FOR 2,000 years, the scientific debate was settled. The ancient Greeks had studied the skies, and had determined by the 4th century before Christ that the Earth was the center of the universe.Sound familiar? Galileo was an "Earth Center Denier", kind of like the "Global Warming Deniers" of today who are all but branded as heretics.
The heavenly bodies rotated around the Earth in little wheels. Except for a few geocentric deniers, most scientists agreed, and in addition, the Holy Scripture said so.
They had proof. Using their calculations, they could prove where the planet and the Moon and the Sun would be at any one time.
True, these bodies did not exactly circle the Earth in concentric circles, but there was an explanation that was long and too complicated to go into here.
Then along came this troublemaker, Nicolaus Copernicus. He was a mathematician and an astronomer in Poland, and he came up with a whole new set of calculations that had the Earth rotating the Sun.
This was in the 1500s. After he died, his theory got Galileo Galilei in a whole lot of trouble.
Galileo supported Copernicus' theory, which put him at odds with his fellow scientists and the Catholic Church.
Scientists at that time had no power.
The church was another matter. It had a lot of power, and church officials at the time believed that the Earth did not move (it is in Psalms), and that to say otherwise was heresy.
For more than 15 years, Galileo fought the church. But in 1633, Galileo finally recanted and said the Earth was the center of the universe.
In 1992, Pope John Paul II expressed regret and officially recognized that no, the Earth is not the center of the universe.
That was a little late for Galileo, but the audience for that retraction was the living, not those who have long departed this Earth.
Today, the Church of Manmade Global Warming holds that man's sin of materialism is causing the Earth to burn up.
Read the rest of it here.
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