Author Topic: Did Catholics before the "Reformation" believe in FE? (Read 47152 times)

happenby · « **Reply #270 on:** December 05, 2017, 01:11:33 PM »

Quote from: Ladislaus on December 05, 2017, 11:08:11 AM

Sure, there can be a crossover between matters of science and matters of faith ... so, for instance, heliocentrism or evolution. But the question is whether the Fathers were relaying some revealed doctrine or else just going with their own scientific assumptions at the time. I am in fact a geocentrist.

But I'm still studying Flat Earth. So, for instance, some pro-FE sources say that all flights between South America and Australia move across the U.S. West Coast ... which would make sense, since it's a huge distance to cover directly on a flat earth circular disc model. But them an anti-FE source said that there have been new flights introduced that go directly across, and they cover the distance in the time expected by a globe earth model, that the planes would have to be travelling at Mach 2 (Concorde speeds) to make in that time period the distance that it would be on a Flat Earth model. Some people claim that these flights don't exist, whereas others claim that they were ON these flights and covered the distance in the amount of time described.

There is more than one flat earth model because fe'rs do not have access to all the information necessary to know what the exact form of the earth is. We just know scripture doesn't lie, and it can't be a sphere.

happenby · « **Reply #271 on:** December 05, 2017, 01:21:25 PM »

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 05, 2017, 01:03:05 PM

Helio- and geocentrism in an absolute sense are not matters open to settlement through human science by any currently known means. Physics does not even recognise any absolute sense for these terms.

Heliocentrism from the persective of an "inertial frame of reference", which is itself defined within the model of Newtonian mechancis, is a fact. The power of Nwtonian mechanics and its ubiquitous impact upon human civilisation and technology is beyond dispute.

Geocentrism would appear to be true in the absolute sense from revelation.

The question of human origins in unanswerable by science, in principle, period.

Evolution, even in "theistic" form, is absolutely irreconcilable with the existence a good God as creator and the implied perfection of original creation, and also with original sin and the cosmic Fall, period. It destroys the foundations of the very ideas of Catholicism which are intended to answer the age-old "problem of evil"; imperfection, suffering, death are supposed to be consequences of angelic and human disobedience, not creations of God, while theistic evolution posits a cosmos which is naturally imperfect from its inception, and in which suffering and death, and the voracious consumption of one creature by another for the mere purposes of survival, are present before the Fall - and hence the problem of evil that the Fall solves is re-introduced: the "God" of theistic evolution is monster who would sit at a table playing cards with Calvin's one.

Fiat creation is patently true from revelation, unless one wishes to frorce entirely anachronistic "mythological" interpretations upon Genesis which have NO FOUNDATION in any of the deposit of revelation, and the unanymous belief of the Fathers, to whom naturalisticand evolutionary ideas of human origins were not foreign. Enough.

Why accept "Newtonian mechanics" over scripture? Newton was a plagarist and a ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ. He was also deep into alchemy (illegal at the time) and the Kabbalah, the occult musings of medieval тαℓмυdic authors. Although he was reputed to have Christian moorings, Newton embraced the heresy of Arianism (i.e., the denial of both the divinity of Christ and the Trinity). Westfall writes: “In Newton’s eyes, worshiping Christ as God was idolatry, to him the fundamental sin” (Richard S. Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton, Cambridge University Press, 1981, 1983, p. 314; On Newton’s intimacy with Wickens and Fatio, see Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer, Michael White, MA: Perseus Books, 1997, pp. 235-254).

Neil Obstat · « **Reply #272 on:** December 05, 2017, 01:35:55 PM »

Quote from: happenby on December 03, 2017, 10:59:07 AM

If your sources aren't scriptural, why do you accept them to the exclusion of scripture?

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You are so confused it's pathetic.
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Scripture has no part in the discussion. Why can't you wrap your tiny head around that fact?
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If you want to know the value of PI do you look in the Bible?
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Have you ever used a search engine, like Google? Why bother? Why don't you look in the Bible for all your answers?
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You say that scripture is all I'll accept, but that isn't the case at all.

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Yes, it is the case. Anything you DON'T LIKE and isn't Scriptural, you criticize it because it's not in the Bible.
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So your default position is the Bible. If something isn't in there you don't believe it.
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Is your phone number or address in the Bible? So how can you believe your phone number or address is real?
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It just so happens that scripture and science are never at odds with each other and there is plenty of proof that earth is not a globe.

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You just love to mix truth with lies, don't you.
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Scripture and science are never at odds with each other, true; there is plenty of proof the earth is not a globe, false.
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There is no proof whatsoever that the earth is not a globe.
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There is only the fact that you are not willing to open your eyes and observe the reality that presents itself every day.
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Conversely, there are zero empirical proofs that earth is a globe.

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False, again. There are innumerable empirical proofs that the earth is a globe, and you simply refuse to look at them.
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Further, the science that brings the sphere to the table has been condemned by the Church.

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Wrong again. The Church has never condemned the sphericity of the earth. You are a liar.
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Copernicus' model was specifically condemned. And as shown before Copernicus is responsible for resurrecting the pagan spherical model of earth.

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The model of Copernicus the Church condemned had nothing to do with the shape of the earth. The Church is never going to condemn something that can be determined by observation, like the earth's shape can be.
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The shape of the earth is not a "pagan model". It is an objective reality.
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To deny objective reality makes you a Modernist, which is a condemned heresy.
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Therefore you make yourself a heretic. Congratulations, Modernist heretic.
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happenby · « **Reply #273 on:** December 05, 2017, 01:44:29 PM »

Quote from: Neil Obstat on December 05, 2017, 01:35:55 PM

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You are so confused it's pathetic.
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Scripture has no part in the discussion. Why can't you wrap your tiny head around that fact?
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If you want to know the value of PI do you look in the Bible?
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Have you ever used a search engine, like Google? Why bother? Why don't you look in the Bible for all your answers?
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Yes, it is the case. Anything you DON'T LIKE and isn't Scriptural, you criticize it because it's not in the Bible.
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So your default position is the Bible. If something isn't in there you don't believe it.
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Is your phone number or address in the Bible? So how can you believe your phone number or address is real?
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You just love to mix truth with lies, don't you.
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Scripture and science are never at odds with each other, true; there is plenty of proof the earth is not a globe, false.
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There is no proof whatsoever that the earth is not a globe.
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There is only the fact that you are not willing to open your eyes and observe the reality that presents itself every day.
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False, again. There are innumerable empirical proofs that the earth is a globe, and you simply refuse to look at them.
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Wrong again. The Church has never condemned the sphericity of the earth. You are a liar.
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The model of Copernicus the Church condemned had nothing to do with the shape of the earth. The Church is never going to condemn something that can be determined by observation, like the earth's shape can be.
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The shape of the earth is not a "pagan model". It is an objective reality.
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To deny objective reality makes you a Modernist, which is a condemned heresy.
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Therefore you make yourself a heretic. Congratulations, Modernist heretic.
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Scripture has everything to do with this, as well as the saints that expounded on it teaching earth is flat and geocentric. Just because you cannot understand, or refuse to listen doesn't mean this isn't a fact. Just because you accept modern science over scripture and the Church or that you deny what the Church has said on the matter, with regards to scripture, and to the saints that taught it. You provide no proof. You just say, "Nope". "Or, such and such is objective reality." And then you disparage me. Move on, Neil, we don't agree. I will never abandon truth because you have a different view.

Neil Obstat · « **Reply #274 on:** December 05, 2017, 01:47:26 PM »

Quote from: happenby on December 05, 2017, 01:11:33 PM

There is more than one flat earth model because fe'rs do not have access to all the information necessary to know what the exact form of the earth is. We just know scripture doesn't lie, and it can't be a sphere.

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No, that's not the problem at all.
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The problem with flat-earthers is they refuse to observe what is real, right in front of their face every day, and think about it.
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All the information you need is right there, plain as the nose on your face, but you simply can't bother to look.
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Your golden-calf-false-god of flat-earthism is all that's important to you.
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Neil Obstat · « **Reply #275 on:** December 05, 2017, 01:56:49 PM »

Quote from: happenby on December 05, 2017, 01:44:29 PM

Scripture has everything to do with this,

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Scripture has nothing to do with this.
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Just like the operation of the computer you're using. It's not in the Bible.
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If it were not for Isaac Newton, you wouldn't have a computer to type your nonsense on.
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as well as the saints that expounded on it teaching earth is flat and geocentric.

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The saints have nothing to do with what shape the earth has, just like they have nothing to do with computer science.
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Just because you cannot understand, or refuse to listen doesn't mean this isn't a fact.

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You cannot understand.
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You don't want to understand.
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You use a computer but have no idea why it does what it does.
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You use GPS but you have no idea that it requires satellites to work but you don't have to believe that satellites exist.
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You do not believe that Newton's work is at the root cause of your computer's ability to work, but you use your computer anyway.

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Just because you accept modern science over scripture and the Church or that you deny what the Church has said on the matter, with regards to scripture, and to the saints that taught it. You provide no proof. You just say, "Nope". "Or, such and such is objective reality." And then you disparage me. Move on, Neil, we don't agree. I will never abandon truth because you have a different view.

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The Church has never said anything about what the shape of the earth is. And if the Church would now speak on the matter, you wouldn't believe it anyway because you would say that's not the Church because the Church has been overtaken by Newtonian functionaries and ideologues.
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How convenient.
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You abandon the truth every time you touch your keyboard, which you don't believe in because it wouldn't be there if it were not for the same Newton you think was a pagan, devil worshiper and occultist.
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Move on, happenby, and get a life.
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Neil Obstat · « **Reply #276 on:** December 05, 2017, 01:58:57 PM »

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You just say, "Nope".

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You're a liar, happenby. I've never said "Nope."
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happenby · « **Reply #277 on:** December 05, 2017, 02:00:41 PM »

Quote from: Neil Obstat on December 05, 2017, 01:47:26 PM

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No, that's not the problem at all.
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The problem with flat-earthers is they refuse to observe what is real, right in front of their face every day, and think about it.
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All the information you need is right there, plain as the nose on your face, but you simply can't bother to look.
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Your golden-calf-false-god of flat-earthism is all that's important to you.
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https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/copernicus/#2

2.3 On the revolutions
...
11). Particularly notable for Copernicus was that in Ptolemy's model the sun, the moon, and the five planets seemed ironically to have different motions from the other heavenly bodies and it made more sense for the small earth to move than the immense heavens. But the fact that Copernicus turned the earth into a planet did not cause him to reject Aristotelian physics, for he maintained that “land and water together press upon a single center of gravity; that the earth has no other center of magnitude; that, since earth is heavier, its gaps are filled with water…” (Revolutions, 10). As Aristotle had asserted, the earth was the center toward which the physical elements gravitate. This was a problem for Copernicus's model, because if the earth was no longer the center, why should elements gravitate toward it?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An astronomical system positing that the Earth, Moon, Sun and planets revolve around an unseen "Central Fire" was developed in the 5th century BC and has been attributed to the Pythagorean philosopher Philolaus, a version based on Stobaeus account, who betrays a tendency to confound the dogmas of the early Ionian philosophers, and he occasionally mixes up Platonism with Pythagoreanism.^[1] Brewer (1894, page 2293) mentioned Pythagoras taught that the sun is a movable sphere in the centre of the universe, and that all the planets revolve round it.^[2]
The system has been called "the first coherent system in which celestial bodies move in circles",^[3] anticipating Copernicus in moving "the earth from the center of the cosmos [and] making it a planet"

As you can see, Neil, references agree that Copernicus for whom the Copernican model was named, that which was condemned by the Holy Office, also known as Heliocentrism, a certain aspect belongs: that is, the spherical earth. The spherical earth brought to you by Copernicus.

CONDEMNED

happenby · « **Reply #278 on:** December 05, 2017, 02:01:29 PM »

Quote from: Neil Obstat on December 05, 2017, 01:58:57 PM

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You're a liar, happenby. I've never said "Nope."
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<sigh> Ok, Neil. You win.

Neil Obstat · « **Reply #279 on:** December 05, 2017, 02:12:46 PM »

Quote from: happenby on December 05, 2017, 01:11:33 PM

There is more than one flat earth model because fe'rs do not have access to all the information necessary to know what the exact form of the earth is. We just know scripture doesn't lie, and it can't be a sphere.

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There is more than one flat-earth model because just like Protestants (there are more than a few Protestant sects) flat-earthers can't agree on what to believe.
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They can't agree with each other and cannot provide a photograph of their flat-earth, but at the same time, they accuse those who recognize the reality of the earth's sphericity by accusing them of having no legitimate photograph of the spherical earth.
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If any of the several deep space probes that have been sent out from earth had been turned around to show what the earth looks like from a hundred thousand miles out in space, it would do you no good because you would say it's just CGI and a cartoon, and a conspiracy to deceive.
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You would say (as you already have) that these probes cannot possibly be out that far because they would have already crashed into the "dome" and exploded.
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While the reality is, they did not point the camera toward earth because that's not what the probes were designed to do, so they were not able to point the cameras at the earth, besides, they were all booked up looking in front of them. They were intended to look out in FRONT of where they were going, not BEHIND.
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In order for the probes to have been able to turn around and provide a picture of the earth, they would have required many design changes, and a lot of associated expense, and for what end, so that flat-earthers who wouldn't believe it anyway, could then say, "WE DON'T BELIEVE THIS CARTOON"?!
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Meg · « **Reply #280 on:** December 05, 2017, 02:17:44 PM »

Quote from: happenby on December 05, 2017, 02:00:41 PM

As you can see, Neil, references agree that Copernicus for whom the Copernican model was named, that which was condemned by the Holy Office, also known as Heliocentrism, a certain aspect belongs: that is, the spherical earth. The spherical earth brought to you by Copernicus.

CONDEMNED

Doesn't Heliocentrism, as taught by Copernicus, includes a globe earth? And since heliocentrism has been condemned, why should we be forced to believe in it, as some globe-earthers say we should (or we are heretics!)?

I suppose the globe earthers think that the "globe earth" wasn't named specifically in the condemnation of heliocentrism, and therefore this somehow makes the "globe earth" as something we should believe in. This doesn't seem logical to me.

Neil Obstat · « **Reply #281 on:** December 05, 2017, 02:18:39 PM »

Quote from: happenby on December 05, 2017, 02:00:41 PM

Quote from: happenby on Tue Dec 05 2017 12:00:41 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/copernicus/#2

2.3 On the revolutions
...
11). Particularly notable for Copernicus was that in Ptolemy's model the sun, the moon, and the five planets seemed ironically to have different motions from the other heavenly bodies and it made more sense for the small earth to move than the immense heavens. But the fact that Copernicus turned the earth into a planet did not cause him to reject Aristotelian physics, for he maintained that “land and water together press upon a single center of gravity; that the earth has no other center of magnitude; that, since earth is heavier, its gaps are filled with water…” (Revolutions, 10). As Aristotle had asserted, the earth was the center toward which the physical elements gravitate. This was a problem for Copernicus's model, because if the earth was no longer the center, why should elements gravitate toward it?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An astronomical system positing that the Earth, Moon, Sun and planets revolve around an unseen "Central Fire" was developed in the 5th century BC and has been attributed to the Pythagorean philosopher Philolaus, a version based on Stobaeus account, who betrays a tendency to confound the dogmas of the early Ionian philosophers, and he occasionally mixes up Platonism with Pythagoreanism.[1] Brewer (1894, page 2293) mentioned Pythagoras taught that the sun is a movable sphere in the centre of the universe, and that all the planets revolve round it.[2]
The system has been called "the first coherent system in which celestial bodies move in circles",[3] anticipating Copernicus in moving "the earth from the center of the cosmos [and] making it a planet"

As you can see, Neil, references agree that Copernicus for whom the Copernican model was named, that which was condemned by the Holy Office, also known as Heliocentrism, a certain aspect belongs: that is, the spherical earth. The spherical earth brought to you by Copernicus.

CONDEMNED

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You're wrong, again. The Church has not condemned the shape of the earth. Get a clue.
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And if you're so hot on quoting Wikipedia (instead of Scripture) why don't you quote Wikipedia for flat-earthism?
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Neil Obstat · « **Reply #282 on:** December 05, 2017, 02:28:14 PM »

Wikipedia:
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The myth of the flat Earth is the modern misconception that the prevailing cosmological view during the Middle Ages in Europe was that the Earth is flat, instead of spherical.^[1]^[2]
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During the early Middle Ages, virtually all scholars maintained the spherical viewpoint first expressed by the Ancient Greeks. From at least the 14th century, belief in a flat Earth among the educated was almost nonexistent, despite fanciful depictions in art, such as the exterior of Hieronymus Bosch's famous triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights, in which a disc-shaped Earth is shown floating inside a transparent sphere.^[3]
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According to Stephen Jay Gould, "there never was a period of 'flat Earth darkness' among scholars (regardless of how the public at large may have conceptualized our planet both then and now). Greek knowledge of sphericity never faded, and all major medieval scholars accepted the Earth's roundness as an established fact of cosmology."^[4] Historians of science David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers point out that "there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circuмference".^[5]
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Historian Jeffrey Burton Russell says the flat-Earth error flourished most between 1870 and 1920, and had to do with the ideological setting created by struggles over biological evolution. Russell claims "with extraordinary few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the Earth was flat", and ascribes popularization of the flat-Earth myth to histories by John William Draper, Andrew Dickson White, and Washington Irving.^[6]^[7]^[2]
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History
In Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians, Jeffrey Russell describes the Flat Earth theory as a fable used to impugn pre-modern civilization and creationism.^[6]^[2]
James Hannam wrote:

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The myth that people in the Middle Ages thought the Earth is flat appears to date from the 17th century as part of the campaign by Protestants against Catholic teaching. But it gained currency in the 19th century, thanks to inaccurate histories such as John William Draper's History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science (1874) and Andrew Dickson White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896). Atheists and agnostics championed the conflict thesis for their own purposes, but historical research gradually demonstrated that Draper and White had propagated more fantasy than fact in their efforts to prove that science and religion are locked in eternal conflict.^[8]

Early modern period
French dramatist Cyrano de Bergerac in chapter 5 of his Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (published 2 years posthumously in 1657) quotes St. Augustine as saying "that in his day and age the Earth was as flat as a stove lid and that it floated on water like half of a sliced orange."^[9] Robert Burton, in his The Anatomy of Melancholy^[10]wrote:

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Virgil, sometime bishop of Salzburg (as Aventinus anno 745 relates), by Bonifacius, bishop of Mentz, was therefore called in question, because he held antipodes (which they made a doubt whether Christ died for) and so by that means took away the seat of hell, or so contracted it, that it could bear no proportion to heaven, and contradicted that opinion of Austin [St. Augustine], Basil, Lactantius, that held the Earth round as a trencher (whom Acosta and common experience more largely confute) but not as a ball.

Thus, there is evidence that accusations of Flatearthism, though somewhat whimsical (Burton ends his digression with a legitimate quotation of St. Augustine: "Better doubt of things concealed, than to contend about uncertainties, where Abraham's bosom is, and hell fire"^[10]) were used to discredit opposing authorities several centuries before the 19th. Another early mention in literature is Ludvig Holberg's comedy Erasmus Montanus (1723). Erasmus Montanus meets considerable opposition when he claims the Earth is round, since all the peasants hold it to be flat. He is not allowed to marry his fiancée until he cries "The earth is flat as a pancake". In Thomas Jefferson's book Notes on the State of Virginia (1784), framed as answers to a series of questions (queries), Jefferson uses the "Query" regarding religion to attack the idea of state-sponsored official religions. In the chapter, Jefferson relates a series of official erroneous beliefs about nature forced upon people by authority. One of these is the episode of Galileo's struggles with authority, which Jefferson erroneously frames in terms of the shape of the globe:^[11]

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Government is just as infallible too when it fixes systems in physics. Galileo was sent to the inquisition for affirming that the Earth was a sphere: the government had declared it to be as flat as a trencher, and Galileo was obliged to abjure his error. This error however at length prevailed, the Earth became a globe, and Descartes declared it was whirled round its axis by a vortex.

19th century
The 19th century was a period in which the perception of an antagonism between religion and science was especially strong. The disputes surrounding the Darwinian revolutioncontributed to the birth of the conflict thesis,^[4] a view of history according to which any interaction between religion and science would almost inevitably lead to open hostility, with religion usually taking the part of the aggressor against new scientific ideas.^[12]
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Irving's biography of Columbus
In 1828, Washington Irving's highly romanticised biography, A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus,^[13] was published and mistaken by many for a scholarly work.^[14] In Book II, Chapter IV of this biography, Irving gave a largely fictional account of the meetings of a commission established by the Spanish sovereigns to examine Columbus's proposals. One of his more fanciful embellishments was a highly unlikely tale that the more ignorant and bigoted members on the commission had raised scriptural objections to Columbus's assertions that the Earth was spherical.^[15]
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The issue in the 1490s was not the shape of the Earth, but its size, and the position of the east coast of Asia, as Irving in fact points out. Historical estimates from Ptolemy onwards placed the coast of Asia about 180° east of the Canary Islands.^[16] Columbus adopted an earlier (and rejected) distance of 225°, added 28° (based on Marco Polo's travels), and then placed Japan another 30° further east. Starting from Cape St. Vincent in Portugal, Columbus made Eurasia stretch 283° to the east, leaving the Atlantic as only 77° wide. Since he planned to leave from the Canaries (9° further west), his trip to Japan would only have to cover 68° of longitude.^[17]^[18]
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Columbus mistakenly assumed that the mile referred to in the Arabic estimate of 56⅔ miles for the size of a degree was the same as the actually much shorter Italian mile of 1,480 metres (0.92 mi). His estimate for the size of the degree and for the circuмference of the Earth was therefore about 25% too small.^[19] The combined effect of these mistakes was that Columbus estimated the distance to Japan to be only about 5,000 km (or only to the eastern edge of the Caribbean) while the true figure is about 20,000 km. The Spanish scholars may not have known the exact distance to the east coast of Asia, but they believed that it was significantly further than Columbus's projection; and this was the basis of the criticism in Spain and Portugal, whether academic or amongst mariners, of the proposed voyage.
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The disputed point was not the shape of the Earth, nor the idea that going west would eventually lead to Japan and China, but the ability of European ships to sail that far across open seas. The small ships of the day (Columbus's three ships varied between 20.5 and 23.5 m – or 67 to 77 feet – in length and carried about 90 men) simply could not carry enough food and water to reach Japan. The ships barely reached the eastern Caribbean islands. Already the crews were mutinous, not because of some fear of "sailing off the edge", but because they were running out of food and water with no chance of any new supplies within sailing distance. They were on the edge of starvation.^[20] What saved Columbus was the unknown existence of the Americas precisely at the point he thought he would reach Japan. His ability to resupply with food and water from the Caribbean islands allowed him to return safely to Europe. Otherwise his crews would have died, and the ships foundered.
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Advocates for science
In 1834, a few years after the publication of Irving's book, Jean Antoine Letronne, a French academic of strong antireligious ideas, misrepresented the church fathers and their medieval successors as believing in a flat earth in his On the Cosmographical Ideas of the Church Fathers.^[2]^[21] Then in 1837, the English philosopher of science William Whewell, in his History of the Inductive Sciences, identified Lactantius, author of Institutiones Divinae (c. 310), and Cosmas Indicopleustes, author of Christian Topography (c. 548 ), as evidence of a medieval belief in a Flat Earth. Lactantius had been ridiculed much earlier by Copernicus in De revolutionibus of 1543 as someone who "Speaks quite childishly about the Earth's shape, when he mocks those who declared that the Earth has the form of a globe".
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Other historians quickly followed Whewell, although they could identify few other examples.^[22] The American chemist John William Draper wrote a History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874), employing the claim that the early Church fathers thought the Earth was flat as evidence of the hostility of the Church to the advancement of science.^[23]The story of widespread religious belief in the flat Earth was repeated by Andrew Dickson White in his 1876 The Warfare of Science^[24] and elaborated twenty years later in his two-volume History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, which exaggerated the number and significance of medieval flat Earthers to support White's model of warfare between dogmatic theology and scientific progress.^[25] As Draper and White's metaphor of ongoing warfare between the scientific progress of the Enlightenment and the religious obscurantism of the "Dark Ages" became widely accepted, it spread the idea of medieval belief in the flat Earth.^[26]
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The widely circulated engraving of a man poking his head through the firmament surrounding the Earth to view the Empyrean, executed in the style of the 16th century, was published in Camille Flammarion's L'Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888, p. 163).^[27] The engraving illustrates the statement in the text that a medieval missionary claimed that "he reached the horizon where the Earth and the heavens met". In its original form, the engraving included a decorative border that places it in the 19th century. In later publications, some of which claimed that the engraving dates to the 16th century, the border was removed.
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20th century and onward

Front Cover of Daniel Boorstin's The Discoverers (1983), bearing a copy of the Flammarion engraving

Since the early 20th century, a number of books and articles have docuмented the flat earth error as one of a number of widespread misconceptions in popular views of the Middle Ages. Both E. M. W. Tillyard's book The Elizabethan World Picture and C. S. Lewis' The Discarded Image are devoted to a broad survey of how the universe was viewed in Renaissance and medieval times, and both extensively discuss how the educated classes knew the world was round. Lewis draws attention to the fact that in Dante's The Divine Comedy about an epic voyage through hell, purgatory, and heaven, the earth is spherical with gravity being towards the center of the earth. As the Devil is frozen in a block of ice in the center of the earth, Dante and Virgil climb down the Devil's torso, but up from the Devil's waist to his feet, as his waist is at the center of the earth.
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Jeffrey Burton Russell rebutted the prevalence of belief in the flat Earth in a monograph^[6] and two papers.^[7]^[2] Louise Bishop states that virtually every thinker and writer of the 1000-year medieval period affirmed the spherical shape of the Earth.^[28]
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Although the misconception was frequently refuted in historical scholarship since at least 1920, it persisted in popular culture and in some school textbooks into the 21st century. An American schoolbook by Emma Miller Bolenius published in 1919 has this introduction to the suggested reading for Columbus Day (12 October):

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When Columbus lived, people thought that the earth was flat. They believed the Atlantic Ocean to be filled with monsters large enough to devour their ships, and with fearful waterfalls over which their frail vessels would plunge to destruction. Columbus had to fight these foolish beliefs in order to get men to sail with him. He felt sure the earth was round.^[29]

Previous editions of Thomas Bailey's The American Pageant stated that "The superstitious sailors [of Columbus's crew] ... grew increasingly mutinous ... because they were fearful of sailing over the edge of the world"; however, no such historical account is known.^[30]
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A 2009 survey of schoolbooks from Austria and Germany showed that the Flat Earth myth became dominant in the second half of the 20th century and persists in most historical textbooks for German and Austrian schools.^[31]
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As recently as 1983 Daniel Boorstin published a historical survey, The Discoverers, which presented the Flammarion engraving on its cover and proclaimed that "from AD 300 to at least 1300 ... Christian faith and dogma suppressed the useful image of the world that had been so ... scrupulously drawn by ancient geographers."^[32] Boorstin dedicated a chapter to the flat earth, in which he portrayed Cosmas Indicopleustes as the founder of Christian geography.^[33] The flat earth model has often been incorrectly supposed to be church doctrine by those who wish to portray the Catholic Church as being anti-progress or hostile to scientific inquiry. This narrative has been repeated even in academic circles, such as in April 2016, when Boston College theology professor and ex-priest Thomas Groome erroneously stated that "the Catholic Church never said the earth is round, but just stopped saying it was flat."^[34]
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The 1937 popular song They All Laughed contains the couplet "They all laughed at Christopher Columbus/When he said the world was round". In the Warner Bros. Merrie Melodiescartoon Hare We Go (1951) Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand the Catholic quarrel about the shape of the Earth; the king states the Earth is flat. In Walt Disney's 1963 animation The Sword in the Stone, wizard Merlin (who has traveled into the future) explains to a young Arthur that "man will discover in centuries to come" that the Earth is round, and rotates.
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Neil Obstat · « **Reply #283 on:** December 05, 2017, 02:43:57 PM »

Quote

And if you're so hot on quoting Wikipedia (instead of Scripture) why don't you quote Wikipedia for flat-earthism?

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That's why. (see previous post)
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Furthermore, there is this.......... which only gets WORSE for your pet-golden-calf-false-god of flat-earthism:
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Historiography of the flat Earth myth
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Ornamental door (1871) at the US Capitol depicting the Council at Salamanca

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Historical writers have identified a number of historical circuмstances that contributed to the origin and widespread acceptance of the flat-earth myth. American historian Jeffrey Burton Russell traced the nineteenth-century origins of what he called the Flat Error to a group of anticlerical French scholars, particularly to Antoine-Jean Letronne and, indirectly, to his teachers Jean-Baptiste Gail and Edme Mentelle. Mentelle had described the Middle Ages as twelve ignorant centuries of "profound night", a theme exemplified by the flat-earth myth in Letronne's "On the Cosmological Opinions of the Church Fathers".^[35]
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Historian of science Edward Grant saw a fertile ground for the development of the flat-Earth myth in a more general assault upon the Middle Ages and upon scholastic thought, which can be traced back to Francesco Petrarch in the fourteenth century.^[36] Grant sees "one of the most extreme assaults against the Middle Ages" in Draper's History of the Intellectual Development of Europe,^[37] which appeared a decade before Draper presented the flat-Earth myth in his History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science.^[38]
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Andrew Dickson White's motives were more complex. As the first president of Cornell University, he had advocated that it be established without any religious ties but be "an asylum for science". In addition, he was a strong advocate for Darwinism, saw religious figures as the main opponents of the Darwinian evolution, and sought to project that conflict of theology and science back through the entire Christian Era.^[39] But as some historians have pointed out, the nineteenth-century conflict over Darwinism incorporated disputes over the relative authority of professional scientists and clergy in the fields of science and education.^[40] White made this concern manifest in the preface to his History of the Warfare of Science and Theology in Christendom, where he explained the lack of advanced instruction in many American colleges and universities by their "sectarian character".^[41]
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The flat-Earth myth, like other myths, took on artistic form in the many works of art displaying Columbus defending the sphericity of the Earth before the Council of Salamanca. American artists depicted a forceful Columbus challenging the "prejudices, the mingled ignorance and erudition, and the pedantic bigotry" of the churchmen. Abrams sees this image of a Romantic hero, a practical man of business, and a Yankee go-getter as crafted to appeal to nineteenth-century Americans.^[42]
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Russell suggests that the flat-earth error was able to take such deep hold on the modern imagination because of prejudice and presentism. He specifically mentions "the Protestant prejudice against the Middle Ages for Being Catholic ... the Rationalist prejudice against ʝʊdɛօ-Christianity as a whole", and "the assumption of the superiority of 'our' views to those of older cultures".^[43]
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The flat-earth error was able to take such deep hold on the modern imagination because of prejudice and presentism. He specifically mentions "the Protestant prejudice against the Middle Ages for Being Catholic.
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That would make happenby a Protestant. No wonder you don't quote Wikipedia.

Ladislaus · « **Reply #284 on:** December 05, 2017, 02:58:58 PM »

I've looked at the results of the Hungarian (Lake Balaton laser) experiment and it appears to be rather convincing ... unless it was completely hoaxed.

Author Topic: Did Catholics before the "Reformation" believe in FE? (Read 47152 times)

happenby

Re: Did Catholics before the "Reformation" believe in FE?

happenby

Re: Did Catholics before the "Reformation" believe in FE?

Neil Obstat

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happenby

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Neil Obstat

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Neil Obstat

Re: Did Catholics before the "Reformation" believe in FE?

Neil Obstat

Re: Did Catholics before the "Reformation" believe in FE?

happenby

Re: Did Catholics before the "Reformation" believe in FE?

happenby

Re: Did Catholics before the "Reformation" believe in FE?

Neil Obstat

Re: Did Catholics before the "Reformation" believe in FE?

Meg

Re: Did Catholics before the "Reformation" believe in FE?

Neil Obstat

Re: Did Catholics before the "Reformation" believe in FE?

Neil Obstat

Re: Did Catholics before the "Reformation" believe in FE?

Neil Obstat

Re: Did Catholics before the "Reformation" believe in FE?

Ladislaus

Re: Did Catholics before the "Reformation" believe in FE?