For the record, Galileo was not tortured by the Inquisition (now know in modern times as the Holy See); he was merely threatened with torture to help him change his mind about those silly notions of Earth not being the center of the Universe et al.

Galileo was getting on in years by the time his trial rolled around (1633; he died in 1642) and figured he didn't have what it took to handle what the Inquisition could dish out like in his younger days. So he took back what he saw with his own eyes in his own telescopes and via scientific experiments he had conducted for years and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/galileo.html

It was Giordano Bruno, who theorized that the Universe consisted of innumerable suns with planets around them and with life of all kinds on those worlds, who never caved in despite spending the last 8 years of his life imprisoned and periodically tortured by the Inquisition before being burned at the stake on February 17, 1600.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno

About your earlier comment on Carl Sagan being an atheist (8-28), he actually said of himself that he was more of an agnostic, as since he didn't have definite proof of the existence of lack thereof of a God, it wasn't right to declare his existence or not with absolute certainty. I just wish I could remember where I read this.