WHERE REFERENCES TO GALILEO ARE ABSURD.

I had cause to block another person on Quora this week over anti-trans statements whereby they claimed that those who are against transitioning of gender are like Galileo. To make one thing clear to them, Galileo was held under house arrest because his observations questioned the teaching of the Church. As did Christopher Columbus when he was able to prove that the Earth is not flat and that you would not fall off if you went past a certain point. The right-wing cranks that make up the Galileo Society are those who deny new observations that global warming is real and accelerated and claim that data has been corrupted by NASA and that they know better than climate scientists.

Right-wing cranks, including the numbskull who embarrassed Australia for 726 days in Kirribilli, claim that climate change is a cult that is sacrificing minerals such as coal in the same way as animals were sacrificed. Yet that same numbskull is a member of the Catholic Church and is an archconservative.

At the time that Galileo lived, many innocent or harmless people, not just those well-known, were called upon to face the Inquisition on trumped-up charges without knowing who had informed upon them and what they had said. At the time, the church had a more central role in society than what it does today.

Many who attempt to discredit climate change scientists find themselves questioned and not believed, but what people need to remember is that science is not so much like history. Yes, science can be questioned, but a scientific fact can be proven, but there is a difference between historical fact and historical opinion. To give an example, it is an historical fact that at 8:15am on the morning of August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was detonated over Hiroshima, but Harry Truman’s reasons for it have been subjected to historical debate and interpretation, or saying, “There’s an alternative reading of this.” As another example of historical interpretation, David Irving was quite rightly cancelled for his nonsensical claims that the Holocaust did not occur! What did he believe that Dachau, Auschwitz and other notorious concentration camps were for?

What is also important to remember is that Galileo used facts to support new theories, whereas the right-wing crackpots are holding onto discredited theories like flies to septic tanks.