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Science is the systematic application of a logico-empiricist method to look at and understand things, and was born in Christian Europe first with the Scholastic philosophy and then with Leonardo da Vinci, Francis Bacon and Galileo Galilei. The necessary foundation for scientific research is the belief in one God that created a universe regulated by immutable laws which can be understood by man exactly because God's mind and man's are similar except in extent. The Christian God is a person. Galileo famously talked about the "book of nature", that scientists try to read, being written by God. This is possible...

Explanation: Like the downtown area of your favorite city and any self-respecting web site ... Io's surface is constantly under construction. This moon of Jupiter holds the distinction of being the Solar System's most volcanically active body -- its bizarre looking surface continuously formed and reformed by lava flows. Generated using 1996 data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft, this high resolution composite image is centered on the side of Io that always faces away from Jupiter. It has been enhanced to emphasize Io's surface brightness and color variations, revealing features as small as 1.5 miles across. The notable absence of impact...

Explanation: Two dark shadows loom across the banded and mottled cloud tops of Jupiter in this sharp telescopic view. In fact, captured on January 3rd, about a month after the ruling gas giant appeared at opposition in planet Earth's sky, the scene includes the shadow casters. Visible in remarkable detail at the left are the large Galilean moons Ganymede (top) and Io. With the two moon shadows still in transit, Jupiter's rapid rotation has almost carried its famous Great Red Spot (GRS) around the planet's limb from the right. The pale GRS was preceded by the smaller but similar hued...

Thought destroyed but now found. It's not had the greatest care over the years and this group in Hollywood who are the acstual folks that have worked on the shows over the years is trying to raise funds and bid on an auction, restore and display properly the original full size Galileo shuttlecraft from the original Star Trek series. It's important TV history to preserve considering the impact Star Trek has had on society, inspiring even people to become astronauts. Please throw in a few bucks for this, and watch the video at the fund raising site... http://galileorestoration.com/

As The Chronicle reported today, Galileo High School celebrated Valentine’s Day with a “Love Fest” that featured same-sex marriage ceremonies and safer-sex games. In one exercise, students puts on goggles “that made their vision slightly blurry, simulating a drunken state.” A teacher told students “to put a condom on a wooden penis. Most of the students left air in the condom tip, which could lead to breakage, and that prompted an instructional rebuke from (teacher Raina) Meyers.”

Galileo was facing some stiff odds when he published his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World. He'd already been officially warned against heliocentrism, and he had enemies. But it's possible, just possible, that he would have squeaked by if he hadn't been a jerk to the Pope. The feud between Galileo and the Catholic Church - the one that resulted in Galileo spending the last years of his life under house arrest - is perhaps the most well-known part of his history. Galileo was tried, threatened with torture, and forced to recant his perfectly correct position about...

Preceding Galileo by nearly two Centuries and professing to represent the Catholic faith, Nicolas Cardinal diCusa's cosmology was far more accurate than Galileo's In fact, Galileo was quite dramatically wrong about the heavens, in such a profound manner as to set our understanding of the universe back centuries, and that the reason for his wrongness is that he refused to properly consider evidence that didn't match his beliefs... exactly the charge he had laid against the Church. Even more surprisingly, nearly two centuries earlier, a Catholic cardinal had made doctrinal assertions about the nature of the universe which were literally...

Pope Benedict XVI has made a sweeping exoneration of the Jewish people for the death of Jesus Christ, tackling one of the most controversial issues in Christianity in a new book. In Jesus of Nazareth-Part II excerpts released on Wednesday, Benedict explains biblically and theologically why there is no basis in Scripture for the argument that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible for Jesus' death. Interpretations to the contrary have been used for centuries to justify the persecution of Jews. While the Catholic Church has for five decades taught that Jews weren't collectively responsible, Jewish scholars said on...

If you ever visit Florence-and you really ought to see the birthplace of the Renaissance-there is a fascinating little museum, next to the more famous Uffizi, devoted to the history of science. There you can see one of Galileo's original telescopes, as well as a fascinatingly grotesque and revealing artifact: one of Galileo's fingers, preserved in an elaborately decorated container of the style used for holy relics belonging to the Church. Legend has it that this is his middle finger-a fitting message for Galileo to send to the Church that persecuted him. That relic sums up the contradictions of Galileo's...

Dr. Dennis Danielson, professor of English at the University of British Columbia, has some advice: Don't believe everything you read in textbooks. Speaking at the meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation in July, Danielson noted that the conventional wisdom says that when scholars thought the earth was the center of the universe, then humans were the king of the cosmic hill, creatures in God's image. But when Copernicus discovered Earth orbited the Sun, man concluded that he was a mere animal -- or so the story goes. After nearly a decade of research, however, Danielson, who has specialized in linking...

So the other day one of my readers declared: Copernicus was so afraid of the catholic church that he waited until he was on his death bed to proclaim that the earth as was believed by the catholic church was not the center of the universe and that it was the sun. The best answer to these sorts of claims is “Documentation please?�  An even better answer, if you have the time and inclination, is to provide the answer yourself, which I helpfully did since I had the time and inclination.  If you want it yourself, go here. My reader,...

At an aerospace facility in Denver, Colorado, engineers are busy attaching scientific instruments to NASA's next mission to Jupiter, which is set for launch in less than a year. But team members on the billion-dollar Juno mission are quietly talking about slipping something extra onto the spacecraft — a tiny fragment of bone from Galileo Galilei.

The Idea Galileo Was Wrong is a detailed and comprehensive treatment of the scientific evidence supporting Geocentrism, the academic belief that the Earth is immobile in the center of the universe. Garnering scientific information from physics, astrophysics, astronomy and other sciences, Galileo Was Wrong shows that the debate between Galileo and the Catholic Church was much more than a difference of opinion about the interpretation of Scripture. Scientific evidence available to us within the last 100 years that was not available during Galileo's confrontation shows that the Church's position on the immobility of the Earth is not only scientifically...

The Prince of Wales has blamed a lack of belief in the soul for the world’s environmental problems, and said that the planet cannot sustain a population expected to reach 9 billion in 40 years. He said he found it “baffling” that so many scientists professed a faith in God yet this had little bearing on the “damaging” way science was used to exploit the natural world. The Prince pinned part of the blame on Galileo. Criticising the profit imperative behind much scientific research, he said: “This imbalance, where mechanistic thinking is so predominant, goes back at least to Galileo’s...

A tooth, thumb and finger cut off from the body of renowned Italian scientist Galileo, who died in 1642, go on display this week in Florence after an art collector found them by chance last year.

In the early seventeenth century a courageous and brilliant scientist, Galileo Galileo, confirmed heliocentrism, the idea first proposed a century earlier by Nicolaus Copernicus that the sun was at the center of the universe. Heliocentrism challenged geocentrism, the religiously motivated idea that a stationary earth was at the center of the universe. Galileo explained why heliocentrism was true and not surprisingly the church strongly opposed and persecuted the scientist. Ultimately, however, the truth could not be denied and church was forced to, once again, reluctantly give in to the objective truths of science. That was the false history of the...

If we wanted to add a twentieth-century name to the list of prophets, I would nominate Robert Nisbet (1914-1996), who would not be surprised by recent revelations that an elite group of global-warming experts have been reckless with their "science" and ruthless towards their scientific peers I refer to the scandal that broke at the disclosure of private e-mails among leading climatologists connected to the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, one of the nerve centers for global warming studies. As former Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson summarizes the preliminary evidence for the London Times: "(a)...

President Obama's climate czar, Carol M. Browner, claims that Climategate is not important and that global warming is settled science. "[The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has] been studying this issue for a very long time and agree this problem is real," she said last week, six days after the scandal first broke about fudged global-warming research. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs repeated the claim yesterday. This obtuseness exposes the Obama administration's complicity in aiding and abetting the fraud involved to stir up climate-change hysteria. Responsibility for continuing to perpetuate this scandal goes all the way to the top....

Two fingers and a tooth removed from Galileo Galilei's corpse in a Florentine basilica in the 18th century and given up for lost have been found again, a Florence museum said Friday. Paolo Galluzzi, director of the Museum of the History of Science, said three fingers, a vertebra and a tooth were removed by enthusiastic admirers from the astronomer's body in 1737, 95 years after his death, while his corpse was being moved from a storage place to a monumental tomb, opposite the tomb of Michelangelo, in Santa Croce Basilica in Florence. One of the fingers was recovered soon after,...

This weekend’s feedback is in response to a number of queries about the Church of England (Anglicans) officially apologizing to Darwin. However, they don’t speak for all attenders of this church, since many of them are still faithful to Scripture and are appalled by their ‘leaders’. There are numerous mistakes in the article by the official CoE representative, a Rev. Dr Malcolm Brown, on the official CoE website, and Jonathan Sarfati replies point-by-point...

Just over 400 years ago, Galileo--then chair of mathematics at Italy's University of Padua--got word that Dutch glass makers had invented a device that allowed viewers to see very distant objects as if they were nearby. The mathematician soon acquired a Dutch instrument, and on August 25, 1609, he presented an improved, more powerful telescope of his own design to the senate of the city-state of Venice. The government officials were so impressed with Galileo's telescope that they rewarded the professor with a higher salary and tenure for life at his university. At the time, Galileo was touting the telescope...

The film “Angels and Demons” brings up the Catholic Church’s so-called war on science and the church’s treatment of Italian scientist Galileo Galilei. The following analysis sheds much-needed light on the case. In October 1992, Cardinal Paul Poupard presented to Pope John Paul II the results of the Pontifical Academy study of the famous 1633 trial of Galileo. He reported the study’s conclusion that at the time of the trial, “theologians ... failed to grasp the profound non-literal meaning of the Scriptures” when they condemned Galileo for describing a universe that seemed to contradict Scripture. The headlines that followed screamed...

Answering another uninformed atheist: Galileo, Miller–Urey, probability Published: 5 March 2009(GMT+10) Last week, we answered a poorly informed atheist about DNA complexity, and cited Gordy Slack, an evolutionist himself, agreeing that “some proponents of evolution are blind followers”. This week, we provide another example. Varun S. of Switzerland makes a number of false assertions that he could have corrected with a little study of our website. The letter is first posted in its entirety, then answered point by point by Dr Jonathan Sarfati. For my part, I’m a biologist first but more so an atheist. I see you are hell...

Star Children for DarwinFeb 28, 2009 — Why should we be looking for alien intelligence around other stars when it is right behind your eyeballs?  You may not have known that you are a star child, but that’s what a leading astronomer called you.  As a good star child, you need to pay tribute to Charles Darwin.     In New Scientist, Lawrence Krauss called on children of spaceship Earth to “Celebrate evolution as only star children can.”  In this, he tied together the International Year of Astronomy 2009, the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first use of the telescope on...

The Galileo affair: history or heroic hagiography? by Thomas Schirrmacher Summary The 17th century controversy between Galileo and the Vatican is examined. Fifteen theses are advanced, with supporting evidence, to show that the Galileo affair cannot serve as an argument for any position on the relation of religion and science. Contrary to legend, both Galileo and the Copernican system were well regarded by church officials. Galileo was the victim of his own arrogance, the envy of his colleagues and the politics of Pope Urban VIII. He was not accused of criticising the Bible, but disobeying a papal decree...

Many people have uncritically accepted the idea that there is a longstanding war between science and religion. We find this war advertised in many of the leading atheist tracts such as those by Richard Dawkins, Victor Stenger, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Every few months one of the leading newsweeklies does a story on this subject. Little do the peddlers of this paradigm realize that they are victims of nineteenth-century atheist propaganda. About a hundred years ago, two anti-religious bigots named John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White wrote books promoting the idea of an irreconcilable conflict between science and...

WHEN he was buried - at the insistence of the Catholic Church in unconsecrated ground - Galileo Galilei left behind at least two conundrums: how could a man with impaired eyesight have made the observations that revolutionised astronomy; and did his faulty vision alter what he saw and recorded? When his body was moved to the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, some 100 years later on the initiative of local freemasons, it gave rise to a third riddle: who was the woman found buried alongside him? Scientists are planning now to solve all three questions with the help of...

Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-24710?l=englishPontiff Says People Aren't Governed by the Stars Reiterates Galileo's Thought on Cosmos VATICAN CITY, JAN. 7, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The universe is not governed by a blind force, but by love, and people are not slaves to the cosmos, Benedict XVI says. The Pope affirmed this Tuesday during a Mass in St. Peter's Basilica that celebrated the magi of the east, who arrived to Bethlehem following a star. During his homily he spoke of Galileo's idea that love governs the cosmos. The Holy Father noted that 2009 marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first observations by telescope. This anniversary...

EU parliament approves military use of Galileo In a majority decision on Thursday, the European parliament adopted a resolution on the importance of space for European security. The draft of the resolution submitted by Karl von Wogau, a member of the German CDU party and chairman of the European Parliament's subcommittee on security and defence, stipulated that Europe's future satellite navigation system, Galileo, should also be available for operations related to European security and defense policy (ESDP). 502 MEPs voted for the resolution, 83 against. The European Green Party proposed amendments so that Galileo could only be used for civilian...

Vatican Galileo statue to be installed at the Vatican Galileo Galilei Vatican City, Mar 6, 2008 / 07:10 am (CNA).- The Vatican plans to erect a statue of the 16th century scientist Galileo in the Vatican gardens, the Times reports.The statue will stand near the apartment in which the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was incarcerated while awaiting trial in 1633.  He was charged with advocating heliocentrism, the theory of Copernicus that the Earth revolves around the Sun.  Though he was not tortured or executed, as some believe, he was forced to recant by the Roman Inquisition. Nicola Cabibbo, a nuclear physicist...

The Times March 6, 2008 That Martin Luther? He Wasn’t So Bad, Says Pope Richard Owen in Rome Pope Benedict XVI is to rehabilitate Martin Luther, arguing that he did not intend to split Christianity but only to purge the Church of corrupt practices. Pope Benedict will issue his findings on Luther (1483-1546) in September after discussing him at his annual seminar of 40 fellow theologians — known as the Ratzinger Schülerkreis — at Castelgandolfo, the papal summer residence. According to Vatican insiders the Pope will argue that Luther, who was excommunicated and condemned for heresy, was not a heretic....

A couple of times, rusty has criticized the Catholic Church : once recently involving a distorted and incorrect presentation of what happened to Galileo, and then later followed it up, with a sarcastic " the Catholic Church would just declare it wrong "...... What has made rushbo turn into this nasty anti-Catholic? Many of his closest friends and people he admires, are Catholic. Like Bill Bennet, William F. Buckley, etc. It is almost like something happend to rush, and he is bitter about it.

So far, only the test satellite Giove-A is flying in orbit Europe's satellite-navigation system, Galileo, will have to be built with public funds if it is to be built at all, says the European Commission (EC).It has put forward proposals for the stumbling space project to be completed with taxpayers' money - not the private finance as was originally envisaged. The four billion euro (£2.7bn) system should be up and working by 2012. Its 30 satellites will beam radio signals to receivers on the ground, helping users pinpoint their locations. The recommendation now to construct the whole system -...

Europe's $4.9 billion satellite navigation system is in deep crisis and will require more public funds to get back on track, the European Union said. The Galileo project -- Europe's rival to the U.S. Global Positioning System, or GPS -- has already seen major delays because the eight companies in the consortium are arguing over how to divide the workload. The consortium of companies from France, Germany, Spain, Britain and Italy has been given until Thursday to set up a joint legal entity to run the project or risk losing control of it. But German Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee, speaking...

But the Inquisition ruled against him (Galileo) in 1616. This was not as unreasonable as it appears. His position flew in the face of common sense and 1,500 years of academics. It violated the accepted laws of physics. The star parallaxes demanded by this system could not be observed (and would not be until 1838). The Inquisition condemned the Copernican system and forbade Galileo from teaching it as fact. But Galileo never gave up. When a friend was elected pope in 1623, Galileo went to see him, but Urban VIII would not lift the injunction for fear of undermining church...

So far, only test spacecraft for Galileo have been launched Europe's proposed satellite-navigation system, Galileo, faces big delays and cost overruns unless major obstacles to its development are removed - and fast. A large order for spacecraft must be placed in the coming months if the project is to keep to a 2011-12 target for full operational deployment. But negotiations to set up the private framework that will implement and run the system have now been suspended. It has fallen to the German government to try to break the impasse. The Germans currently hold the presidency of the European...

THE CONSORTIUM building the €2.3bn (£1.5bn, $2.9bn) European Galileo satellite will be dissolved in March unless it can resolve the infighting that has paralysed the project. The European Space Agency (ESA) has issued an ultimatum to the eight aerospace and manufacturing companies who have failed to agree on how to divide up the work and missed deadlines. Last week Jean-Jacques Dordain, the director general of ESA, which is funded by member states, announced a March deadline to determine whether to force the dissolution of the industrial consortium, which includes Britain’s Inmarsat, France’s Thales, and pan-European EADS. A break-up of the...

Posted on: Friday, 5 January 2007, 06:15 CST 400-Year-Old Telescopes Appear in the Strangest of Places CHICAGO -- Like cell phones or the Internet in recent history, the telescope's introduction in the early 17th Century had a swift and lasting impact on the world. Telescopes revolutionized military strategy and within months showed the father of astronomy, Galileo Galilei, that Earth is not the center of the universe. Until recently, scholars thought only 8 or 10 of these important early telescopes _ made between 1608 and 1650 of tightly rolled paper and crudely ground lenses _ had survived to the present...

China's satellite navigation plans threaten Galileo 13:34 08 November 2006 NewScientist.com news service Paul Marks China's decision to expand the functionality of its satellite navigation network could undermine the economics of Europe's nascent Galileo system, according to sources close to the project. Until now, experts believed that China's "Beidou" navigation system ? a 35-satellite constellation ? would only be used by its armed forces. This explained China's decision to invest ?200 million in Europe's ?2.5 billion Galileo programme. But things appear to have changed in Beijing. On 2 November, the country's official news agency Xinhua reported that Beidou would, from...

ROME, August 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Jesuit priest-astronomer who vocally opposed the Catholic understanding of God-directed creation, has been removed from his post as head of the Vatican observatory. Fr. George Coyne has been head of the Vatican observatory for 25 years is an expert in astrophysics with an interest in the interstellar medium, stars with extended atmospheres and Seyfert galaxies. He also appointed himself as an expert in evolutionary biology and theology last summer in an article for the UK’s liberal Catholic magazine, The Tablet. Fr. Coyne was writing against Christoph Cardinal Schonborn, a principal author of the...

No episode in the history of the Catholic Church is so misunderstood as the condemnation of Galileo. It is, in Newman's phrase, the one stock argument used to show that science and Catholic dogma are antagonistic. To the popular mind, the Galileo affair is prima facie evidence that the free pursuit of truth became possible only after science "liberated" itself from the theological shackles of the Middle Ages. The case makes for such a neat morality play of enlightened science versus dogmatic obscuratism that historians are seldom tempted to correct the anti-Catholic "spin" that is usually put on it. Even...

A university in the US has cracked the secret codes of the European satellite system Galileo's first satellite in orbit, making it doubtful that the €3.4 billion project will pay for itself through commercial fees as promised by Brussels. "That means free access for consumers who use navigation devices," said the scientist who broke the code, Mark Psiaki, in a statement. It could cost the EU dearly as it wants to charge high-tech firms "licence fees" to access that same data, before they can make and sell compatible navigation devices to the public. But the European Commission told the Telegraph...

Europe's Galileo satellite navigation system has already run more than 400 million euros (513 million dollars) over budget in its first phase, the head of the group managing the project said on Monday. The over run was due mainly to miscalculations for the costs of building and launching two test satellites, said Rainer Grohe, director of the Galileo Joint Undertaking. The first satellite was sent into orbit in December while the second is due to head into space by the end of the year. Grohe said improvements to the project's security system also added to the financial burden. The spending...

Bible proves Earth is center of universe, author argues The Earth is at the center of Robert Sungenis' universe. Literally. Yours too, he says. Sungenis is a geocentrist. He contends the sun orbits the Earth instead of vice versa. He says physics and the Bible show that the vastness of space revolves around us; that we're at the center of everything, on a planet that does not rotate. He has just completed a 1,000-page tome, "Galileo Was Wrong," the first in a pair of books he hopes will persuade readers to "give Scripture its due place, and show that science...

In his Christmas address to the Roman Curia on true and false interpretations of Vatican II, Pope Benedict XVI asked why the Church had had such a difficult time opening a dialogue with “the modern age.” His answers are provocative — and turn some of the conventional accounts of modern history inside out.A Bad Start The pope suggested that “Catholicism-and-modernity” got off to a bad start when the Galileo trial opened a fissure between the Church and natural science. Immanuel Kant’s philosophical attempt to define “religion within pure reason” then seemed to eliminate any notion of a divine revelation to...

MOSCOW, Dec 28 (Reuters) - The European Union launched its first Galileo navigation satellite on Wednesday, moving to challenge the United States' Global Positioning System (GPS). Russian space agency Roskosmos said the 600 kg (1,300 lb) satellite named Giove-A (Galileo In-Orbit Validation Element) went into its orbit 23,000 km (15,000 miles) from the earth after its launch on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur cosmodrome in the middle of Kazakhstan's steppe. "The launch of Giove is the proof that Europe can deliver ambitious projects to the benefit of its citizens and companies," said EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot in a...

Walker's World: The EU - lost in space? By MARTIN WALKER\ UPI Editor WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- 05EUDec27 For an organization that is supposedly on the ropes, and less and less popular with its members, the European Union is being extraordinarily active and ambitious. On Wednesday this week, it launches the first demonstrator spacecraft of its new $4 billion global positioning network. Called Galileo, its critics say it merely duplicates the existing American GPS system run by the Pentagon, and symbolizes Europe's increasingly independent and competitive attitude towards the United States. For Americans, the EU's decision to invite China...

Although proponents of Intelligent Design (ID) have received a setback in this week’s Dover, PA decision, I do not believe that the world-is-flat defenders of Darwinism can continue for long keeping people from discussing the possibility that the world is actually a globe that revolves around the sun. Future discoveries may show ID proponents to be wrong, but inquisition should have died with Galileo. Darwin’s theory that life began from a confluence of accidental events and evolved over eons into many thousands of life forms, including man, through a series of random mutations that were passed on through inheritance (if...

"Supplementary funding issue divides partners as cash for programme starts to dry up" Work on the European Galileo navigational satellite programme could be suspended if four of the national partners continue to block agreement over industrial workshare linked to cost increases, says the European Space Agency. Finland, Germany, Spain and the UK are blocking a vote to resolve the issue of supplementary funding for the Galileo programme, the cost of which has increased from €1.1 billion to €1.5 billion ($1.32 billion to $1.81 billion). Half of the extra €400 million is being provided by the European Commission and the rest...

Creationism, Christianity, and Common Sense September 26, 2005 by Alan Burkhart Here we go again. According to a Washington Post article from 09/25/05, a group called “Answers in Genesis – USA” is building a museum in Cincinnati dedicated to the proposition that the universe was created exactly as stated in the Bible. In other words, God created the universe in six days, and He did it only about six thousand years ago. The group’s president, Kenneth Ham, is quoted in the Post as saying, "This is a battle cry to recognize the science in the revealed truth of God." Science...