Galileo’s Heresy and the Price of Certainty
Only 400 years ago, Galileo turned the religious and scientific worlds on their heads when he publicly asserted the heliocentric theory—the idea that the Sun was at the center of the universe—as a scientific certainty. Up to that point, the generally accepted view was that the Earth was at the center of the universe. The Church held that God would not have positioned His most important creation anywhere other than at the center of everything else He created. The Church’s frame of reference included a group of Biblical passages that seemed to lend weight to geocentrism. Joshua 10:12 recounts Joshua commanding the Sun to stand still (thus reinforcing the belief that the Sun moved). Then there are Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, and 1 Chronicles 16:30—“…the world is firmly established; it cannot be moved”; Psalm 104:5—“…the Lord set the Earth on its foundations; it can never be moved”; and Ecclesiastes 1:5—“…the Sun rises and the Sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.” Until Galileo—and c...