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That the earth is a sphere, like all the other visible celestial bodies, was well-known in classical antiquity, and a famous experiment by Eratosthenes (c. 276 BC – c. 195/194 BCE), conducted around 240 BCE, gave an accurate measurement of its circumference. Eratosthenes also correctly determined the earth's axial tilt, and made the first known earth globe... based on the very limited geographic knowledge of his era. So the size and shape of the earth was well-known to educated individuals for more than 2000 years before the present day. The fact that the earth is a world in space, along with the sun, moon and planets, was well understood. Ancient religious traditions are quite different, with for example both the Old and New Testaments clearly implying in various passages that the earth is flat. The flat earth picture was revived by British religious fundamentalists in the early 19th Century, and very tiny organizations promoting these ideas continued to survive into the early 20th Century. The gist of the claim was that the earth is obviously flat and at the center of a very small universe, with the sun, moon and planets only a relatively short distance above the surface "in confirmation of the Holy Scriptures." This picture requires ALL of physics and astronomy to be completely wrong, with Newton's gravitational force probably not existing, or else having a totally different dependence on distance and mass! This also implies that everything "known" about the geography of the earth is a lie, and despite the advent of widespread intercontinental travel by ship, and later by plane, a massive centuries-long conspiracy to which every educated person on earth belongs is dedicated to keeping the true, God-given shape of the earth the deepest possible secret! Of course this means that the entire space program of every participating nation on earth is a hoax, and that earth satellites do not exist, for example. These ideas sound rather extreme, to say the least... so how did they become remarkably popular suddenly within the last three decades?
The secret is that while the dogmas of Intelligent Design are rigidly and dictatorially controlled by the ominous and monolithic Discovery Institute, it is no exaggeration to say that there are as many different Creationist doctrines as there are Creationists. The rapid rise in popularity of Creationism in the 1970s--- due to massive and completely uncritical media publicity--- carried along with it the flat earth! While it is certainly not true that every Creationist is a flat-earther, it is certainly true that every flat-earther is a Creationist!
The broad spectrum of modern
"Creationism"!
The vagueness of belief allowed in
the modern Creationist movement is well illustrated by beliefs
within the movement concerning the age of the earth. "Old Earth"
Creationists accept the facts of geophysics and astrophysics,
and the measured age of earth and solar system to be 4.5 billion
years. Other Creationists agree on "millions," but won't accept
"billions." Other Creationists accept that the earth is at least
as old as urban civilization, about 10,000 years. Other
Creationists claim the earth is no more than 6000 years old,
having been created in 4000 BCE. And I was recently told by a
Creationist that the earth is obviously only 2023 years old
because the current year is 2023. The rise of the modern Flat
Earth cult is due to Samuel
Shenton and Charles
K. Johnson, and it is Johnson who, beginning in the early
1970s and piggybacking on the popularity of the Creationist
movement, began to grow the cult to its present popularity.
After Johnson's death, Daniel
Shenton created a web presence for the cult, and breakaway
members soon formed a rival organization. The exact number of
followers of Flat Earth cults is currently unknown, but most
extreme fundamentalists in the USA are at least sympathetic to
the cult's "educational" aims. A 2022 survey of people in
the US found about 10%
of the population to be flat-earthers.
Night and day, and the seasons, provide an almost impossible puzzle for Flat-Earthers... the sun is like a searchlight, shining on only parts of the earth at once, and has to travel in an expanding and descending/ascending spiral to provide seasons. The South Pole and the entire continent of Antarctica simply do not exist, despite the fact that the USA has a very large scientific base right at the South Pole. Instead, a huge barrier of ice prevents things from falling off the edge of the earth into a bottomless unknown region.
Even the simplest everyday phenomena make no sense in the flat earth picture. The sun is always overhead, despite beaming light like a flashlight, and would never be seen to rise or set. Nor could the most common type of eclipse, the eclipse of the moon by the earth's shadow, ever happen. Solar eclipses are also impossible. The planets do not exist as such, but are just tiny lights in the sky a short distance above earth, like all the rest of the observable universe. Even though the moon is just a few miles above earth, it would apparently be impossible to reach it or land on it, for reasons not explained.
