You mean, like, string theory, or SETI?
Galileo was challenging a metaphysical theory. Other metaphysical theories,
Uh huh, nobody at the heresy trial of Galileo ever spent an evening on the beach saying to themselves, "see, the sun rises in the east, and sets in the west, clearly, any fool can see that the sun goes round the earth."
Regardless of whether the Pope owned a telescope or not (and, as a matter of fact, he did) The church had a physical theory about the behaviors of two bodies, even if you hold your breath until you turn blue insisting that this can't be called a scientific theory. A label does not determine the nature of a thing. The nature of a thing determines whether a label is accurate or not. If it smells like a theory about how the physical world behaves, and looks like a theory about how the physical world, and you are willing to throw people in jail for contradicting you, than it is a theory about how the physical world behaves--which is close enough to being science for government work--and you, in fact, endorsed it.
like the Theory of Intelligent Design, are also oftentimes confused with science.
ID can satisfy most reasonable criteria for being a science. It just isn't a very good science, is all.