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 THE HERESY OF GALILEO Galileo was condemned by the Inquisition, not for his own brilliant theories, but because he stood up for his belief in Copernicus's theory that the earth was not, as the Church insisted, the center of the universe, but that rather, the universe is heliocentric. Galileo was a man of tremendous intellect and imagination living in a era dominated by the Catholic Church, which attempted to control the people by dictating their …

…the theologians. At the hands of Galileo, the heliocentric system threatened the geocentric and, much more serious, God's creation was becoming an object of direct human observation which could be interpreted without the help of the Scriptures or of religion. In short, Galileo was condemned because he could not keep his opinions to himself and could not resist the temptation to expose the ignorance, deceit, and manipulation of the powerful religious leaders of the time.