Quote:
Originally posted by Kitsune
Slartibartfast -- awesome link. This guy may be on to something.
WHAT IF - the Bible teaches a stationary earth (just like everyone agreed it did until Copernican and finally Newtonian "mathematics" scared the churches into thinking that "science" had proof of heliocentricity)?
Oh, yeah, I bet that is exactly how it happened. Copernicus scared the church into thinking the sun was the center of the solar system and Galileo disavowed his beliefs just for the hell of it.
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Copernicus, conveniently, presented heliocentrism as a hypothetical logic fantasy, and published his ideas just before he died (so that he wouldn't have to deal with the backlash.
The Bible does teach a stationary Earth, because the Bible was based on a physical model of the Universe in which the Earth was stationary. The heliocentric model
invalidated their understanding of the Universe -- and the Church suppressed it because they feared that it might invalidate the Bible as well.
The Biblical Universe also neatly explained that feeling of wonder as you gaze upon a cloudless starry night. According to the Bible's model of the Universe, the Universe could be neatly represented as a series of concentric spheres*, with each planet on it's own orbit, and where the outermost concentric sphere is a sort of celestial curtain dividing Heaven from our Universe. The Stars were little pinpricks in the curtain through which the Light of Heaven shone.
The Star of Bethlehem was the opening in Heaven through which Jesus came to Earth.
They knew of gravity, which pulled everything toward the center of the Universe. Until Newton, one problem that people had with the heliocentric model was: 'if the Earth is rotating and spinning around the Sun at great velocities, why haven't we all been flung off?'.
*Before they recognized the Earth as round, it could have just been a series of bars.
[Edit: Jesus addendum