[Asraelite]

> By Galileo’s era, the Catholic Church was well aware of this scientific truth and actively engaged with astronomy and natural philosophy.

I'm confused. Are you saying that the Church knew the Earth was round or not? If they knew, then it doesn't matter what arguments were made, it was all in bad faith and therefore wasn't scientific.

EDIT: Never mind, I misread

[mcswell]

The sphericity of the Earth was not what Galileo and the Church were arguing about--they were arguing about whether the Sun revolved around the Earth, or the Earth around the Sun.

[mike_hearn]

The idea that people used to think the Earth was flat is a common misconception. Sometimes medieval painters would draw the Earth that way for artistic purposes, but nobody seriously thought it worked that way for real.

Why not? It's obvious to anyone who watched a ship sail over the horizon that the Earth must be a sphere because you see the body of the ship disappear before its sail mast does.

[looperhacks]

The church knew that the earth was round. Which is largely irrelevant, because Galileo argued for a heliocentric model vs the (at the time popular) geocentric model. Nobody argued that the earth was round