The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetics in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
It took the Church until 1832 to remove Galileo 's work from its list of books which Catholics were forbidden to read at the risk of dire punishment of their immortal souls.
It used to be, it is accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat, and this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier.
Is it possible that I am not alone in believing that in the dispute between Galileo and the Church, the Church was right and the centre of man's universe is the earth?
Just because you have a group of scientists who stood up and said here is the fact. Galileo got outvoted for a spell.
I am not very impressed with theological arguments whatever they may be used to support. Such arguments have often been found unsatisfactory in the past. In the time of Galileo it was argued that the texts, 'And the sun stood still... and hasted not to go down about a whole day' (Joshua x. 13) and 'He laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not move at any time' (Psalm cv. 5) were an adequate refutation of the Copernican theory.
If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.
