ABSTRACT
Galileo Galilei stands as the iconic figure in the war between science and religion. The battle lines have shifted from when the war first started, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the reputation of Galileo. Galileo is a seventeenth-century figure and his career begins in the late Renaissance at a time when religious wars were taking place and Protestantism was established in England and northern Europe. All the interpretations of his career which have multiplied in recent times can be seen as a reflection of the fact that Galileo is the proto-scientist. Galileo's warning about the misuse of sacred scripture is particularly apt at this time when sincere but wrongheaded believers make statements about the age of the earth based on certain biblical texts. The Bible was written to reveal to human beings that which they otherwise might never know about creation, salvation, and the nature of the divine.
