Steve_F

The world is round!?!?!?!?!

When did this happen?

Read:In Tooth & Claw

Psalms 19:6 is the most telling...

So if the bible states clearly that the earth is spherical (or round and allegorical to spherical) then why was Copernicus imprisoned? Why then was it so commonly held that one could sail off the edge of the Earth?

What do those nutters who still believe the Earth is flat think about satellites in orbit? I'll bet they don't mind the satellite imaging and guidance systems the U.S. is currently using to destroy those infidels in Iraq. What a bunch of crackpots! I think it is clear that the writers of the Bible thought the Earth was flat, if not, then why did the idea that the Earth was flat survive for thousands of years when it was Biblically decreed that the Earth was a sphere?

Also, if you allow for any bit of allegory in the Bible, then where does the symbolism end and the truth begin? Maybe the creation story is an allegory for evolution... Maybe the existence of God is an analogy for the fear and dominion the authors of the Bible wanted to exercise over the populations...
Just a thought...

Sven

IIRC, Copernicus advocated heliocentrism against geocentrism, not a round earth against a flat earth.

Did this idea really survive for thousands of years?

secular buddhist

While I am not going to comment on whether the Bible claims the earth is flat or round, I will say that some of the ideas in this post are a myth.

First, Copernicus was not imprisoned. He never published his writings in his life time, it is true, but his heresies were his claim of a heliocentric universe. All educated people knew, since the time of the ancient Greeks, that the earth is a sphere. This is true of the Middle Ages.

I don't know what the "commonly held view" was; since there was no universal education in those days and since most of the people were illiterate peasants and serfs, it may be possible that the ordinary illiterate peasant, who never went more than a dozen miles from his or her home, believed the earth was flat. I doubt this, though. The educated elite certainly knew that the earth was round. This was such a commonly accepted fact that I find it hard to believe that it wouldn't have trickled down to the masses somehow.

SEF

Read:In Tooth & Claw was probably thinking about Galileo. It's been a while since I studied/read this stuff. In his case part of the problem was allegedly not so much his ideas per se as him going out of his way to be offensive and taunt the clergy with the evidence. Clearly one was not permitted to mock morons back then - largely because they were in charge of everything! Has anything much changed though? Nowadays they have bigger guns & bombs, I suppose, but have gone further in being subtle and trying to pretend their motivations are not what they really are.

However, I'm pretty certain people really did believe the world was flat - other than the intellectual elite, eg among the Greek scholars. It seems to me that there wouldn't have been such a need to make a big deal about collecting the various evidences for a spherical earth and "publishing" them together if there wasn't some background of flat earthism to go against. I'm also fairly sure that part of the Columbus mutiny thing was about sailors believing they would fall off the edge of the world as well as about the food shortage. I would have thought the US history books/classes said more about that sort of thing though than UK ones (pretty minor incident in UK terms).

Dark Jedi

more than once per game. you know, get up and hit again... rather than both carted off to the morgue.

Or don't rugby players hit with that much force?

KeithHarwood

Minor quibble. Copernicus was never considered a hereitc because he presented his heliocentric model as an aid to calculation, not as a description of reality. Tycho Brahe went part way to reality by having the earth at the centre of the universe, the sun revolving around it and all the planets revolving around the sun. It was Galileo who first put the sun in the centre and claimed it as reality. He was the heretic.

Sven

And who do you think did publish this?

Again, IIRC, both Copernicus and Galileo only worked on the heliocentrism vd. geocentrism problem.

SEF

The ancient Greeks did. If you look at the sentence you'll see I was talking about the spherical Earth bit not the helio/geo-centric bit which some other poster mixed up later in the thread. These are quite separate things with separate evidence.

Howay the Toon

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