Our Inventions

“Nator said...Mark, how many things have we discovered recently? (within the last 100 years) Microwaves, TV, lasers, flight, radio, electricity, cars, computers, internet, new species, etc. I could go on and on about what we have recently discovered. Just because we don't know something doesn't mean it isn't true. (I know that last statement can go both ways!) When Galileo said the earth rotated around the sun, he was put under house arrest by the church because they "knew" the sun rotated around the earth. How did they know this? They got their information from the Bible. What will we "know" in the next 100 years.”

Nator . . . please study your history. It was the Roman Catholic church (not the Christian Church) that arrested Galileo. I have spoken to hundreds of Roman Catholics, and when you ask them “Are you a Christian?” most say, “No. I’m a Roman Catholic.” They know the difference. One is steeped in tradition, and the other adheres to the Bible. And the Catholic church didn’t get their information “from the Bible” (it was a banned Book).

Skeptics often try to demean Scripture by saying that the Christian Church persecuted Galileo when he maintained that the earth circled the sun. As a professor of astronomy at the University of Pisa, Galileo was required to teach the accepted theory of his time that the sun and all the planets revolved around the Earth. Later at the University of Padua he was exposed to a new theory, proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus, that the Earth and all the other planets revolved around the sun. Galileo’s observations with his new telescope convinced him of the truth of Copernicus’s sun-centered or heliocentric theory.

Galileo’s support for the heliocentric theory got him into trouble with the Roman Catholic church. In 1633 during the Inquisition he was convicted of heresy and ordered to recant (publicly withdraw) his support of Copernicus. The Roman Catholic church sentenced him to life imprisonment, but his advanced age allowed him to serve the term under house arrest at his villa outside of Florence, Italy. The Christian Church therefore should not be blamed for his imprisonment. It was the Roman Catholic church that persecuted Galileo.

“Under the sentence of imprisonment Galileo remained till his death in 1642. It is, however, untrue to speak of him as in any proper sense a ‘prisoner.’ As his Protestant biographer, von Gebler, tells us, ‘One glance at the truest historical source for the famous trial would convince anyone that Galileo spent altogether twenty-two days in the buildings of the Holy Office [during the Inquisition], and even then not in a prison cell with barred windows, but in the handsome and commodious apartment of an official of the Inquisition'" (Catholic Encyclopedia).

Also, when you speak of how many things "we discovered" in the last 100 years, I hope you keep in mind that man simply uncovers hidden laws that allow him to invent things. We would have no microwaves without the already existing electromagnetic waves. There would be no television without the laws that govern television waves, and radio communication without radio waves, etc. We couldn’t fly if the law of aerodynamics didn’t already exist, or use any electrical appliance without the existing laws that govern electricity. All these things were around before we “discovered” them. Science merely uncovers what God has already made.

I noticed that you snuck in the words “new species” on the end of the "discovery" list. Is a species suddenly “new” because we discover it?