Religion or Atheism? An open forum.

[denuseri]

You must remember that a geo-centric universe was a scientifically-formulated belief that had little relevance to religions until new ideas appeared to challenge contemporary beliefs about the creation. After the Church reconciled itself to the truth, and realised that the new ideas did not affect its fundamental beliefs at all, it was able to accept that the Sun was at the centre of the solar system. There is no reason to expect science and religion to change positions in tandem, especially when one of them appears to undermine the other. Sooner or later, they will catch up with each other: God will be in his Heaven and all will be well with the world.

Oh he wont like the idea of that becuase it takes the "evil" out of religion and puts the blame for a misguided theory squarly on the shoulders of the guys who really came up with it...which btw were not christian monks at all but much earlier astrologers. And alltough they were undoubatable believers in a religion in their day and age...they based their assumptions about a terra centric model on the scientific observations that they were capable of making.

[Thorne]

Oh he wont like the idea of that becuase it takes the "evil" out of religion and puts the blame for a misguided theory squarly on the shoulders of the guys who really came up with it...which btw were not christian monks at all but much earlier astrologers. And alltough they were undoubatable believers in a religion in their day and age...they based their assumptions about a terra centric model on the scientific observations that they were capable of making.

Oh, I have no problems with that. I agree, the early astrologers could only work with the tools they had. And at first the heliocentric theory met with resistance because it was unable to predict the positions of the planets with any more accuracy than the geocentric model. Primarily this was because they still considered the planets to be moving in perfectly spherical orbits, according to divine plan. Then Galileo came along with his telescope, which showed that there were satellites orbiting Jupiter, not Earth, and that Venus showed phases just like the Moon, indicating a heliocentric system. The Church didn't like that idea, though, as it went against dogma that the Earth was the center of the universe. It was only after Kepler deduced that the orbits of the planets were, in fact, ellipses that the heliocentric theory was able to overturn the old geocentric theory. Even then there were detractors, though, who based their opposition on the teachings of the Church. If nothing else, the Church's stranglehold on education seriously delayed the advancement of science and freedom for the common man. That's evil enough for me.