this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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Well, Columbus, Galilei, Kepler & co. challenged what was considered "established fact" about the shape and place of the earth in their times.
It is not wrong to challenge what is considered "established facts". Problem is when you discard results that are going against your preoposition. I wouldn't consider flat earthers to be particular religious as a crowd though. At least in my country they mostl come from the esoteric scene, where you get a mixed bowl of esoteric nonsene, conspiracy theories, and fascist ideology.
One thing to point out is that Columbus wasn't challenging established thinking about the earth's shape, but rather its size. The educated populace at the time was on the ball with the earth being a sphere.
And the critics of Columbus WERE RIGHT! He was vastly underestimating the size of the earth. If North America hadn't existed and it had just been one big ocean, he and the expedition would have perished in the middle of nowhere. Of course, the size had been calculated before his expedition (the actual values turned out be extremely close to what had been calculated), so he should have known better. There's a reason he had trouble getting funding for his expedition...
I'm still somewhat frustrated that our history classes taught (maybe still do, I've been out of high school a long time) that all the naysayers thought the earth was flat.
My recollection is that Columbus was also wrong about its size. He thought the distance from Europe to Asia via the Atlantic was much smaller than it really is, but got lucky and found the Americas on the way
Meh, our esoterics are basically religious anarchists or spiritual hippies. They still fall into all the trapping of religion without the "organized" part of "organized religion".