The existing authority will not accept new theories replacing the old until VERY compelling evidence has been brought forth (this happens even today in the secular world, and that's a GOOD thing).
Creationism will have a very hard time displacing the existing accepted scientific body of theory and evidence, as has been seen by their constant failures in the past. But sneaking it in under the radar by "presenting both theories" has gained them more traction than any other strategy they've attempted so far.
What the pope was telling Galileo to do was, in effect, the same thing. Sneak the idea in on the coattails of established "truth", and then it'll be a lot easier to embellish it to fullness later.
So I retract my previous statement that the church was on the side of scientific inquiry. In fact, both cases involve intellectual fraud, in that an idea is not allowed to stand on its own merits, but rather requires political machinations in order to be injected into society at large (but then again, when was that ever not the case?). The only difference is that Galileo's teachings were actually true, and creationism is actually false, but we only have that knowledge with the benefit of hindsight.
The existing authority will not accept new theories replacing the old until VERY compelling evidence has been brought forth (this happens even today in the secular world, and that's a GOOD thing).
Creationism will have a very hard time displacing the existing accepted scientific body of theory and evidence, as has been seen by their constant failures in the past. But sneaking it in under the radar by "presenting both theories" has gained them more traction than any other strategy they've attempted so far.
What the pope was telling Galileo to do was, in effect, the same thing. Sneak the idea in on the coattails of established "truth", and then it'll be a lot easier to embellish it to fullness later.
So I retract my previous statement that the church was on the side of scientific inquiry. In fact, both cases involve intellectual fraud, in that an idea is not allowed to stand on its own merits, but rather requires political machinations in order to be injected into society at large (but then again, when was that ever not the case?). The only difference is that Galileo's teachings were actually true, and creationism is actually false, but we only have that knowledge with the benefit of hindsight.