I understand that it was the scientific establishment in the universities that opposed Galileo. Galileo was being funded by the Catholic church, so was the church fighting against itself? Unfortunately, yes. The scientists opposed Galileo and had the ear of the pope, so Galileo was threatened with death.
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This is a twist on an old argument that I have heard before. Along the lines of "Galileo was supported by the church and opposed by scientists, and he turned out to be right - therefore evolution is wrong" Y
No, the scientists of the time (for the most part) did not agree with Galileo. Neither did the Church. The only thing that Galileo's story tells us is that the assumptions we hold as "scientific fact" today could be proven wrong tomorrow, and all it takes is a determined man or woman with enough evidence, testing, and sheer ingenuity.
What it means is that he was just about the only one who knew what was going on and it took a few generations for the rest of the world to catch up to him. At the time he had a set of nuts to buck the system, nowadays we know the system was dead wrong.Galileo was persecuted.
Galileo was the first to use a telescope to view celestial objects. He saw things that no other Human being had seen before so of course what he said broke down what was "assumed" to be true sight on seen. However, that doesn't mean that scientists got him killed because "they had the ear of the Pope." His words were blasphemy pure and simple and the church had no problem exercising power over Galileo (all by itself) or any of the other free thinkers which they killed. The only reason Galileo did not die was because he had a lot of powerful political friends and the like.
Galileo claimed the moon had mountains and craters, while catholic theology claimed the moon was perfectly smooth. This means Galileo is opposing god and will cause civilisation to be destroyed. Just like allowing evolution to be known causes homosexuality, drug use and islamic terrorists. So you have it exactly backwards.
Galileo wasn't funded by the Catholic Church. Of course there were scientists who rejected his views (sound familiar?). But scientists didn't try to suppress him or denounce him to church authorites. Copernicus had already published his geocentric theory before Galileo was born. did denounce him to the Pope. To make matters worse, he had been ordered to "teach the controversy" (sound familiar?), and instead wrote a pro-Copernican work in the form of a dialogue and placed the Pope's own anti-Copernican views in the mouth of a character named Simplicio.
The Pope, God's Divine Representative was listening to scientists, not God you say?http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4116951,00.html
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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