The Copernican model held that planets moved in circular orbits at uniform angular velocity--which is sufficiently wrong that it required only a few less epicycles than Ptolemaic astronomy. You can't fall back on "it's more accurate" since the results weren't really any more accurate. Yet, for this inaccurate results, a Copernican would have to explain:
* The lack of stellar parallax
* How the Earth can rotate around the sun
* Why we don't fall off the planet
* Why the rotation of the planet doesn't throw us off the planet
The Copernicans had no good answers for these questions--the latter were eventually explained by Newton's Law of Gravitation which proved to cement the transition away from geocentrism (the accuracy of Kepler's elliptical orbit also provided another major impetus for the transition, since it didn't need any epicycles. Incidentally, Galileo saw Kepler as a Copernican heretic and viewed his model of planetary orbits as utter rubbish).
Stellar parallax was resolved when we actually found it--in the 1700s. The Copernican attempts to explain it were weak and sometimes involved actual heresy on the nature of God, declared as such by the Catholic church 100s of years prior. Tycho Brahe gave a fairly comprehensive, scientific denunciation of Copernican astronomy based on his stellar observations.
Incidentally, your number for the deaths caused by the Catholic Church during the Inquisition is off by over an order of magnitude. The Spanish Inquisition appears to have executed only around 2000 people, and that for all of the major executions put together doesn't seem more than around 10,000 people. In general, the Inquisition's goal was mainly getting heretics to convert, not executing them: only around 5% of guilty sentences produced executions in the first place.
Not on astronomical grounds, but on philosophical ones. His observations (mountains on the moon, phases of Venus, sun spots, moons of Jupiter) led Galileo to the conviction that the celestial bodies were made from the same materials as terrestial ones. Remember, aether wasn't just the stuff that filled the space between the celestial bodies, it's also what those bodies were supposedly made of, allowing them the rapid daily motion you have to posit if earth is not supposed to rotate. One of the arguments formerly brought forth against terrestial motion gets thereby neatly turned on its head.
The problem was that while personally I find this line of reasoning rather convincing, it's not a smoking gun, which led Galileo on his quest for more direct observational evidence, eg his (incorrect) theory of the tides.
So if anything, Galileo's story is about the Church being on the side of science, not against it.
I think the idea that if his heliocentric model was more accurate it would have meant the Church instantly accepting him is extremely faulty. He was convicted of going against geocentrism in the bible, not being a bad scientist. The idea that the Catholic system was a strict meritocracy open to change is ridiculous. It defended its status quo and its scripture unfairly using absurdly powerful institutions like the Inquisition, in which it is more or less impossible to get a 'fair' trial, even by the low standards of theocratic justice.
Being an asshole to a very powerful politician (especially one that knows you personally) generally gets you into trouble, no matter the day and age.
> Thirdly, to Catholic Apologists :
> (1) Avoid the mistake of minimizing the official action of the Church authorities, or of understating the ground of their condemnation. The official documents plainly embody the view that the Copernican theory was not only "false" but also "heretical" because "altogether contrary to Scripture"; and Galileo was condemned as "grievously suspected of heresy," which heresy is defined as holding that the earth moved and the sun stood still." It is precisely in this dogmatical pronounce ment on the heretical character of the new astronomy that their blunder consisted.
> (2) Do not try to cloak this blunder by arguing that Galileo brought all the trouble on himself by meddling in theology, or by his aggressiveness of manner. The clash with theology was inevitable, and must be forced upon him ; and his defence on this point was entirely sound and unexceptionable. His aggressiveness explains the amount of human passion which was aroused against him, but does not extenuate the act of condemning officially as heresy a doctrine which we all now know to be totally free from heresy. That Galileo was imprudent in forcing an official pronouncement does not diminish the error which the official pronouncement contains.
> (3) Avoid also laving too much stress on the fact that Galileo was contumacious to Church authority. His contumacy might justify a disciplinary punish ment ; but once more, it does not cloak the blunder of charging his doctrines with heresy.
> (4) There is no reason for trying to exonerate the Popes from all share in the action of the Congrega tions. Although their names do not appear in any official capacity, there is no doubt that they were fully conversant with what was being done ; that they partly directed the proceedings ; that they approved and sanctioned the decrees issued and the sentences pronounced. Our defence on this point lies simply in the fact that the Pope's approval of the acts of a Congregation does not raise them to ex cathedra definitions.
If the Catholic Church didn't take that as a threat to their legitimacy I'd be surprised.
Similar shit happens today where people who question the efficacy of e.g. capitalism are effectively silenced (media control and subtlety allows voices to be silenced without imprisoning or killing people these days)
His was the find the exception that contradicts the rule kind of science/theorem proving.
They weren't completely incorrect. There are two aspects you want to look at when evaluating those models. The first is their predictive power, which was the best for the times, and better than the stuff Galileo proposed[0]. Which made Galileo's model incorrect in this regard. The second aspect is explaining the model in terms of more basic laws - this they did not do at all, and nor did Galileo's model. The required theories that allowed to derive heliocentric model from first(er) principles were only formulated later by Newton, which only then invalidated the geocentric models.
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[0] - from mathematical point of view, all models that give the same results are equally correct; the only thing one cares about is which one is simpler / more useful for you.
This isn't mere pedantry, a good example of epicylic type theories being used to modify the system under study, can be found today in modern economics.
Those prove heliocentrism. The fact that Galileo's model had worse predictions for the planets positions was much weaker than that observation.
AFAIK the first serious "proof" (as far as we can talk about proving that the Sun is the center of everything) was the observation of stellar parallax some century later. In Galileo's time parallax was too small to detect and it was an open question whether stars are too far to observe it (postulated by Copernicus) or Earth is actually immobile (postulated by Tycho Brahe et al).
Some of Galileo's points, for example his explanation of tides in term of heliocentrism, were downright wrong---which is fine, but trying to mix theology and astronomy, which he did, and putting the pope's theory in the mouth of a character called "Simple" were not the best political moves.
I hate when the "Oh, there's more to this story" attitude is used to defend the wrong narrative. I see it all the time on the internet. Edison is on par with Hitler for some reason, Lincoln is a war mongering criminal for going against the peace loving Confederate states, etc. The larger narrative is dismissed for smaller details that are presented in a way to distract or contradict the larger narrative. Its purposely viewing the trees and ignoring the forest. Sadly, its a popular way for disingenuous people to promote their views.