Overview
It seems crazy that there are still people today who maintain that the Earth is flat. That’s both sad and funny, but it’s curious to know why they might still think that way? Apart from mental illness or fraud, it’s most likely because religion has encouraged that point of view. And of course it’s the Young-Earth Creationists (YEC) and/or fundamentalists who are more likely to take the words of the bible literally.
Some history
The Ancient Greeks knew that the Earth was a sphere. Many of them had been chipping away at the problem of the shape of the Earth – first proposing that it was a ball in about 500 BCE, but by about 350 BCE Aristotle declared it to be a sphere. In the next hundred years or so, the Greeks had measured its size, and by 240 BCE Eratosthenes had made a reasonable measurement of the radius of the Earth. Those dates give a clue to the problem because the old testament was started about 300 years before the Greeks first considered the Earth to be a sphere.
From religious text
The authors of the old testament didn’t realise that they were standing on a very large ball. That’s evident from their writings:
- genesis 2:8 “And the lord god planted a garden eastward in eden”. East of what? on a sphere there is always something to east. On a finite plane (which is what the writers thought they were standing on), there’s a most-easterly point; in the real world, there isn’t.
- deuteronomy 13:7 “Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth”. The Earth doesn’t have ends.
- daniel 4:10-11 “behold a tree in the midst of the earth, and the height thereof was great. The tree grew, and was strong, and the height thereof reached unto heaven, and the sight thereof to the end of all the earth”. No matter how high you go, you can’t see to the end of all of the Earth, however you could (theoretically) if the Earth was flat. And a tree reaching to heaven? How high would that be, biblical literalists? The tallest tree on Earth today measures 115 m (380 feet), however the tallest tree in the Middle East is just under 21 m (69 feet). So which parts of the bible are man-made exaggerations and which parts are the inerrant word of god?
- isaiah 40:22 “It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth”. The Earth isn’t a circle. Note that there were words in the original language better suited to describing a globe (e.g. as a “ball”), but the writer still used the word for “circle”. That’s because when you stand in a flat, empty place and look to the horizon all around you, “circle” is the best word to describe what you see (not what is present beyond the horizon).
- isaiah 11:12 “and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth”. The Earth doesn’t have corners. Remember that we use metaphorical language like “four corners” because of works like the bible, however the men who wrote the bible used such words because they believed them, literally.
- revelation 7:1 “After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth”. Again, the Earth doesn’t have four corners.
- job 37:3 “He unleashes his lightning beneath the whole heaven and sends it to the ends of the earth”. The Earth doesn’t have ends, and lightning cannot reach all the way around the Earth. The longest recorded lightning strike was about 710 km (440 miles) – which doesn’t even get out of the Middle East, let alone the “to the ends of the Earth”.
- revelation 1:7 “Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him”. Only on a flat Earth could every eye have a hope of seeing “he” as he cometh along. And if “he” is just clouds that everyone is seeing, then it’s not really he, is it?
- job 28:24 “for he views the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens”. The Earth doesn’t have ends and it’s not possible for one person to view everything under the heavens.
- job 38:14 “It is turned as clay to the seal” (when talking about the foundations of the Earth).
- matthew 4:8 “Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor”. It doesn’t matter how high you climb, you can’t see all the kingdoms of the world – however you could (theoretically) if the Earth was flat. The theoretical distance that you could see from the top of Mount Everest is 336 km (209 miles). The highest peak in the Middle East is Mount Damavand in Iran at 5,610 m (18,406 feet), and from its peak the theoretical furthest distance that you could see is 267 km (166 miles) – which is only one sixth of the way back towards Jerusalem. The men who wrote the bible didn’t even have a rudimentary understanding of geography or mathematics.
The more moderate religious folk will come up with all sorts of excuses as to why these don’t really mean that the Earth is flat, but what they are forgetting is that it would have been trivially easy for the writers of the bible to leave no doubt by using language that specifically described the Earth to be a sphere and to omit descriptions of actions that are only possible if the Earth was flat. The reason they didn’t was because they believed it was flat.
Evidence for a spherical Earth
It is easy to figure out that the Earth is a sphere. The ancient Egyptians knew it, and so do we. Here are some issues that cannot be explained or reconciled via a flat Earth model but are easy to explain via the correct globe model.
- There are many videos on the Internet that show a boat sailing over the horizon and gradually disappearing from the bottom up – while all remaining parts of the boat are in perfect proportion and focus. Note that the horizon is always a distinct line, so the disappearance of the boat (from the bottom up) has nothing to do with atmospheric distortion.
- A laser placed perfectly level a little off the ground at one end of a large lake hits a point very much higher up off the ground at the other end of the lake. This has even been demonstrated by flat-Earthers in an attempt to disprove it. This alone is enough to disprove a flat Earth.
- There are many videos showing the rotation of the Earth from a satellite in orbit. There are recognizable land masses that are not always visible on the Earth (from the satellite), but which do rotate into view as the Earth spins. If the Earth was flat, you’d always see what is about to rotate into view.
- The flat-Earth model doesn’t support the times it takes to fly air routes in the southern hemisphere compared to the northern hemisphere. For example the LATAM Airlines flight LAN810 from Sydney, Australia to Santiago, Chile (in the southern hemisphere) takes about 12 hours. An example 12 hour flight in the northern hemisphere is the Japan Airlines flight JL6 from Tokyo, Japan to New York, US. Both flights cover about 7,000 miles (a little over 11,000 km). Would someone in the flat-Earth community care to measure the distance of those flights on their flat-Earth model and explain why the distances (on their “map”) are so dramatically different (when they should be the same)? Note that for fuel efficiency, modern aircraft all fly at a speed of 550 to 600 mph (885 to 965 km/h, or roughly Mach 0.78 to 0.85).
- No flat-Earth model fully supports the observed celestial mechanics concerning the movement of the Sun, Moon and stars – especially considering that sometimes the shadow of the Moon strikes the Earth and sometimes the shadow of the Earth strikes the Moon. If it’s a flat Earth with the Moon and sun above it, how can Earth’s shadow ever cast upon the moon?
- The globe model accurately predicts events such as eclipses and planetary alignments. Flat-Earth models don’t predict anything accurately, and certainly not events far into the future.
- At sunset the sun can be seen to illuminate just the bottom of the cloud layer. This makes sense on a globe but leads to a problem under a flat Earth model. On a flat-Earth model, a setting sun illuminating the bottoms of clouds can only be explained if it is falling below the plane of the Earth. We know that the sun illuminates 50% of Earth’s surface at any given time, so how can the flat-Earth model of sunshine work if the sun is falling below the disk?
- Imagine a guy in New York (USA) who is watching the sun set (to the west) and who has a friend in San Francisco (about 4,000 kilometers or miles or 2,500 miles to the west). As the sun is setting, the guy in NY phones his friend and states the exact moment when the sun disappears below the horizon. At that same moment, his friend (in San Francisco) confirms that the sun is still well above the horizon, and to his east. That scenario is a trivial consequence of a globe model, but how is it possible on a flat Earth?
- How could gravity work if the Earth was a flat disc? If it was a disc, gravity would be less on the edges than at the center (and it isn’t)
- No flat-Earther has ever returned from the edge of the Earth with photographic evidence of the edge, let alone what is on the other side of the flat disc.
- For some reason you’ll never hear from the flat-moon, flat-Sun or flat-Jupiter believers, so according to flat-Earthers it’s just the Earth that is flat out of all the celestial bodies!
It’s really embarrassing that this even has to be explained.
Here’s another example demonstrating flat-Earth to be nonsense. With a very good pair of binoculars (such as 20×80 or 15×70 mounted on a tripod), a viewer can typically resolve lunar features down to just under 2 miles (about 3.2 kilometers). Mount Everest stands above its surrounding base by about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers). The furthest away that Mount Everest can be seen on Earth with a pair of very good binoculars is about 200 miles (about 320 kilometers). The moon is about 220,000 miles (360,000 kilometers) away from Earth (via the closest surface to surface line). The moon’s surface is therefore about 1,100 times further away than Mount Everest can be seen on Earth. The problem for flat-Earthers is to explain why it isn’t possible to see Mount Everest from further away on Earth? Everything makes perfect sense on a globe, but everything fails miserably if a flat Earth is assumed. Before anyone says “atmosphere”, remember that from the top of mount Everest, the horizon is visible up to about 200 miles (320 km) and looks relatively sharp. It should be possible to see Mount Everest with a pair of very good binoculars from anywhere (with line of sight) if the Earth was flat, however it isn’t possible.
A fixed Earth?
But let’s not blame iron-age men too quickly, for didn’t god realise that the world he created was a sphere and influence the writing of his divine words accordingly? Why did he introduce doubt? But there are still some religious fundamentalists who would prefer to deny scientific evidence rather than admit that something in the bible isn’t correct.
To iron-age men, the Earth must have seemed like a huge stationary object at the center of everything that they could observe or imagine. It certainly gives that impression because in a glance, the sun, moon and stars appear stationary above us, and even when it is realized that they do appear to move slowly (in relation to the Earth), it’s easy to be fooled into thinking that the Earth is still and everything else moves. The bible certainly states that to be the case:
- “the world also shall be established that it shall not be moved” (psalms 96:10).
- “the world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved.” (psalms 93:1).
- “Fear before him, all the earth: the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved.” (1 chronicles 16:30).
- “The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.” (ecclesiastes 1:5). This states that the sun moves around a fixed Earth.
- “who made the earth and fashioned it, and himself fixed it fast” (isaiah 45:18)
Note that these are not metaphors. Until science figured out that the Earth was not fixed and immovable, there were no religiously-based writings to suggest that they were metaphors. It’s only in modern times that the religious apologists have tried to come out with the “it’s a metaphor” argument in defense of the above passages – continuing the game of religious catch-up that has been played for centuries.
A century later, Galileo, after having used a telescope to expand on the model by Copernicus, and observing moons orbiting Jupiter (the first bodies known to orbit something other than the Earth or the Sun), published his theories in 1,632 CE. The church immediately persecuted Galileo of heresy and he had to spend the rest of his life under house arrest. Says something, doesn’t it?
Of course, we now know a great deal more about the motion of the Earth. Far from being “fixed”, it actually has an extremely complicated motion in relation to the observable universe. The (tilted by about 23.5 degrees) Earth spins on its own axis from east to west at about 1,600 km/h (1,000 mph) at the equator and moves around the sun in an elliptical orbit at about 107,000 km/h (67,000 mph). The entire solar system is moving at 828,000 km/h (514,000 mph) around the center of the galaxy, and the galaxy (and the cluster of galaxies it is in) is moving at an astonishing 2.1 million km/h (1.3 million mph) in relation to the cosmic microwave background radiation of the universe.
What religion really says about the Earth
But since god is supposed to have created everything in the universe, didn’t he know all the issues and force a description of it into the writings he was leaving for all time to his beloved creation? Apparently not because he managed to fool his creation into believing that the Earth was “fixed” for about 2,000 years. Still want to hitch your wagon to that engine?
It gets worse because the bible extends the description of the physical model of the Earth to be much stranger. There is no doubt that the bible depicts the Earth as having a plate or dome called the firmament sitting above the Earth’s surface. Here are some characteristics of that structure as described in the bible:
- “And god said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And god made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And god called the firmament heaven.” (genesis 1:6-8). So according to that, “heaven” is not some sort of metaphorical place; it is definitely somewhere above us. Why has it never been seen if it is above us? Why didn’t the astronauts puncture the firmament or see “heaven” on their way to the moon?
- “And god said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And god made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And god set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth” (genesis 1:14-17).
- “and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.” (genesis 7:11). So there definitely is a water reservoir somewhere above us (according to the bible).
- “And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it.” (ezekiel 1:26). Have you ever tried to go outside, squint, and spot the throne that the bible tells you is somewhere above your head? Funny that no satellite or telescope has ever photographed the throne (likeness or otherwise)?
- “and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven” (matthew 24:29). The stars are not in a position to fall from the “firmament” to the Earth.
- “for the pillars of the earth are the LORD’s, and he hath set the world upon them.” (1 samuel 2:8). You could only conceivably set supporting pillars on a flat earth (not a globe).
- “Which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble.” (job 9:6)
- “The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at his reproof.” (job 26:10).
It’s clear that the writers of the bible had no real idea about the relationship between the Earth, its atmosphere and the celestial bodies. Their descriptions are about at the same level as would be expected today from a young child. They believed in a type of snow-globe model that had a clear firmament layer with windows to allow for rainfall, and which had stars placed in that layer. They also believed that pillars kept the firmament elevated, despite the fact that not one of them could ever have seen one of the pillars (not least of which is because they don’t exist). Some sympathy has to be felt for the iron-age writers because if you had no concept of evaporation (invisible water!) you’d probably also come to the conclusion that there must be a huge reservoir of water up there somewhere.
Even more flat-Earth nonsense
For some people, the flat-Earth model doesn’t die easily. They regularly trot out arguments that they feel are either gotchas for a globe model or somehow support a flat-Earth model. Here are some.
Ozone is really heavy so how does it stay up there?
The argument:
Ozone molecules are about 1.7 times heavier than average air molecules and therefore there’s no way that they can exist in a layer that ranges from about 9 to 19 miles (15 to 30 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface. They should sink down below that layer.
The facts:
Ozone (O₃) forms when high-energy ultraviolet (UV) sunlight or electrical discharges break apart standard oxygen molecules (O₂) into single oxygen atoms. These highly reactive single atoms then collide and bond with intact O₂ molecules, creating ozone. This therefore happens where the sunlight first interacts with the atmosphere (in that high up layer).
The concentration of ozone is between 8 and 15 parts per million. That’s incredibly dilute (when it comes to the makeup of molecules in the upper atmosphere).
Despite being heavier, ozone does not sink to the ground. That’s because the Earth’s atmosphere is continuously stirred by turbulent winds and weather systems, which keeps heavier gases thoroughly mixed with lighter ones.
Ozone is highly unstable and constantly breaks down, meaning it tends to exist where it is actively being created (in the upper atmosphere). It also exists close to the Earth’s surface because it forms near the surface when pollutants – primarily nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds from motor vehicle exhausts, industrial facilities, and power plants – react chemically in the presence of sunlight.
Earth’s atmosphere can’t exist next to the vacuum of space
The argument:
The argument is that, on a globe, the atmosphere would simply leak away into the vacuum of space – hence the globe is impossible. This is an argument that is really far out because it is made by those who believe that the atmosphere is contained in some sort of firmament (a dome-like structure stated by various religious texts) which prevents it leaking into whatever is out there.
The facts:
The argument is wrong because it incorrectly extends the observation that if you open a jar of gas in a vacuum then the gas will dissipate into the vacuum. That’s a correct observation, but it’s incorrect to extend the observation to the Earth and its atmosphere. The reason is that the Earth is an extremely large mass and therefore exerts a gravitational force over everything else that has a mass in its vicinity – and air molecules have a mass (albeit tiny). If the Earth’s gravity could be turned off, the air would indeed dissipate into the surrounding vacuum.
Interestingly, Earth’s atmosphere does continuously leak into space. Earth loses about 90 tons of air every day. The vacuum of space does not “suck” Earth’s air away; instead, light gases in the upper atmosphere reach escape velocity (about 11 kilometers per second) and drift off. By the way, Earth gains an estimated 30 to 100 tonnes (metric tons) of matter from beyond its atmosphere every day. That influx mainly consists of cosmic dust and micrometeorites originating from comets and asteroid collisions in the solar system.
For some reason it doesn’t seem to bother people who promote this incorrect argument that observations prove that every sufficiently-large body in the solar system has an atmosphere.
(More – coming soon …)
Flat Earthers and religion
Because the model is so horribly incorrect yet made its way into what is supposed to be the inerrant word of god, the religious apologists go to tremendous lengths to play around with the definition of words such as “firmament” to try and make the situation less ridiculous than everyone else knows it to be. They can’t escape the fact that the bible is quite clear in defining objects in the firmament layer (e.g. stars) and objects above the firmament layer (e.g. water, a throne, and a man). Why didn’t the omniscient creator of the universe dictate some facts to the writers of the bible regarding the physical systems on Earth that he had designed? A few choice words and there wouldn’t have been a need for the apologists to try and explain the disastrous model proffered by the iron-age men who made up the bible. But sadly for them, he didn’t.
There’s a reason why the vast majority of flat-Earthers are religious. If not, they always get backed into a logical corner when having to explain particular bits of their religious texts (as detailed above). For that reason, they have to start from the point of view that the entirety of their religious texts are correct, and then try to explain the individual problems as they arise.
If they don’t have that starting point, then they are forced to admit that there is at least one inaccuracy in their fundamental texts. That of course is a major problem because it begs the questions: how could an inerrant god make a mistake in the texts, and if at least one thing is wrong in the text, what else could be wrong? They therefore double-down by pretending that everything is correct and try to deal with the multitude of problems as they come up.
Of course not all religious people believe in a flat Earth, but you have to go a long way to find a flat-Earther who is not religious. For the religious globe-Earthers, there remains the problem of having to explain the problems in the religious texts (as detailed above). Most of course don’t bother.