RP>KK>I'm afraid Mr Jefferson might disagree with you there.  Here he was
RP>KK>writing in the context of the Enlightenment, in which it was
RP>KK>acknowledged that such thinkers as Galileo and Newton had produced
RP>KK>ideas that outraged the orthodox Christianity of their time, yet
RP>KK>actual observation had borne them out:
RP>They outraged, not Christianity, but their scientist peers and
RP>academics, who then used the power the Church had at the time in
RP>attempts to discredit them and their discoveries.
I'm reading an article here in the March 1993 issue of Sky and
Telescope magazine.  It's written by Owen Gingerich, who teaches
the history of astronomy at the Harvard/Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics.
Below, he quotes Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, who he refers to as
Rome's leading theologian in those days:
  "For to say that assuming the Earth moves and the Sun stands
   still saves all the appearances better than eccentrics and
   epicycles is to speak well.  This has no danger in it, and
   suffices for the mathematicians.  But to affirm that the Sun is
   really fixed in the center of the heavens and that the Earth
   revolves very swiftly around the Sun is a dangerous thing,
   not only irritating the theologians and the philosophers,
   but injuring our holy faith and making the sacred scripture
   false."
The Church didn't
RP>think up charges against Galileo on its own, scientists and academia
RP>brought those charges to the Church and the willing actors in it who
RP>then ran with with them,
Gingerich shows quite clearly that G's opposition were theologians,
as did the Pope in a 1992 statement, referred to "....Galileo's
judges, incapable of dissociating faith from an age-old cosmology...."
RP>aided by Galileo's abrasive approach.
You're certainly right about that.
Had they
RP>a Supreme Court like ours at their disposal they would've used it to the
RP>same end in much the same way.  We see similar being done today to
RP>insure ideas contrary to evolution, and anyone who dares espouse such
RP>ideas, are discredited and scorned,
During the Arkansas 'Balanced Treatment' case, the creationists
claimed that scientists were suppressing their work.  When asked
to provide evidence of papers rejected by peer-reviewed journals,
they could not produce a single one.
RP>                                 and most certainly never, ever,
RP>taught to anyone in public schools.
If you want creationism taught in public-school science classes,
the best approach would be to find some actual science to support it.
Right now, it's just Genesis with the religious words removed.
RP>Neither Galileo or Newton believed their discoveries contradicted
RP>scripture, and in fact, their discoveries were not a contradiction of
RP>them.  The idea that the earth was the center of the universe is NOT in
RP>scripture,
Gingerich mentions Psalm 104 and that part in Joshua where the sun is
made to stand still, as being used by Galileo's opposition.
RP>          nor was heliocentrism ever declared a heresy.  That idea came
RP>from the likes of Aristotle, "Master of Those Who Know", whose ideas
RP>were accepted by the scientists of the time, and they in turn corrupted
RP>the Church with those same ideas.  We suffer similar in our time.
Gingerich again:
  "In the end the pope's conservative advisers won out, and Galileo
   received an unexpectedly harsh sentence.  He was forced to abjure
   a 'vehement suspicion of heresy' and to recite a humiliating
   confession.  But in essence the verdict was imposed for disobeying
   orders, not heresy.  One of the Vatican's leading apologists,
   Giambattista Riccioli, later wrote that the Copernican opinion
   had, as a result, become heretical, or at least erroneous...."
 * SLMR 2.1a * "... Mr. Reagan's plan is voodoo economics."  George Bush
--- PCBoard (R) v15.4/M 5 Beta
(1:301/45)
---------------