Just to correct my wording. I mean "persecution" not "opposition". there was plenty of opposition and people were arguing for multiple alternatives to the Ptolemaic model at the time.

Comapring the assassination of a president by a pro-slaver to a scholarly and political dispute that ended up with house arrest in a villa, where he wrote and published his most important work, is a bit wild. The Church has done much, much worse things than the dispute with Galileo.

So you'd rather have Europe be Islamic I guess, if you're opposing the crusades

But why man of science would avoid starting crusades?

Moral virtue has nothing to do with being a man of science, and many men of science lacked it completely.

Why would a Catholic man of science necessarily oppose the crusades?

If you step outside and watch the stars, and map them, you'd also come to the conclusion of a geocentric universe yourself. The nature of the sky makes it appear that everything is regularly revolving around us. And incidentally you can even create astronomical predictions based upon this assumption that are highly accurate. You end up needing to assume epicycle upon epicycle, but Galileo's theory was no better there since the same is true when you assume circular orbits.

So what made Galileo decide otherwise was not any particular flaw with geocentricism, but rather he thought that he'd discovered that the tides of the ocean were caused by the Sun. That is incorrect and also led to false predictions (like places only having one high tide), so the basis for his theory was incorrect, as were many assumptions made around it. But it was still interesting and worth debating. Had he treated 'the other side' with dignity and respect, it's entirely possible that we would have adopted a heliocentric view far faster than we ultimately did.

Based on data and evidence that we now have? Yes.

Back then Galileo’s theory wasn’t exactly provable and while he did get the core idea right he was still wrong on quite a few important things.

e.g. Tycho‘s model solved quite a few questions that Galileo couldn’t at the time.

e.g. Stellar parallax was a big issue that was conclusively solved until the 1800s

There were definitely two sides at the time in people's minds. He could have presented the geocentric position as being based on theories that were justified only by inductive reasoning, and contrasted that with his own observations and why they provide a more accurate view of the universe.

Neutral writing only means that it is not overtly prejudiced, and the weight of the evidence speaks for itself. That's definitely not what Galileo wrote. He was eventually widely considered to be right, but that didn't help him any.

> ... position is silly and wrong.

Both positions were build on top of aether, quintesence and Celestial Spheres. The result was silly and wrong no matter which one you picked.

There were two sides on the evidence available at the time.

The Tychonic model was probably the one best supported by evidence.

its worth bearing in mind that the Copernican model is also badly wrong - the sun is not the centre of the universe, just the solar system.

It is not about better or worse, it is about correcting myths created later on that were intended to paint the Church as epitome of backwardness.

Galileo's affair wasn't about noble scientist going against stupid masses and oppressive institution designed to keep people in dark, while providing strong evidence for revolutionary theory, and being punished for his great genius.

But it is often presented like this.

How so?

Even better is, 'I aim at the Stars! (but sometimes I hit London)'.

"I Aim at the Stars" was the name of a real biographical movie made about him in the 60s. It feels like that exact title had to have been chosen, at least partly, tongue in cheek.

Impossible to know if this is a serious case of "i am very smart" or sarcastic.

It will surprise you but we don't literally believe there is a face in the sky looking down.