Friday, January 02, 2009

658 - Galileo and the church

Here's a few lines from the article about how the Catholic church is finally trying to admit that Galileo might have been right.

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The church denounced Galileo's theory as dangerous to the faith, but Galileo defied its warnings. Tried as a heretic in 1633 and forced to recant, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, later changed to house arrest.
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Here's the whole article. The church better be careful. Somebody from the church might actually admit that the earth is round!
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4 comments:

John A Hill said...

In the Old Testament Book of Joshua, it says in the tenth chapter, "So the sun stood still,
and the moon stopped,
till the nation avenged itself on [a] its enemies,
as it is written in the Book of Jashar.
The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day."

This is the text that the Church used to say that the sun orbited around the earth ans not the other way around. Galileo reasoned by observation that the earth orbited around the sun and was proclaimed a heretic for his discovery.

The truth is often overlooked when fanatics refuse to listen to the other side's argument.

Bilbo said...

Well said, John. The word "fanatic" has been described as "one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." Sadly, there are plenty of them breeding in the tasty, yet stagnant intellectual soup of religion and politics.

Mike said...

"one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

That's a good one. I don't think I've heard it said that way before.

Anonymous said...

When you build me a church in our backyard, you can include a laboratory for chemistry experiments and an observatory for viewing Heaven. How about the roof of the sanctuary being open to the sky? OOH!OOH! this is getting exciting! Padded pews. We definitely have to have padded pews. And the sanctuary should be an atrium, with lots of flowers and plants year-round, with harmless little critters like tiny lizards and frogs to eat the bugs. Thank you, Galileo!