The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.(*)
* It appears to be there is some controversy regarding this quote as to who said what, when, and why (read comments)
Vicente C. de Jesus said,
17 August, 2007 at 3:12 am
This quote is sprouting all over the Internet, picked up by every Tom’s, Dick’s and Harry’s blog. This is a fabricated quote.
You can’t trace this to any eyewitness account, to a contemporary historian’s book, or any authentic biography. Someone just made this up and foisted this falsification on an unsuspecting public.
One business enterprise, Successories, came up with a poster with this quote. To the credit of this company, it asked for comment from members of the Discovery email list who unanimously came up with the verdict it’s not authentic. Successories withdrew the poster from the market. Those who’re quoting it are probably the ones who bought the poster and has yet to be told those words are fake.
frixos said,
19 August, 2007 at 5:17 pm
My dear fellow, the quote is beautiful in itself; if indeed it hadn’t been said by Magellan but by Richard Thomas Harris – my upstairs neighbour – it would have been beatiful all the same!
Nevertheless I will have to trust George Seldes – wouldn’t you ? – quoting Magellan with the above frase when he witnessed the solar eclipse of 17 April 1520.
On the other hand I was unable to trace Successories poster story ..
Vicente Calibo de Jesus said,
11 December, 2007 at 9:32 am
The bogus quote is by Robert Green Ingersoll
The quote is a fabrication of Robert Green Ingersoll. It is found in his essay “Individuality.” This may be accessed at http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/individuality.html
It’s in the fourth paragraph of his essay:
It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions, — some one who had the grandeur to say his say. I believe it was Magellan who said, “The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church.” On the prow of his ship were disobedience, defiance, scorn, and success.
This was first pointed out, as far as I know, by Dr. Tom Gorski in his website “Knowing What Ain’t So” at http://www.churchoffreethought.org/cgi-bin/contray/contray.cgi?DATA=&ID=000011010&GROUP=048. Dr. Gorski is one of four founders of the The North Texas Church of Freethought.
There are probably over a hundred sites on the Web with this bogus quote. I hope we all begin to exercise some form of self-correction and cite the real author of those words, Ingersoll.
Vicente Calibo de Jesus ginesdemafra@gmail.com