[MD] Galileo and the church

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Arlo]
However, Arlo, one very clear point Wallace makes is that the priests and
religious factions within the church were enthusiastic about the discoveries of
Galileo. Dining at their houses and showing them his telescope.  It was the
entrenched bureaucratic  factions in the academic arm of the church which
opposed Galileo because his ideas overthrew the existing power structures. 

[Arlo]
Nowhere in the Inquisition against Gallileo do I see any mention of a
non-academic wing of the religious factions that opposed the Inquisition.

You are right in that the Church controlled the Academy during these years, and
from the records of the Inquisition it is clear that the Church outright
condemned any authority into describing the world other than its own.

But rather than boringly pandering to anti-intellectual revisionism in modern
culture, its clear that those holding an "esoteric" view of religion (the
gnostics, the mystics, the mythologists, The Bible is A STORY), these people
were the ones not threatened by Galielo, while those adhering to an "exoteric"
view of religion (the fundamentalists, the literalists, the dogmatists, The
Bible is THE WORD), these were the ones who were threatened.

To suggest that were it not for "academics", the Church would have otherwise
embraced Galileo is nonsense. However, were it not for fundamentalists and
literalists, it very well may have.

THAT is the divide that is critical here. 

The exact same divide that has fundamentalists claiming the earth is only 6000
years old, dinosaurs rode on a big boat to survive a flood, and everyone who
does not call god by a certain name is going to hell. THESE are the people
threatened by advances in understanding made through observation. 

This whole "big bad academics" nonsense is really getting sad.