It's not Galileo, and it isn't Columbus either. It talks about Copernicus, who discovered the earth was not the center of the universe, and he was actually a priest. That's why it says "in his colleagues eyes he soon became a mockery"; his colleagues are the other priests.

This song deals with religion and how it causes people to blindly follow not thinking on their own. The "dusty village" in the first verse talks about how a man uses religion trying to spread hope to the people of the village who all follow him, but in the end religion fails to solve the problem.

The second verse about "the time when wise men peered through glass tubes" is about Galileo. To understand the meaning here you need to know a bit of history. Galileo, though not the first to propose this, had found out through looking at the changing positions of stars that the earth was not flat, and also wasn't the center of the universe.

After publishing his findings the Catholic Church put Galileo on trail because they felt that his discoveries defied what was said in the Bible, and threatened to sentence Galileo to death if he did not publicly announce that he was wrong and was mistaken to make these claims. Galileo agreed and lived the rest of his life a mockery. This is a very good example to use in the song to emphasize the Church's dogmatic thinking and denial of anything that might differ from their own beliefs.

The next verse emphasizes on how they want nothing to do with religious thinking in favor of having their own beliefs and ideas, this being the overall theme of the whole song.

This song is denouncing the notion of following a set path made manifest by fellow humans; anything that a man can come up with is fallible and is pure hearsay. In essence, "The Answer" is only attainable if one conforms to a set of laws, and changes his or herself ("got enough naivete, and you've got conviction then the answer is perfect for you").

Bad Religion have always denounced organizations both religious and non religious in nature that act upon a shared set of beliefs. The Answer is in effect the beliefs of a shared group.

Galileo was the one who said the Earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around (hence "the heavens changed in predictable ways").

I think this song is about peoples' ideas and how they are sometimes turned as hatred towards the person who is trying to help.

The first part to me is about Jesus: "a man came fourth with a vision of truth and a way to a better life"

"He compelled people to follow along, but the hunger never vanished"; they followed along because he promised a great thing, but people started going against his ways and thus his crucifixion: "the man was banished"

The second part to me is about Galileo and other astronomers at the time, "at a time when wise men peered through brass tubes towards the sky". They basically figured out the world was actually round which wasn't what the church had been telling the people of faith, "he was scrutinized in his colleagues eyes" (the church was basically saying "no no, god says the world is flat" and then he was being mocked and humiliated and put in house imprisonment.)

People will always be searching for an answer and what we keep doing is finding information that proves the previous one wrong. "don't tell me you've got the answer I've got ideas too" it will just keep going on and on.

I think 'The Answer' is referring to religion itself. As the lyric goes, everyone is looking for an answer, without regard for validity. Some of the things in the Bible and other religious books are ridiculous and sometimes just plain wrong. People will look toward religion for the answer to all their life's problems, but they don't bother to understand what they are actually doing. The miracles, why don't they occur with everybody? God acts in odd ways will be the answer. Once again an answer that means nothing.

I think what the song is also saying is that you don't have to stick your answer in my face all the time. Pretty soon, another answer will come up, just like what happened to the old man. This is a lot like religions, who pity all the non-believers, deists, atheists, agnostics and other. Go ahead and pity, but don't keep insisting that I turn to religion, leave me alone.

I think that 'The Answer' is a persons idea in how the world should be. So instead of accepting one answer, be open-minded and evaluate multiple answers because more answers will come along. Also that accepting one persons answer is not always the right thing to do. Because one persons answer could be truly devastating.