Do they really think the earth is flat? (BBC) {Yes. Yes, they do.}

[eppur_se_muova]

By Brendan O'Neill


In the 21st Century, the term "flat-earther" is used to describe someone who is spectacularly - and seemingly wilfully - ignorant. But there is a group of people who claim they believe the planet really is flat. Are they really out there or is it all an elaborate prank?

Nasa is celebrating its 50th birthday with much fanfare and pictures of past glories. But in half a century of extraordinary images of space, one stands out.

On 24 December 1968, the crew of the Apollo 8 mission took a photo now known as Earthrise. To many, this beautiful blue sphere viewed from the moon's orbit is a perfect visual summary of why it is right to strive to go into space.

Not to everybody though. There are people who say they think this image is fake - part of a worldwide conspiracy by space agencies, governments and scientists.

Welcome to the world of the flat-earther.
***
more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7540427.stm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_Society

http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/FlatHome.htm

[sakabatou]

1. Reminds me of the people quoted by FSTDT

[Wapsie B]

2. The Flat Earth Society, another name for republicans

in my book.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. To be fair, it's the earth orbiting round the Sun that some Republicans don't believe in

I think they've all managed to accept the 'globe' bit:

The odious Texas Representative Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, Chairman of the Texas House Appropriations Committee, distributed a disturbing anti-science and anti-Semitic memo to the other members of the Texas House of Representatives on Friday, February 9, 2007. Not content with repeated attempts to impose his radical religious right agenda on the citizens of Texas by trying to legislate religious school vouchers and requiring all public schools to offer a Bible course, promoting the teaching of creationism in science classes and abstinence-only sex education in health classes, sponsoring a Constitutional amendment to ban gay and lesbian marriage and civil unions in Texas, giving priority to heterosexuals over gay and lesbian families to provide care to foster children, and attempting to return the full powers to censor textbooks to the State Board of Education (see House Bills 220 and 2534 Will Return Texas to Its Dark Ages), Rep. Chisum sunk to a new low of bigotry by distributing a memo--reproduced below--of State Representative Ben Bridges, Republican of Georgia, that advocates young-Earth creationism, geocentricity, a non-rotating and non-revolving Earth, and attributes evolutionary biology to a conspiracy of Jewish "Kabbalists" documented in ancient "Rabbinic writings." The late journalist Molly Ivins referred to Chisum as "the Bible-thumping dwarf from Pampa," referring both literally to his physical and and figuratively to his moral stature, so this episode certainly confirms that characterization.

Ben Bridges' memo contains anti-science and anti-Semitic rants against evolution and other sciences. It obtained its information from a creationist-geocentric Earth website of the self-named Fair Education Foundation, Marshall Hall, President. Hall's wife is Bridges' campaign manager. The website condemns the "Copernican and Darwinian Myths" of heliocentricism and evolutionary biology. Bridges' memo claims that biological evolution has a "religious agenda," a common claim of creationists. Unusually, however, the memo claims the religion is a sect of Judaism, the "Pharisee Religion," as proven by its mystic "holy book," the Kabbala. Creationists always claim the religious basis of evolution is the "religion" of secular humanism, so Chisum, Bridge, and Hall are certainly promoting a new twist on the origin of biological evolution, although not one recognized by historians of science.

http://www.texscience.org/news/chisum-bridges.htm[/div[

[chknltl]

3. I am constantly telling conservatives that the earth is indeed round...

...round like a basketball not round like a pizza. Sadly this gives them pause only briefly before they continue on trying to convince me of things that a partially retarded third grader could refute.

[bdf]

6. But it's in the Babble that the earth is flat

Two places, in fact. In one somebody climbs a tree which allows him to see all the kingdoms of the earth. Even a tree that grew as tall as the moon's orbit won't let you do that. And Jeebus was on top of a mountain that gave him the same view. But even an infinite distance from the Earth you could only see (assuming you had a powerful enough telescope) half of the planet at one time. But if it's in the Babble that means God said it and it must be true.

[Occulus]

7. That's one of the reasons I'm not willing to believe ANYTHING that godawful book has to say

I treat it as a work of fantasy literature.

Truth? Not even close.

[bdf]

8. There's a more sophisticated interpretation

The leading thinkers of the enlightment poured scorn on the Babble, particularly the two tales of creation in Genesis. How could anyone believe that...

The sky was a big, solid hemispherical dome that met the ground (which was flat. That light simply came forth from nothing. That the sun and moon were not sources of illumination but navigation beacons.

But that's what it looks like, at least if you don't have a very inquisitive mind.

The sky does look like a big bowl. I remember back as a kid looking up and around in wonderment and thinking exactly that. Light does appear to come from everywhere. When the sun is behind a cloud or a mountain, it's still light. And the sun couldn't be the source of that light because it had to be nearer to us than the sky (even if you decided the sky was blue glass, if the sun were further away it would be tinted blue). And if the sun is nearer to us than the sky and the source of the light which lit up the sky then the sky would be a lot brighter close to the sun, and it does not appear so.

Look around with the eyes of a child and you see what the authors of the babble saw. It was their best guess at how the world around them actually was. OK, some people of that age were a lot smarter. Back in 230BCE Eratosthenes didn't just know that the Earth was a sphere, he calculated its circumference (and got the answer right to within 10%, which is pretty good considering how he did it). At that time the tribes of Israel were still convinced the Earth was flat (some Christians even today are convinced of the same thing because the babble tells them so).

They may not have been very scientific, and may not have been very smart, but the authors of Genesis made an honest attempt to describe what was around them and why it was so and came up with a fairly consistent (but totally wrong) explanation. Unlike the Enlightenment thinkers, I do not mock them for getting it wrong and not having the benefit of a few hundreds of years of scientific experimentation to get better answers.

What I mock is the fact that supposedly this stuff wasn't a load of invention by the authors of the Babble but the Holy word of Gawd Awmighty explaining how His creation worked. You'd really think that Gawd would know how everything worked instead of coming out with a half-assed explanation like that.

[krispos42]

9. ...

[melody]

5. The Flat Earth Society was started as a joke

The guy lived in my town (the high desert, ergo the visual field of memory).

If others fell for it along the way, it's their bad. But the first guy just thought the idea funny.
(See also "Fnord")