On 2/17/14, 6:30 PM, Tim wrote:
On Monday, February 17, 2014 5:22:16 PM UTC-6, F*O*A*D wrote:


The point, which seems lost here, is that the belief that the sun

revolves around the earth is an ancient religious belief that was

carried forward by more modern religions, and that the people who still

believe it do so out of ignorance and religious belief and superstition.

And what is superstition if not the belief in supernatural causes or in

trying to explain the natural world in religious terms, such as taking

literally "biblical" history that claims to indicate the age of this

planet.

How ancient do you want to claim, Harry? The Chinese didn't believe it, neither did the Ancient Egyptians, Jews, Romans, Greeks or Assyrians?

You're making a claim of 'thousands of years of religious ignorance" thought this, not them...


The ancient Greeks certainly believed in geocentrism. Ptolemy, Plato and
Aristotle believed in it. So did the Muslim astronomers who came later.

Here's an interesting quote from Wiki:

The Ptolemaic model of the solar system held sway into the early modern
age; from the late 16th century onward it was gradually replaced as the
consensus description by the heliocentric model. Geocentrism as a
separate religious belief, however, never completely died out. In the
United States between 1870 and 1920, for example, various members of the
Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod published articles disparaging
Copernican astronomy, and geocentrism was widely taught within the synod
during that period.[37] However, in the 1902 Theological Quarterly, A.
L. Graebner claimed that the synod had no doctrinal position on
geocentrism, heliocentrism, or any scientific model, unless it were to
contradict Scripture. He stated that any possible declarations of
geocentrists within the synod did not set the position of the church
body as a whole.[38][not in citation given]

Articles arguing that geocentrism was the biblical perspective appeared
in some early creation science newsletters associated with the Creation
Research Society pointing to some passages in the Bible, which, when
taken literally, indicate that the daily apparent motions of the Sun and
the Moon are due to their actual motions around the Earth rather than
due to the rotation of the Earth about its axis for example, Joshua
10:12 where the Sun and Moon are said to stop in the sky, and Psalms
93:1 where the world is described as immobile.[39] Contemporary
advocates for such religious beliefs include Robert Sungenis (president
of Bellarmine Theological Forum and author of the 2006 book Galileo Was
Wrong).[40] These people subscribe to the view that a plain reading of
the Bible contains an accurate account of the manner in which the
universe was created and requires a geocentric worldview. Most
contemporary creationist organizations reject such perspectives.[n 12]

After all, Copernicanism was the first major victory of science
over religion, so it's inevitable that some folks would think that
everything that's wrong with the world began there. (Steven Dutch of the
University of Wisconsin–Madison [42]

Morris Berman quotes survey results that show currently some 20% of the
U.S. population believe that the sun goes around the Earth
(geocentricism) rather than the Earth goes around the sun
(heliocentricism), while a further 9% claimed not to know.[43] Polls
conducted by Gallup in the 1990s found that 16% of Germans, 18% of
Americans and 19% of Britons hold that the Sun revolves around the
Earth.[44] A study conducted in 2005 by Jon D. Miller of Northwestern
University, an expert in the public understanding of science and
technology,[45] found that about 20%, or one in five, of American adults
believe that the Sun orbits the Earth.[46] According to 2011 VTSIOM
poll, 32% of Russians believe that the Sun orbits the Earth.[47]

As I stated, geocentrism is part of religious beliefs.