Veritas.ucsb.org debunks the secular lie that the Medieval period was a dark age in which Christians believed the earth was flat:
A curious example of this mistreatment of the past for the purpose of slandering Christians is a widespread historical error, an error that the Historical Society of Britain some years back listed as number one in its short compendium of the ten most common historical illusions. It is the notion that people used to believe that the earth was flat–especially medieval Christians.
It must first be reiterated that with extraordinary few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat…….
A few–at least two and at most five–early Christian fathers denied the sphericity of earth by mistakenly taking passages such as Ps. 104:2-3 as geographical rather than metaphorical statements. On the other side tens of thousands of Christian theologians, poets, artists, and scientists took the spherical view throughout the early, medieval, and modern church. The point is that no educated person believed otherwise.Historians of science have been proving this point for at least 70 years (most recently Edward Grant, David Lindberg, Daniel Woodward, and Robert S. Westman), without making notable headway against the error. Schoolchildren in the US, Europe, and Japan are for the most part being taught the same old nonsense. How and why did this nonsense emerge?…………
No one before the 1830s believed that medieval people thought that the earth was flat.
The idea was established, almost contemporaneously, by a Frenchman and an American, between whom I have not been able to establish a connection, though they were both in Paris at the same time. One was Antoine-Jean Letronne (1787-1848), an academic of strong antireligious prejudices who had studied both geography and patristics and who cleverly drew upon both to misrepresent the church fathers and their medieval successors as believing in a flat earth, in his On the Cosmographical Ideas of the Church Fathers (1834). The American was no other than our beloved storyteller Washington Irving (1783-1859), who loved to write historical fiction under the guise of history………..
But now, why did the false accounts of Letronne and Irving become melded and then, as early as the 1860s, begin to be served up in schools and in schoolbooks as the solemn truth?
The answer is that the falsehood about the spherical earth became a colorful and unforgettable part of a larger falsehood: the falsehood of the eternal war between science (good) and religion (bad) throughout Western history. This vast web of falsehood was invented and propagated by the influential historian John Draper (1811-1882) and many prestigious followers, such as Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918), the president of Cornell University, who made sure that the false account was perpetrated in texts, encyclopedias, and even allegedly serious scholarship, down to the present day. A lively current version of the lie can be found in Daniel Boorstin’s The Discoverers, found in any bookshop or library.”
And why did these historians spread propaganda against Christianity?
It was in order to shore up the arguments of Darwinists (with whom Darwin himself would have disagreed) against Christians.
It was to make Christians look stupid and opposed to science.
It was to falsely equate a non-existent “Christian” belief in a flat earth with anti- Darwinism so as to shame educated Christians into subscribing to the dogma of evolution, without fully grasping the import of what they were doing.
It was subversion of religion by stealth.
“What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index to his desires – desires of which he himself is often unconscious.
If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts [or worldview], he will scrutinize it closely, and unless [and at times even when] the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it.
If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance with his instincts [or worldview], he will accept it even on the slenderest evidence.” — Bertrand Russell, Proposed Roads to Freedom, 1919, pg 147
Bertrand Russell, though not my favorite philosopher, or even human being by any means, but one whom I have read considerably since 9th grade, has made an empirical observation. It is virtually a truism. It applies to all human beings. No one who has any iota of the right half brain can claim exemption from it. I have explained that elsewhere and I don’t need to reproduce it here as you are already well versed in that abstraction.
I am often faced with this dilemma captured by Russell in my own examination of reality, both past, and present. But being aware of it most acutely however, I try to compensate for that natural inclination which is present in all human beings.
Why do I bring this up here? I think I can just stop here as it should be obvious.
But for those for whom it isn’t, I would just advance the following observation.
I notice that Christians, like Muslims, Jews, atheists, Hindus, and all other peoples, are just as socialized in their world view as any other peoples.
With the onset of rationality which brought the West out of its Dark Ages, which was, as wel all know without any controversy, controlled almost exclusively by the Church dogmas, normal people experiencing cognitive dissonance on their past history are inclined to behave in one of three ways.
Some deny modernity and its discoveries altogether.
Some, go the other way and deny their past, that they ever were in the Dark Ages.
And some, a much smaller number than the previous two, admit they were wrong and adopt the new understanding without making apologies.
All this is true, factual, and empirical obervation. It is applicable to any strongly held belief, including in matters of science which prides itself on its rationalism, empiricism, and logic. Most scientific discoveries which have totally changed man’s outlook had to fight against the grain and wisdom of thier own colleagues in science. The examples are too numerous to bother mentioning, but since you mentioned Darwinianism, that is an obvious example in point. Still hotly contest even today, and very few, even today, actually fully understand what it is, and what it isn’t, what Darwin actually contributed, what predated him, and what he did not actually state that is attributed to him.
As one can see, that was a case when hard science meets social sciences and strongly held beliefs, making the trifecta all the more harder on the psyche where beliefs, as in this case, rather than empirical evdience and logical analysis, is principally being threatened. We won’t mention global warming for instance, where it is not so much belief, as preconception of what is evidence and what isn’t, all of which itself is cacooned in engineering consent around a diabolical agenda of institutng carbon credit, that well-intentioned scientist cannot agree on the definition of evidence. There is no cognitive dissonance in this case.
Having said all that for those who are unfamiliar with these psychological factors (others I am sure understand it even better than I do and with apologies to them for this simplified exposition), do you really think Lila that this article has any merit other than to sanitize one’s own Dark history to make it appear more palatable to those who share in that ethos?
Thanks
Zahir Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
Hi Zahir,
Quite the contrary. Protestant historians (I am a Protestant by birth) had an axe to grind with the church and a vested interest in portraying the Middle Ages in quite a different way than it was. Are you aware of the Carolingian Renaissance that occurred several centuries before the Renaissance we all know about?
Are you aware of the mathematicians of the Kerala school?
Darwin was no where as certain about the theory of evolution as it is swallowed uncritically today in the social sciences, for reasons that have nothing to do with science.
To say that doesn’t mean that I embrace teaching
“Creation science” or some such thing.
It means that I question histories of civilization with convenient divisions that suit modernist thinking on the subject.
Also, I didn’t sanitize any history. I documented that SECULAR historians themselves do not argue that all Christians believed the earth was flat. I show that that is propaganda taught in the public schools, which is not supported by academic historians.
“I show that that is propaganda taught in the public schools, which is not supported by academic historians.”
Specifically, “not supported by academic historians.” says what?
Virtually all academic historians today, say 9/11 was the work of Muslims…. Find my one Western “academic historian” who is exempt from participating in sanctifying that narrative.
If I cannot believe their crap for something I am witnessed to in my own lifetime, you expect your readers to believe their crap for what they themselves were not witnessed to?
The Western civilization today has an agenda — and that has to do with glorifyng what is called its “judeo-christian” heritage.
Just as from the highest Ivy leagues there is a systematic doctrinal motivatio being seeded to demonize Islam to give doctrinal credence Islamofascism, the reverse of it is going on with why Western civilization is superior, its judeo-christian heritage. Just take a read of Bernard Lewis’s work coming out of Princeton.
On what basis are these Western “academic historians” suddenly the beacon of objectivity, for matters which suit your own socialization bias?
You cannot have it both ways — writeoff these same academics when they come on the sides of issues you don’t agree with, and rush to endorse them on topic which you agree with.
This is the point of quoting Bertrand Russell right at the top of first my comment.
I don’t know, disappointed in your lack of objectivity on this.
It is akin to if, because I am a Muslim, I were attempting to promote the work of those Muslim academic scholars who routinely argue, and most eruditely too, that history of Muslims under the early imperial dynasties wearing the robe of Islam, was the best period of “Islam” because science flourished under their reign.
I am sorry Lila but this is what I see happening here with your comment, and your projecting Christianity’s dark past during the Crusades, as mere propaganda of the early Protestants (and atheists).
For what 0.02 cents that observation may be worth. Ignore it if you don’t agree with it. Only offered in a friendly way.
All the best,
Zahir Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
Hi Zahir,
You are taking things out of context.
You scoffed at the article, arguing that it was some kind of propaganda by the church.
So I showed you that it was produced by trained historians, not by advocates of Christianity.
You then scoffed at academic historians but these historians are revisionist historians.
My whole thesis is that what is being taught in the public schools is anti-religious ideology, some of it originating in canards promoted by Protestant historians.
The point is not whether facts are produced by academics, amateurs, establishment theorists or revisionists, Catholics or Protestants. The point is, are they accurate?
Point two.
Where am I claiming that the Middle Ages was the best period?
I simply said that the Middle Ages were not as “dark” as people claim.
Google the Carolingian Renaissance, if you want more.
Why is atheism or bias against religion, assumed to be the default position of scientists, when history shows that great scientists have been as often believers as not?
Show me when and where belief in a flat earth was distinctively Christian, extensively or universally held, and abandoned only with the onset of modernity under pressure from the secular world?
As for my motives, you should know from my blog that I publish articles from every conceivable view point, some that support the traditional church, some that don’t.
In any case, please send me objective scholarly sources disproving what I have written…
Also,
If you Google my blog, you will see that my position is that the development of science was not a result of the Enlightenment, but from contact with non-Western civilizations. The Christian priests were in touch with Arab, Jewish, Central Asian (Buddhist) and Hindu science and antiquities and learned from them.
Lila,
Interesting post. I already knew the Bible itself does not portray a literally flat earth but I was not aware of the beliefs among medieval “Christendom” in general.
I’m uneasy with your blaming “Protestant historians” solely. There are/have been no atheist/secular humanists or Jews, or liberal Romanists (like Jesuits) involved in writing medieval history? It’s a Protestant monopoly? Very doubtful.
Actually, I wonder where real Protestantism has gone. It seems to be an endangered species. Mushy ecumenism has been the fashion for quite some time among the old-line (“mainline”)denominations, and much of the evangelical movement that has replaced them numerically is silent or unclear about the huge epistemological, theological, and ecclesiological distinctions between Christianity and Romanism.
I also noted that you oppose “protestant historians” to “the church.” surely you don’t mean to equate a single politically organized state entity headquartered in Rome –which forged its claims to universal authority in the blood of the innocent — with “the church.” Even Malachi Martin drew a distinction between the living Body of Christ and the organizational machinery. (Difference is, he believed the machine *once* roughly traced the outlines of the actual Body, while to me it is evident that that has never been the case.)
@Jaylib
No.Of course, I don’t blame Protestants entirely. And of course there are Jews, atheists, etc. rewriting history just as well.
I don’t equate the Catholic church with the church or with the organizational hierarchy.
I simply used the term church as short-hand in the context with which I was dealing.
Chill…
Ok, I see your later comment where you qualify that “some of it” was from Protestants. Fair enough, I guess, except that deist/humanist/mason types would barely qualify as Protestant in my book.
I don’t know enough to go further with that.
I think my neighbors next door and around the corner are from Kerala, BTW, and they are Protestants.
@Jaylib
I’m Protestant. I absolutely will say whatever I like about them, being one of them.
No PC. Protestant. I even dislike the word.