The book, “History’s Greatest Lies”, authored by William Weir and published in the U.S. by Fair Winds Press in Beverly Massachusetts provides extensive, fascinating, and accurate details about Galileo’s difficulties with the Catholic Church. That account is fully three dimensional in its humanity, rather than the simplistic one dimensional fiction that Galileo was condemned by an ignorant, intolerant, and anti-science Catholic Church.

In a much too brief summary, “History’s Greatest Lies” describes the realty as: “His trial for heresy was the culmination of a campaign to discredit him that was spearheaded by his enemies and rivals – and inflamed by Galileo’s own hubris.”

Most of the information presented briefly in this book was known to me from having read the book, “The Crime of Galileo” published by the Chicago Press sometime around the 1950′s. The name and publisher of this older book is from my memory, which I hope is accurate.

Both books identify that numerous factors were at play, beyond the simple theological question of exactly what has been revealed by God about the nature of the world. Personalities, rather than facts and the truth played far too great a role in the whole proceedings.

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Very interesting!

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The Vatican today runs one of the most advanced observatories in the world, in Arizona called VATT (Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope), and Italy which was built in 1891 by Pope Leo. They have many Jesuit Brothers working alongside secular astronomers. They are also at the forefront of meteor research, and have the worlds biggest collection of them.

One of the quandaries the Vatican had with Galileo’s theory was that if the earth wasn’t the center, then the sun couldn’t be either because of the observed motion of the stars AND the sun. At the time, it actually made more sense that the earth was stationary, rather than the sun alone.

-That, and Galileo was a bit of a self-aggrandizer, and tended to put himself “above” all other scientists and church leaders of the time, even in things not astronomical. The church undoubtedly held more power over science and thought than acceptable by todays standards, but things were what they were.

I don’t think Mike set out to diss on the Church. If he wasn’t brought up under it’s theology, tenants, and history (like we were), and in light of the given public/secular info commonly available, it isn’t shocking to me that the “popular history” is slanted by anyone.

Angelo Secchi, is known as the father (pun intended) of astrophysics. The Big Bang theory was first proposed in 1933, by Father Georges Lemaitre. The Vatican today spends over a million/year on astronomy-related projects.

Last year Father Jose Funes of the Arizona facility gave a talk to my dads astronomy club here in the SF Bay area, and will make himself available to talk to any group of 25 or more for free.

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@pdill: It should have been clear that I consider the Warmers to be the modern day equivalent of the Inquisitors.

I’m trying to stir a Catholic pot here Pdill, so you’ll have to let me know if this reference I cited from John Paul II was accurate:

Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the centre of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a planetary system. The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world’s structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture….
– Pope John Paul II, L’Osservatore Romano N. 44 (1264) – November 4, 1992

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Mike, it’s most disappointing that you chose to back up you “Galileo facts” with anti-catholic disproven urban legends, especially ‘’Wikipedia, which you would never accept as reliable reference for anything you were supporting. Adding to the disappointment, is the egregious (and I certainly hope not bigoted), comparison of Galileo with the “warmers”.

Unlike Al Gore/warmers, Galileo made major scientific contributions, just a bit over zealous (the REAL reason for his arrest), in being dogmatic in his heliocentric theory before the science was there to support it. He also eventually recanted.

Here’s a good read for anyone interested in the facts: (Excerpt)

OBJECTOR: Okay, so Galileo was not forbidden to continue his scientific work. But the fact remains that the Church condemned a proven scientific theory by invoking the Bible.

CATHOLIC: We must remember that no one—not even Galileo, has he acknowledged—had proof for the motion of the earth in 1632. Evidence would come later, but that evidence was not available to the judges in 1633. The first experimental confirmation of stellar parallax, for example, did not come until the nineteenth century with Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel’s observations. So believing that the earth was motionless was not absurd in the seventeenth century.

Moving on…

Even as the all the scientific observations from that point on confirmed Galileo’s conclusions it would take more than 300 years before the Catholic Church under Pope John Paul II finally admitted that Galileo had been right all along.

Really Mike, Wikipedia as a reference? Guess that’s ok when it’s the Catholic Church you are referencing. Gee, even a Google search would have educated you to the fact that an encyclical by Leo XIII was well in place before JP II RE-CONFIRMED (that’s what Popes often do in their teachings)

OBJECTOR: But today the Church does recognize that the decision against Galileo was mistake, doesn’t it? Why did the Church take so long to recognize its mistake?

CATHOLIC: Yes, the Church recognizes that the decision was wrong, but that recognition took place long before John Paul II made the formal apology in 1992. Copernicus’s book and thus the heliocentric system was removed from the Index of Prohibited Books in the eighteenth century. The Church, long before the past two decades, accepted Galileo’s approach to the reconciliation of science and Scripture as well founded. For example, Pope Leo XIII issued an encyclical Providentissimus Deus (November 18, 1893) in which he basically endorsed Galileo’s approach to the reconciliation of apparent conflicts between the Catholic faith and science. I say “apparent conflicts” because neither Galileo nor the official Church ever believed that there could be true conflicts between the Christian faith and science. Leo in the nineteenth century, Galileo and Bellarmine in the seventeenth, all affirmed the ultimate agreement between truths of faith and truths of science.

Here’s another good factual reference:

It is a good thing that the Church did not rush to embrace Galileo’s views, because it turned out that his ideas were not entirely correct, either. Galileo believed that the sun was not just the fixed center of the solar system but the fixed center of the universe. We now know that the sun is not the center of the universe and that it does move—it simply orbits the center of the galaxy rather than the earth.

As more recent science has shown, both Galileo and his opponents were partly right and partly wrong. Galileo was right in asserting the mobility of the earth and wrong in asserting the immobility of the sun. His opponents were right in asserting the mobility of the sun and wrong in asserting the immobility of the earth.

Had the Catholic Church rushed to endorse Galileo’s views—and there were many in the Church who were quite favorable to them—the Church would have embraced what modern science has disproved.

Bottom line, it is absurdity (or bigotry) to draw a connection to the warmers and Galileo. It’s also more than unfair to paint the “inquisitive” Catholic Church as the villain of science, when in point of fact, it was the Scientists of the Catholic Church who contributed most to the sciences, especially astronomy, and still do to this day .

Currently, the Catholic Church is HONORING and celebrating Galileo and Astronomy (fat chance of that ever happening with Al Gore). Less than a month ago, they hosted a Congress at the Vatican, (regardless of religious belief), and it was fascinating.

A Vatican sponsored exhibit is now available:

The exhibition will open Oct. 16 and will run through Jan. 16, coinciding with the close of the International Year of Astronomy, promoted by the International Astronomical Union and UNESCO.

Perhaps these words combined with Pope Benedict’s recent quote to the Astoomy Vatican Congress should give us all pause:

“True Knowledge Is Always Directed to Wisdom”

And if that doesn’t do it for you, at least know this: (my bold emphasis)

OBJECTOR: So, you as a Catholic, what lessons do you think we can learn from the Galileo trial?

CATHOLIC: That the pursuit of knowledge is always a humbling process. And that is good, because humility is one of the greatest virtues.

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I wish someone could hack into JournoList and let the world see why the Old Media is silent on ClimateGate.

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Climategate Foretold…

“• What is the current scientific consensus on the conclusions reached by Drs. Mann, Bradley and Hughes? [Referring to the hockey stick propagated in UN IPCC 2001 by Michael Mann.]

Ans: Based on the literature we have reviewed, there is no overarching consensus on MBH98/99. As analyzed in our social network, there is a tightly knit group of individuals who passionately believe in their thesis. However, our perception is that this group has a self-reinforcing feedback mechanism and, moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that they can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility.”

AD HOC COMMITTEE REPORT ON THE ‘HOCKEY STICK’ GLOBAL CLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION, also known as The Wegman report was authored by Edward J. Wegman, George Mason University, David W. Scott, Rice University, and Yasmin H. Said, The Johns Hopkins University with the contributions of John T. Rigsby, III, Naval Surface Warfare Center, and Denise M. Reeves, MITRE Corporation.

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5
Now that is one hell of a plan.

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“Marines have always been environmentally conscious, but now they’re starting a new program that should really make liberals happy. They’re going to be selling lifetime carbon offsets. You pay them their fee, and the Marine will then kill someone in a foreign land, effectively offsetting your entire carbon footprint.”

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Here’s some more information I left out of my post:

Bigger and stronger hurricanes?

Dr. Tim Ball on how the Warmers corrupted the peer review and publication process. Ball also describes earlier efforts by the Warmers to “get rid of the Medieval warm period.”

The Pew Poll:

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