Fun fact: the Vatican’s objections to Galileo were spot on the money. He had made correct observations, but the Vatican had also made correct refutals. Ironically, Cardinal Nicolas Di Cusa had already correctly supposed how to reconcile the apparent contradictions (and published them asserting that they represented Catholic thought): The universe was so massive that any point within the universe was the center of the universe.
Einstein came up with something which even more radically affirmed the ancient Catholic position, but which was ignored because it gave the win to the Catholic Church: that wherever an observer is IS the EXACT center of the universe, from that observer’s perspective.
God really did devise the universe so that the whole universe revolves around each of us. That’s pretty awesome.
the omnipotence of an almighty God is beyond man’s ability to comprehend.
Any infant knows that.
This bit about the “persecution” of Galileo is almost entirely untrue. 1. The heliocentric theory was Copernicus’s, not Galileo’s. Copernicus was a Catholic cleric, and the Church published his work, which circulated for decades freely. 2. Galileo, like many gifted people, was arrogant, and he was so infatuated with Copernicus’ theory that his championing of the theory overlooked critical facts and was presented in a poorly disguised ad hominem tirade against the Pope. 3. The Copernican theory did NOT predict well because it assumed that orbits are circular. The Ptolemaic geocentric theory, though complicated, made more accurate predictions about the movements of the planets. At the time, it was clearly the better theory based on the evidence. 4. Cardinal Bellarmine investigated the controversy and concluded that the heliocentric theory was promising, but wasn’t supported by the facts, which was correct. 5. It wasn’t until Kepler theorized that orbits are elliptical, not circular, that the deficiencies of Copernican model were corrected. This was long after Galileo’s death. 6. Galileo was financially supported by the Church, and that support continued after the investigation until his death. Galileo was never tortured, never held in a prison, or in any other way physically abused. 7. This Galileo myth is largely a 19th Century invention and has been repeated endlessly because it has been useful to the secular left in the culture wars. There are many other examples of tales about the “war” between “science” and Christianity that are nothing but useful, false narratives.
Unfortunately, this nonsense is endlessly repeated. Historians of science, however, know better.