Hello
Does anybody know? Why did the Church believe in geocentrism? Gordiano Bruno was killed by the Church, so geocentrism must have been important to the Church. Why were they so insistent about that?
Lots of quotes in the bible that if taken completely literally imply geocentrism and flat earth.
check this out
Aristotle proved that God exists. Aristotle was the standard for science until the Renaissance. Aristotle placed the Earth at the center of the universe.
Also, Ptolemy had produced the authoritative text on astronomy and he used a geocentric model.
The Abramic religions require that Man be special. Secular Humanism implies it, but betrays it at the same time.
Massive fail for everyone here, a perpetuation of a agnostic superstition.
Only a small handful believed the earth was the center, it in fact is a backwards heresy, as Christianity believed that God existed prior to, is greater than, and created the universe, that the universe is finite, and though created and controlled by God, is not God persay. The Sum of the Parts of the universe do not = the whole, which ultimately is God.
It was a view contended by a science oriented minority however, who undertook to overthrow scientific opinion, which the majority of church fathers accepted, as inherited pagan superstition.
One bold thinker, the monk Cosmos Indicopleustes, in the 6th century, set out to prove them all. Having long been ostracized from the Catholic-Apostolic-Orthodox faith for holding to earlier heresies, he removed himself from the Roman lands to Ethiopia just prior to the advent of Islam, and got it in his head to prove scientifically that the earth was not Round, but flat… and set out on a aquatic journey of discovery that is only rivaled by Darwin. He recorded and drew countless exotic animals to great scientific detail, and applied geometric analysis of the stars on his journey to India, proving conclusively the earth is flat, and the sky is shaped like the inside of a chinese takeout flip-box.
That’s fucking science.
Anyway… people continued on… civilizations rose and fell, and libraries decayed and renewed, only to decay a few more times again. Still, the majority of the learned men knew this to be false, not knowing or imagining a future idiocracy of fattie armchair philosophers with little knowledge of their era, holding all eras in history, and all societies or groups other than their narrow minded stupid clique in the early 21st century, would pronounce otherwise… for they were too busy laughing along at the galactic battles occurring between the armies of the Sun and the Moon and Miliky Way in Lucian’s “True Histories” to ever ponder such absurd, remote possibilities such as this forum.
But as I said, all things decay, and as the educated grow in population, magnitude and scope of education doesn’t necessarily carry to the new masses, and the new intellectuals carry their superstitions with them.
Science is attempted by more men, but its bar is inevitably lowered in ambition and detail, due to a general lack of awareness. Great awakenings tend always to the Common Dumbest Denominator, as evidence most of the posts on this site…
The high muddle ages produced some of the greatest and most modern thinkers we produced to this day, but it also produced some of the dumbest headaches as well, running loose half-cocked with a handful of assorted facts that rarely fit together as a coherent whole. The closer to the renaissance we got, the dumber the got, mixing concepts like institutionalized roving courts and juries (a good idea) with mutilations, forced drownings, and burnings not merely as punishments, but also as a means to assert guilt… despite centuries previous bishops united against such ideas as assine and barbaric.
But such practices continued, intellectualized without loosing malice or short-sightedness, becomming the inquisitions, and evolving further into our wonderful legal systems today.
Part of the emphasis in astronomy lied in what classical manuscripts survived in which libraries. Also of influence was Alexandrian Astrology, which many educated mathematicians knew. It was simpler to calculate and go off received tradition from remote antiquity, especially when nothing benefits or encourages you to change opinion… just like it wouldnt occur to most of you to challenge the idea of gravity, or evolution, or pulmonary blood-flow, or multiplication. Just seems logical… figuring out what to eat and who to fuck is the challenge.
It took nothing less than a schism between the eastern Orthodox Church… that had the eastern roman works and educated monks leading education, and the western catholic church, with its tired, insulated, not too challenging university system, to cause in the western half this March towards widespread stupidity and ignorance. Yes, there have been some high tides in the west… like when the Byzantine east gave the west its books, sparking a renaissance, but lets be honest, its not getting any smarter… in fact, if anything, everyone is getting dumber.
Whatever happened to the inheritors of those dumb stupid peasants of the middle ages Cosmas lead the charge for? They watch TED lectures and then stare at the wall, unwilling to think for themselves, making a occasional post on a philosophy forum about how stupid ancient christians were, blaming the bible, and not modern prejudices.
Just accept you are the culmination point of the dumbest forces of history, and stop blaming others, be it people or eras, for the stupid that flows through you. Stupidity isnt something perceived, its a known abstraction who’s identification is known through recognition within the self. They are only as stupid as you are, no more, no less… as they are merely a projection of yourself on your own problems, rephrased as history. Focus on the smart things they did, and you will do the world a favor.
By far, what “The Church” insists on, is uniformity in fundamentals. They don’t care as much about what is believed concerning these types of things as much as setting a standard so that contention is reduced. For example, no one cares how long a “meter” “really is” as long as everyone agrees. Thus comes “heresy”.
Btw, both Aristotle’s cosmological argument and Aquinas’ 5 proofs are presumptuous and thus “not necessarily true”. Both include unproven (and even false) premises.