Letters to the editor April 5

Galileo’s views

A simple response to Susan Cahill’s letter (Lessons of Galileo, March 24). In brief, many people wrongly believe Galileo proved heliocentrism. Unfortunately, he could not answer the strongest argument against it, which had been made nearly two thousand years earlier by Aristotle: If heliocentrism were true, then there would be observable parallax shifts in the stars’ positions as the earth moved in its orbit around the sun.

However, given the technology of Galileo’s time, no such shifts in their positions could be observed. It would require more sensitive measuring equipment than was available in Galileo’s day to document the existence of these shifts.

Galileo could have safely proposed heliocentrism as a theory or a method to more simply account for the planets’ motions. His problem arose when he stopped proposing it as a scientific theory and began proclaiming it as truth, though there was no conclusive proof of it at the time.

It is a good thing that the church did not rush to embrace Galileo’s views, because it turned out that his ideas were not entirely correct, either. Galileo believed that the sun was not just the fixed center of the solar system, but the fixed center of the universe. We now know that the sun is not the center of the universe and that it does move — it simply orbits the center of the galaxy rather than the earth.

Interestingly enough, had the Catholic church rushed to endorse Galileo’s views — and there were many in the church who were quite favorable to them — the church would have embraced what modern science has disproved.

I’m betting Ms. Cahill was not aware of this as she claimed in her letter that ‘Arrogance and ignorance remains our most stalwart enemy...’ Sorry Ms. Cahill — your point, whatever it was, is muted by your lack of due diligence.

— Katie Donahue, Kalispell

Galileo and the church

When Susan Cahill (Lessons of Galileo, March 24) and others wish to question the infallible teaching of the Catholic church on faith and morals to give themselves permission to commit immoral acts, they incorrectly cite the case of Galileo.

In reality, the church never made an infallible pronouncement on whether the earth was stationary or mobile. It had in fact been instrumental in advancing the work of Nicholas Copernicus, a Catholic priest, which was the basis of Galileo’s subsequent theory.

A church tribunal punished Galileo for publishing his theory, after he had agreed not to, out of concern at that time in history that an unproven work could harm the belief of the faithful. His sentence was subsequently adjudged unjust, resulting in a formal albeit delayed apology.

Galileo, himself a faithful Catholic to the end, would likely be horrified to have someone use his unjust sentence to advance the atrocity of abortion.

— Michael Boharski, Kalispell