From my understanding, it's more that the personalities of certain powerful individuals in the Church didn't rub well with the personalities of certain influential citizen-scientists (@Galileo, principally), and the former individuals abused their power to torment the latter. The actual results were much less important to the people involved than the prestige of "being right".
For context, these inquisitions happened at a time when the printing press was democratizing ownership of authoritative information (i.e. the Church) – not too dissimilar to today, where the web's information is upending traditional news sources. The inquisitions were a reaction to a perceived loss of power.
From that POV, it was less an ideological, Church vs Science thing (although this conflict is real today, though it seemed to be less real in the past), and more a butting of egos. Many people today experience zero dissonance between their religion and their scientific beliefs, and this observation is an old one (see the writings of any number of religious scientists throughout history). Anyways, just my 2¢! :)
Yes it was a power play. My point is that a 10000 year organization will have a tendency to do so because otherwise progress will quickly make it obsolete. It needs to control progress so it has time to adapt.
For context, these inquisitions happened at a time when the printing press was democratizing ownership of authoritative information (i.e. the Church) – not too dissimilar to today, where the web's information is upending traditional news sources. The inquisitions were a reaction to a perceived loss of power.
From that POV, it was less an ideological, Church vs Science thing (although this conflict is real today, though it seemed to be less real in the past), and more a butting of egos. Many people today experience zero dissonance between their religion and their scientific beliefs, and this observation is an old one (see the writings of any number of religious scientists throughout history). Anyways, just my 2¢! :)