The Medieval Flat Earth Myth
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- Опубліковано 27 сер 2024
- Despite it having been repeatedly debunked by historians, some atheist activists continue to peddle the myth that the Medieval Church taught the earth was flat. But how did this myth arise and what did medieval people really know about the shape of the earth?
See also:
historyforathe...
historyforathe...
And my detailed critique of the claims of "Aron Ra":
historyforathe...
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My school teaches us myths like that the Medieval church taught flat earth, the church suppressed all kinds of science and that the Renaissance and the enlightenment destroyed religion, I'm glad that I discovered your work
It does seem that one of the reasons that the Columbus story was invented was it gave the US a foundation story with a hero who was at odds with the Catholic Church. The story arose at a time of a lot of anti-Catholic sentiment in the US.
Is there intelligent life in the southern hemisphere? I guess that was Augustine's equivalent to current questions about intelligent life on other planets.
Pretty much.
Many thinkers in Antiquity believed there was a landmass in the Southern hemisphere equivalent to The Oecumene (Euro - Asio - Africa) in The Northern.
It was not then known that Africa stretched across The Equator.
I believe Dante Alighieri also portrays the Earth as a sphere in the Divine Comedy.
He does. Complete with a scene where gravity reverses as he and Virgil pass through the earth's centre.
@@boereherp8705 Copernicus and Galileo were proving that we live in heliocentric system, not that Earth is a globe... Educate yourself before writing stupid comments
@@boereherp8705 Please stop embarrassing yourself man, Magellan sailed around the globe before Copernicus wrote about helicentric system. Why am I even arguing with you, go to wikipedia and first read about Magellan, then about Copernicus & Galileo. Then come back here and delete your comments because its not good that someone stumble upon them.
@@Saiko586 He is trolling mate
@Jason Push Yes, absolutely. I'm italian and I've read the entire Divina Commedia in the original language. In the Purgatorio, Dante often uses long periphrasis to indicate the hour, in which the spherical shape of the world is implicitly or explicity stated. But he thought its size to be smaller than the real one tho
Wait, so you're saying Neil Degrasse Tyson the space doctor and Agent K from Men In Black got it wrong? :/
Well nobody can be 100% right. This also includes Tim O'Niel. I believe understand something after being told why when evidence is presented is more important as a skill than getting it right the first time.
@@basilofgoodwishes4138 Huh?
@@basilofgoodwishes4138 Regardless, I hold scientists to a standard. Before I state something as absolute truth I should actually see if my assumption is correct. DeGrasse Tyson comes off as an aloof if bright, asshole.
Thanks. Though I’m a bit confused by the lack of volume and spittle on the camera lens and the deficit of condescending remarks about religion or someone else’s beliefs. It’s refreshing and civilized. You’ve made me think and do a ton of research. For this, thanks.
I’m appalled, since I was certain you were wrong, but you were right about the flat earth “stories”. Please continue.
Great channel, just started watching the vids.
Around 7:15: "the idea that the bible should only and always be read literally is actually a very modern and largely protestant affair"
This was roughly my understanding (apart from the largely protestant angle), but whenever I bring up the idea, whether I'm talking to angry atheists, or Christians, most of the time I get told that I am talking nonsense and am completely wrong, and of course Christians have always believed that most or all of the Bible should be understood literally. Do you have any pointers to more information on this claim?
[EDIT: this was a dumb question, you have a major section on exactly this subject on your website, thanks!]
Brilliant. Thank you for this. Fellow historian of science (in the making) here. Might I add one of my personal favourites, the 5th century Byzantine Sundial-Calendar, which allows the user to adjust it for other latitudes (listing cities in the Eastern Roman Empire for various latitudes). Without wanting to mansplain to you, I'd like to mention for the sake of your viewers that sundials have their parameters determined based on latitude, which only has meaning on a spherical Earth. I like the story when a sundial was taken back to Italy from Greece by the Romans, only to discover it did not work as intended, yet it wasn't broken..! One last personal addition is the origin and use of the word "climate", a transliteration of the Greek "κλιμα" literally meaning "inclination", but which in the vernacular has fully adopted the meaning of arctic/temperate/tropical based on the dominant weather conditions on that latitude.
@@shines9290 Not sure I follow your point
It appears the Flat Earther idiots have arrived.
@@historyforatheists9363 I find them hilarious. They are astoundingly skilled at logical contortions. Tho their proposed Flat Earth has to be shaped more like a Klein bottle to have any hope of working as described...
I did get a laugh from UA-cam adding a 'fact check' header directing us to Wikipedia's entry for Flat Earth.... apparently the idiots were already here!
I'm pretty much aware of the myths, but had not seen the background so detailed, so this is fascinating (love seeing the foundational historical facts hauled into the air and light) but _please_ run your videos through an equalizer, so the volume doesn't jump up and down (the opening and closing, and the included clips, were very loud, while yourself was very soft, requiring several leaps for the volume control to preserve my eardrums).
Otherwise, I'm glad you decided to do these as vids -- I'd just tripped over the blog, also cool, but find this sort of info absorbs better when it's stuffed into my brain through my ears. :)
I may not be an atheist, but I believe in Tim O'Neill
Even though aware about the fact that medieval scholars were not believers in the flat earth, for a long time I’ve had this questioning of what the average unlearned person’s views were. I was about to ask you on a comment before watching the video but good thing I watched it until the end first 😆. Excellent content, thank you.
Love the video, but Pump Up the Volume.
Have you considered putting the audio from these onto a podcasting platform?
That’s the plan.
And now it's done. See historyforatheists.com/podcast/
@@historyforatheists9363 Nice!
So, St. Augustine wasn't arguing against the existence of a round earth, but rather arguing against the existence of Australians? Church Fathers win once again!
In Cicero's Republic the dialogue starts with a character having a (geocentric) model of the solar system. They even discussed how lunar and solar eclipses are caused.
Just throwing this out there. It seems a round earth was very common in the late Republic.
20:49 If I recall correctly, in Cicero's Dream of Scipio he also refers to these different zones of the earth. Could be wrong though.
Yes, and the "De somnium Scipionis" that forms the sixth book of that work by Cicero was a highly popular work in the Middle Ages, even in the early period, partly thanks to the commentary on it by Macrobius. So its cosmology was widely known.
@@historyforatheists9363 Interesting! To my knowledge Augustine also loved Cicero's work, especially the Republic. So there's that as well. Even less reason to think Augustine was a flat earther.
@@boereherp8705 Somehow I think he knows jut a tad more than you do on this topic.
Are you sick, or just speaking quietly? I love your blog, have since the beginning. But your audio is quite hard to hear.
Thanks, but that’s my voice. I can’t change it.
@@historyforatheists9363 Oh, I’m sorry Tim. I didn’t intend to come off disrespectful, if I did. I’m majoring in Medieval history, so your blog was a perfect reflection of my frustration with New Atheist types. Godless Engineer is someone that particularly annoys me, have you ever thought of giving him the Aron treatment?
@@TheMindIlluminated No problem. I didn't think the audio was unclear, but I have a voice with a pretty deep register that some people do find hard to pick up. Try turning on the captions for the video - I just tried that and they seem to understand me pretty well.
Godless Engineer is someone I've come across mainly as an acolyte of Richard Carrier and a peddler of Jesus Mythicism. He doesn't seem to have had an original idea in his life and basically just parrots Carrier's arguments, though in a balder and less sophisticated form. I'd prefer to deal with Carrier directly.
@@historyforatheists9363 Your voice is fine and you speak clearly (very pleasant to listen to); the problem is the gain is set too low on your microphone, and the resulting huge contrast to the volume on the clips and opening/closing bits.
@@Reziac I am still learning when it comes to producing these videos. At this stage I'm shooting them on an iPhone XS with a plug-in external mic (a Rode VideoMic Me-L). If there is a way to adjust the gain on that, it's not something I know about. I'm doing the editing on Adobe Premiere Elements, which limits what I can do to the sound levels in post-production. I may invest in the full Adobe Premiere tool if I can bring myself to pay a monthly fee for the privilege. So if you have any advice given the limitations of my current tools, I'd be open to it.
gotta love the fact that although the entire POINT of this channel is to fact check conspiracy theories and pseudohistory... youtube, in its goofy automated "wisdom" has decided to "fact check" his articles with, of all things, wikipedia, which last I checked, was beholden to anonymous "editors" not professional historians, scientists, or other professional experts. come here wikipedians and TRY to dispute what he's saying...
Sorry, UA-cam has factchecked who with Wikipedia?
@@historyforatheists9363 Idk if you can see it but UA-cam put a link to the Wikipedia article about the flat earth model right underneath your video. They do that to any video that has the words "Flat Earth" in the title I think. It's not really fact checking they just say "Context" and provide the link underneath.
The Wikipedia article agrees with what Tim is saying (that people in the middle ages didn't believe in a flat earth) so I'm not sure what you're complaining about. UA-cam has a million problems but providing links to Wikipedia articles on certain controversial topics is not one of them imo since Wikipedia is pretty accurate in general.
@@henrimourant9855 It's not showing up when I look at it, but I think it just shows their algorithm isn't very smart.
@@historyforatheists9363 According to their official explanation they don't even bother sorting out who is an actual flat earther or not. They just put the links under videos on certain topics that are "prone to misinformation" regardless of what those videos actually say on the topic. Just FYI this is the Wikipedia article they put under your video:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth?wprov=sfla1
New subscriber ❤️ i love your contents, keep it up ❤️
I believe George and Ira Gershwin's much - covered song,
They all Laughed,
has played some part in perpetuating this myth.
Aron Ra admitted he was wrong?? proof that miracles are in fact possible
Well, his admission was very reluctant, hedged around with excuses and only on one of the many erroneous assertions he made. But - maybe - we won't be hearing him claim Augustine was a flat earther again. Maybe. Details here: historyforatheists.com/2020/07/aron-ra-responds-badly/
In The God Delusion. Dawkins starts with a quote from Bertrand Russell who said: "Intellectually eminent men disbelieve the Christian religion, but hide the fact, because they are afraid of losing their income." The next sentence is: "Newton was religious." The insinuation is that Newton was faking belief in God to get money. Is this accusation true or false?
If that is what he was implying, then that is not just false but absolutely ridiculous.
@@historyforatheists9363 How much did Russell get wrong about history? I vaguely remember you commenting on his mistakes.
@@michaelletourneau9623 It's been literally decades since I read his "History of Western Philosophy" as an undergraduate. It was written over 75 years ago, so of course much of its view of history is going to be pretty dated. And even back in in 1945 it was criticised for its poor handling of ancient and medieval philosophy and some heavy-handed polemical elements. Neither of those things have aged well. He was a philosopher, not a historian and he had some clear biases and prejudices; some personal and some simply ones common at that time. This makes his book a highly unreliable guide for anyone wanting objective and up to date analysis. For someone like Dawkins, of course, it's a nice little mine for confirmation of his own dated and prejudiced view of history.
@@historyforatheists9363
I think what is more interesting than his dislike of The Catholic Church (which is standard Protestant prejudice and not particularly extreme) is the way anti - Nazi and anti - totalitarian thinking distorts his view of the post - Enlightenment scene.
Excellent video. I have one question that about the round earth belief in antiquity. Clearly, as you demonstrate in this video, Christians inherited and excepted the idea of the round earth from the Greeks but do we know (or is it possible to speculate) what the very earliest Christians, like the apostle Paul for example, thought about the shape of the earth? Just curious.
That's hard to tell. Well educated Jews would have been familiar with the Greek conception of the earth as round and most likely accepted it. Peasants like Jesus and his first followers are much less likely to have absorbed that idea and probably had a naïve and flat earth cosmology. Exactly what Paul's ideas would have been is unclear. He was literate and clearly educated, but to what extent his study would have embraced Greek cosmology is unknown and probably unknowable.
@@historyforatheists9363 Ahh ok. Thanks for the info! You do great work on your blog and I'm already enjoying this channel so thanks for all the effort and research you put into it!
@@historyforatheists9363 Pure speculation on what Jesus and his followers "would have" believed.
@@justifiedFaith209 No, it’s not “pure speculation”. What I said is based on what we know about who most likely would and would not be exposed to Hellenic intellectual culture. So it’s not mere “speculation”; it has a basis in evidence. We can’t be certain, but that doesn’t make evidence based assessments into “pure speculation”. Words have meanings.
@@historyforatheists9363 Fair enough, but it doesn't seem sound to assume that a lack of exposure to "Hellenic intellectual culture" by Jesus and his followers defaults them to a flat earth view. An over confident assessment in my opinion. Especially regarding Jesus, this notion seems to disregard the New testament as historical documents which seems to indicate Jesus as more than an uneducated peasant.
The music is too loud. It's as loud or louder than your voice.
Pay me for a sound engineer to work on my home made videos and I’ll ensure these huge problems won’t occur for you. Until then I’ll keep using the controls Audacity and Adobe Premiere Elements give me and you’ll just have to … adjust your volume very, very slightly.
@@historyforatheists9363 You're doing a fantastic job. Please don't get me wrong. I was just offering a little feedback. Carry on!
@@longrider188 I just noticed you were commenting on one of my earliest videos. I think you’ll find I’ve worked out how to fix these problems with inconsistent sound levels in my recent ones.
Yep - there were two ways of computing the diameter. Almost no one knows this.
@@ZackWolfMusic One was Erasthones' (sp) method -- the other [and I've slept since reading it] had to do with the declination of Canopus. (probably mangled that) Tim should know.
Respect to Aron Ra for admitting he was incorrect.
Thank you for this video. I have been trying to deprogram from my religious upbringing but running into these myths don't help. Right now I'm trying to sort out what I was taught was historically true about the bible and what really is.
"Respect to Aron Ra for admitting he was incorrect."
Ummm, no. He barely admitted he was incorrect, made excuses for his clear error, refused to admit he was incorrect on most elements of what he said and only admitted that he was wrong on one point because he couldn't find a way to weasel around his mistake. He deserves no respect.
So much hate against atheists ...sounds a bit ironic
A strange and rather confused comment. What "hate against atheists" are you talking about? You understand that *I'M* an atheist myself, don't you?
First!