Is the Church actually trustworthy?

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Another point was that he was arguing against the scientific consensus of his day. You are right that the Church wanted more evidence and they wanted consensus with other scientists, just as we would want today with any new, very different theory.

I looked into this several years ago and as an agnostic, the Galileo affair was something I pointed to as Church denying science! It fed my bias. Then I learned what happened. While the old theory was wrong, the Church wasn’t suppressing his science. They wanted more evidence before they went against all the other scientists. That’s how science should and usually does work! And it worked here as well. Meanwhile, Galileo wasn’t a patient man and stepped on toes he shouldn’t have which only hurt his case.
 
Pattylt said:
I looked into this several years ago and as an agnostic, the Galileo affair was something I pointed to as Church denying science! It fed my bias. Then I learned what happened. While the old theory was wrong, the Church wasn’t suppressing his science. They wanted more evidence before they went against all the other scientists. That’s how science should and usually does work! And it worked here as well. Meanwhile, Galileo wasn’t a patient man and stepped on toes he shouldn’t have which only hurt his case.
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Could you provide sources please? If someone was to bring it up with me and I gave that response I suspect I’d be accused of whitewashing. Since you are not Catholic I feel that you would have got the information from a source that non Catholics would find reputable.
 
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It’s been several years but I remember the blog I got it from (footnoted and all). Let me look…
 
Pope Urban II was one, Pope Pius V was known to have people tortured in the Inquisition. Pope Innocent III allowed 4,000 people to be burned alive, an atrocity, in the early 1200s. Just a few examples.
 
runningdude said:
Galileo didn’t have scientific proof for his theory. Instead, he used theology to prove his theory, and his theology was rejected by the church. It wasn’t until years later that sufficiently advanced telescopes proved the sun was at the center.
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I second that. In contrast, Copernicus proposed the same theory before Galileo and never had any problem or was questioned for it.
 
Dan_Defender said:
Copernicus proposed the same theory before Galileo and never had any problem or was questioned for it.
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That’s because, out of fear of being accused of heresy, he put of publishing it until shortly before he died. Though the book got an initial warm reception, it was not long before it was attacked by Catholics and Protestants alike as incompatible with scripture and Aristotelian philosophy, and it eventually ended up on the Index of Forbidden Books.
 
Just to be clear Copernicus published “De revolutionibus” in March 1543, after more than a decade of revisions. The book included a letter to Pope Paul III arguing the legitimacy of the heliocentric theory.
“De revolutionibus” initially met no resistance from the Catholic Church. It was not until 1616 that the church banned the book.
 
Or worse at selecting saints. Couldn’t resist that one. But yes, I fully agree.
 
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