re: #288 ferris

I know this is going to hurt me as an atheist to actually nitpick this one but… =)

Most people who were educated since the time of the Greeks already knew the earth was round. The debate wasn’t really about that. There were few exceptions to it. While it is true that some Christian cartographers actually were influenced by the Bible verbatim and thought that it couldn’t possibly be round, that line of thinking never really lasted very long. The debate was much more along the lines of what the world looked like in terms of land formations according to the way it could fit with scripture.

The real debate was when we the Copernican system came out and then they had to think about if we were actually the center of the solar system or not.

But in essence, your point is 100% correct. =)