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Entry: The Galileo Myth Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_galileo_myth#15921 Post contents: @ I am not Spartacus, you have answered the atomism conundrum in the way a mediæval scholastic disputant would have done, rather than in the way a suspicious Inquisitor of the Counter-Reformation would have done. It was not my intent to engage in theological controversy. but rather to describe the theological controversy that Prof. Redondi describes surrounding Galileo's atomism. @Robert Burch, it is true that the Church did not burn people alive. After pronouncing a person guilty of heresy it turned him over to the secular arm of government with the admonition to shed no blood. Thus the stake, rather than the headsman's sword or axe, breaking on the wheel, etc., was used as the method of execution, and the Church was removed from the responsibility for carrying it out. People WERE executed for heresy, witchcraft, etc., although the numbers were much smaller than is popularly believed. A 19th-century charlatan named Etienne Leon de Lamothe-Langon wrote a history of the inquisition that made fictitious claims of witch trials in the fourteenth century and much exaggerated the numbers of people executed for witchcraft. His work was generally believed until it came under scholarly question in the mid-20th century. Nonetheless, executions for heresy took place at the instance, if not by the direct agency of the Church. Famous examples include Cecco d'Ascoli, Lucilio Vanini, Giordabno Bruno, etc. Sent at: 2008 12 02