Reflect on Professor Kjar’s lecture and text

Joanie Cahill. "Image ID: 584528." 6 Aug 2006. Online image. Stock.xchang. 28 Mar 2010

According to Geymonat, who wrote the biography of Galileo, Galileo insisted that people should recognize that there were two different types of language: “ordinary language” and “scientific language” (Geymonat 67). Galileo argued about the Ptolemaic Theory which was mentioned in the Bible:

God in his infinite wisdom, being familiar with both, understood very well when dictating the Sacred Scriptures that, in order to make the Bible comprehensible to its intended audience, it would be necessary to employ ordinary language as the only one understood by the common man. This entailed writing that the sun turned round the earth. But in science we must make use of the second kind of language, rigorous and exact, which is characteristic of scientific reasoning; hence we need not accept as scientifically valid the statement in question, despite the fact that it is found in the Bible. (Geymonat 67)

Science and religion strongly relates each other because both of them are the explanation for the system of the mysterious and unknown nature. However, I think each of them has a different support for their insistence: science is based on scientific theories and facts, religion is based on myths and belief. Although both have completely different supports, since they are explaining a same phenomenon, I think there are many antagonism between those two.

I felt this antagonism was also mentioned in Professor Kjar’s lecture.

Professor Kjar introduced some pictures that shows Adam and other animals were peacefully living together. There was no fighting nor hunting, but there was a beautiful piece of scenery. The pictures represented a perfect "order." However, those pictures were contrary to the scientific theories and facts, such as the theory of natural selection and evolution, which seems to be more complicated and chaotic than the pictures.

"What was God feeling that day?" this was the most impressive quote for me in the lecture.

Geymonat, Ludovico. Galileo Galilei: A Biography and Inquiry into His Philosophy of Science. New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 1965. Print.