No, my mistake was (at least) that it wasn’t Calvin in person, but rather Geneva... Apparently there was some amount of buzz among fairly modern historians that Calvin opposed Copernicus, but I’m reading that such a tension is held at least by this one author to be mythical; that its unlikely Calvin had enough knowledge of Copernicus to disdain him.
At this time, I’m going to simply retract that statement about Calvin. I had heard it as a science major, not from any Catholic apologetics, but my first quick attempt to substantiate any truth from the matter immediately raises red flags.
It’s a little intellectual flaw I have: if an obviously interested party states something I find useful, I’ve always made sure I can back it up before I repeat it. (For instance, if I learn something from a Catholic apologist about the counter-reformation.) But as I writing serious arguments on the internet, I’ve got to be equally careful even if I learned it before I was so careful and the motivation for my source’s bias or error hadn’t been so obvious. I don’t know why I would have been taught this wrong, but I should’ve checked it out before repeating it.
On the other hand, a lot of easy-to-find references on the internet presume popular understandings. For instance, the Our Daily Visitor’s 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia (which is old enough to have lost copyright protection, so it’s what you’ll find on line) routinely simply restates the popular notions of largely Protestant middle America. So I’m not saying the inverse is true: that Geneve wasn’t hostile to Galileo.
Like Reagan said, “It’s what they know that’s wrong.” I gotta be better than them.
>>> No, my mistake was (at least) that it wasn’t Calvin in person, but rather Geneva... Apparently there was some amount of buzz among fairly modern historians that Calvin opposed Copernicus, but I’m reading that such a tension is held at least by this one author to be mythical; that its unlikely Calvin had enough knowledge of Copernicus to disdain him. <<<
If you have a source for your claim that Geneva (the city fathers?) had it out for Copernicus, I’d like to see it.
As for Calvin, the most from the scholarly input I’ve seen is that he was disdainful of heliocentrism per se. Given that heliocentrism had a history that stretched back to ancient Greece, and that the “scientific establishment” in Calvin’s time hadn’t exactly come out for one side or the other, it seems unfair to say he was either “out to get” Copernicus or scientifically benighted.
If you want to throw mud at Protestants in regard to this topic, my understanding is that Luther and Melanchthon would be more appropriate targets. However, don’t be surprised if athiests and agnostics don’t pick up that mud and throw it back at you. In a general effort to smear Christianity. It’s what they do.