" 

 ==Split== 
 Over at Galileo Galilei there was talk a long time ago about splitting out the section called Church Controversy and rewriting the whole story as a separate article. The section has long been too big (putting the article as a whole over the recommended max size) and too sprawling and self-contradictory. In spite of its already large size, fair coverage of the many controversies inevitably causes the section to get longer, even if handled well. But no one ever had the time to do the rewrite. 

 Now that that section has been hit with a demand for cleanup, we really ought to undertake the job. For a basis, I have copied the whole section, as it stands, as the text of this article. This is not because the article ought to stay in its present form, but to get the old text into a convenient place in the History. 

 Then I'll change the section in the Galileo article to a brief summary, with a pointer to this as the Main Article. More on that in the the Galileo talk page. 

 Then I'm going to blank out the text of this Trial article and turn it into a stub, from which the new article can be written. It would be futile to try to make a good text just by patching the old one, which needs massive reorganization; but we'll have all the pieces of the old version from which to crib as needed. Parts of it are very good. 

 The old Church Controversy text is also being copied below as part of the talk page, as this might be more accessible than going back into the History page to find old text. 
 

 :Dandrake, this is a very impressive, NPOV and accurate article with repect to this controversy. WRT names, how about something like Galileo: the conflict with Rome ot Galileo's Conflict with Rome (or The Church or The Inquisition, etc..) The point is to get trial out of there as it is too resticted and expand it a broader concept like conflict or confrontation or something along those lines.  

 ::Usually the whole church controversy topic is known as the ""Galileo Affair"".  It's actually the name of several books, but I think it predates the books that use that as the title; I think the commonness of the term outweighs the partisanness of it, since people have written about it using that term from a wide variety of views.  

 n fact, the new brief text from the main Galileo article has been pasted in, forming a rough outline. Let's replace this rapidly with a well-organized text (in which it will be impossible to recognize this first hack). 

 As to this article's name: it's not really accurate, as this covers far more than the trial of 1633. It is very hard to find a descriptive and neutral name. ""The Galileo Affair"" could be one, but it's not, being the title of a book, and a partisan one. ""GalileoFor Copernicus and the Church"" appeals to me, but that one is also taken. As is ""The Crime of Galileo"". ""Galileo, heliocentrism, and the Church"" would be descriptive, but it sounds pompous. 

 Any better ideas? Please?   

  
 ==Church controversy== 
 This is the former text, complete: 

 Galileo was a practicing Catholic, yet his writings on Copernican heliocentrism disturbed some in the Roman Catholic Church who believed in a geocentric model of the solar system. They argued that heliocentrism was in direct contradiction of the Bible (Joshua (10:12)): ""Then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, 'Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon'."" This Bible passage could be literally interpreted as the Sun and the Moon were both objects peripheral-to or a subset-of Earth, as opposed to a more symbolic, metaphysical interpretation (e.g., their representing a highly illuminated state of consciousness (the Sun founded upon Gibeon) and a phase of lower reflected intellect (the Moon in the valley of Ajalon) or thought).  At that time the most literal Biblical interpretation was prevalent with the church hierarchy, especially among the Dominican Order, facilitators of the Inquisition; it was also in line with the highly revered ancient writings of Aristotle and Plato. 

 The geocentric model was generally accepted at the time, as it had been since philosophers first considered the heavens. By the time of the controversy, the Ptolemaic model had a serious rival in the Tychonian model in which the Earth was at the center of the [