The geocentric universe was not an inherently religious perspective unless you're willing to accept the fact that nearly everyone was "religious" in some way throughout Antiquity. Atheism was not really a thing. The geocentric universe was not religious. It was the de facto understanding of the universe from the earliest scholars we have records for until the work of Copernicus, with a few exceptions in Antiquity (Aristarchus) and the Middle Ages (Martianus Capella). The original reasons for advocating for the heliocentric theory were more religious than scientific, but they used logical reasoning to support their ideas. There is no reason to attack religion in this post. Monasteries and abbeys are the main source of scientific knowledge in medieval Europe. Without the preservation of texts in monasteries, Europe would have been even more behind than it was. Most of the big translations that were done in the High Middle Ages were undertaken by religious people who wanted to understand the universe better. Yes, there was resistance to some of the astronomical theories over time but most of the people who pursued astronomy were also religious and for many, their religious belief was in no way in conflict with their scientific pursuits.
I was so interested in this post because I've seen images from medieval Islam demonstrating the nature of eclipses (from earlier periods) and I didn't know there were similar attempts made in medieval Europe as well. I'm disappointed that it's just being used to attack religion with apparently zero understanding of the nature of astronomy and astronomers pre-Scientific Revolution. Copernicus' De Revolutionibus was published in 1543, more that 50 years after this was made.
Amazing how the size of the Moon changes depending on where it is in its orbit. I wonder how that was explained. I also wonder how they explained why no one noticed it when actually looking at the Moon.
This was a well-known issue with the geocentric universe at least from the time of Ptolemy's Almagest when he demonstrated the quantitative model and created the tables for predicting motion. Many astronomers over the years attempted to figure it out. In fact, Ibn al-Haytham wrote a book called Doubts on Ptolemy, listing all the problems with the Ptolemaic model that future astronomers would have to work on. To a degree, because the math worked so well at predicting position, they were willing to set that flaw aside so that they could use the tables of planetary position (the Moon was considered a planet in Antiquity and the Middle Ages) that were so accurate.
Medieval Astronomy from Melk Abbey
