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Before Copernicus, everyone thought that the cosmos spun around us.
Not at all.
There are some Vedic Sandscrit writings that indicate such ideas from the 7th century BCE, and the Greek, Aristarchus, had a heliocentric model in the 3rd century BCE (that was possibly based upon even earlier Islamic astronomy and math.
As usual, only the Christian European history is remembered.
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Before Christ, we as humans usually view ourselves as the center of attention.
That is such crap, Phat!
Do I really need to list all of the pre-Christ religions and cultures that considered humans to be part of nature, and tiny and insignificant in the Grand Scheme of Things?
In fact, I would say that the rise of violent monotheistic religions such as Judaism tended to inflate humans as much more important that anything else on Earth, and one particular tribe of humans greater than everyone else.
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Its hard to accept that the best laid plans of mice and men are dependent upon an active Deity.
Yeah, especially when nothing at all about existence appears to be influenced by any active deity.