The Galileo Myth
Atheists would have had to invent Galileo if he hadn’t existed. No other figure even comes close to being the poster boy for the war between science and faith.
Every schoolchild learns about Galileo Galilei. 
Image via Wikipedia
The father of the telescope, except that he wasn’t. But he did build a good one, and then looked up into space with it.
The problem is that much like the attribution of the invention of the telescope, all sorts of other untruths have have been taught about him. As a matter of fact, if there had been no Galileo, atheists would have had to invent him to use as a club against religion and stir up anti-catholic sentiment. Most schools never even teach the fact that the church actually funded science and scientists, or that Galileo himself was a very devout man. In fact the leading astronomers of the day were priests.
Now Copernicus was also a man of the church, a priest, who postulated that perhaps the Sun did not revolve around the Earth, but that the Earth actually revolved around the Sun. The church really didn’t have a problem with Copernicus saying this because it was only a theory. Copernicus made no claims to absolute fact or truth.
Galileo on the other hand, with the aid of telescope, started teaching the it was the truth that the Sun revolved around the earth. The church, siding with secular science of the day, went to Galileo and demanded he bring forth his evidence. Of course, Galileo had his math and his theories, but not incontrovertible proof. The church requested Galileo not teach it as proven truth until it had been studied further. Not to be hasty. He agreed.
Image via Wikipedia
But Galileo didn’t keep his part of the bargain and again started teaching that the Earth revolved around the Sun as truth.
Galileo was taken by the Inquisition and imprisoned. Well no, he was asked to come and explain himself, he was housed at the Medici Villa in Rome. A palace.
He was tortured. Well there again, no he wasn’t. He attended parties, and had visitors.
But he was tried and convicted of heresy…right? No, sorry, he wasn’t. He was charged with teaching his new theory as truth after he had promised not to, for breaking his word.
At the close of his trial Galileo is recorded as muttering under his breath “And yet it moves…”. Well here again, no he didn’t. This is a legend started more than century after Galileo’s time.
Galileo was a brilliant, and obstinate man with a big mouth.
Martyr for science? No.
Tortured and imprisoned for his discoveries? No.
Foot soldier in the war between science and religion? No.
So the next time someone says “I think we should remember what the Church did to Galileo…”, you can set them straight. After all, truth is better than fiction isn’t it?
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3 Responses to “The Galileo Myth”
On September 5, 2009 at 11:00 am
This is interesting. I have not studied Galileo, but as I recall the text books say all the stuff that you have debunked. Just out of curiosity, where did you find the evidence that “busted” the Galileo Myth?
On September 5, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Hi Karen, Historians have known for some time that the sequence of events that eventually led to the Church’s actions against Galileo was set in motion by secular academics, not priests. It’s all there in the history books if you avoid the misinformation that leaked in.
The myth regarding Galileo being taught in schools today can be traced back to two men, Andrew Dickson White and John Draper. Who just happen to have been activists in the movement to secularize higher education. Galileo was perfect to use as a wedge between science and religion. All substantiation for tenets of the myth run into a dead end with them. There have been unsubstantiated attacks on the Church because of Galileo for a long time, these guys popularized it and pushed it into academia as fact.
But if you read enough of the surrounding material the truth of the events that took place can found. The Inquisition did not think that it was requiring Galileo to choose between faith and science. Nor did he.
On September 8, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Hi again, Stephen
I’ve been checking out some of your writing, and find it impressive. Your response to Karen Gross about Galileo really caught my eye. You see, I did some research a while back on the Christopher Columbus flat-earth myth. Seems the story traced all the way back to Washington Irving! Nobody with an education believed in a flat earth, as far back as the 3rd century BC. Irving cooked it up for a history of CC which was more a historical novel than anything else. So, somebody took that and pushed it into the textbooks from which it has been taught as fact ever since. Who? None other than Andrew Dickson White and John Draper. These two were working overtime pushing their secularist agenda back in the 19th century. Oh, and never mind truth. For people like that, it’s the agenda that counts.
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