he nature of God. The Inquisition, however, did denounce Galileo for his defense ofCopernicus's theories, and on order of the Pope, admonished Galileo that he was not to hold,teach, or defend the condemned opinion of Copernicus. A few days later, Copernicus's book, DeRevolutionibus, which had been dedicated to a Pope, and which the Pope had accepted, and withwhich the Church had found no fault until Galileo had started to present it as reality, wascondemned and prohibited until it should be corrected. Yet, the Roman Catholic Church hadtaken no action against Copernicus's books or his ideas until Galileo undertook his campaign to"convert" the theologians. At the hands of Galileo, the heliocentric system threatened thegeocentric and, much more serious, God's creation was becoming an object of direct humanobservation which could be interpreted without the help of the Scriptures or of religion. In short,Galileo was condemned because he could not keep his opinions to himself and could not resist thetemptation to expose the ignorance, deceit, and manipulation of the powerful religious leaders ofthe time....
