Introducing Science and Religion

First of all, there was conflict in this affair but it was conflict not between ‘science’ and ‘religion’, but between real human beings in a complex and turbulent environment. A conservative, post-Reformation, defensive Church was trying to assert its authority against an (admittedly, occasionally arrogant) layman who was trying to insist on his interpretation of the Bible. This was also a conflict between religious individuals. For Galileo faith was of paramount importance, as he understood what he was doing as discovering God’s order in the universe, and it appears that he felt no internal conflict about what he was doing. The conflict between Galileo and the Catholic Church was about the authority to perceive truth; the threatening thing that Galileo did was attempt to defend his scientific views biblically.18 In the end he was condemned not for his views but because he would not toe the line over the Church’s teaching ban.

This is a view that goes back to St Augustine, but it does have a small number of modern-day adherents.

A recent Gallup poll found that 40 per cent of American adults thought that humans were made by God in their present form rather than by any process of evolution,30 and in the UK a 2011 poll found that 31 per cent of Christians think that six-day creationism should be taught in state school science