Disease. Again, you're looking for the "scientific" answer and apparently will be content with that. In OT times, they apparently had noticed the phenomenon of contagion, vide the treatment of lepers; when Jesus cleansed the lepers, I don't recall any mention of demons. Job was afflicted with boils by Satan, with God's permission, but he was hardly possessed. My own understanding is that disease entered the world through sin -- as one of the Church Fathers (I forget who) put it, since man disobeyed God, so his own body will not obey him. I'm not concerned with "proving" it to anyone; to me, it rings true, though it says nothing about whatever cellular mechanisms or whatever are involved.
As for the Bible being "reliable," I take the historical books as being as reliable as any history we have -- certainly moreso than whatever source you rely on for your understanding of Galileo and the Church. ;-)
Of course, I still assume the Trojan War happened, even if archeology hasn't found any evidence of it yet! In fact, I consider most things scientific mildly interesting, but subject to revision. (And if the Bible were intended as some sort of diviney inspired All-purpose Boy Scout Handbook, surely it would have said something about Anthropogenic Global Warming!)
What you just posted is an insult to intelligence. Being an astrophotographer is a hobby, not an academic degree and the fact that the article you linked even lists his hobby as an authentication of his qualification is like saying that someone who owns a sailing boat is an expert on naval history.
First of all, if Galileo actually looked at the sun through his telescope, he would have gone blind to one eye not both, right at that instant, not years later. One can see sunspots on a projected image of the sun on a white screen or a wall, but not directly.
Gaileo purchased the telescope from the Dutch, and being a tinkerer, ade some imporvements on it. He never claimed to have invented it. It was a simple lens with a negative eyepiece, and power of 14X (your average binocluars typically come with a power of 8-16X. Anything over 10X cannot be hand held steadily enough for useful obsevring or provide sufficiently wide field of view). The differnce is that Galileo's telescope had only abut 1/3 the light gathering power of an average 8X50 binoclars, and was not achromatic, or coated for greater transmission, or necessarily optically to within the 2-wave tolerance of commercial optics (true astronoical optics are finished to better than 1/4 wave tolerance). So, all in all, it was a toy. At best one could call it a small "spotting scope.
But it was sufficient to resolve the Milky Way into stars(of which, in our galaxy, alone there are billions and not millions, as the author says), or to show "appendiges" on Saturn.
Your author is dead wrong when he says that Gaileo didn't have a proof. He postulated heliocentricity based on the phases of Venus. Simple geometry shows that the only way we can see the full face of Venus is if it goes around the sun. When he positvely observed the fully illuminated face of Venus, knew.
Obviously, if Venus was always in front of the Sun, as it was believed, then a full face of Venus cluld never be seen. And he was right, of course.
Galileo was not convicted and thrown into house arrest for insulting the Pope, but on charges of "vehement suspicion of heresy." Heresy, by definition, means "that which is not taught by the Church," so your author is again wrong in asserting that the Church did not have a stance on heliocentricity. Otherwise it couldn't have accused Galileo and convicted him of "vehement suspcision of heresy."
The Church used Aristotelian philosophy and Ptolomey's navigational system (both were geocentric) becuase they agreed with the theolgoical notion that man was God's central creation and that we were the center of the Creation, and that everything revolved around us (literally speaking!).
Ptolemy's navigaitonal system is a typical scientific working model, which works on predictable observend phenomena, even if it is based on on erroneous premises, and a typical exmaple of the so-called "observational phenomenon."
This amateur that your Catholic site uses as some "authority" on this subject also finds himself authorized to diagnose the cause of Gailleo's blindness. It could have been nothing more than cataracts, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, bad lighting (usually candles) and, above all, old age! BTW, the loss of sight from looking into the sun through a telescope is instantaneous, not gradual.
The fact still remains that the Cathoic Church did not retract its charge of "vehement suspicion of heresy" until the 1990's, 450 years after his death. It cointinued to blame him for teachng a "false" doctrine of heliocentricity until the end of the XX century. Talk about obtuse....
Well, you can go on assuming the Trojan War happened. Belief in things in absence of evidence is called fantasy. I have just as much "justification" to believe there are pink unicorns living on Jupiter!