Galileo Imprisonment?? Christianity?

Question

Was galileo guilty or inoccent of his imprisonment??

Answer 1

~He wasn't charged with imprisonment, he was charged with heresy. Under the prevailing law, he was guilty. By verdict, he was guilty. By the language of your question, you know he was found guilty, else why would he be imprisoned? In 1992, Galileo was rehabilitated by Pope John Paul II. That did not expunge the conviction however, nor did it constitute an acknowledgment by the church that Galileo was right.

Galileo was not convicted for advocating his theory of heliocentrism. He was convicted for bringing theology into the mix and claiming the church to be wrong. He then disobeyed express church directives. Today the charge would be contempt of court. Today he would be guilty. He was imprisoned for a brief time and thereafter, with the intervention of Pope Urban VIII, his sentence was commuted to house arrest for the rest of his life, first with his friend archbishop Ascanio Piccolomini of Sienna, then in his own home. All in all, he was treated with kid gloves by the church.

The church never condemned the heliocentric theory. Urban VIII expressly licensed Galileo to publish his "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems". Previously, Urban, then Cardinal Barberini, had opposed the condemnation of Galileo. In fact, many church scholars (including bishops, cardinals, and particularly the Jesuits) believed Galileo's theories to have some merit but they insisted on empirical evidence that Galileo could not provide.

Aristotle had refuted heliocentric theory some 2000 years earlier and most scientists of Galileo's day believed in a geocentric theory - not because of church dogma but because of the evidence. (We still say the sun rises and sets, after all.) Galileo was never able to refute Aristotle. Galileo held off on publishing his works out of fear of ridicule from his fellow scientists, not out of fear of the Church. Contrary to popular belief, the church was not anti-science at the time and there were more people being burned in Salem, Mass. for witchcraft by the protestants when Galileo was tried than there were in Europe for heresy.

The church had never ordered Galileo to refrain from writing of his ideas as theory. Had he kept his work in the realm of the theoretical and not turned his discussion into a theological debate, the problems he had with the church would never have happened. When Urban approved and licensed Galileo to publish his theories, he set a few simple conditions. Galileo chose to ignore those conditions. He not only ignored Urban's instructions, but he mocked Urban, and less directly, the church, in "Dialogue". It was that disrespect and disobedience that led to the trial before the inquisition coupled with the fact that he argued his theory as fact, not as theory and, of course, he could not prove his theory. Neither the math of the times nor the instruments available could substantiate his claims.

Finally, as it turned out, Galileo was wrong. He was convicted in part because he claimed his theory to be fact and he was unable to prove himself. Amongst his claims were the postulates that the sun was stationary and that the sun was center of the universe. He blew it on both counts.

Answer 2

Galileo Imprisonment

Answer 3

The saga of Galileo is an important chapter in the quest for the emancipation of science from religion.

Geocentricism (the theory of the Earth being the center of the universe) had been the dominant astronomical theory of the day. The Math mostly added up, and any discrepencies could be filled with a simple "God did it". And the church liked the idea of Geocentricism because it reinforced the idea that man was the ultimate creation of God.

The first person to put forth the idea of heliocentricism was a man by the name of Copernicus. However, it should be noted that while he was more correct, it was little more than guesswork, as the Mathematics of the Earth orbiting the sun did not add up. Few in the scientific or religious communities took him very seriously.

Galileo was man who gave significant creedence to the theory of Heliocentricism. By observing the moons of Jupiter, he hypothesized that because these objects orbited something other than the Earth, then the Earth itself could be the orbiter of something (presumably, the sun.) The Geocentric response was that the 'moons' were actually orbiting the Earth while doing loops in their orbit, so it only appeared that they were orbiting Jupiter. Thus Galileo's only recourse was to prove Heliocentricism mathematically. The church had formally adopted Geocentricism (for the above mentioned reasons) and therefore felt that Galileo was undermining their authority, thus they turned their resources against him, in the ultimate underdog match up of science.

Galileo's results were... dissapointing. He could not prove that the Earth revolved in circles around the sun. No matter how he worked it, the math simply refused to add up. The church adopted the same position that modern Creationists do: "Well, since your theory doesn't work, then obviously God did it." On pain of heresy charges, he was forced to renounce heliocentricism. Religion had won that round.

The saga does continue, however, when Johannes Kepler discovered that the Earth does not in fact have a circular motion around the sun; its orbit is an ellipse! All of a sudden, the Math started coming into place. This severely undermined the theory of Geocentricity, but there was one final trump card that would forever put Geocentricism to rest, and that was Isaac Newton and his theory of Newtonian mechanics. Newton's theory of physics was so profound, so elegant, that heliocentricism became accepted by the scientific community without a shadow of a doubt.

The church, of course, pretended like it never heard of Geocentricism, until 1993, when Pope John Paul II officially forgave Galileo.

Answer 4

Because of the times in which he lived .,Galileo was guilty of speaking against church teaching and the Scripture. It can be said that this happened during the Inquisition where science was considered a part of reason and an obstacle to faith. But times have changed and Galileo was pardoned as we entered a new age where science and faith work together for the betterment of the human person and their knowledge as well. We must also remember that this was done under a false papacy in which the Church was in jeopardy from within and would safeguard itself by any means even those of an evil nature based on ignorance of truths that has been true through the ages.

Answer 5

You can't be guilty or innocent of "imprisonment", you can only be guilty or innocent of a crime or charge.

Technically, Galileo was guiltly of the crime the Christian Chruch charged him with, because he did assert that the earth revolved around the sun instead of the other way around (which was the commonly held theory at the time, and central to Church dogma). However, he did have the last laugh, because he was proven right, and recently the Catholic Church absolved him of the crime (better late than never, I guess).

Answer 6

Galileo Galilei was not imprisoned. He was subjected to a relatively easy house arrest. The religious authorities who imposed this on him did it to silence him, not to punish him. Some of them had gone to school with him and knew him well and respected him.
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They knew full well that he was right, but wanted to avoid the disruptive effect of letting the truth be known to their docile congregations. It is an official policy of the Roman Catholic Church that it is permissible to deceive people when you are doing so to protect the Church itself, this being perceived as a greater good than truthfulness.
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The essential point of Galileo's work was not just establishing astronomical facts. It was the means by which human beings acquire information. The traditional church method was by allegedly divine authorization and revelation. Galileo showed that you can learn facts by experiments and observation of nature. The conflict was inevitable, and it has not yet ended. There are still plenty of Americans who cling to alleged revelation as the source of knowledge, rather than giving priority to evidence.

Galileo pioneered in this important shift. Thus he was indeed "guilty" of challenging the claimed authority of the Bible and the church. It took a few centuries, but the Vatican now recognizes that they made a mistake by rejecting his advancement of knowledge. As to Charles Darwin's 1859 advance, the Vatican has needed only about 150 years to catch up with that. But the advances in knowledge due to Darwin and others all owe to Galileo the credit for being the first to openly advocate belief according to evidence rather than according to faith, and Galileo paid the price for doing so.
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Interestingly, there are still some fundies who won't accept Galileo's conclusion that the Earth revolves around the Sun and also rotates on its axis. They are (why am I not surprised?) in Kansas. Galileo reputedly said "Eppur se mouve" (Still, it [the Earth] moves.) Yet these fundies even today say oh no no no, the Bible says it doesn't move so it doesn't move. Their website is www.geocentricity.com and they insist that the Earth must be stationary at the center of the universe. If Galileo is looking on he is shaking his head in wonderment at these American fundies.

Answer 7

Galileo was justifiably imprisoned by the most Holy Roman Catholic Church for the crime of heresy.

Answer 8

The Pope that imprisoned him is now referred to as an "anti-pope". He's one of the 2 or 3 that are considerred to have done significant damage to the church, and that were, in fact, evil.

Answer 9

He was guilty in the eyes of the Roman Catholics -- but he was a hero in those who appreciate someone sticking up for the true model of the world.

Answer 10

He was emphatically innocent - it's hardly a crime to question and think about the world. It wasn't until this century that the Roman Catholic Church absolved him. Posthumously, of course.