I've said it before, and I'll say it again, "fuck the Catholic Church! "

I studied this period for my first book, Mirror Reversal. To call the Catholic Church “an association of dullards” is soft-hearted and overly lenient. The punishment of Galileo was nothing compared to what these brain-washed fanatics did to countless other scientists and scholars. Galileo at least, due to his popularity as a professor at Bologna University, was allowed to live under house arrest in his spacious villa. His main punishment was solitude and even his daughter wasn't allowed to visit him.

But what about dozens of others who were condemned to cruel torturous death? Immolation was recommended because at the Resurrection they would have no body to rise from the grave – no bull! Giordano Bruno, great astronomer way ahead of his time; Jan Hus, renowned scholar and professor; Michael Servetus, brilliant physician and scientist, discovered pulmonary circulation – killed because of his heretical ideas about the Trinity.

But by far to my mind is the sacrifice of Lucilio Vanini, great genius and contemporary of Galileo. His audacious crime was to write a book suggesting that life might have evolved in the sea and then proceed to land. “He argued that the animal species arise by spontaneous generation from the earth, in the second part he seems convinced that they can be transformed into each other and that man comes from 'animals related to man, such as the Barbary apes, the monkeys and apes in general'". He wrote this 160 years before Darwin – and many history professors never even heard of him! By “spontaneous generation” I'm sure he means abiogenesis of the first RNA replicators.

My research on this brought me all the way back to Thales of Ionia considered the Father of the Scientific Method. One of his disciples was Anaxamander, the first human to realize that life might have begun in the sea. Thales' plan was to write down the results of experiments so his followers could refute the chimerical claims of their religious rivals. Vanini's story was especially poignant because Church officials ordered his tongue amputated so he couldn't relate his scientific theories.

Even today few people have ever heard of Lucilio Vanini. To my mind he's one of the most important scholars of history – as important as Charles Darwin. How come the Church can just apologize and everyone forgets these atrocious, cruel crimes against humanity. I know what I would do to these quacks with their ornate frippery and wacky costumes: I'd make them pay taxes, every one down to the last acolyte in some forlorn monastery, and get jobs like everybody else.

The last chapter on Mirror Reversal describes the tragic life of Vanini. Don't let the Church get away with these senseless murders any longer. Think of what it did to human progress and evolution. Vanini deserves to be remembered.

[amazon.com]

At least they both had enough sense to realize that the Earth is not flat. Unlike some vitamin D deficient circus clowns in 2019.

The Church, especially the Catholics have trouble admitting guilt, even when they're book says they should if they have sinned. Their Whole System is full of Shit!! I was brought into this world Catholic . Cant say I respect the church very much at all

The way I have read about it recently, the Church was a big supporter of science and learning but could not support Galileo's proposal that the new scientific understandings must include a new understanding of meaning in theological terms. Apparently, Galileo was very dogmatic that one must mean the other so the Church dug in its heels and refuted all the new science to cut through the complications.

The rcc should be outlawed, worldwide.

Sinead said all those years ago: "Fight the real enemy!"

Bruno was burned at the stake for his stubborn adherence to scientific ideas.

Must have been painful.

And a law passed in 1956 by the Congress and approved by president Dwight Eisenhower declared "In God We Trust" must appear on American currency and it still exists.

You spelled “assholes” incorrectly. It is not spelled “dullards”.

The stunted scientific progress due to the church is tragic.

Galileo was a martyr for the truth. Shame on the church for what it did to him.

And yet the Catholic Church is on the forefront of astronomy.

And they are changing the US and the spirit of secular countries that maintains separation of religion from state is the only way to have a scientific, fair, and progressive society. From the in god we trust on legal tender to forging history about whether this nation is Christian or secular and the founding fathers were religious or the opposite

Are you forgetting the abortion laws in the US, all the immigrants that ran away from persecution by religion to re-establish a worse intolerant bigoted existence here. The Supreme Court is now approx half catholic while they are barely 20% of population. The Supreme Court shouldn't be divided religiously at all but those on the Supreme Court are more catholic than Americans or secular or constitutional, an inherent problem in a judge

Let's face it, the history of the Catholic Church is indefensible. The perpetrators involved were sadistic, misogynist, corrupt, venal, politically ambitious (like today), nepotistic, racist, and philistine (suspicious of knowledge and science). They literally got away with murder and torture. The clergy at the time of Galileo made the Nazis look like boy scouts.

To atone for their crimes against humanity, the church should be boycotted and made to bring out their vast buried treasure hidden in underground Vatican vaults and use the money to alleviate human suffering, much of which the church caused.

At least the Church would do some good, instead of using the placebo effect which does nothing more than give followers false hope.

How do you know this happened?

I thought he was decapitated? It's bad, but better late than never. All they are doing is hindering the advancement of the human race. They also admitted that evolution is real.

Shame on the church. A big problem I see here is that many of the Evangelicals do not consider the Catholic Church as anything to be relied upon. They forget where they come from, anything at all about Martin Luther, a biblical numbering system for the bible, and anything from Bishop Usher who pinpointed the exact day of creation. What a mess!

And then only under duress