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Galileo and the Roman Catholic Church

Galileo was recognized as one of the great scientific thinkers of the early seventeenth century. His conflict with the Roman Catholic Church represented more than the tension between two different views of the universe. It arose from the tension between beliefs based on observation and interpretation and beliefs derived from faith and interpretation of scripture.
The central disagreement between the church authorities and Galileo was his belief that Copernicus had been right in stating that the earth revolved around the sun.
If this was so, the earth could not be the center of the universe. Behind this dispute about the correctness of the two theories...