Aikiweezie wrote:As a Catholic science buff and science fiction enthusiast I was happy to read, about a year or so I think, that the Catholic church's "official" position (what's really official can be debated even when it comes down to things the Pope says actually, but this I am pretty sure was from the Vatican) is that Extra Terrestrial life is certainly possible, because with God, anything is possible, even if it it difficult or impossible to explain. The offifial Catholic position on evolution might surprise non-Catholic's too, it's considered sound science and I was taught evolution all through Catholic grade school and high school. This is before "intelligent design" was even coined as a phrase, by the way. We were taught all about evolution in bio class and never really got into the whole debate.
Yes, the Catholic Church really damaged its reputation by censoring Galileo. But the details of that incident are surprising. It was is not the story of a secular natural philosopher attacking church beliefs and getting squelched. Galileo was a very concerned and obedient Catholic. For instance when the Catholic church would censor books back in those days, they wouldn't necessarily ban the whole book. They would issue an order for everyone to go cross out certain sentences and replace them with new sentences. (Books were too expensive to just throw out). SO GALILEO WOULD DUTIFULLY DO THIS WITH HIS OWN BOOKS. So he was very obedient. He was also a strong Catholic and that was one of his motivations for fighting this battle with the Catholic church. Being one of the first to point his telescope at the night sky, he realized that the Earth-centered view WOULD be overturned. Since Protestants would have no qualms about following the evidence in this regard, he was afraid it would leave the Catholic church look silly if they were to deny it so he tried to push the issue. He miscalculated and pushed to hard. If he had laid low, they might have come around on their own.
First he actually ran the idea for his book past his friend at the Vatican. The idea was to set up a "dialogue" on two world systems, with one fictional character presenting one side of the argument for an Earth Centered world and another fictional character presenting the argument for a Sun centered world, without coming down on one side of the other or the argument. That idea was OK'd in theory. Unfortunately, when the book came out, one guy had all the best arguments and the other guy was obviously goofy. In fact his name was "Simplico," lol . . .
Ut oh . . . an enemy of Galileo pressured the pope to "DO SOMETHING. He's making fun of you!" If it hadn't been for the guy pressuring the pope to "DO SOMETHING" Galileo would have probably gotten away with it and the Catholic church would have made no pronouncement at all on the issue and not become famous for insisting that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
Now aren't you glad Eva picked that apple and we humans were booted out of the garden? 
I think God set us up for that and wanted us to pick that apple. Like any responsible parent, God wanted humans to grow up and leave home. Oh, and I think the Vulcans did something even worse than the humans did for not only were they booted out of their garden, according to one ST novel, Spock's World, I think it was, the garden was removed from the planet in a cataclysmic planet-wide environmental change so that they could never find it again. 
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