It is not true that the church used to teach a flat earth

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Contents 1 Claim 2 Source 3 Responses 4 Fallacies contained in this claim 5 External Links 6 References 7 Related claims 8 See Also 9 Acknowledgments

Claim

It is not true that the church used to teach that the Earth was flat. Only two Christian theologians (Lactantius and Cosmas Indicopleustes) taught it, and they were largely ignored and uninfluential. The flat earth myth is a product of Darwinism meant to make it look like religion was the enemy of science when it was not so.

Source

• Wells, Jonathan, 1999 (Oct. 20). "Evolution: Teaching the Controversy", debate at Burlington-Edison High School, sponsored by Skagit Parents for Scientific Truth in Education.

Responses

1. Greek geographers had indeed realised that the earth was spherical by the 5th century BCE, and the cultures dependent on Greek science (Roman, medieval Christianity, Islam) followed them. The medieval flat-earthers were a minority, but not as tiny a minority as Wells wants you to believe. Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Methodius, Theodore of Mopsuestia, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, Ephraim Syrus, Athanasius of Alexandria, Diodorus of Tarsus, Epiphanius of Salamis, Hilary of Poitiers, and Severianus of Gabala are other theologians with the same leanings.
2. The idea that medieval Europeans believed that the earth was flat originated in the mid-19th century. So this part of the claim is true. But the historian Jeffrey Burton Russell claims, as Wells does, that this was an intentional conspiracy, which goes not only beyond the evidence but also beyond credibility. For example, Russell's main villains, Antoine-Jean Letronne and Washington Irving, both died before Darwinism even existed.
3. Making religion appear as an enemy of science was not necessary for Darwinism. Galileo Galilei and creationism are enough to demonstrate that religion can be an enemy, at least of some scientific findings it does not like.
4. There are flat-earth advocates even to this day, often with religious justification[1] for their theory, suggesting some causal link between past religious interpretations and today.
5. This is a red herring - the fact that the church did or did not have negative views on scientific theories is irrelevant to the topic of evolution.

Fallacies contained in this claim

• Red Herring (irrelevant to whether evolution is true)

External Links

• Mark Isaak's page for this claim [2]
• Ethical Atheist, 2001, The Flat Earth: A Detailed Study of Personal Bias and Historical Thinking. [3]
• Jeffrey Burton Russell summary [4]

References

1. Schadewald, Robert, 1999 (Oct. 24, 16:15). "Re: Wells speech at Burlington Edison High School", USENET post to talk.origins, Message-Id <3.0.1.32.19991024161523.01174958@gold.tc.umn.edu>.
2. Jeffrey Burton Russell, 1991. The Myth of the Flat Earth, New York: Praeger.

Related claims

• Pope's statement about evolution was mistranslated
• The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built

See Also

• Why is Creationism not a Scientific Theory?

Acknowledgments