Christianity - A Journey from Facts to Fiction — Page xxiv
xxiv Christianity – A Journey from Facts to Fiction argument against belief in God took the following course: If God is the Creator of the universe and all that belongs to it, and if He is the Designer and Maintainer of the laws of nature, as discovered by investigative human minds, then how could He Himself have been so utterly ignorant of those realities? When one studies the Biblical account of how heaven and earth were created and how man was fashioned out of dust and how Eve was carved out of the rib of Adam etc. (two examples out of a host of puzzling discrepancies between the word and the act of God), one is astounded and amazed at the glaring contradic- tions between the origin of life on earth and the Biblical account given in Genesis. Such inconsistencies made the Church take an oppressive stance in those times when it held an unchallenged political authority. One famous example is that of the tussle between the Church and Galileo. When Galileo (1564–1642) published his findings about the solar system, it infuriated the Church because his findings were against the perception which the Church had of the solar system. Under extreme duress he was forced to publicly renounce his scientific discoveries. Alternatively he would have suffered death by torture. Nevertheless, he was kept under house arrest for the rest of his days. It was only in 1992 that the Church decided to reverse the judgement passed against Galileo, after prolonged deliberations that lasted twelve years by a committee set up by the Pope, John Paul II. To begin with, the impact of these contradictions did not penetrate or infiltrate the common levels of society and for some time it remained confined to a close circle of intellectuals. But