I am not arguing they were anti-science. I am simply pointing out that they gave preference to their personal interpretation of the Bible over scientific evidence, just like Ken Ham does today.
Yes and I’ve previously read several articles from ThonyC making the same kind of points. It doesn’t change the fact that there was enough evidence to validate Galileo’s position, which is why some of the astronomers agreed with him, and why he was so influential in establishing heliocentrism so quickly after he published, and why scientists and historians of science agree that those contemporaries of his who agreed with him were right to do so, and were pioneers in their field. I don’t know any scientists or historians of science who argue that no one should have agreed with Galileo and his evidence shouldn’t have been taken seriously.
Of course this is only relevant to the scientists. It’s not relevant to the church, because the church didn’t argue against him on the basis of science. It just waved the Bible, pointed to a some verses, and said “Sorry, you’re wrong because the Bible says so”. Just like Ken Ham does today.
In other words, they had only the personal interpretation of the Bible which had been handed down to them, and which they agreed with. And it was wrong. So they were in exactly the same position as Ken Ham, and just as wrong as he is.
I don’t understand how “larger concerns” such as “societal stability” means it’s wrong to say Galileo knew more science than they did and his Biblical hermeneutic was better than theirs, or that it’s wrong to say they preferred their own theological opinion over his.
That’s what this looks like.
But I’m not talking about simply being wrong. I’ve been confining myself specifically to cases in which scientist say X about the natural world, and Christians deny it and say the scientists are all wrong and cite the Bible as evidence. How many times has it been that the scientists have had to say "Wait, you’re right, all my experiments were wrong, the data was completely misinterpreted, I could have saved myself all that time and trouble by simply reading those Bible verses?
Conversely how many times has it been that Christians have initially launched theological arguments against scientific conclusions and then been proved wrong; heliocentrism, the age of the earth, the shape of the earth, the scope of the flood, the age of fossils, what happened to the dinosaurs, the Big Bang, etc.