The reality is that the people who shaped the debates within the Catholic church back then tended to be well educated, and possessing all the attributes of one raising through a hierarchy - above average intelligence, determination, and skill. It is pretty extreme to describe them all as narrow-minded fundamentalists.
Before telescopes, Plato and Aristotle were state of the art knowledge in cosmology (inasmuch as this field even could be said to exist back then). An educated person, including top theologians back then, would have been well acquainted with their views. It is also the case that the Catholic church has been historically more open to scientifically-backed knowledge than most people give it credit for - look at all the Jesuits who had successful careers as scientists, while also remaining men of faith.
Please be aware that observing the (mostly american) present-day religious phenomena does not provide you a good basis for judging religious thinking in the past, especially that related to the non-protestant churches.
No, they were not. They were just popular but not state of the art, as neither from them actually preformed astronomical observations or did the calculations. There are people before and after these two who did much more. Because they actually did some real science.
Aristarchus:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Sizes_and_Distances_(Ar...
"This work calculates the sizes of the Sun and Moon, as well as their distances from the Earth in terms of Earth's radius."
Eratosthenes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes
"Repeating Eratosthenes' calculation with more accurate data, the result is 40,074 km, which is 66 km different (0.16%) from the currently accepted polar circumference of the Earth."
Aristarchus of Samos:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos
"presented the first known model that placed the Sun at the center of the known universe with the Earth revolving around it"
Archimedes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sand_Reckoner
"Estimation of the size of the universe
Archimedes then estimated an upper bound for the number of grains of sand required to fill the Universe. To do this, he used the heliocentric model of Aristarchus of Samos."
Everything before that year that that carpenter was born, and before his followers continued to depend on older or plainly less informed texts.
I did not say "astronomy". I said "cosmology". The choice was conscious. The one is the more practical study of celestial phenomena, and you are correct that neither Plato nor Aristotle were astronomers. The other concerns itself with the large-scale structures and phenomena, both in time and space. Astronomy studies what is going on out there. Cosmology tries to figure out how it all works together.
Astronomy was not an immediate concern to theologians. But they obviously were interested in what was then a proto-cosmology, intertwined with philosophy. If you were an educated person back then, and you were interested in an overall synthesis of how the universe works, Aristotle had it, and you were sure to read his books.
Also be aware that back then nobody had proof positive that Aristarchus (who was much closer to the current definition of an astronomer) was right. Just like today, there were many competing ideas. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that he was on to something. But really it took the invention of the telescope, and the scientific revolution after 1600 to definitely tip the balance.
It is good that you fight narrow-mindedness, but be aware that its antidote is having a broad understanding of these issues. Spend some time thinking about that, okay?
And no, this is also not true: "really it took the invention of the telescope"
It's Tycho Brahe who measured enough:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe
"he was the last of the major naked eye astronomers, working without telescopes for his observations."
I don't understand why people who don't know history try to argue here. In fact, I think I know, you don't have to try to explain me.
In fact knowledge is the thing that allows you to choose which constants to calculate at all. It is not intuitive why a light in the sky should have a size. What is the size of a sunset? What is the size of a rainbow? What is the size of an eclipse?
Knowledge is not the mere accumulation of measurement. It is the organizational structure that allows you to separate between what we can and cannot measure, what we have measured before and have not measured yet. It is what tells us whether "the" sun is a singleton or that "a" rainbow today is not the same today as tomorrow.
> who don't know history
I think you would benefit from reading up on the current consensus among historians on the Conflict Thesis before presenting it to those of us who have caught up on our Ferngren, Barker, etc.
Conflict Thesis has nothing to do with the facts I've presented. I haven't invented any. Where have you found any error in these?
Can you point out even one instance in which the Bible is inaccurate about the physical nature of the world? I'm curious
Or perhaps grab any part of the creation myth—the whole of the universe, our galaxy, our arm of the galaxy, our place in that arm, our star, our solar system, our planet, all the plants and animals and us...all made in just a handful of hours each.
Or how about the notion that not one, but two lucky guys met death and were returned from it days later. Or that mud can cure blindness. Or 5,000 people can be fed to satisfaction with tons of leftovers from just a couple fish and loaves of bread. Or that a jug known to be full of water can transmogrify into wine. Or bodies of water momentarily drying up, or having waters recede on command, to permit human passage. Or stars falling from the sky and crashing into earth. Rivers turning to blood. Sudden overnight pestilence that kills only the first-born of an entire nation, unless you painted blood on your doors. A woman turned into a pillar of salt.
Of course, asking such a question as yours implies one ought to take seriously and somewhat bordering on completely literal that which the Bible says that remotely touches on and involves the physical nature of the world. Otherwise the question doesn't make any sense. Because from the creation to the revelation, all of its stories say something about the physical nature of the world.
We talk about the religious view. For the religious view the Bible was actually relevant for the Church:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmament
"Augustine wrote that too much learning had been expended on the nature of the firmament.[9] "We may understand this name as given to indicate not it is motionless but that it is solid." he wrote.[9]
Saint Basil argued for a fluid firmament.[9]
According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the firmament had a "solid nature" and stood above a "region of fire, wherein all vapor must be consumed."[10]"
1475:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmament#/media/File:Scheme_o...
Before the Christians, the Jews also had such interpretations:
"According to The Jewish Encyclopedia:
The Hebrews regarded the earth as a plain or a hill figured like a hemisphere, swimming on water. Over this is arched the solid vault of heaven. To this vault are fastened the lights, the stars. So slight is this elevation that birds may rise to it and fly along its expanse.[8]"
Yes, yes, by Apollo I suffer, I get colic, then the stew sets to rumbling like thunder and finally bursts forth with a terrific noise. At first, it's but a little gurgling pappax, pappax! then it increases, papapappax! and when I take my crap, why, it's thunder indeed, papapappax! pappax!! papapappax!!! just like the clouds.
SOCRATES:
Well then, reflect what a noise is produced by your belly, which is but small. Shall not the air, which is boundless, produce these mighty claps of thunder? STREPSIADES:
And this is why the names are so much alike: crap and clap. But tell me this. Whence comes the lightning, the dazzling flame, which at times consumes the man it strikes, at others hardly singes him. Is it not plain, that Zeus is hurling it at the perjurers?
It's obvious that only Socrates here claims that the rain comes from clouds, or that the thunder is the result of the discharge, and gets mocked for that.
Even today very much alive.
From the other sources we know that Socrates was then accused "corrupting the youth of the city-state and asebeia (impiety) against the pantheon of Athens" and that he was for that crime sentenced to death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Socrates
That's why Platon decided to only philosophise about the "ideas" and not to discuss or analyze the nature phenomena. He didn't want to end like Socrates.
And the scriptures were made by the people who understood very little about the world, compared to what the current science knows. Therefore the creation is described using the concepts that we today know for sure don't exist. Specifically, in the creation myth:
"And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so." (Genesis 1:7)
The firmament is what people believed separated the water that rains "from above" from what we see as "heaven."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmament
The Latin translation, accepted by the Church, made in 4th century AD, uses word that is cognate with English "firm." The firmament was believed to be firm, like metals, and the gods "opened" it when it rained, and then closed it back.
They didn't even know that the rain is really in the clouds.
Their "world model" involved non-moving Earth. Aristotle came later.
It's true that Aristotle wrote what he wrote, but his teachings were never a part of the Bible.
Edit: kindly see my next answer down the tree if you don't want to read the Wikipedia yourself, the highest church thinkers really supported exactly the model with the firmament, the Earth in the middle, because Bible. Also see my top post here regarding the main article.