[sharikone]

The church defended a scientific assertion based on theology and used their (absolute) political power to curb other worldviews.

Even assuming that Galileo could not prove beyond reasonable doubt heliocentrism as a physical model, and that the Church accepted that the Ptolemaic model wasn't valid - the Church took an active part in asserting that "heliocentrism is heresy". They could have said it's not their own matter to pontificate about and they instead went after Galileo asserting that he overstepped his boundaries.

It's very possible that Galileo (and the stories about him in later epochs) was not 100% in his assertions and his arguments. And it's important to look at the history from an objective point of view. However if you look at it as a battle for freedom to do experiment-based research, yes, the church was evil at that time.

[shjake]

> the Church accepted that the Ptolemaic model wasn't valid - the Church took an active part in asserting that "heliocentrism is heresy".

It was not that straightforward. The Tychonic model was already accepted and generally the church was quite tolerant (by premodern standards) towards scientific debate and the heresy decision was mainly an outcome of political/personal squables.

The next pope, Urban VIII had no issues with allowing measured debate of heliocentrism. What landed Galileo in house arrest was him writing a book which directly mocked the people (at least everyone thought that it did).

> However if you look at it as a battle for freedom to do experiment-based research, yes, the church was evil at that time.

Which disregards the fact that it didn’t have much issue with other scientists doing that. In fact generally the Catholic church and its affiliated institutions were almost the only places where any scientific research was done at all for quite a while..