Inspiration for the Day

Griffith Park Observatory, Los Angeles, 2010

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. He would not require us to deny sense and reason in physical matters which are set before our eyes and minds by direct experience or necessary demonstrations.

Galileo Galilei

There are some interesting notes over on The Writer's Almanac today about the great Galileo Galilei and his persecution by the Catholic Church during the Roman Inquisition in 1633. I had been reading a bit of news about Paul Ryan and his views of abortion, views that are so abhorrent and tiresome to me that I retreated to the daily poetry that I find on the Writer's Almanac. So, it's been 380 years since Galileo stood before the grand inquisitors for daring to buck the Bible and posit that the planets revolved around the sun, and while I realize this is a far different issue than a woman's right to control her reproductive freedom, it's not too difficult to imagine the likes of Paul Ryan as Grand Inquisitor of the "modern" age.