Creationism’s prison

Originally published 9 December 1996

“In the city of Pisa, a lit­tle boy was born with stars in his eyes. His par­ents named him Galileo.”

So begins the sto­ry of Galileo Galilei in Peter Sis’ new chil­dren’s pic­ture book, Star­ry Mes­sen­ger.

The words are accom­pa­nied by a won­der­ful draw­ing of dozens of swad­dled infants, packed togeth­er like eggs in a crate, all in full voice, the off­spring of car­pen­ters, cob­blers, sol­diers, cheese-mak­ers, serv­ing maids, exe­cu­tion­ers — each child’s par­ent iden­ti­fied by a pic­ture on its blan­ket. Among the bawl­ing infants is a child whose blan­ket is the col­or of the night and cov­ered with stars.

It is aston­ish­ing how much of Galileo’s life and work Sis has man­aged to con­dense into 15 dou­ble-page spreads, most of which are giv­en over to draw­ings that are wit­ty and whim­si­cal even as they evoke the style and sub­stance of Galileo’s time. There are mar­gin­al quotes in script, as if in the hand of Galileo him­self. Sis’ own text is con­cise, a few dozen words on each dou­ble page:

“His fame grew…and the cel­e­bra­tions became extrav­a­gan­zas. But now the Church began to wor­ry. Galileo had become too pop­u­lar. By uphold­ing the idea that the Earth was not the cen­ter of the uni­verse, he had gone against the Bible and every­thing the ancient philoso­phers had taught.”

The sophis­ti­cat­ed illus­tra­tions and mar­gin­al gloss­es of this book will more like­ly appeal to adults than to chil­dren. Still, so few chil­dren’s books take sci­ence as a sub­ject that it is a joy when one comes along, espe­cial­ly one as hand­some­ly illus­trat­ed as this.

And, when near­ly half of Amer­i­cans believe that the world is less than 10,000 years old, as described in the Bible, the sto­ry of Galileo bears repeating.

“I think that in dis­cus­sions of phys­i­cal prob­lems [nature], we ought to begin not from the author­i­ty of scrip­tur­al pas­sages but from sense-expe­ri­ences and nec­es­sary demon­stra­tions,” Galileo wrote, and his words are curled into the shape of an eye in a mar­gin of the book.

Sis’ mar­velous illus­tra­tions show Galileo in the dun­geon of the Inqui­si­tion, on tri­al before the assem­bled princes of the Church, and under house arrest in Flo­rence. The images are pow­er­ful­ly rhetor­i­cal, rich in sym­bol­ism, both fan­ci­ful and true. They have a fairy tale qual­i­ty that will appeal to the child in all of us.

On the last page, we are remind­ed that it was not until Oct. 31, 1992 that the Roman Catholic Church at last offi­cial­ly par­doned Galileo for his crime. His “crime,” of course, was to believe that the Earth moves about the sun, that the moon has moun­tains, that the sun has spots, that Jupiter has satel­lites — things that even fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­tians now con­cede to be true.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, oth­er equal­ly well-ground­ed sci­en­tif­ic truths, such as the evo­lu­tion of life by com­mon descent and the antiq­ui­ty of the Earth, con­tin­ue to be dis­missed by many Chris­tians because of an appar­ent con­tra­dic­tion with Gen­e­sis. Thus the media fuss in late Octo­ber when Pope John Paul II decreed that “evo­lu­tion is more than a hypothesis.”

More to the point, the pope addressed the ques­tion of evo­lu­tion in words star­tling­ly rem­i­nis­cent of Galileo: “The sci­ences of obser­va­tion describe and mea­sure with ever greater pre­ci­sion the mul­ti­ple man­i­fes­ta­tions of life…while the­ol­o­gy extracts…the final mean­ing accord­ing to the Cre­ator’s designs.”

Alas, the pope’s opin­ion prob­a­bly has less influ­ence on the beliefs of Amer­i­cans than, say, the Insti­tute for Cre­ation Research in Cal­i­for­nia, a cre­ation­ist orga­ni­za­tion that affects sci­en­tif­ic cre­den­tials and whose pseu­do­sci­en­tif­ic pro­pa­gan­da prob­a­bly reach­es into more homes than the pope’s voice ever will.

Hen­ry Mor­ris, pres­i­dent emer­i­tus of the insti­tute, is quot­ed in Time mag­a­zine as say­ing: “There is no sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence for evo­lu­tion. All real sol­id evi­dence sup­ports cre­ation.” This cocka­mamie opin­ion has been expressed so often, from so many pul­pits, in so many radio and tele­vi­sion exhor­ta­tions, and on so many web sites that it is tak­en seri­ous­ly by mil­lions of people.

Which is why it is good to see a tal­ent­ed and thought­ful artist like Peter Sis give such vivid expres­sion to Galileo’s affir­ma­tion of the excel­lence of the human mind as an instru­ment for dis­cern­ing the truth of the world. Sis quotes Galileo: “I do not feel oblig­ed to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sens­es, rea­son, and intel­lect has intend­ed us to for­go their use.”

The penul­ti­mate draw­ing in Sis’ book shows Galileo under house arrest in Flo­rence. He stands in a moon­lit gar­den, sur­round­ed by the won­ders of God’s cos­mos, with math­e­mat­i­cal demon­stra­tions described on the bright inte­ri­or walls of his prison. Beyond the walls, in the osten­si­bly unim­pris­oned world, all is dark­ness. The les­son is clear: It is our sens­es, rea­son, and intel­lect that make us free.

It is aston­ish­ing that 350 years after the tri­al and con­dem­na­tion of Galileo we are still fight­ing the bat­tle of sens­es, rea­son, and intel­lect against the lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tion of an ancient Mideast­ern cre­ation myth. Sis’ Star­ry Mes­sen­ger is a wel­come restate­ment of a much need­ed message.