william of ockham was a friar. gregor mendel was an abbot. do they have to go that far before you assume they were men of faith? or can you just assume that when galileo wrote that "the laws of nature were written by the hand of God in mathematics", he was talking about the christian god he professed faith to? interestingly, when galileo presented his findings to the jesuits they were intrigued and wanted more. but galielo lamented in a letter, "The novelty of these things, as well as some consequences which followed from them in contradiction to the physical notions commonly held among academic philosophers, stirred up against me no small number of professors-as if I had placed these things in the sky with my own hands in order to upset nature and overturn the sciences."
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/galileo.html so we got the jesuits being all "HOLY SHIT DUDE THIS IS AWESOME!!!" and the professors looking at it with disdain. i nthat same letter he linked those professors though to turing to the bible -- but this isn't the church, this was acedemia. the future pope urban the 8th wrote to galileo, if there were proof that the earth circles around the sun, "then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of Scripture which appear to teach the contrary." meaning, he wanted PICS OR GTFO
galileo, while right of course, had no real proof. he was insisting on perfect orbits of planets that kepler already described as being elliptical. still he acquiessed to the church and ceased pestering them about it. then that guy who wrote that letter to him became the pope and galileo, since he was a friend to him, felt free to do as he pleased. he then wrote a scathing assault on some jesuits, claiming that comets (which the jesuits were claiming were farther away than the moon) were actually optical illusions, and did so in a harsh tone. it was this action of bing a total dick AND not knowing what he was talking about (the jesuits were correct here, not him) that soured relations.
the pope was sick of his shit because he was being an asshole, and told him it's beyond human understanding as to the ordering of the heavens and if he was to present a heliocentric view of the universe where earth goes around the sun, he needs to present it along side the aristolean idea of geocentric. galileo did as he was told, and wrote a story where a man known as "the Academician" presents galileo's views as he argues against a bumbling "Simplicio" (the fool) who presents the other side. so galieleo is being a sassy f**k. both the pope and galileo being vain this was bound to happen. he was charged with suscpicion of heresy (corpernician thought was never heretical, but the pope was pissed) and put under house arrest.
people don't really realize the real reason had nothing to do with the science, it had to do with galileo being an asshole
Americans learn only from catastrophe and not from experience. -- Theodore Roosevelt
My life has become a single, ongoing revelation that I haven’t been cynical enough.