Poor old Magellan.

[bunnyjadwiga]

There's a nasty little quote going around the internet, attributed to Ferdinand Magellan. Now, I have no problem with people complaining about christianity or the church for things they actually did. But the problem with this quote is that it alleges that Magellan said the Church told him the earth was flat. I have never been able to find any source of this quote, because the Church did NOT believe the Earth was flat in his time. *

I finally tracked down a source for this quote, because someone else found it:
http://www.churchoffreethought.org/cgi-bin/contray/contray.cgi?DATA=&ID=000011010&GROUP=048

It's not in the words of Magellan. It's in the words of Robert Green Ingersoll, a freethinker, who first used this alleged quote from Magellan, in an 1873 text called Individuality:
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/individuality.html

What's even more curious about this is the text that follows his made-up quote:

The trouble with most people is, they bow to what is called authority; they have a certain reverence for the old because it is old. They think a man is better for being dead, especially if he has been dead a long time. They think the fathers of their nation were the greatest and best of all mankind. All these things they implicitly believe because it is popular and patriotic, and because they were told so when they were very small, and remember distinctly of hearing mother read it out of a book. It is hard to over-estimate the influence of early training in the direction of superstition.

Yup. He's absolutely right. He's managed to put words in the mouth of a guy that was dead over 300 years when he wrote, and because they are both dead, everyone believes that it actually happened.

* while somewhat apologistic, Jeffrey Burton Russell's Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians lays out the evidence on this point very well.

Comments

[cbpotts.livejournal.com]

Can I just say the fact I can click on my flist and find stuff like this from you is one of the many reasons I adore you?

Not sure what the random adoration of someone you've never met is worth, but pls. feel free to feel randomly adored all day long.

[bytchearse.livejournal.com]

More proof that some people, as you have pointed out yourself about other issues, are quite willing to believe anything if it bolsters their POV :-)

[fabricdragon.livejournal.com]

yup. church bashing . always in fashion.

[icewolf010.livejournal.com]

*shake head* Seriously. We did the Inquisition. There's enough out there without people making stuff up.

Of course, there are also the people (in my case, Catholics) who are ignorant as cat you-know-what who prattle theological and dogmatic nonsense. I'd like to shake those folks until their teeth rattle. Stop helping, already!