Galileo against the BibleReligion and science have always been contrasting studies. Religion, being based on faith, relies on the supernatural to explain life and being. Science, however, cannot do this. Scientists must eliminate the possibility of the unexplained in order to maintain and control the group by which to measure other groups. The unexplainables I am referring to are the miracles common in all supernatural religions. Galileo lived in an era when the Church was the State. The country was governed according to the words of the Bible and anyone who opposed it would be despised. Galileo's scientific discoveries were therefore strongly shunned by the church. In 1615 Galileo attempted to explain how these findings contradicted the teaching given to the Church in a letter to Cristina, Grand Duchess of Tuscany. Galileo believed that there needed to be a dividing line between which philosophical questions should be answered by science and which scriptures should be answered. This does not mean that Galileo himself was not religious. Nor did he feel that the Bible was a complete falsehood. In his letter, Galileo states: "... I think first of all that it is very pious and prudent to say that the Holy Bible can never tell a lie, whatever its true meaning is understood." This statement is based on his contradictory thought that it is the earth that revolves around the sun and not that it is the center of the universe. To Galileo the Bible seems to bend the truths, to explain things to men of all intelligence. Nature, however, never changes or breaks the rules. Nature is all around us, and we can draw our own conclusions from it, and therefore we should not be "questioned on the testimony of the bib... middle of the paper... unconvincing to its original audience." It is difficult for us to understand why the clergy and society quickly shunned an idea that is now widely known and accepted by everyone if they could read. Many of those who could not read had the Bible read to them. Government, economics, and basic daily life were based on this book, and science barely existed just a few years after Galileo's time. The scientific method was developed, and only years later did the scientific method become a method of recognizable study. If the scientific method had been a concept when Galileo's ideas were realized, the Church might have paid more attention to his scientific ideas. and therefore more open to the ideas he presents in his letter to the Duchess.