I only read this sentence. Since it is incorrect, I'd rather focus on this and see about the rest later.
You believe what I posted as nonsense, but that doesn't make it so. The fact that you call any opinion that doesn't match your own "nonsense" is part of the problem at FR. It is possible I am talking about something you don't know.
I didn't bring the book in, but I reviewed my copy of "The Soul of Science" by Nancy Pearcy last night. She has a few pages on the issues between Galileo and the Catholic Church. I was recalling them correctly, the battle between Galileo and the Church was not a battle about scientific truth. In fact, many scholars in the Church already supported the heliocentric theory.
However, I had oversimplified. It was actually a battle about the philosophical underpinings of science. The Church based their scientific approach on Aristotle and believe this was a requirement to the notion of moral authority. Galileo had to challenge Aristotle (sorry, I don't remember the detail) and the Church took this as a challenge to its own ability to maintain a moral code. The Pope and Galileo had been friends. The Pope had even been a "follower" of Galileo in the science realm. But the Church's desire to hold on to this power put them at odds. The battle got ugly and it became a political mess.
In the same way as Luther could have avoided the Reformation if he hadn't called the Pope the Anti-Christ, Galileo might have avoided the false split between Church and Science if he hadn't turned it into a personal crusade. But that's not to blame either radical. The Church should be big enough to handle a challenge without getting nasty itself and, IMO, enjoys the lion's share of the blame.
I meant to bring the book in and provide a couple of quotes and some footnotes, but I left it at home. You can read the book yourself. But to say the battle was about faith vs. science is as gross an oversimplification as to say that the US Civil War was about slavery.
Shalom.
You forgot to mention the part where Galileo "misbehaved"; that was the point of disagreement.
The Civil war was about slavery--there would not have been a civil war over any other conflict of interest without the fulcrum of slavery, and Galileo's Trial was, above all else, about the church suppressing science it found disagreeable.
One can always point to subsidiary issues revolving about an historical event, and try to wrap one's vision about one's own peculiar notions of what's essential to history, but I don't recommend it as a general practice, and I'd appreciate it if you'd keep your cotton-pickin' hands off the history department, as well as the biology department, at the next schoolboard meeting.