As the story goes, people living in the “Dark Ages” were so ignorant (or so deceived by Catholic priests) that they believed the earth was flat.īut the reality is more complex than either of these stories. the question of the shape of the earth was finally settled by three sailors, Columbus, Da Gama, and above all, by Ferdinand Magellan.- John William Draper, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874)ĭid people in the Middle Ages think that the world was flat? Certainly the writers quoted above would make us think so. The authority of the Fathers, and the prevailing belief that the Scriptures contain the sum of all knowledge, discouraged any investigation of Nature. Boise Penrose, Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance (1955)
Strict Biblical interpretations plus unbending patristic bigotry resulted in the theory of a flat earth with Jerusalem in its center, and the Garden of Eden somewhere up country, from which flowed the four Rivers of Paradise.
MYTH With the decline of Rome and the advent of the Dark Ages, geography as a science went into hibernation, from which the early Church did little to rouse it.
Supplementary Reading for the Earlier Posts: Is there a War between Science and Religion? – Science and Christianity: Part 1 How the Myth of Warfare between Science and Christianity Began in Victorian England
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