by Theodosius Dobzhansky:
As recently as 1966, sheik Abd el Aziz bin Baz asked the king of Saudi Arabia to suppress a heresy that was spreading in his land. Wrote the sheik:
"The Holy Koran, the Prophet’s teachings, the majority of Islamic scientists, and the actual facts all prove that the sun is running in its orbit . . . and that the earth is fixed and stable, spread out by God for his mankind. . . . Anyone who professed otherwise would utter a charge of falsehood toward God, the Koran, and the Prophet."
The good sheik evidently holds the Copernican theory to be a "mere theory," not a "fact." In this he is technically correct.
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[still a good read, 33 years after it was written]
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You said: It doesn't say in the Bible that the sun orbits the earth. The Church had adopted the popular "enlightened" position on that issue.
Evidently the Koran says so, and since it also says it was dictated to the "prophet" in order to correct the errors that have crept into the other Abrahamic faiths...
Seriously, both the Pope and Luther condemned heliocentrism. One could say that the Earth's motion wasn't proved until Foucault's pendulum.
Of course they did -- once they had sufficient reason to do so. Scientific progress was of great help in this regard.
There is no "Great Wall of China" between faith and reason.