Glenn quotes:
<< "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 >>
This brings us back to Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus & Modern Historians
(ISBN 027595904X), by history professor Jeffrey Burton Russell, which is
where I got the idea that in the time of Columbus people still did not expect
humans to exist on the other side of the ocean. I finally found the quote:
A commission of lay and clerical advisors was appointed by the King and Queen
to decide if a westward passage was practical. they reported in 1490.
"Relying on Ptolemy and Augustine, they argued that the sea was too wide; the
curvature of the planet would prohibit return from the other side of the
world; there could not be inhabitants on the other side because they would
not be descended from Adam;only three of the traditional five climatic zones
were inhabitable; [and the reason I like the best] God would not have allowed
Christians to remain ignorant of unknown lands so long."
Russel points out that no one questioned the sphericity of the earth; only
that if you sailed too far down the curve, you might not be able to sail back
up again. This and the rest of the book makes the paragraph above from White
into a half-truth at best, albeit, the antipodes are another story. Russell
does discuss White and others who promulgated the myth that Christians
believed in a flat earth: only a very small minority did.
It is only to be added that although Russel clearly shows that the Church for
the most part believed in a spherical earth, he makes no attempt to give
evidence to show that the OT did not assume the earth is flat.
Paul S.
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