Religion and Science

The interplay between science and religion has a long history, and it would be understating things to say that the relationship has been strained at times. In 1600, for example, the Italian philosopher, cosmologist, and former Catholic priest Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for espousing heretical views, including the notion that the universe is infinite and contains an infinite number of worlds. In 1633, Galileo Galilei was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church for his blasphemous claims that the Earth moved around the sun. Galileo, who was 69 when this judgment was passed, might have met a fate similar to Bruno had he not renounced his scientific findings. In lieu of torture, imprisonment, and possibly even execution, Galileo was placed under house arrest for eight years until his death in 1642.