[b-hebrew] repost of full question
Dirk Frulla
fiveacorns at yahoo.com
Tue Apr 22 23:01:58 EDT 2008
> There is evidence the earth is flat, and that is why people believed it to
> be flat
> for many years; but there is now more and better evidence to say it is
> round. Nothing wrong with being dogmatic about that.
This is a bad example. Ptolomy, if I remember correctly, about 50 BC
measured the circumference of the earth, and was not far off. Furthermore,
he stated that the earth is but a speck in reference to the vastness of
space. His works were an important part of medieval scholasticism, therefore
were widely known. There are earlier references to earth being a sphere as
well.
DF:
If you are interested (want to laugh a bit) check out this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth_society
These are people who still seem to think the earth is flat. According to them, the earth is a flat disk accelerating upwards at 9.80 m/s^2 - which is why we have "gravity". They have explanations for lunar eclipses, the motion of the stars, and even why a ship will disappear over the horizon when sailing away. All the answers are far-fetched.... or maybe not ... since we can't be 100% sure about anything. :)
The point is that we can say that all these dates are not provable 100% - which is a fair statement, I'm not disagreeing with it - but at what point do we start to favor one viewpoint over another? And at what point do we abandon the current viewpoint (or at least patch it up a bit to fit all of the evidence)?
Thanks!
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