on tri­al, though. What was he tried for?
Obe­di­ence was the only issue in the tri­al. And he was guilty. Every­body could tell he was guilty because Galileo does­n’t just dis­cuss the pros and cons of the the­o­ry, he just advo­cates all the way. It was a blun­der on Galileo’s part.

Galileo then recants. Why?
He had two choic­es. There was the threat of impris­on­ment or he could recant. Every­body knew it was a for­mal­i­ty, so he did­n’t cost his cause any­thing to recant.

How did the the­o­ry of the sun as the cen­ter of the uni­verse final­ly get accept­ed by the church?
Once New­ton’s the­o­ry of grav­i­ta­tion came along, you had over­whelm­ing argu­ments in favor of helio­cen­trism. The church says, “Okay, now we’ve got proof, so now we will rein­ter­pret the Bible.”

By the end of the 17th cen­tu­ry, the church was on board, though Coper­ni­cus’s book stayed on the index of pro­hib­it­ed books until 1835. This geo­cen­tric mod­el remained an alba­tross around the Catholic Church’s neck.

Inter­est­ing stuff.

More Scientists Who Believe

I just ran across a link for the Amer­i­can Sci­en­tif­ic Affil­i­a­tion: a fel­low­ship of men and women in sci­ence and dis­ci­plines that relate to sci­ence who share a com­mon fideli­ty to the Word of God and a com­mit­ment to integri­ty in the prac­tice of sci­ence.

They have an absolute­ly incred­i­ble respos­i­to­ry of arti­cles and links to resources. If you’re in the sci­ences, you need to check this out!

Cult On Campus

Heads up–there’s a cult active at Stan­ford. One of Andrew’s friends was approached this week by a group called “Stu­dents For the Truth at Stan­ford.”

They are a part of the “Local Church” found­ed by Wit­ness Lee. The ver­sion of the Bible they hand out is called “The Recov­ery Ver­sion.”

This is not sim­ply anoth­er Chris­t­ian group like Cor­ner­stone or Inter­Var­si­ty. Those are won­der­ful groups that are good to be involved in (obvi­ous­ly, we’d pre­fer you plug into Chi Alpha, but that’s just ’cause we want to know you).

This group is fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent. The Local Church is known for demand­ing absolute and unhealthy obe­di­ence from its fol­low­ers. Here’s my coun­sel to you: groups like this mess up your life. If some­one approach­es you, give them absolute­ly no infor­ma­tion about your­self or where you live. Be polite but firm.

Here are some links you can inves­ti­gate:

Crit­i­cal Per­spec­tives
Apolo­get­ics Index
Liv­ing Truth Min­istries
Chris­t­ian Research Insti­tute

Their Per­spec­tive
Stu­dents For The Truth At Stan­ford (does not seem to be active­ly main­tained)
Liv­ing Stream Min­istries
Bibles For Amer­i­ca

Tony Campolo, John Gallegos, Jeff Bills, and Eddie Rentz

Tony Cam­po­lo and three Assem­bly of God pas­tors. No–this isn’t a joke. Why do you ask?

Yes­ter­day morn­ing I went to hear Tony Cam­po­lo speak at ‘Straight Talk’, a real­ly cool min­istry to busi­ness­peo­ple spon­sored by Men­lo Park Pres­by­ter­ian Church.

He was real­ly funny–I’d always heard that he was a fun­ny guy, but he was REALLY fun­ny. He was also insight­ful. He con­trast­ed two basic ori­en­ta­tions to life (emo­tion­al and ratio­nal, peo­ple and prin­ci­ple, yin and yang, Pen­te­costal­ism and Pre­by­te­ri­an­ism) and talked about how Jesus was able to inte­grate them both.

When­ev­er I’m around a world-class speak­er I always try to glean some tips. He did­n’t do a good job of con­nect­ing with mem­bers of the audi­ence before­hand (we shared a break­fast table sep­a­rat­ed by one per­son and bare­ly exchanged two sen­tences), although I think some of that may have been due to the struc­ture of the event rather than his pro­cliv­i­ty (there real­ly was­n’t much of a chance to talk). He did an excel­lent job of using humor to make pro­found points, and was an out­stand­ing sto­ry­teller. In fact, his talk was real­ly a series of sto­ries con­nect­ed by some log­i­cal tran­si­tions.

He was also out­stand­ing at local­iz­ing his mes­sage. He had tons of jokes about Pres­by­te­ri­ans and Men­lo Park and oth­er things his audi­ence would res­onate with. I’ve got no doubt he’s giv­en basi­cal­ly the same talk many times before, but it felt fresh and spe­cial because of the local­iza­tions.

Side note: Tony men­tioned that he thinks Pen­te­costal­ism is the­o­log­i­cal­ly incon­sis­tent. I wish I had been able to talk to him about that… but duty called.

As soon as the meet­ing was over, I had to book it up to Wood­land to meet with two pas­tors (AGTS class­mate John Gal­le­gos and Jeff Bills), and then I drove to Sacra­men­to and met with anoth­er pas­tor (Eddie Rentz, the for­mer nation­al youth direc­tor for the Assem­blies of God: check out his google), and start­ed to dri­ve home just in time to catch the traf­fic jams.

After return­ing I vis­it­ed a stu­dent in his dorm room, and then came home around 7:30pm. Twelve hours on the road–not a bad day.

I Lived In A Condemned Building

some dorms on my under­grad cam­pus are destroyed by explo­sives

On a com­plete­ly ran­dom note, one of the dorms I lived in back in my under­grad days was demol­ished via explo­sives last week­end.

I always said it should be con­demned, I just nev­er thought they’d take me seri­ous­ly…

See the mul­ti­me­dia footage.

Developing a Reading Plan

I just received an email from a friend named Earl Creps

land of plen­ty movie

(he’s the direc­tor of the doc­tor­al pro­gram at my alma mater, the Assem­blies of God The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary).

Any­way, it’s all about how to read for per­son­al growth. I thought it was worth shar­ing an excerpt here. In case it’s not obvi­ous, he’s speak­ing with­in the con­text of spir­i­tu­al and orga­ni­za­tion­al lead­er­ship.

I think points 3 and 5 are par­tic­u­lar­ly good.

Here are some keys to max­i­miz­ing the effec­tive­ness of your read­ing…

1. Read the clas­sics: dial up amazon.com and search for the works of
James McGre­gor Burns, Hen­ri Nouwen, War­ren Ben­nis, etc. While we can debate
“what’s a clas­sic?,” books of this sort will get you into the game in a
hur­ry.

2. Read the lat­est and skip the mid­dle: if you’re just get­ting into an
orga­ni­za­tion for­get what was writ­ten any more than 2 years ago [except for
lead­er­ship clas­sics] and read from here for­ward. Most of the stuff in the
mid­dle is derived from the clas­sics any­way.…

3. Trust your life to guide your read­ing: When I’m feel­ing fresh, I
read in my spe­cial­ties [self-lead­er­ship, emerg­ing cul­ture, pow­er min­istry].
When I’m tired, I read 90 degrees out from my spe­cial­ties [, i.e.,
pro­fes­sion­al lit­er­a­ture from oth­er fields such as tech­nol­o­gy or psy­chol­o­gy].
When I’m burned out, I read 180 degrees out from my aca­d­e­m­ic inter­ests
[e.g., fic­tion, his­to­ry]. Some­how, I always find more illus­tra­tions,
prin­ci­ples, and oth­er ulti­mate­ly use­ful mate­r­i­al in this “diver­sion­ary”
read­ing than just about any­where else. I also find it huge­ly refresh­ing. A
tired mind can­not absorb much any­way.

4. Any work is a “lead­er­ship” book if it’s read by a leader: the leader
of the future must be an inter­est­ing, well-round­ed per­son, not an
incom­pe­tent mys­tic or a cor­po­rate-clone tech­no­crat. Younger adults
espe­cial­ly are all about who you are, not just what you can do.

5. Putting it togeth­er: Read­ing in your field makes you com­pe­tent.
Read­ing out from your field [90 degrees] makes you broad-mind­ed. Read­ing
oppo­site your field [180 degrees] makes you inter­est­ing and cre­ative.

My major rec­om­men­da­tion for left-brain­ers: devel­op a read­ing plan that
includes 0, 90, and 180-degree dimen­sions.

My major rec­om­men­da­tion for right-brain­ers: start lis­ten­ing to your life
and read in response to it, dude.

Bless­ings,

Earl

An Old Stanford Student Testimony I Ran Across

I just ran across an online arti­cle by Heather Williams, who became a believ­er at Stan­ford: Over­haul at Stan­ford.

When I entered Stan­ford, I was not a Chris­t­ian. The world lay at my feet then, wait­ing to be rev­o­lu­tion­ized. I attend­ed polit­i­cal meet­ings, took class­es on racism and social jus­tice, and immersed myself at the com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice cen­ter. I believed in the pow­er with­in me to make a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in the world. I tutored under­priv­i­leged ele­men­tary school kids; I ran the day camp at a home­less shel­ter; I col­lect­ed left­over food to feed the hun­gry. Yet, the more I tried to change the world, the more frus­trat­ed I became. I con­front­ed bureau­cra­cy, apa­thy, and…sin. I began to think that maybe human nature need­ed a basic over­haul.

Dur­ing this time I was chal­lenged to read the Bible by a friend of mine. I had come to col­lege hat­ing the Bible. I thought it was sex­ist, homo­pho­bic and rigid­ly self-right­eous — the basic blue­print of intol­er­ance. You see, I grew up in the “Bible Belt.” Through­out high school, most of the Chris­tians I encoun­tered were more con­cerned about knock­ing some sense into me with the Bible than they were con­cerned about explain­ing to me what its pages con­tained. Most were vocal about their con­vic­tion that I was going straight to hell because of my lib­er­al agen­da. Yet, when my friend in col­lege chal­lenged my actu­al knowl­edge of the Bible (gar­nered from child­hood Sun­day school lessons and the lit­er­a­ture class exam­in­ing his­to­ry’s “great works” my fresh­man year), I real­ized that I knew very lit­tle about Jesus and His fol­low­ers…

It was pub­lished back in ’96, so don’t expect to see her walk­ing around cam­pus.

LSU Chi Alpha Student Healed of Asthma

I just heard this won­der­ful news from LSU Chi Alpha:

“One of the best things God has done for me,” said Zechari­ah Brew­er, a sopho­more at Louisiana State Uni­ver­si­ty, Baton Rouge, “is heal me of asth­ma.”

When Brew­er was in the 10th grade, he began using an inhaler because of occa­sion­al breath­ing prob­lems. With­in a year, he was put on dai­ly med­ica­tions. Over the next few years, the dosages were increased.

By the time the busi­ness admin­is­tra­tion major, who accept­ed Christ when he was 15 years old, entered col­lege he was resigned to the fact that he was going to have to cope with asth­ma for the rest of his life. But, ear­ly in the fall semes­ter he decid­ed to try some­thing he had nev­er con­sid­ered before.

“I went to a Chi Alpha prayer meet­ing after work and asked Cam­pus Mis­sion­ary Nick Call­away to pray for my heal­ing,” said Brew­er. “He gath­ered a few oth­er believ­ers, and they laid hands on me and began to pray.”

The next morn­ing, Brew­er went out for a run and to his amaze­ment his lungs were healed. From that point on, he has been walk­ing around breath­ing more freely than he has in years. All it took was a sim­ple prayer of faith.

“I told God, ‘I know You’ve healed many peo­ple, and I want to believe that You’ll heal me,’ ” Brew­er said. “That was when my prayer was answered.” (source)

Happy Groundhog Day!

six more weeks of win­ter

Side note: leg­endary prog­nos­ti­ca­tor Punx­sutawney Phil has weighed in: we face six more weeks of win­ter.

For­tu­nate­ly, I live in Cal­i­for­nia. I’ve for­got­ten exact­ly what win­ter is like…

Here’s a sea­son­al joke for your amuse­ment:

Over break­fast one morn­ing, a woman said to her hus­band, “I’ll bet you don’t know what day this is.”

“Of course I do,” he answered as if he was offend­ed, and left for the office.

At 10:00 a.m., the door­bell rang and when the woman opened the door, she was hand­ed a box of a dozen long stemmed red ros­es. At 1:00 p.m., a foil-wrapped, two-pound box of her favorite choco­lates was deliv­ered. Lat­er, a bou­tique deliv­ered a design­er dress.

The woman could­n’t wait for her hus­band to come home.

“First the flow­ers, then the choco­lates and then the dress!” she exclaimed.

“I’ve nev­er had a more won­der­ful Ground­hog Day in my life! (source)

Wow–Space Shuttle Flashbacks

Brief reflec­tions on the space shut­tle explo­sion.

I woke up this morn­ing to the news that the Space Shut­tle blew up on re-entry.

I had two thoughts rush through my mind imme­di­ate­ly:

1) Wow–I vivid­ly remem­ber the last time this hap­pened. It shocked me deeply–the idea that our sci­ence was­n’t per­fect and that Amer­i­ca could make a mis­take and that heroes could die.

2) The first Israeli astro­naut was on the shut­tle, and it’s such a high-pro­file Amer­i­can sym­bol: it sure would be an attrac­tive tar­get to ter­ror­ists… Acci­dents hap­pen, and I hope that’s all it was. If it was ter­ror­ists, it would have to be some sort of sab­o­tage before the shut­tle took off (that, or some­one on the shut­tle would have had to turn traitor–something I con­sid­er extreme­ly unlike­ly).

I have intense sym­pa­thy for the fam­i­lies of the astro­nauts: may God com­fort their hearts with His peace.

[update: my wife men­tioned that it looked as though I actu­al­ly sus­pect ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty. Not so! I’m report­ing the first two thoughts that flashed through my mind, not giv­ing my cur­rent opin­ion. For the record, I think it’s improb­a­ble that ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty caused the Space Shut­tle to dis­in­te­grate.]