Aryabhatt (Elder)

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

george9252 <george9252 at EMAIL.MSN.COM> wrote:

>Do you really mean that, Richard? You can't mean that the RC Church
>"adopted" Ptolemy's theory of epicycles as official RC doctrine. If it had,
>then, even today, the RC Church would insist that its adherents accept the
>Ptolemaic theory. It doesn't.

The Ptolemaic theory was certainly upheld by the Roman Catholic church,
mainly because of its geocentric nature. Heliocentric theories were
associated with the pagan worship of the sun. That was the reason why
Galileo was arrested and asked to recant his "heresy" in championing the
Copernican theory. The church finally caught up with science only as late as
1992, when it officially accepted that it was wrong for condemning Galileo.
Official Catholic doctrine is subject to change, but in its own sweet time.

Vidyasankar