Statue of Galileo Planned for Vatican

Reservoir Hill writes "Four hundred years after it put Galileo on trial for heresy the Vatican is to complete its rehabilitation of the scientist by erecting a statue of him inside Vatican walls. The planned statue is to stand in the Vatican gardens near the apartment in which Galileo was incarcerated. He was held there while awaiting trial in 1633 for advocating heliocentrism, the Copernican doctrine that the Earth revolves around the Sun. The move coincides with a series of celebrations in the run-up to next year's 400th anniversary of Galileo's development of the telescope. In January Pope Benedict XVI called off a visit to Sapienza University, Rome, after staff and students accused him of defending the Inquisition's condemnation of Galileo. The Vatican said that the Pope had been misquoted and since the episode, several of the professors have retracted their protest."

Comments

Re:Vatican, Church....

[Lanarion]

Yes, because as we all know the philisophical arguments given in Small Gods are perfectly true and valid. Not at all a fictional universe. No never.

God addicts never learn

[hyades1]

When it turns out that torture, murder, intimidation and incarceration can't change the facts, a major religion of the day finally tries to repair its reputation by acknowledging one of the scientists who rubbed their noses in reality...four centuries late.

Something to remember when a modern would-be theocracy attempts to use its power to deny reality in American labs and classrooms. Science moves on, leaving the morons behind.

Re:cool

[igb]

think it's safe to say that there's plenty of controversy in the public

In the depressed parts of America, anyway: not unsurprisingly, anywhere in the US within a hundred miles of an ocean is immune from this. But in the fly-over states, large portions of the population are happy to have no health insurance, no jobs, their mortgage foreclosed, their son sent to Iraq and their daughter condemned to an unskilled job by the price of education, just so long as homosexuals a thousand miles away in California can't marry and science textbooks don't have that dang evilution in them.

This is an inland US problem, far less of an issue elsewhere. Creationists are laughable nutters who no-one, no-one takes seriously elsewhere. And as several people have pointed out, neither the Catholic nor the mainstream Protestant churches have any issue with evolution anyway.

two words

[Rumagent]

Fucking hypocrites...

Re:troll hunting

[operagost]

Or perhaps you should refrain from making ignorant statements involving religious belief or geography altogether.