A Flat Earth? Answers In Genesis

[media=https://youtu.be/XlVNIFbVm_Y]

The cartoon displays the silly arguments about the shape of the earth.

Most people have thought about the shape of the earth. From their earliest days in school, teachers and textbooks have taught students that the earth is spherical. For those who have given this some thought and have begun to raise simple objections to the earth’s spherical shape, it doesn’t take much to plant seeds of doubt. Often, people will respond with the observation that photos from space clearly show a spherical earth. However, we know that photos can easily be photo shopped or faked. And these types of photos and videos (starting with the Apollo space missions) have been available only for a little more than a half century. But evidences for a spherical earth go back much further than this.

So how did people in the ancient world figure out that the earth is spherical? In the sixth century BC, Pythagoras taught that the earth was spherical, although none of his writings exist which explain how he came to this conclusion. Aristotle (384–322 BC) was among the first to write down the fact of our planet being a round sphere. He observed lunar eclipses and correctly realized that the cause of lunar eclipses (which can happen only with a full moon) is the shadow of the earth crawling across the moon. And because the edge of the earth’s shadow is always a portion of a circle, the earth’s shadow on the moon must also be a circle. If the earth were flat and round, like a disk, it could only cast a circular shadow for lunar eclipses that occur at midnight. For a lunar eclipse at sunrise or sunset, the earth’s shadow would be an ellipse, a line, or a rectangle. But during a lunar eclipse, the earth’s shadow is always a circle regardless of when the eclipse occurs. The only shape that consistently produces a circular shadow, regardless of its orientation, is a sphere. You can easily see this if you point a flashlight at a wall and use a circular dish and a ball. The dish will only project a circular shadow when oriented face-on to the light, and when it is edge on, or at any other angle, it will produce a line or ellipse.

The altitude of the North Star is noticeably higher in the sky at northern locations than at southern locations. For example, the North Star is much higher in the sky in Minnesota than it is in Florida, as anyone who pays attention to the night sky on vacation can attest. This can happen only if north-south motion is along an arc. Furthermore, the North Star (Polaris) is not visible in locations more than one degree south of the equator, nor is the Southern Cross visible in most of the Northern Hemisphere. This makes no sense in a flat-earth model but comports perfectly with a spherical earth.

Contrary to the common misconception, the medieval church did not believe or teach that the earth was flat. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274 AD) introduced Aristotelian thought into medieval church teaching. Aristotle (fourth century BC) and subsequent Greek philosophers and mathematicians clearly taught that the earth was spherical. In the early second century BC, Eratosthenes measured the circumference of the spherical earth to a very close approximation. The works of Aristotle, Eratosthenes, and other scholars’ written works were all copied by monks and were widely available and discussed in the late medieval period by clergymen and well-educated people, and this continued through the transition to the Renaissance. Given the clear testimony of historical record, why is it so commonly believed by many people today (and ironically even by some in the church) that the church taught the earth was flat?

This misconception is easily traced to two late nineteenth-century skeptics, John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, who invented the conflict thesis. The conflict thesis (a humanist tenet) holds that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, held back progress. The contention of the conflict thesis was that the alleged Dark Ages (fifth–fourteenth centuries) was a period when Europe was gripped with superstition (unfairly blamed solely on Christianity) that prevented intellectual advancement, and it was only after man’s reason (secular humanism) reasserted itself during the Renaissance that man slowly became unshackled from religious dogma, bringing about the Enlightenment.

It was known at the time how long it took to sail from Spain to the Orient by hugging the coast of Africa, rounding the Cape of Good Hope, and sailing up Eastern Africa and then past India. Keep in mind that the Suez Canal was not yet in existence. But going to the Orient via the Atlantic Ocean would be much longer since the Panama Canal did not exist at that time. For Columbus to have made it to China, he would have had to sail across the open Atlantic, circumvent South America and traverse the much vaster Pacific Ocean. And even though maps at that time were more crude and less accurate, most educated people knew that the distance was much greater by going west to the Orient.

The facts of history refute the commonly held story about Columbus. Much of the work supporting a flat earth today uncritically repeats and builds upon this false view. The flat-earth movement began in the mid-nineteenth century, the same time that the conflict thesis was being developed. While skeptics were ridiculing the Bible for allegedly teaching that the earth is flat, early flat-earthers foolishly accepted this false claim. Undoubtedly, the recent surge of interest in a flat earth among Christians has been fueled by the (false) belief that the Bible teaches that the earth is flat. But examining the Scriptures to see what they say, we find that promoters of a flat earth do not handle the text any better than they handle history.

I'm going to stop here for now. As we can see, God has established a round earth like it says in His Word. This is true in spite of what skeptics believe.