Galileo

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended for us to forgo their use. "

Those in the Church who opposed Galileo's views of the Earth as orbiting the Sun (the Copernican model) did so partly from their understanding of the Bible:

Psalm 104:5-6 "He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved. You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains."

Particularly if you had the predisposition to believe that earth and the life thereon were the most important parts of the universe and therefore the center of everything, it would be easy to persuade yourself that this verse makes the Earth fixed. This favors the view of Ptolemy that everything else revolves around the Earth as center.

Other verses which could be interpreted as favoring the Earth-centered universe are:

Psalm 93:1 The Lord reigns; he is robed in majesty; the Lord is robed; he has put on strength as his belt. Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.

Psalm 96:10 Say among the nations, ÒThe Lord reigns! Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity.Ó

1 Chronicles 16:29b-30 Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness;tremble before him, all the earth; yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.

Ecclesiastes 1:4-5 A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.

The Earth-centered view of everything is sometimes attributed to Aristotle, which suggests that it was the dominant view for nearly two thousand years.

Another interesting quote of Galileo:
"The heart cannot rejoice in what the mind cannot accept."