GALILEO'S GREAT SENSE OF HUMOR !

Galileo was called by the pope because he had written that it is not the sun that goes around the earth; on the contrary, it is the earth that goes around the sun. But the Bible states the commonsense view. Just as we see the sun rising in the morning and going around from the east to the west, setting, so it appears that the sun is going around the earth. This is a commonsense view, but the question that Galileo had asked the pope was, “Why are you are so much afraid of a truth? I have been experimenting; this is my whole life’s work.

And even if I withdraw the sentence that you are wanting me to withdraw, neither is the earth going to change its course nor the sun, because they don’t read my books. The earth will go on circling the sun. But why are you afraid?” Galileo had asked, and he had cornered the pope: “You either prove that I am wrong on scientific grounds…because it is not a religious matter at all. What has religion to do with whether the sun goes around the earth or the earth goes around the sun? It has nothing to do with any spirituality, it is a scientific area.

If anybody can prove anything scientifically against me, then of course I will withdraw. But why are you afraid?”Cornered in this way, the pope had to accept that the real problem was: “We are not concerned whether the earth goes around, or the sun. Our concern is that even if one sentence in the Bible is found to be wrong, the whole credibility of the Bible goes. Then it is not a work of God. God is infallible, God cannot commit such a mistake. He made the earth, he made the sun, and he does not know who goes around.“The point is that one sentence proved wrong will create doubt about the whole authenticity of the Bible, so we cannot allow you to create this doubt in people’s minds.”Galileo was very old, almost on his deathbed.

He had been dragged from his deathbed to the court of the pope. He said, “I don’t want to get into any unnecessary trouble. I am already dying. So I will cancel the sentence.” And he must have been a man of a great sense of humor. He canceled the sentence. But in a footnote he wrote, “Although I am canceling this sentence, the fact is that the earth goes around the sun. They are not going to listen to me, and they don’t follow any religion and they are not Christians.”Certainly the earth is not Christian, neither is the sun Christian [OSHO].