Most Professors of Religion are Considered Liars

We no more deny the essential value of religion because we hold most religions false, and most professors of religion liars, than we deny that of science because we can see no great difference between men of science and theologians.

 Roberto Bellarmino's Condemnaton of Galileo's Theory

It seems to me that your Reverence and Signor Galileo act prudently when you content yourselves with speaking hypothetically and not absolutely, as I have always understood that Copernicus spoke. To say that on the supposition of the Earth's movement and the Sun's quiescence all the celestial appearances are explained better than by the theory of eccentrics and epicycles is to speak with excellent good sense and to run no risk whatsoever. Such a manner of speaking is enough for a mathematicia...

 Facts are as Sacred as Principles

Philosophers and theologians have yet to learn that a physical fact is as sacred as a moral principle. Our own nature demands from us this double allegiance.

 Ignoring Inconvenient Truths In Astronomy

Metaphysically speaking, no one paradigm is innately any better than any other. A universe that began at 9 a.m. on October 10, 4004 B.C. (which was official back in the seventeenth century) is intrinsically no less valuable for those who live by a belief in it than is our present uncertain universe, perhaps built like a yo-yo, forever destroying and remaking itself in never-ending big bangs. Each of the cosmological theories has, at different times, found totally ironclad evidence to support ...