“I am the Inquisitor of Florence,” the local priest, half Galileo’s age, affirmed.
“You?” Galileo hazarded a throaty, phlegm-filled laugh.
“You are compelled to comply.”
“And the charges against me?”
“They are here.”
The Inquisitor handed Galileo a document. The ailing scientist read the official declaration from the Vatican Inquisition. The principal charge referred back to 1616 when the church’s Index of Forbidden Books censored the works of Copernicus. At that time, Jesuit cardinal Robert Bellarmine instructed Galileo never to hold or defend the opinion that the Earth moved. Galileo agreed but arguably only loosely complied.
“I have a certificate signed by Cardinal Bellarmine that states I have no such restriction other than any applied under the edict of 1616.”
“Which, according to the charges, you violated. I suggest you find it.” The priest felt empowered and fully in control now. “Though such a paper should bring you little consolation.”
“This is how they come to me?” Galileo looked up to the heavens. He sighed heavily. “I would request that any proceedings against me, no matter how fabricated, be settled here.”
“His Holiness requests your presence in Rome.”
“But, as you can see, I am in ill health. An extended trip to Rome will take its toll.” Galileo coughed, not just for effect. He was sick.
His request was denied. In late January, 1633, Galileo began an arduous journey to Rome in the dead of winter. Twenty-three days later, two days before his sixty-ninth birthday, weakened by crippling sciatic pain, he took up residency in the Florentine embassy. Over the next four months, he tried to get his strength back to endure the private hearings and public humiliation. As he prepared, Galileo feared for what the Inquisitors would conclude from his writing given their strict Biblical interpretations, and what they might find if they explored further. He was certain the punishment would be death.
Fourteen
The discussion from earlier in the day continued around a campfire.
McCauley used the time to better understand his team, their individual abilities and personal perspectives, and whether they could also listen and work well with others. It was good information for him and a character building exercise for them.
“Play the devil’s advocate now,” McCauley said.
“I’m not sure the devil needs an advocate,” Al Jaffe chided.
The gang laughed.
“Okay, okay. Got me,” McCauley acknowledged. “What I want are arguments in the affirmative that the earth is under ten thousand years old. And as you do, remember, you’re representing the view of nearly fifty percent of the country. Who’s first?”
The crackling wood in the fire pit didn’t drown anyone out because no one volunteered. McCauley could read the faces in the glow of the flames. This was going to be harder than he thought.
“I’ll kick it off with an assumption: Evolution cannot be observed. Therefore it doesn’t exist.”
It worked. Anna Chohany jumped right in. “But fossils—”
“Fossils? There aren’t any transitional fossils,” the professor quickly countered. “If the ancestor of today’s horse, supposedly Miohippus, evolved from Mesohippus, where are its fossils? And again, don’t argue against the proposition, speak in favor that since evolution cannot be observed in real time, it does not exist.”
“All right, though there are ways to support evolution under the microscope,” Adam Lobel offered.
“Nope. Stick with the argument.”
Leslie Cohen raised her hand ready to join the conversation, but Lobel held the floor.
“There’s the erosion of Niagara Falls. I could argue that it absolutely lines up with the timeline of a few thousand years since the flood. It proves we live on a young Earth because its erosion is consistent with biblical fact.”
“Not a lot of support, but it would make a strong sermon,” McCauley noted. “Give me more detailed thought that debunks deep time, the long-held view of evolutionists.”
Cohen put her hand down.
“Can I try again?” Lobel asked.
McCauley laughed. “Okay, sure. Back to the gentleman from Penn State.”
“The Grand Canyon. It was cut by the receding waters after the flood.”
“The Flood?” Trent asked.
“THE Flood,” Lobel responded. “The Noah’s Ark flood.”
“Got it, but to do so, the water would have had to rush through five times the speed of sound.” Trent was highly sarcastic.
“Whoa. I said no counter arguments. Not yet,” McCauley proclaimed. “Only positions that speak to our inhabiting a young earth.”
Anna Chohany was ready again. “Where are the geologic columns of recognizable soil layers? If deep time was correct, with two hundred million years of life on earth, there should be an overabundance of evidence in fossilized soil formation.” Role playing, the Harvard grad student sounded indignant. “There isn’t any!”
Al Jaffe stood up. “Ladies and gentlemen, both the Royal Greenwich Observatory and the U.S. Naval Observatory have made exacting measurements that show our sun is shrinking at a rate of roughly five feet per hour. Moreover, records of a dwindling number of solar eclipses over the last four centuries reinforce the shrinkage. A smaller sun by the year, fewer opportunities for the heavenly phenomena to occur. Even the most zealous evolutionists would have to deduce that if the sun existed millions of years ago, it would have been so ginormous that it would have cooked the earth and no species could have lived here. Ergo, young Earth.”
His argument brought a round of applause.
“Nice job, Mr. Jaffe. Deeper reasoning. You may sit down now.”
“There are other astronomical arguments. Anyone? Mr. Tamburro?”
“Well,” he started slowly. “This wasn’t going to be my example, but I can go with it. Up there.” He pointed to the crescent moon. “Consider the rate the moon accumulates meteoritic dust. If it were really billions of years old, that layer should be a mile deep. NASA was concerned about that when they sent the Apollo astronauts to the moon. They worried that they’d sink into dust. But there was very little, which to them proved that the moon, like the Earth, is young.”
“Hadn’t considered that,” McCauley said, complimenting him. “Let’s go back to Leslie. Looks like you’ve been thinking something through.”
“I have. It’s about the spin down rate of the earth.”
“The what?” Rodriguez asked.
“The spin down rate,” she repeated. “Atomic clocks have measured the earth’s rate of rotation for the past three decades to billionths of a second. They’ve found that the earth is slowing down almost a second a year. If the earth were as old as the evolutionists claim, its initial spin rate would have been so fast that the earth would have been a different shape. Therefore it is not billions, only thousands of years old.”
“Wow, that was good!” Cohen’s boyfriend, Adam Lobel, said. “Very good. Now how about this? It’s absolutely improbable for life forms, as complex as they are, to develop by chance. It’s like saying that a tornado could rip through a junkyard and create an Alfa Romeo or a Boeing 777. Improbable? No, impossible. There’s intelligent design to it all. There’s a creator.”
It was the first mention of a higher force by anyone in the group. It was followed by complete silence.
McCauley let the quiet settle in. Then he spoke just above a whisper.
“We’re not going to change people’s minds. Young Earthers base their evidence on their own set of facts and their faith. They maintain that since evolutionary phenomena can’t be observed in motion, they doesn’t exist. That since evolution doesn’t explain things like the Big Bang, it is therefore false. That scientists disagree on its veracity. And most importantly, new species do suddenly appear through intelligent design. They claim we are evidence of that.