Dr.Goldish-Anu Timple

I really appreciated Dr.Goldish’s lecture because of how he set out to clarify the misunderstanding of how science and religion have been at war throughout all of history. I believed that the church was always against science from hearing pieces of scientific history like how Galileo was committed of heresy and sentenced to basically house arrest for the rest of his life. But looking more into it after Dr.Goldish’s lecture, I read how after Galileo was proven to be correct and the church resultantly cleared his name. This showed how the church was willing to accept science, even when it did not perfectly fit the church’s teachings. In the lecture, Dr.Goldish exemplified this through talking about the events that occurred between Copernicus and the church. I was intrigued to learn how it was a myth that the church loathed Copernicus from the beginning but rather utilized him. This occurred when the current Pope specifically asked Copernicus to research more about how the planets and stars move in the sky so as to create a better calendar system. As shown in this case, the church wanted to involve science in this new decision rather than cast it out. Additionally, the rejection of his findings about the orbit of the Earth with respect to the Sun was mainly from a few colleges rather than the entire church. Overall, this lecture gave me a new understanding of how science and religion have interacted throughout time and helped clear discrepancies I have had about it all. Moreover, it also proved how important it is to hear all of the details of a story before forming an opinion, as without all of the details it is very easy to misconstrue what truly happened, just as I have about the relationship between science and religion.