The Writer’s Almanac – APRIL 11 – 17, 2005

It was on this day in 1633 that Galileo was put on trial for publishing evidence that the sun and not the earth is the center of the solar system. He was a devout Catholic but didn’t believe his ideas should threaten the church. He wrote, the “Holy Sprit intended to teach us in the Bible how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go.” …

So Galileo wrote a book in which three friends discuss whether the earth or the sun is the center of the solar system. The book presented the sun-centered argument as convincing and the earth-centered argument as idiotic, but at the very end, the three characters agree that no one really knows the truth. When it was published, the book became a best-seller.

The pope decided Galileo’s book had crossed a line, and mocked the church, and he ordered the printing stopped, all copies seized, and Galileo was put on trial for heresy. Galileo was sentenced to house arrest. …

It took more than 350 years for Pope John Paul II to declare, in 1992, that Galileo had been unjustly condemned by the Catholic Church.

If the trial were held today, how would Tom Delay and Duhbya vote? And if they managed to vote for truth over lies, how many of their supporters would rage at them? The Dark Ages are back. mjh