What do invented saints tell us about Christianity?

[Jehanne]

The link is here for those who wish to read it for themselves:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth

And, here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_cosmology

[Belacqua]

The link is here for those who wish to read it for themselves:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth

And, here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_cosmology

Plato says the earth is a sphere. 

Apparently the idea began to catch on especially in the 4th century BC. After that it was the majority view, although there was a minority of holdouts. 

To say "early Christians believed in a flat earth" would be misleading, because some did, but many didn't. It would be equally correct to say "modern Americans believe in a flat earth," because some small percentage do. A blanket statement that excludes so many is misleading at best. 

The topic came up on this thread because "Aron Ra" states categorically that Augustine believed in a flat earth. There are only two places in Augustine's work where he addresses the idea; the first time he says he's not sure and we should believe whatever the experts prove -- it won't affect Christianity. The second time he seems to accept that it's been demonstrated, but since he's not writing a geography book he doesn't address it much. 

The point is that "Aron Ra" is wrong. And the view that a flat earth was the mainstream belief until Columbus is false.

[Jehanne]

The link is here for those who wish to read it for themselves:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth

And, here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_cosmology

Plato says the earth is a sphere. 

Apparently the idea began to catch on especially in the 4th century BC. After that it was the majority view, although there was a minority of holdouts. 

To say "early Christians believed in a flat earth" would be misleading, because some did, but many didn't. It would be equally correct to say "modern Americans believe in a flat earth," because some small percentage do. A blanket statement that excludes so many is misleading at best. 

The topic came up on this thread because "Aron Ra" states categorically that Augustine believed in a flat earth. There are only two places in Augustine's work where he addresses the idea; the first time he says he's not sure and we should believe whatever the experts prove -- it won't affect Christianity. The second time he seems to accept that it's been demonstrated, but since he's not writing a geography book he doesn't address it much. 

The point is that "Aron Ra" is wrong. And the view that a flat earth was the mainstream belief until Columbus is false.

Clearly, the author of Revelation (7:1) believed in a flat Earth, as did the author of Matthew. Likewise, Saint
Irenaeus, a second century Christian bishop, justified the four Gospels as being due to the "four corners of the World", and so, the idea was certainly present in Christian belief.

[The Grand Nudger]

To say that something plato thought was the "majority view" makes about as much sense as saying that since francis crick doesn't have an issue with biology, that's the majority view of christendom.

Most of christendom (and everyone else) then, like most of christendom today, continued to believe in the traditional..and very wrong..things in their magic books. Those things were the cultural inheritance of pagan influences in proto christianity (a category that plato and his thoughts also belonged to), which surrounded them on all sides, as well as coming from within. Even within the very, very limited field of proto christian academia, we have no end of examples of the shamans in charge of important groups arguing for, and yes..being argued against, on the subject of a flat earth.

There is seemingly no end to the excuses you will make for other peoples superstitions, and their history.

---

Continuing further, for the non apologists - the earliest positions on a spherical earth weren't actually all that enlightened or based on clear thinking either. Many were derived arbitrarily from some other set of myths or ideals, and even the people who held them had trouble understanding how it was that the earth could be round - how there could be people opposite and under, or why the water "above" didn't drain away and "down" to that other side, or completely away.

They resorted, in nearly every case, to god-magic as an explanation for all of this. It's understandable, given their place in time and lack of fundamental knowledge required to comprehend those ideas we find so simple and self evident today that we teach them to five year olds. As sagan put it, the simplest idea, like the concept of the number one, has an elaborate logical underpinning. They simply did not possess those intermediate steps between what could be seen, and the counter-intuitive reality it described. Most got it right by accident, which isn't exactly getting it right at all.

If we wanmt to point to someone who made the case well, it would be Eratosthenes, not Plato. He had heard of a place where a stick cast no shadow at specific times. Having a good idea of the distance between alexandria and that well based on others work in the field over centuries...he then commissioned an expedition to see if that was just a rumor, and, when it wasn't, they literally walked out the distance just to check it. Using that distance and the difference between the shadows angles, he was able to make a very accurate calculation as to the circumference of the earth, and he concluded that those effects simply would not be possible if the earth were any other shape.

He was also a xenophobic bigot who thought that superior greek blood should be kept pure from that of the barbaric unter-mensch. That last bit is fun, since...as a highly valued historical figure, he often gets credited for holding the opposite position simply because he had an argument with how aristotle formulated that same position. Modernizing his position to fit what we would expect of a vry smrt prsn. Exactly the same thing we do when we hear that some fucking nutter believed that the earth was round, as if it must be based on their greater intelligence and the value of their positions, or the community to which they belonged. Plato, for example, offered no justification. He just mentioned that some people believed that it was, ipse dixit, and this was likely not based on anything other than homers flat disc...with the added concepts of the stars in their dome above, the underworlds dome below....and how "perfect" such a form would be. A common mythological cosmology for the region.

[Jehanne]

Plato argued passionately, also, that the Earth was the center of the universe and that all the planets and Sun must go around the Earth in perfect circles. That idea went unchallenged for over 2000 years, even though the ellipse was universally known.

[The Grand Nudger]

Owing in part, no less, to people who had a strong tendency to remark "well, plato said.....", in so many other words.

---

I think that what alot of the religious and their aligned apologists fail to realize is that the issue is not so much that any given group of superstitious nutters was more or less superstitious than any other, but that religions, as social institutions, are necessarily conservative -as- institutions. While the base line for idiocy in any religion is roughly equal, if and when a chance to progress arises, a body whose power is largely determined by adherence and deference to tradition will reject, diminish, or eliminate those bits of progress if feels threeatened by...even when it knows those things are true, or very likely so.

That christian academia was well aware of the earths shape even when others were most emphatically not is not a defense, in this. It's an even stronger condemnation. "Yes, yes yes yes, we know..but you have to stop saying that, or else the people we're farming like so many heads of cattle might start to ask other questions!"

It's only after the fact, when rejection and systematic deception have utterly failed, that they re-imagine themselves, and attempt to rewrite their own histories, as having been the rare champions of that truth in the past. They're pretty successful in this, the new truth becoming a part of the new tradition, the next social institution to reject, diminish, eliminate, and gaslight it's adherents and those who arise from the culture they dominate.

[Fireball]

Yup, Seneca pointed it out millennia ago- "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."

Apologists would have you believe that the RCC supported the growth of say, mathematics. In the sense that the pope bamboozled people with prediction of an eclipse, mathematics was supported. For church use only. When the cat got out of the bag, as always happens, then the claims shifted.

[The Grand Nudger]

It doesn't even take a concrete body like the RCC for that relationship to manifest itself. You can predict, with incredible accuracy, lunar cycles and eclipses (and do a range of other useful agrarian math) using the ridges and valleys of the knuckles on your hand as a combined siting device and slide rule.

This was leveraged to great effect in the pre-columbian americas to justify the position of priests, shamans, and witchdoctors who didn't really have a central authority, outside of notable meso and s american empires.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

To say that something plato thought was the "majority view" makes about as much sense as saying that since francis crick doesn't have an issue with biology, that's the majority view of christendom.

This is spot on.  Simply because a philosopher who - let's admit it, lives a somewhat rarified life - holds a particular viewpoint doesn't mean that rank-and-file peasants are going to hold that same view point.  And it's worth mentioning here that Plato doesn't appear anywhere in the New Testament.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

We desperately want there to be some unbroken line of intelligence and decency - as judged by our sensibilities, from the past to the present. That the royal we are inheritors of that tradition...but there just isn't and we just aren't.