TMLutas wrote:The Church did err in Gallileo's case in making him renounce his beliefs and, eventually, an apology and penance was announced by JP II to close the matter but they had long ago reconciled with the science. It really was a matter of personalities. Galileo systematically alienated his Church supporters and enraged his opponents and it eventually got way too personal.
But this is exactly the mirror image of what I'm talking about with scientism. Galileo should have been disciplined for trying to recruit the priests to settle a scientific controversy. This should be condemned by scientists too but it almost never is.
It should be noted Galileo was never given an apology. The Catholic Church never apologized and I'm not sure about the penance. Galileo was "Forgiven for his crimes" in 1996 I believe it was, and his family was never apologized to.
Well, yes, the problem being that. theologically, asserting that the Church has to support your then unproven scientific theory is
a crime. It should be
a crime. The problem with the Galileo case from the point of view of the Church's misconduct was that he was convicted on the wrong grounds and that seems to have been a result of personal animus. You see, convicting him of theologically running in advance of scientific proof wouldn't have done much and the judges wanted to make the old man squirm.
Galileo made a guess, a correct guess as it turns out, and decided to insist that the Church support his guess in advance of proof. How that's supposed to be the proper poster child of science is beyond me.
Axelgear wrote:The fact of the matter is, Galileo (And to a lesser extent Copernicus and the long-forgotten Ionians (Ionia is/was a Greek colony that was renowned for their understanding of the universe, who understood things like particulate matter around 2600 years ago)) was correct. I've always read that his methods were quite well thought out and not as devious as you say he was, and until I recieve some proof, I'm inclined to believe my version.
The proof is that in researching accounts of heliocentrism you'll find that there are various dates for "final proofs" of heliocentrism and they all long post-date the death of Galileo. He believed and eventually science knew that heliocentrism was true but it was not in his lifetime that science knew and Galileo was in error to insist that the Church adjust its theology to his guess in order to stifle debate and unseat geocentric astronomers from the universities. If you read French, German, or Italian you can find the relevant speech
to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
I hope you agree that so long as the debate is not settled scientifically, it is appropriate for churches to remain neutral in these little arguments. There was tremendous controversy over geocentrism, heliocentrism, and the modified geocentrism of Tycho Brahe at the time, legitimately so given the state of the evidence. Galileo did not actually kill geocentrism, though he dealt it some heavy wounds. That was the work of later astronomers. The Church should have remained neutral. It did not and that was a mistake.