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What is Galilean heresy?
Galileo challenged the Church's authority on scientific matters. The Church at the time sanctioned Aristotle as the authority on scientific matters. Galileo was able to prove …some of Aristotle's ideas as erroneous. He was persecuted for being a heretic. .
Answer .
What got Galileo into trouble was the acceptance not just of Aristotelian ideas but the cosmology of Ptolemy which was an earth-centered system. The scientists who followed this system convinced the Roman Catholic theologians of the time that this was taught in the Bible. They thus believed that to question such a system amounted to questioning the Bible, whereas it was actually their system which was in error and not the Bible. The relevant passages use what is termed the 'language of appearance' in referring to the the sun rising and setting just as we do. The passage which refers to the earth not being moved has no reference to the earth not moving through space but to its firmness and solidity as a planet - it is not about to fall apart or explode. Literally hundreds of books have been written about this controversy between the Roman Catholic church of the time and Galileo. A number of these seek to demonstrate that this was a conflict between science and the Bible. This is clearly not the case. It was a conflict between two systems of cosmology. Galileo's was always going to 'win' since it is based on fact, just as the Bible is. The lesson in history for Christians is not to wed one's interpretation of the Bible to a particular scientific world-view which may prove to be false. The Bible being God's eternal truth needs to be rightly understood in its context and taken as it stands. Some would see the reading of the Bible in the sense it was intended as the new 'Galilean heresy' since it conflicts with the prevalent interpretation of the Bible according to evolutionary long-age beliefs. (MORE)
