Really? How did sailing from Europe to the Caribbean and back to Europe prove that the world was spherical? It didn’t. Finally, according to the story, Columbus managed to complete a voyage to the New World, and when he returned to Europe, people realized that Columbus was right-the world was round and not flat. Supposedly, Columbus had to argue against strong objections coming from those who thought that the earth was flat to get support for his expedition. According to the story, Columbus was one of the few people who thought the earth was spherical, and he understood that on a spherical earth one could sail westward from Europe to reach India and China. Most people today persist in the belief that at the time of Columbus, nearly everyone thought that the earth was flat. The promoters of the conflict thesis also retold the story of Christopher Columbus. Hence, the conflict thesis reinterpreted the Galileo affair into something that it was not. 2 That is, the Galileo affair was a battle between two scientific theories-geocentrism and heliocentrism-with the Bible playing a very minor role. However, the historical record demonstrates that it was the teachings of Aristotle and Ptolemy that played the major role in that conflict.
According to the conflict thesis, it was the alleged geocentric teaching of the Bible that caused the Roman Catholic Church to oppose Galileo. It is true that four centuries ago the Roman Catholic Church opposed Galileo’s teaching of the heliocentric theory. The contention of the conflict thesis was that medieval Europe was gripped with superstition (Christianity) that prevented intellectual advancement, and it was only after man’s reason reasserted itself during the Renaissance that man slowly became unshackled from religious dogma, bringing about the Enlightenment. The conflict thesis holds that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, held back progress. This misconception is easily traced to the writings of two late nineteenth-century skeptics, John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, who invented the conflict thesis. Given the clear record of history, why is it so commonly believed today that most people, and especially the church, thought that the earth was flat? Given the clear record of history, why is it so commonly believed today that most people, and especially the church, thought that the earth was flat? The works of Aristotle, Eratosthenes, and Ptolemy were all widely available and discussed in the late medieval period, and continued to be through the transition to the Renaissance. While this model was geocentric, it did not promote a flat earth, but instead was based upon a spherical earth. Claudius Ptolemy’s Almagest, from the early second century AD, provided a useful model for calculating the positions of heavenly bodies.
In the early second century BC, Eratosthenes accurately measured the circumference of the spherical earth. Writing in the fourth century BC, Aristotle clearly taught that the earth was spherical. Thomas Aquinas introduced Aristotelian thought into medieval church teaching. But before doing so, I must respond to two false assumptions mentioned above-that the church historically taught that the earth is flat and that this changed 500 years ago.Īs the medieval scholar Geoffrey Burton Russell ably demonstrated, 1 contrary to common misconception, the medieval church did not teach that the earth was flat. In this article, I will examine many of the biblical passages that supposedly teach that the earth is flat, and I will show that in fact they do not.
Unfortunately, many Christians have fallen prey to this, misled into believing that the Bible teaches the earth is flat and that, until five centuries ago, the church likewise taught that the earth is flat. As I have previously discussed, belief that the earth is flat has rapidly grown of late, largely through dissemination via countless Internet sites and the influence of social media.