The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief

by Francis S. Collins

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo (all strong believers in God) built an increasingly compelling case that the movement of the planets could be properly understood only if the earth revolved around the sun, rather than the other way around. The details of their conclusions were not all quite correct (Galileo made a famous blooper in his explanation of the tides), and many in the scientific community were initially unconvinced, but ultimately the data and the consistency of the theory’s predictions convinced even the most skeptical scientists. The Catholic Church remained strongly opposed, however, claiming that this view was incompatible with holy scripture. In retrospect it is clear that the scriptural basis for those claims was remarkably thin; nonetheless, this confrontation raged for decades and ultimately did considerable harm, both to science and to the church.