> The ruling in 1616 was about the notion that heliocentrism was proved fact, using it as a hypothesis and pointing out it gave better results was fine. That's

> The ruling in 1616 was about the notion that heliocentrism was proved fact, using it as a hypothesis and pointing out it gave better results was fine. That's incorrect. You can read the 1616 ruling on heliocentrism, which I both quoted from and linked to above. The Inquisition did not mince words in definitively stating heliocentrism to be both false and heretical. > in 1616, how the motion of the Earth would escape the notice from everyone standing on it was a serious scientific challenge Even were that true, it would not justify the Church's muzzling of Galileo, nor their ruling that heliocentrism was false because it violated Scripture. However, I think the argument about parallax was less problematic than you think. There was an obvious answer to it, which is that the stars are very far away, and therefore have small parallax motion.