The Galileo thing was far more complex than common received wisdom thinks. There are a number of reasons for this, including the ones that have already been pointed out.
Galileo
was a Catholic, just as much as the Pope was. To cast the dispute as one between science on the one hand (represented by Galileo) and religion on the other (represented by the Pope and the other church leaders) is therefore arbitrary at best. It assumes that "religion" is more closely represented by the leaders of the church rather than its members. There is no basis for that assumption.
Galileo's views were rejected by the majority of scientists of his day - not for religious reasons but because the evidence simply didn't support them. From the point of view of contemporary scientific consensus, the church leaders were going with the majority.
The dispute wasn't actually about which model of the solar system is the best. It was really about what astronomical models are. The prevailing view at the time was that astronomical models don't purport to describe reality. Rather, they are mere models with a primarily predictive function. Whether the sun "really" goes around the earth or vice versa doesn't make much difference and probably isn't knowable anyway. What matters is whether talking as if the sun goes around the earth explains the visible astronomical phenomena better than talking as if it's the other way around. Galileo, however, insisted not only that his model explained the phenomena better, but that it was a literally and factually accurate account of reality. That was regarded not only as impious (because it involved a claim to knowledge that only God should have) but scientifically hopeless and naive. Plus, of course, Galileo's alleged proof for the truth of his model (his theory of the tides) was completely wrong.
Does all of that excuse placing Galileo under house arrest for his publications? Not by our standards, no doubt, but by the standards of the time it was pretty mild treatment for pretty provocative behaviour on his part. Galileo's worst enemy was really Galileo himself.
We've only been conditioned to think of this as a matter of "science versus religion" because that's how anti-religious writers of the nineteenth century such as Dickson White presented it. Influenced by the contemporary dispute over Darwinism, they assumed that historical disputes could be interpreted in the same way, and they made out Galileo and others to be sort of early Darwins, secular scientists whose views were opposed by reactionary fundamentalists. These were the same people who popularised the myth that in the Middle Ages people thought the world was flat, a myth which fitted in with their own prejudices but was quite insupportable by the evidence.
Lord Baal said:
Religion as a term has lost most of its meaning these days. Theism is the more scholarly acceptable term now. Religion has become too diffused since the collapse of organised religion and the rise of personal, eclectic and syncretic belief systems on such a large-scale.
Theism is quite distinct from religion. Religion is a social phenomenon. Theism is a belief. It is possible to be religious without being a theist and it is possible to be a theist without being religious. It's a common western assumption to think that "religion" and "belief in God" are virtually synonymous, but that's because we're so used to the western monotheistic religions.
I don't see any reason for saying that organised religion has collapsed. Perhaps in parts of the west, but that's a pretty small deal on a global scale.
Certainly the term "religion" is very hard to define, but it's always been that way - there's nothing special about circumstances today that make it that way. It's like Wittgenstein's "games". There's no definition of "game" that includes all, and only, what we usually call games. But it still has meaning. Similarly, I don't know any definition of "religion" that includes all, and only, what we usually call religions, but that doesn't mean the word is meaningless.
Gorakshanat said:
I would be interested to learn the connection with Origen if there is any...
Origen apparently taught a modification of the Stoic view, which was that at the end of history there is a great conflagration, and then a new world is born, which is an exact copy and repetition of the previous one. So history repeats itself, and then again, and so on for ever. Christians also believed that at the end of history there will be a new heaven and a new earth, but that these will be better than the current ones, and permanent, so they had a much more progressive understanding of history. Origen combined these two ideas. Like the Stoics, he believed that after the end of this world there will be a new one which will be much like this one, and after that one another, and so on. But unlike the Stoics, he did not believe that each one would be exactly the same as the previous one. He believed that each one would be a bit different, and a bit better. The Stoics thought that in each world, every individual would be reborn and do the same things that they did in the previous one. Origen also thought that every individual would be reborn, but the form of their rebirth would depend on what they did in the previous world - i.e. a good person would be better placed and a bad person worse placed. Because evil is finite, the general trend of every individual would be upwards, although not necessarily straightforwardly so. There would therefore be a vast succession of universes, each one slightly different from the previous one, with the same souls reborn in each one, sometimes in a better condition, sometimes in a worse condition, but overall getting better and better. Eventually all souls would achieve perfect goodness and be permanently united to God, and the succession of worlds would end. That's why it's best thought of as a spiral - it combines the circularity of the Stoic conception of history with the progressiveness of the Christian one.