At 10:22 AM 2/29/00 -0700, dfsiemensjr@juno.com wrote:
>However, Augustine wrote of the Antipodeans, so there must have been some
>theory in the fourth century that men were widely dispersed. Augustine
>thought their existence erroneous because they would fall off. After all,
>_everybody_ knows you can stand on the floor but not on the ceiling.
This is true that Augustine believed in the sphericity of the earth. He
also didn't beleive that anyone could live there. The entire issue
revolved, as I understand it, around the statement that the Gospell had
gone into all the world in Acts. Yet they knew it hadn't gone to the
antipodes. THus the logical conclusion was that no one was there at the
antipodes. I know this isn't a popular source today but White writes:
"To all of them this idea seemed dangerous; to most of them it seemed
damnable. St. Basil and St. Ambrose were tolerant enough to allow that a
man might be saved who thought the earth inhabited on its opposite sides;
but the great majority of the fathers doubted the possibility of salvation
to such misbelievers.
"The great champion of the orthodox view was St. Augustine. Though he
seemed inclined to yield a little in regard to the sphericity of the earth,
he fought the idea that men exist on the other side of it saying that
'Scripture speaks of no such descendants of Adam.' He insists that men
could not be allowed by the almighty to live there, since if they did they
could not see Christ at his second coming descending through the air. But
his most cogent appeal, one which we find echoed from theologian to
theologian during a thousand years afterward, is to the nineteenth Psalm,
and to its confirmation in the Epistle to the Romans; to the words, 'Their
line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the
world.' He dwells with great force on the fact that St. Paul based one of
his most powerful arguments upon his declaration regarding the preachers of
the gospel, and that he declared even more explicitly that 'Verily, their
sound went into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.'
Thenceforth we find it constantly declared that, as those preachers did not
go to the antipodes, no antipodes can exist; and hence that the supporters
of this geographical doctrine 'give the lie direct to King David and to St.
Paul, and therefore to the Holy Ghost.' Thus the great Bishop of Hippo
taught the whole world for over a thousand years that, as there was no
preaching the gospel on the opposite side of the earth, there could be no
human beings there." ~ Andrew D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science
with Theology in Christendom,1, (New York: George Braziller, 1955), p.103-104
**
"But in 1519 science gains a crushing victory. Magellan makes his famous
voyage. He proves the earth to be round, for his expedition
circumnavigates it; he proves the doctrine of the antipodes, for his
shipmates see the peoples of the antipodes. Yet even this does not end the
war. Many conscientious men oppose the doctrine two hundred years longer.
Then the French astronomers make their measurements of degrees in
equatorial and polar regions, and add to their proofs that of the
lengthened pendulum. When this was done when the deductions of science
were seen to be established by the simple test of measurement, beautifully
and perfectly, and when a long line of trustworthy explorers, including
devoted missionaries, had sent home accounts of the antipodes, then and
then only, this war of twelve centuries ended." ~ Andrew D. White, A
History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, 1,(New
York: George Braziller, 1955), p.109
I got into the theology of Cosmas, a 4th century monk who believed that the
earth was flat, that the sun was small and revolved around a mountain to
the north and that there were NO antipodes. You can learn some about him at :
http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/EMwebpages/202mono.html
Manchester writes:
"During the Dark Ages literal interpretation of the Bible had led the
Church to endorse the absurd geographical dicta of Topographia Christiana,
a treatise by the sixth-century monk Cosmas. Cosmas, who had traveled to
India and should have known better, held that the world was a flat,
rectangular plane, surmounted by the sky, above which was heaven. Jerusalem
was at the center of the rectangle, and nearby lay the Garden of Eden,
irrigated by the four Rivers of Paradise. The sun, much smaller than the
earth, revolved around a conical mountain to the north. The monk's
arguments were fragile, and not everyone accepted them - the Venerable
Bede, among others insisted that the earth was round - but Cosmas scorned
them. Rome agreeing with him, rejected their protests as an affront to
common sense.
"This patristic dismissal of so elementary a fact was a sign of how deeply
the wisdom of the ancient world had been buried. More than three hundred
years before the birth of Christ, Aristotle had determined that the planet
must be a sphere; after an eclipse he pointed out that only an orb could
throw a circular shadow on the moon. The existence of India and Spain was
known in Athens. However, few other geographical or scientific facts were
available to Aristotle, and this led him into error. Holding that land was
heavier than water, and that the masses of each must balance. he inferred
that the distance between the Iberian Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent
could not be great, and that, consequently, there was no land between them
- that is, no North or South America. Therein lay the origin of Columbus's
error, which others would challenge and which Magellan, ultimately, would
discredit." ~ William Manchester, A World Lit Only By Fire: The Medieval
Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age, (Boston: Little, Brown & Co.,
1992), p. 230
Now, before Ted Davis comes after me again, I know that Cosmas was a
minority view. But he did hold some sway among the illiterates, kinda like
Henry Morris today.
I also got a copy of his book translated in the 1800s. It was fascinating.
It is J. W. McCrindle, The Christian Topography of Cosmas, An Egyptian
Monk, Hakluyt Society SEries 1 vol 98, 1897.
It is a great study in how faith can affect ones scientific view.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
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