“The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow of the earth on the moon and I have more faith in the Shadow than in the Church."
What the church says is not always the same thing as what the Bible says, unfortunately.
Magellan would have been referring to the Roman Catholic Church, which had drastically veered away from the Bible at this point. On the scientific front, they stubbornly held to Aristotle as gospel truth even when evidence suggested otherwise.
The adherence to Aristotle had to do with the geocentric view of the universe, not whether the Earth was flat. Gallileo argued for the heliocentric view, but there was no way to distinguish the two views, as they gave the same results. It took later work (measurement of stellar parallax) to determine the the Earth moved.
That may be the best we can do, but it would have required sub-arc-second accuracy to measure the parallax to the nearest stars, and the science of astronomy was nowhere near that capability in Galileo's day. Thus, the superiority of the heliocentric view was unprovable, since it was indistinguishable from the geocentric view.
“The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow of the earth on the moon and I have more faith in the Shadow than in the Church."
~ Ferdinand Magellan
What the church says is not always the same thing as what the Bible says, unfortunately.
Magellan would have been referring to the Roman Catholic Church, which had drastically veered away from the Bible at this point. On the scientific front, they stubbornly held to Aristotle as gospel truth even when evidence suggested otherwise.
The adherence to Aristotle had to do with the geocentric view of the universe, not whether the Earth was flat. Gallileo argued for the heliocentric view, but there was no way to distinguish the two views, as they gave the same results. It took later work (measurement of stellar parallax) to determine the the Earth moved.
It's more of a philosophical position than a scientific one.
As for the parallax, the extent that's been measured was in the range of 0.00000x degrees of a shift.
That may be the best we can do, but it would have required sub-arc-second accuracy to measure the parallax to the nearest stars, and the science of astronomy was nowhere near that capability in Galileo's day. Thus, the superiority of the heliocentric view was unprovable, since it was indistinguishable from the geocentric view.
He thinks he saw the shadow of the earth. He saw a shadow but has no proof it came from the earth.
pro-vaxxers: correlation!
but the big take away from that Magellan quote, is that "flat Earth" was actually an official Church position, not that long ago.
and yes, there are numerous verses in the bible that are used to support flat earth model.