by the Way . . .

I didn't see much foolish in the papers this morning except the attack on Walmart, so let's clarify a little history. Galileo Galilei lived from 1564 to 1642, a very unsettling time for the Church. In England they kept switching monarchs back and forth from Catholics to Protestants, and every time they did, everyone had to switch or march off to Tyborn. The Pope had to go so far as to issue a BULL that OKed the assassination of the Queen, so you can see there were some pretty hard feelings all around.

Today we like to think that the authorities at the time were ignorant, trying to surpress science as contrary to their beliefs. Contraire. Many were acquaintances, and even friends of Galileo, had looked through his telescope, and acknowledged he was on the right track. He was even buddies with the Pope. The problem was that these guys were responsible for keeping order among the faithful, and all this business about the earth going around the sun was tearing things up. Galileo was a big booster of Nick Copernicus' theories, and you know what happened to him.

So a group of his friends went to him. "Leo, we understand about Nick's deal, and we accept that, but let us tell you about our problem. We have priests in places that are barely hanging on. They aren't an educated bunch, but they can read, and we have told them the earth is the center of the universe. Now if you will just keep this stuff about the sun and planets among us insiders, we can all get along. OK Leo?" Leo let on like he understood, but it wasn't long before he was back insisting that the earth moved, and worse, around the sun. Finally, they solved the problem by demanding that Leo provide "more adequate" proof of his theories before publishing. There were gaps and errors in Leo's theories, and there were things not fully explained. He was finally nailed with a proof for which he had no answer: "If there are other planets, since God makes nothing in vain, they must be inhabited; but how can their inhabitants be descended from Adam and Eve?"

This argument would not be such a killer today, of course, since we have space travel.