U is for Universe

Texture by Jay Hilgert: Nebula Paper 5

The sun, with all the planets revolving around it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do.
~Galileo Galilei

You just gotta love Galileo. The father of modern science, this brilliant, ~~renegade,~~ ~~mouthy,~~ ~~radical instigator,~~ outspoken Italian pulled no punches when it came to voicing his opinions…making certain he could back up his theories by scientific discovery when challenged. And although he’s famous for turning the world upside-down in rethinking that everything revolved around us, he never denounced the author of the universe that fascinated him so.

Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

I render infinite thanks to God, for being so kind as to make me alone the first observer of marvels kept hidden in obscurity for all previous centuries.

When I consider what marvelous things men have understood, what he has inquired into and contrived, I know only too clearly that the human mind is a work of God, and one of the most excellent.

Whatever the course of our lives, we should receive them as the highest gift from the hand of God, in which equally reposed the power to do nothing whatever for us. Indeed, we should accept misfortune not only in thanks, but in infinite gratitude to Providence, which by such means detaches us from an excessive love of earthly things and elevates our minds to the celestial and divine.

I find it interesting that Galileo personified the “sun” as vitally important to the cosmos, yet personable enough to care about a bunch of grapes on this blue marble. There obviously wasn’t any conflict between science and faith for Galileo as he gazed through his telescopes and discovered the secrets of the universe. There probably shouldn’t be any conflict for us either.