When did the Catholic church finally acknowledge that the world isn't flat?

Question

The ancient greeks know the earth was round in about 500 BC, in fact they calculated the size of the earth within about 3% of the actual size.

Answer 1

At least since the Middle Ages; Bishop Isidore of Seville, writing in the 7th century, referred to a round/spherical world. The big point of contention for the church was not the shape of the earth but whether people living in the "antipodes" (the other side of the world, unknown to them) could be descended from Adam and Eve and therefore be human. Wikipedia has an excellent discussion of this.

Answer 2

Oh boy yet another stupid atheist question that is trying to off handily try to make religion seem backwards. The view of the world being flat was supported by top SCIENTIST for generations. It was discredited by top SCIENTIST for generations as well. There are many things that the ancients (where did you get your info by the way, but assuming what you are claiming to be true) knew were true that top SCIENTIST discredit, and they are even realizing now that many things that they considered to be a hoax or silly has some merit to it.

Stop trying to slant it as if only atheist or agnostics automatically agreed with the concept that the world was round. You should be asking when did the general public acknowledge that the world isn't flat.

Answer 3

5,000BC The bible in the Old Testament said that God created the heavens & earth . People believed that the earth was fixed in space.

150 AD Ptolemy, a Greek astronomer, thought that the earth was at the centre of the universe. The sun, moon & stars travelled around the earth once each day. People thought this for over 1000 years.

1534 AD Nicolaus Copernicus, a Polish astronomer, thought the earth was a moving planet, spinning on its own axis daily and revolving around the sun. He couldn't prove his theory mathematically. Religious leaders banned his writings until 1757.

1610 AD Galileo, an Italian professor of mathematics. He studied the sky & agreed with the ideas of Copernicus.
In 1613 he wrote a letter showing that his ideas could fit in well with the Catholic Church. At the time there was an organisation of inquisitors who looked for people opposed to church teaching & punished them. Galileo was often sarcastic & had many enemies, some of whom sent his letter to the inquisitors. They found him not guilty of heresy (opposition to the Church teaching) but banned him from agreeing with Copernican theory.

1632 AD Galileo wrote a masterpiece, 'Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems'. This showed that Copernicus' theory was better. In 1633 he was found guilty of heresy & the Church made him publicly withdraw his statement and sentenced him to life imprisonment. He spent the rest of his life alone and unwell and eventually went blind.

1665 AD Sir Isaac Newton discovered the law of gravity helped to explain how the planets relate to each other and are pulled around the sun which is in the centre of the solar system.

2000 AD The Catholic Church officially declared that Galileo should not have been condemned in 1983. We have had satellites in space since the 1960s and the first man landed on the moon in 1966. Today telescopes can study the movement of this planet , the solar system and many other galaxies. We can photograph this and these theories are much easier to believe.

Answer 4

Please do not believe bad history written by anti-Catholics. The idea that the Catholic Church claimed that the Earth was flat is a myth.

The following Catholic Saints are just a few that taught that the world was round:
+ Bede (c. 673-735)
+ Virgilius of Salzburg (c. 720-784)
+ Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), a very interesting woman.
+ Thomas Aquinas (c. 1224-74)

http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods46.html
http://www.catholicleague.org/research/catholicism_and_science.htm

With love in Christ.

Answer 5

Yes and actually the bible itself refers to the circle of the earth (and uses the word circle in the context of a sphere)
People knew the Earth was round 2500 years ago. They just forgot. Because Earth-bound observers could only view a small section of the globe at a time, it wasn't possible to tell from direct observation whether the Earth was flat or a sphere. The Greeks were the first to theorize that the Earth was round. Scholars like Pythagoras in 500 BC based their belief on observations about the way the altitudes of stars varied at different places on Earth and how ships appeared on the horizon. As a ship returned to port, first its mast tops, then the sails, and finally its hull gradually came into view. Aristotle, who lived 300 years before Christ, observed that the Earth cast a round shadow on the moon. When a light is shined on a sphere, it casts the same shadow. The Greeks calculated the general size and shape of the Earth. They also created the grid system of latitude and longitude, so that with just two coordinates one can locate any point on the Earth. Greek philosophers also concluded that the Earth could only be a sphere because that, in their opinion, was the "most perfect" shape. Around 150 AD, Claudius Ptolemy, a Greek geographer, mathematician, and astronomer, compiled an encyclopedia of the ancient world from the archives of a legendary library in Alexandria, Egypt. His eight-volume Geography included extensive maps of the known world, all based on a curved globe. Unfortunately, learning and intellect went out of fashion in Europe between 400 and 1200 AD. The storehouses of Greek knowledge were lost to Western society with the advent of the gloomy period known as the Dark Ages. Sea monsters and Vikings ruled the seas, and ships that ventured too far from shore were sure to fall off the edge of a flat Earth. Maps made in that time were based on religious beliefs or superstitions, not on observations, calculations, or scientific inquiry. Rectangular maps of the Earth represented the "four corners of the Earth." Circular maps usually placed the birthplace of Christianity, the holy city of Jerusalem, at the center of the world. After 1250, map making in Europe took a turn for the better. Land maps and nautical charts were produced for travelers using measurements and observation rather than mythology and literary sources.In Europe, the Middle Ages progressed into the Age of Discovery. Meanwhile, the Arab world had preserved Ptolemy's Geography. Ptolemy's works were rediscovered by the Western world and translated into Latin. Ptolemy's map projections explaining how to represent a sphere on a flat piece of paper enabled cartographers and explorers to chart newly-discovered lands and seas. The invention of the printing press made it possible for more people to use, circulate, and refine maps. Christopher Columbus' voyage in 1492 confirmed that the Earth was round. Magellan's crew proved the fact definitively by circling the globe on a three-year voyage from 1519-1522. Map making joined hand in hand with the Age of Discovery

Answer 6

To the best of my knowledge it was never a doctrinal issue with the church, so I'm not sure they ever made a proclamation. The idea that everyone thought the world was flat until Columbus' voyage is definitely not accurate, but I'm not sure how many people really thought it was flat. You are correct about the Greeks-they did advance mathmatics quite a bit.

About Galileo-they persecuted him for heliocentrism because they believed that Earth was the center of the universe and he challenged that.

Answer 7

The Church did not criticize galileo's writings because of the shape of the earth, but because he tried to use certain passages of the Bible as a base for this, interpreting them his own way

Answer 8

Qur'an mentioned about the shape of world about 1400 years ago before it was proven by science as a fact. Only Qur'an is the word of God which remained unchanged.
Now please don't say that Mohammad (pbuh) copied it from the Greeks!!

Answer 9

when will the Bible Fundamentalists acknowledge that Earth is older than 6,000 years, and the Dinosaurs did in fact exist?

Answer 10

When Christopher Columbus thought he had discovered the Indies.