Summary of the critiques of the heliocentric / mobility of the earth issues:

NOTE: there were many differenct perspectives on the issue

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Biblical references to the stability of the earth and to the movement of the sun. To deny them was to deny the revealed Word of God and suggested heresy!


Was the telescope a device that could be trusted?


But recall this passage and especially the words in boldface. That is, some were more open-minded, but constrained by cultural bias, among them Christopher Clavius, foremost Jesuit defender of the Ptolemaic sytem, writing in 1612 and after having a chance to use the telescope.

I do not want to hide from the reader that not long ago a certain instrument was brought from Belgium. It has the form of a long tube in the bases of which are set two glasses, or rather lenses, by which objects far away from us appear very much closer . . . than the things themselves are. This instrument shows many more stars in the firmament than can be seen in any way without it, especially in the Pleiades, around the nebulas of Cancer and Orion, in the Milky Way, and other places . . . and when the Moon is a crescent or half full, it appears so remarkably fractured and rough that I cannot marvel enough that there is such unevenness in the lunar body. Consult the reliable little book by Galileo Galilei, printed at Venice in 1610 and called Sidereus Nuncius, which describes various observations of the stars first made by him.
Far from the least important of the things seen with this instrument is that Venus receives its light from the Sun as does the Moon, so that sometimes it appears to be more like a crescent, sometimes less, according to its distance from the Sun. At Rome I have observed this, in the presence of others, more than once. Saturn has joined to it two smaller stars, one on the east, the other on the west. Finally Jupiter has four roving stars, which vary their places in a remarkable way both among themselves and with respect to Jupiter--as Galileo Galilei carefully and accurately describes. Since things are thus, astronomers ought to consider how the celestial orbs may be arranged in order to save these phenomena.

Others, like Bruno and even Newton did not make clear distinctions between science, astrology, and pseudo-sciences like alchemy.