did ten cardinals of the Inquisition who conducted Galileo's 1633 trial convict him and sentence him to life imprisonment ?

Just wondering.

If this is wrong then I guess all my premises are based on lies.

Cause it sure seems that the pope went out of his way back in the 80's and 90's to issue an "non" me culpa for the Church.

I was just an interested bystander since at the time my interest were in biochemistry and not physics. Since I was a fallen Catholic, it was of interest on how the church hierarchy felt about some of the science that was and is being developed. I've tended to find more scientist, physicians and academics that were led back to the Lord after witnessing the majesty and complexity of the universe around us. It's inspiring to see a child run..... what's more inspiring is to know the science behind how a child can balance itself and run in the grand scheme of the universe.

I've also seen the brutality of man and how evil, greedy, stupid, vile and weak men use whatever means they can to control other men.

Like I said before, I love the Church but sometimes think that bureaucrats, corruption and greed are timeless.

May 24, 1999, 0:18 a.m.

Enlightenment Spin: The Galileo Myth; The Times's Slip Is Showing; Media Shill Update
By Jonah Goldberg

ENLIGHTENMENT SPIN: THE GALILEO MYTH
The Washington Times reports a very nice story this morning. Catholic scientists, or scientists who are Catholic, whatever makes you more comfortable, are trying to combat the notion that the Church is anti-science. “The Galileo incident has made the Church a whipping boy,” Thomas P. Sheahen of the Catholic Association of Scientists and Engineers told the paper.

Of course, he is referring to the story everyone learns in grade school; a lovable old scientist is condemned to Hell for refusing to deny the truth of the cosmos (in this case the Copernican notion of heliocentricity — the sun’s the center of things rather than the earth). The story is employed to teach children that closed-minded religious people are afraid of science and the truth. Virtually every morally troubling development in science results in a public invocation of this old saw. If Galileo is not called as a central witness for the scientists, then his ghost is surely conjured by the press.

The problem is, it’s spin. Ancient, pro-enlightenment, zealot spin.

Robert Nisbet in (probably my favorite book) Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary, writes that the Galileo myth was adopted by the French Enlightenment to discredit the Catholic Church. Their first choice for martyr was Isaac Newton. Unfortunately, Newton was a religious fanatic in their eyes. So they picked Galileo instead and rewrote significant aspects of his biography (like the obvious fact that he was religious) so as to make the Church the darkest of villains.

Western Civilization’s love of the individual in pursuit of the truth is perhaps its greatest attribute. So it shouldn’t be shocking that we are all very receptive to the idea. “From Diderot to Brecht, the myth of Galileo the rationalist-scientist-martyr dominated Western thought, and even today it shows few signs of abating,” wrote Nisbet in 1982.

He was right. Galileo is still the reigning symbol for the idea that religion can’t handle the truth and that the Catholic Church as a matter of settled policy punishes those who speak it.

Yes, Galileo was eventually found guilty of heresy. But his problems stemmed first and foremost from jealous fellow-scientists. Galileo’s first muzzle was one he put on himself. In 1597 he wrote a letter to Johannes Kepler (the first big Copernican and discoverer of the three laws of moving planet stuff). In the letter, Galileo told Kepler that, yeah Copernicus got things right, but he thought the Aristotelian academic establishment would have a cow if he said so publicly.

Twelve years later he created his own astronomical telescope and confirmed the existence of lunar moons, stars in the Milky Way, and various “planets” revolving around Jupiter. A year later he wrote “The Starry Messenger” and he won piles of awards, a cushy job, and all sorts of junk that they would have had on The Price is Right if it existed back then (“I’d say that Saracen’s head costs 12 guineas, Roberto”).

Galileo went to Rome to show his findings to the Vatican. Despite the fact that his research couldn’t have been more Copernican if it had been titled, “As told by Copernicus,” the Church gave him all sorts of attaboys. While in Rome for a couple years he published more Copernican-friendly papers, and the Church green-lighted all of it with nary a word or a restriction on distribution.

After Galileo went back to Padua, the leading scientific mediocrities started complaining. It was the scientists who said that challenging Aristotle was heresy — not the Church. If Aristotle became obsolete than these guys would lose their prestigious posts and lucrative tutoring gigs. Much like Communist academics in Eastern Europe who invested a lifetime in Marxist theory, they had a lot more to lose from change. So, the tenured guild of professors enlisted the aid of the Dominicans (a rowdy and preachy bunch) to denounce Galileo.

In Tuscany, numerous Church officials and lay nobles supported Galileo during the assault. Still, Galileo had to return to Rome to face his accusers. He went. It was a big fight. The Vatican ordered him to hold off pursuing very specific areas of teaching until some corrections could be made to his last book. Galileo even got a letter from the Vatican hierarchy stating that he didn’t have to recant anything.

So Galileo went home and kept publishing other stuff with explicit permission of the Church, including The Assayer, a rejoinder to some Jesuit criticisms. Galileo argued that doubt was necessary to all scientific research. He dedicated the book to an old friend who just happened to be the new Pope. Who happened to love the book. The Pope subsequently gave his blessing for a new Galilean magnum opus that would cover everything known to date about Copernican and Ptolemaic science. The Pope did ask that Galileo keep it objective and scientific. His Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems was a huge kick in the pants to the Aristotelians, and it generated a lot of controversy — as good science always does — but the Church didn’t stop the publication or the debate, let alone sew a starving squirrel to Galileo’s pancreas.

Galileo’s James Carville was no preacher, but a scientist named Schreiner (it helps if you say his name the way Seinfeld says “Neumann”). He fanned the flames in Rome until the Pope felt obliged to call a trial under the Inquisition. The head of the Inquisition was a Galileo supporter, who hoped to get the whole thing over with quickly by just giving him a formal reprimand. Unfortunately, rabble-rousers and opportunists turned the heat up. The trial is very complicated but the result was that Galileo got house arrest, which is where he did all of his research anyway. He was permitted to correspond with any scientist he wanted and he wrote the Dialogue Concerning Two New Sciences while under the Man’s thumb.

As Nisbet points out, this is not exactly the story one gets from the made-for-TV movies or high-school textbooks. The Church had the same problems of any major political institution and other challenges unique to being the Catholic Church. It had to contend with politics and intrigue and in-fighting and cravenness. But it also had legions of people fighting for truth and fairness in a difficult time beset with bizarre politics. Marxists, like Bertold Brecht, and liberals, like all of your (non-Marxist) college professors, seized upon the notion of a monolithic and superstitious Church because the aim was to discredit the Church specifically and religion in general. Religion with its faith in the unprovable and the perfection of the hereafter is, and always has been, the greatest threat to those who believe we can perfect the here and now through “scientific methods.”

Again Nisbet, “Rivalry, jealousy, and vindictiveness from other scientists and philosophers were Galileo’s lot.…[and] anyone who believes that inquisitions went out with the triumph of secularism over religion has not paid attention to the records of foundations, federal research agencies, professional societies…” etc.

Indeed, one need not look much further than then-Senator Al Gore’s treatment of dissenters on global warming to see how modern inquisitions work. Anyone who questions global warming in front of Gore faces the secular excommunication of being called an industry shill.

The scientists discussed in today’s Washington Times say that Catholicism has much to tell science, most especially the idea that “you can’t use an evil means even for a good end.” That’s a great place to start, but it shouldn’t end there.
— Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. © 2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWU5ZDk3NGY3OGI4NDY1OTdmNzc2NmEzYjUzZWQxNWE=

Debunking the Galileo Myth

DINESH D'SOUZA

Many people have uncritically accepted the idea that there is a longstanding war between science and religion.

Galileo Galilei
(1564-1642)

We find this war advertised in many of the leading atheist tracts such as those by Richard Dawkins, Victor Stenger, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Every few months one of the leading newsweeklies does a story on this subject. Little do the peddlers of this paradigm realize that they are victims of nineteenth-century atheist propaganda.

About a hundred years ago, two anti-religious bigots named John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White wrote books promoting the idea of an irreconcilable conflict between science and God. The books were full of facts that have now been totally discredited by scholars. But the myths produced by Draper and Dickson continue to be recycled. They are believed by many who consider themselves educated, and they even find their way into the textbooks. In this article I expose several of these myths, focusing especially on the Galileo case, since Galileo is routinely portrayed as a victim of religious persecution and a martyr to the cause of science.

The Flat Earth Fallacy: According to the atheist narrative, the medieval Christians all believed that the earth was flat until the brilliant scientists showed up in the modern era to prove that it was round. In reality, educated people in the Middle Ages knew that the earth was round. In fact, the ancient Greeks in the fifth century B.C. knew the earth was a globe. They didn’t need modern science to point out the obvious. They could see that when a ship went over the horizon, the hull and the mast disappear at different times. Even more telling, during an eclipse they could see the earth’s shadow on the moon. Look fellas, it’s round!

Huxley’s Mythical Put-Down: We read in various books about the great debate between Darwin’s defender Thomas Henry Huxley and poor Bishop Wilberforce. As the story goes, Wilberforce inquired of Huxley whether he was descended from an ape on his father or mother’s side, and Huxley winningly responded that he would rather be descended from an ape than from an ignorant bishop who was misled people about the findings of science. A dramatic denouement, to be sure, but the only problem is that it never happened. There is no record of it in the proceedings of the society that held the debate, and Darwin’s friend Joseph Hooker who informed him about the debate said that Huxley made no rejoinder to Wilberforce’s arguments.

Darwin Against the Christians: As myth would have it, when Darwin’s published his Origin of Species, the scientists lined up on one side and the Christians lined up on the other side. In reality, there were good scientific arguments made both in favor of Darwin and against him. The British naturalist Richard Owen, the Harvard zoologist Louis Agassiz, and the renowned physicist Lord Kelvin all had serious reservations about Darwin’s theory. Historian Gertrude Himmelfarb points out that while some Christians found evolution inconsistent with the Bible, many Christians rallied to Darwin’s side. Typical was the influential Catholic journal Dublin Review which extravagantly praised Darwin’s book while registering only minor objections.

The Experiment Galileo Didn’t Do: We read in textbooks about how Galileo went to the Tower of Pisa and dropped light and heavy bodies to the ground. He discovered that they hit the ground at the same time, thus refuting centuries of idle medieval theorizing. Actually Galileo didn’t do any such experiments; one of his students did. The student discovered what we all can discover by doing similar experiments ourselves: the heavy bodies hit the ground first! As historian of science Thomas Kuhn points out, it is only in the absence of air resistance that all bodies hit the ground at the same time.

Galileo Was the First to Prove Heliocentrism: Actually, Copernicus advanced the heliocentric theory that the sun, not the earth, is at the center, and that the earth goes around the sun. He did this more than half a century before Galileo. But Copernicus had no direct evidence, and he admitted that there were serious obstacles from experience that told against his theory. For instance, if the earth is moving rapidly, why don’t objects thrown up into the air land a considerable distance away from their starting point? Galileo defended heliocentrism, but one of his most prominent arguments was wrong. Galileo argued that the earth’s regular motion sloshes around the water in the oceans and explains the tides. In reality, tides have more to do with the moon’s gravitational force acting upon the earth.

In reality, the Church was the leading sponsor of the new science and Galileo himself was funded by the church. The leading astronomers of the time were Jesuit priests.

The Church Dogmatically Opposed the New Science: In reality, the Church was the leading sponsor of the new science and Galileo himself was funded by the church. The leading astronomers of the time were Jesuit priests. They were open to Galileo’s theory but told him the evidence for it was inconclusive. This was the view of the greatest astronomer of the age, Tyco Brahe. The Church’s view of heliocentrism was hardly a dogmatic one. When Cardinal Bellarmine met with Galileo he said, “While experience tells us plainly that the earth is standing still, if there were a real proof that the sun is in the center of the universe…and that the sun goes not go round the earth but the earth round the sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and rather admit that we did not understand them than declare an opinion to be false which is proved to be true. But this is not a thing to be done in haste, and as for myself, I shall not believe that there are such proofs until they are shown to me.” Galileo had no such proofs.

Galileo Was A Victim of Torture and Abuse: This is perhaps the most recurring motif, and yet it is entirely untrue. Galileo was treated by the church as a celebrity. When summoned by the Inquisition, he was housed in the grand Medici Villa in Rome. He attended receptions with the Pope and leading cardinals. Even after he was found guilty, he was first housed in a magnificent Episcopal palace and then placed under “house arrest” although he was permitted to visit his daughters in a nearby convent and to continue publishing scientific papers.

The Church Was Wrong To Convict Galileo of Heresy: But Galileo was neither charged nor convicted of heresy. He was charged with teaching heliocentrism in specific contravention of his own pledge not to do so. This is a charge on which Galileo was guilty. He had assured Cardinal Bellarmine that given the sensitivity of the issue, he would not publicly promote heliocentrism. Yet when a new pope was named, Galileo decided on his own to go back on his word. Asked about this in court, he said his Dialogue on the Two World Systems did not advocate heliocentrism. This is a flat-out untruth as anyone who reads Galileo’s book can plainly see. Even Galileo’s supporters, and there were many, found it difficult to defend him at this point.

What can we conclude from all this? Galileo was right about heliocentrism, but we know that only in retrospect because of evidence that emerged after Galileo’s death. The Church should not have tried him at all, although Galileo’s reckless conduct contributed to his fate. Even so, his fate was not so terrible. Historian Gary Ferngren concludes that “the traditional picture of Galileo as a martyr to intellectual freedom and as a victim of the church’s opposition to science has been demonstrated to be little more than a caricature.” Remember this the next time you hear some half-educated atheist rambling on about “the war between religion and science.”

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Dinesh D'Souza. "Debunking the Galileo Myth." Dinesh D'Souza Blog (November 26, 2007).

This article reprinted with permission from Dinesh D'Souza.

THE AUTHOR

Dinesh D'Souza is the Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. D'Souza has been called one of the "top young public-policy makers in the country" by Investor’s Business Daily. His areas of research include the economy and society, civil rights and affirmative action, cultural issues and politics, and higher education. Dinesh D'Souza's latest book is What's So Great About Christianity. He is also the author of: The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, Letters to a Young Conservative, What's So Great about America, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus; The End of Racism; Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader; and The Virtue of Prosperity: Finding Values in an Age of Techno-Affluence. Dinesh D'Souza is on the Advisory Board of the Catholic Education Resource Center. Visit his website here.