You're telling this as if the rules for knowledge and deduction had already been worked out -- you're telling it in a way where we are invited to take our current understanding of how science works and drop it willy-nilly into a time many hundreds of years ago. It doesn't work like that. To them, holy writ was another form of valid observational data. The struggle religion is having is an internal one -- how literally to take the holy words. Offenses to science are just collateral damage in that larger debate. There was also a personal thing going on between Galileo and the Pope.
I don't say that as an apologist. I really feel like there is nothing to defend here. Mankind's belief system impeded and advanced the acquisition of scientific knowledge in various ways. For instance, I'd argue that the reformation was the biggest thing to happen to science, encouraging individuals to see and prove things for themselves.
I was just taking issue with not having enough context. Yes, the big picture is Galileo had a hard time of it. But all the little details -- the personality issues, the issues of evidence, the way his work was constructed, the way knowledge was generally gathered and advancements made at the time, etc. -- to me those are the juiciest parts of the story. Gives it a wonderful 3-D feel. To tell it like a comic book from the 21st century where the church is evil and Galileo was some kind of uber-hero is to commit a crime against the joy of history, in my opinion. It's a much more enjoyable story than that, and I'm not sure the listener of the comic book version really understands what was going on from this version of the telling. To be more blunt, and speaking as an agnostic and non-religious person, it sounds a bit more like anti-church propaganda instead of an honest look at how people lived. Listening to the apologist doesn't put me on the church's side by any means, but it sure makes the whole thing into a hell of a better story.
@Daniel - I hope you weren't expecting Galileo's full biography, a comprehensive survey of 16th century intellectual life, along with a dissection of approaches to the accumulation of knowledge that had developed over the previous, say, 2,000 years - all packed into a single HN comment. Context - remember?
I don't say that as an apologist. I really feel like there is nothing to defend here. Mankind's belief system impeded and advanced the acquisition of scientific knowledge in various ways. For instance, I'd argue that the reformation was the biggest thing to happen to science, encouraging individuals to see and prove things for themselves.
I was just taking issue with not having enough context. Yes, the big picture is Galileo had a hard time of it. But all the little details -- the personality issues, the issues of evidence, the way his work was constructed, the way knowledge was generally gathered and advancements made at the time, etc. -- to me those are the juiciest parts of the story. Gives it a wonderful 3-D feel. To tell it like a comic book from the 21st century where the church is evil and Galileo was some kind of uber-hero is to commit a crime against the joy of history, in my opinion. It's a much more enjoyable story than that, and I'm not sure the listener of the comic book version really understands what was going on from this version of the telling. To be more blunt, and speaking as an agnostic and non-religious person, it sounds a bit more like anti-church propaganda instead of an honest look at how people lived. Listening to the apologist doesn't put me on the church's side by any means, but it sure makes the whole thing into a hell of a better story.