<<Ok . . . there was not a religious question being discussed by Galileo.
<<Galileo was proposing a new theory of Astronomy , contradicting Phlotemy , not any Biblical problem.>>
Actually, there was a HUGE Biblical problem involved in Galileo's conclusions.
The Biblical problems involved in Galileo's work are discussed here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo#Church_controversyThere was one explanation for how the earth, sun, moon and stars were set up which came from the Bible, and there was one which Galileo had figured out for himself, based on scientific method. The Church did not care a rat's ass about Ptolemy, who was long gone from anywhere where they could get their hands on him and was just, as far as they were concerned, one more fucking pagan Greek whose theories, insofar as they contradicted the Holy Mother Church, didn't mean jackshit. The two explanations (Galileo's and the Bible's) were not in agreement. Needless to say, it was the Church which threatened Galileo with fatal and extremely painful consequences if he did not change his conclusions, not the other way round.
<<Evolution might meet a Galileo someday who has an explanation unguessed at this point. >>
So what? Mr. Newton, meet Mr. Einstein. Mr. Bohr, meet Mr. Heisenberg. What's the big deal?
<<But if the Government has made Evolution the officially accepted orthodoxy we will be poorly prepared to accept any better theory.>>
That is way off. Niels Bohr had developed a famous theory of what the atom looked like, which stood until a fella named Werner Heisenberg developed a theory of his own, the Heisenberg Principle of Uncertainty, or just the Heisenberg Principle, at which point the Bohr Theory of the Atom was no longer serviceable until another fella named Erwin Schrodinger was able to modify the Bohr Theory by applying the Heisenberg Principle, resulting in Schrodinger's Modern Theory of Atomic Structure. There were no academic revolts, no scientists threatened to burn Heisenberg at the stake, Niels Bohr himself didn't give a shit, didn't get fired from any professorships when his theory was replaced with a better one - - that is just science, that's how scientific progress occurs.
Contrast that with religion. A book is written about two thousand years ago, more in the case of the Old Testament, and it's never gonna change. It's inerrant. What they wrote then was good then and today.
Maybe you have confused scientific method with religious method. The only place where <<we will be poorly prepared to accept any better theory>> is in the world of religion, not the world of science.
Our government does not need to take sides and declare one theory or another to be the winner , the Government need not play the role that the church tried to play in the Galileo debacle .
<<Our government does not need to take sides and declare one theory or another to be the winner , the Government need not play the role that the church tried to play in the Galileo debacle .>>
Now you're starting to make sense. The government should not decide and the church should not decide which theory is scientific and which is not. Who then should decide what should be taught in science class? Obviously, scientists. There are no reputable scientists (Nobel Prize winners, heads of departments or faculties of major universities, winners of other scientific prizes and awards) whom I know of who believe that evolutionary theory is bad science. There are no reputable scientists I know of who believe that Creation Science and/or Intelligent Design is good science. So if both church and government keep out of the controversy and let scientists decide what is science and what is not, evolution will be taught in the public schools and Creation Science and/or Intelligent Design will not.
