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Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek
First of all, I never said the Catholic Chrurch "wrote" Genesis. Secondly Drolefille, I don't know why the Earth was created, but I know it wasn't created because of the teachings of the Catholic Church and current biblical interpretations. What I said, which you totally missed, is (to give you a better understanding) these religious claims and predictions, to me, have stalled or reversed the progress of science. A good example of what I was talking about is the trial of Galileo, where he showed the universe to be fundamentally different from the dominant views of the Catholic Church. In all fairness to the inquisition, however, an Earth centered universe made lots of sense observationally back then. With a full complement of epicycles to explain the motions of the planets against the background stars, back then, an Earth centered model had conflicted with no known observations. Furthermore, this actually remained true long after Copernicus introduced his Sun centered model of the universe a whole century earlier, which is why I said this whole thing was aligned with the teachings of the Catholic Church and biblical teachings. I never said anything about the Catholic Church "writing" the book of Genesis. "I'm not sure how you managed that."
Actually, all of that changed, of course, with the invention of the telescope and Galileo's observations of space. For his radical discoveries, which (like I posted earlier) totally conflicted with the Catholic Church and biblical teachings. So, Galileo was put on trial, and found guilty of heresy. Let me add, that he was burned at the stake for suggesting that Earth may not be the only place in the universe that harbors life. Finally, you may be speaking of the present day Catholic Church, and it may not have a problem with scientific explainations of the universe, evolution or whatever....but it did during the time I'm speaking of. So if you want to be amused by people who find it impossible to reconcile the two, fine....have at it. 
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I will indeed, and your exact wording was...
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At one time people actually believed that the Earth was the center of the universe, and that was because the creation of the Earth was aligned with the teachings of the Catholic Church and prevailing interpretations of the Bible, where Earth is created before the Sun and the Moon as described in the 1st several verses of Genesis
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Okay, so what we have here is you saying that people "believed that the Earth was the center of the universe" and that this "was because of the creation of the Earth was aligned with the teachings of the Catholic Church"
So, step one: you seem to suggest that it was the Catholic Church who first wrote and or interpreted Genesis, or was the first to teach the universe in that way. Step two: your wording is poor enough that you actually see to say that the literal creation of the Earth occurred because of the teachings of the Catholic Church.
You didn't actually succeed in saying your point until now.
Also, study Galileo, the whole thing was less about science and more about politics, yeah the Church was wrong, but it wasn't really the story you learned in school, very little of history actually is when it comes to that. Then again you may think that Columbus actually convinced Ferdinand and Isabella that the world was actually round and that this was a revolutionary idea. If so, I'm sorry.