But Galileo Was Wrong!

From Tony Norman's column today:

"Galileo got outvoted for a spell," [Texas Governor Rick] Perry said, defending his utter indifference to the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. It was one of the most preposterous and audacious quips ever by an American politician whose suspicions about science are notorious and well known.

Who's this Galileo and why was he outvoted?

I believe that Perry is not only on the wrong side of this metaphor but that we should be teaching both sides of the the Aristotelian/Copernican debate in our public schools.

Both sides. Let the children decide for themselves which one is right - the eternal word of God or the "opinion" of some unnamed fallible "scientists" who are probably mostly atheists anyway.

Some background:

Galileo Galilei was an early 17th century astronomer who favored the now-current scientific "theory" (and remember, it's only a theory) that the sun is at the center of the solar system and not the earth.

Which ran him straight into conflict with Scripture. Galileo said that the earth moves around the sun but Chronicles 13:30 says quite clearly:

Tremble before him, all the earth!
The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.

And this is echoed by in Psalm 96:

Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns.”
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.

Not only that, but Scripture is very clear that it's the sun that moves. Ecclesiastes 1:5:

The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.

The Joshua 10:12 tells us that the sun was the thing made to stand still - not the earth:

On the day the LORD gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel:

“Sun, stand still over Gibeon,
and you, moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.”

Scripture says it's the sun that moves and the earth is immovable. Galileo was wrong, Perry was wrong and scripture is always right.

We should be teaching both sides of the controversy - that's the only way proper science works!