“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”

— Galileo Galilei , Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina

Variant: I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Source: Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615)
Context: I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.
Context: I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.<!-- ¶22

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Dec. 7, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us…" by Galileo Galilei?

Galileo Galilei 70

Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer 1564–1642

Related quotes

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.”

Galileo Galilei Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina

Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615)

“God in the highest, in the sense of the Christian Confession, means He who from on high has condescended to us, has come to us, has become ours.”

Karl Barth (1886–1968) Swiss Protestant theologian

This is paraphrased in "Karl Barth's Conception of God" (1952) http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/primarydocuments/Vol2/520102BarthsConceptionOfGod.pdf by Martin Luther King, Jr.: God is the one who stands above our highest and deepest feelings, strivings and intuitions.
Dogmatics in Outline (1949)
Context: He is the One who stands above us and also above our highest and deepest feelings, strivings, intuitions, above the products, even the most sublime, of the human spirit. God in the highest means first of all … He who is in no way established in us, in no way corresponds to a human disposition and possibility, but who is in every sense established simply in Himself and is real in that way; and who is manifest and made manifest to us men, not because of our seeking and finding, feeling and thinking, but again and again, only through Himself. It is this God in the highest who has turned as such to man, given Himself to man, made Himself knowable to him … God in the highest, in the sense of the Christian Confession, means He who from on high has condescended to us, has come to us, has become ours.<!-- p. 37

“The true realist is he who believes in both God and the Devil, and is prepared to attempt, with humility, to sort out some corner of the extraordinary tangle of their works which is our world. He cannot use his feeling alone, he must use his intellect.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

“Unless Parliament has conferred upon the Court that power in language which is unmistakable, the Court is not to assume that Parliament intended to do that which so seriously affect foreigners who are not resident here, and might give offence to foreign Governments. Unless Parliament has used such plain terms as show that they really intended us to do that, we ought not to do it.”

Nathaniel Lindley, Baron Lindley (1828–1921) English judge

In re A. B. & Co. (1900), L. R. 1 Q. B. D. [1900], C. A. p. 544. See also Ex-parte Blain, 12 Ch. D. 522; In re Pearson (1892), 2 Q. B. 263.

“The family uses people, not for what they are, nor for what they are intended to be, but for what it wants them for — its own uses. It thinks of them not as what God has made them, but as the something which it has arranged that they shall be.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Cassandra (1860)

“Once your faith, sir, persuades you to believe what your intelligence declares to be absurd, beware lest you likewise sacrifice your reason in the conduct of your life. In days gone by, there were people who said to us: "You believe in incomprehensible, contradictory and impossible things because we have commanded you to; now then, commit unjust acts because we likewise order you to do so." Nothing could be more convincing. Certainly anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices. If you do not use the intelligence with which God endowed your mind to resist believing impossibilities, you will not be able to use the sense of injustice which God planted in your heart to resist a command to do evil. Once a single faculty of your soul has been tyrannized, all the other faculties will submit to the same fate. This has been the cause of all the religious crimes that have flooded the earth. (Translation from Norman Lewis Torrey: Les Philosophes. The Philosophers of the Enlightenment and Modern Democracy. Capricorn Books, 1961, pp. 277-8)”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Questions sur les miracles (1765)
Widely used paraphrase: "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities".

“I don't believe God would give you something that you wouldn't be able to use for his glory," Carrol said. I don't believe you have to compromise who you are as a person in order to do what God has called you to do.”

Madeline Carroll (1996) American actress

Source: 'I Can Only Imagine' Breakout Star Madeline Carroll: 'God has Plans for the Gifts He Gives Us' https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/2018/march/i-can-only-imagine-breakout-star-madeline-carroll-god-has-plans-for-the-gifts-he-gives-us (March 27, 2018)