The Flat Earth Myth

[sandwiches]

In this paper, Stephen J. Gould proves that the Myth of the Flat Earth is driven by Darwinist motives and deception as Gould writes:

“As another interesting similarity, both men developed their basic model of science vs. theology in the context of a seminal and contemporary struggle all too easily viewed in this light – the battle for evolution, specifically for Darwin’s secular version based on natural selection.”

“It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Darwinian revolution directly triggered this influential nineteenth-century conceptualization of Western history as a war between two taxonomic categories labeled science and religion. White made an explicit connection in his statement about Agassiz (the founder of the museum where I now work, and a visiting lecturer at Cornell). Moreover, the first chapter of his book treats the battle over evolution, while the second begins with the flat-earth myth.”

“Draper wraps himself even more fully in the Darwinian mantle.”

Thus Stephen J. Gould proves that the Flat Earth Myth is driven and perpetuated by Darwinist motives and deception.

<edit>

At any rate, in the quotes you posted, Gould only mentions the "flat-earth myth" in reference to a book Andrew Dickson White.

<edit>

 

[corvus_corax]

You are confusing Flat-Earthism with Geocentrism.

Yes, indeed --

Thank you for the correction!

You are confusing Flat-Earthism with Geocentrism.

That's absurd.

Love it!
Even staunch men of faith and absolute opinion-based conviction cannot agree.

 

[Febble]

I refer you to the opening post that you obviously didn't read.

Perhaps contemporary Scripture can help clarify

Thanks.

I did read it actually, I was just puzzled by your comment that:

The Flat Earth Myth strawman fallacy is a cornerstone of the Darwinist fairy tale.

And I'm still puzzled

Could you explain why you think the "Flat Earth Myth" is "a cornerstone of the Darwinist fairy tale"?

I'm not aware of any connection between Darwin's theory of evolution and the belief that some earlier people thought the earth was flat.

 

[Febble]

Ah, apologies. vBulletin caught me out as it sometimes does, when the last unread post is not the last post in the thread. I responded above before I'd seen this:

In this paper, Stephen J. Gould proves that the Myth of the Flat Earth is driven by Darwinist motives and deception as Gould writes:

“As another interesting similarity, both men developed their basic model of science vs. theology in the context of a seminal and contemporary struggle all too easily viewed in this light – the battle for evolution, specifically for Darwin’s secular version based on natural selection.”

“It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Darwinian revolution directly triggered this influential nineteenth-century conceptualization of Western history as a war between two taxonomic categories labeled science and religion. White made an explicit connection in his statement about Agassiz (the founder of the museum where I now work, and a visiting lecturer at Cornell). Moreover, the first chapter of his book treats the battle over evolution, while the second begins with the flat-earth myth.”

“Draper wraps himself even more fully in the Darwinian mantle.”

Thus Stephen J. Gould proves that the Flat Earth Myth is driven and perpetuated by Darwinist motives and deception.

I don't think so. In any case, even if were true (I don't know either way) that Flat Earth beliefs featured in the science vs religion arguments of Darwin's time (from what I have read, it was geocentrism rather than flat-earthism anyway), saying that "the Flat Earth Myth is driven and perpetuated by Darwinist motives and deception" is not at all the same thing as saying that "The Flat Earth Myth strawman fallacy is a cornerstone of the Darwinist fairy tale".

Obviously, I don't think that Darwinian evolution is a fairy tale (it's massively supported by overwhelming and consilient evidence from independent domains of science), but even if it were, it's not at all based on the "cornerstone" that medieval people thought the earth was flat.

I simply don't see any connection at all.

However, on the subject of a flat earth, Asimov's wonderful essay, The Relativity of Wrong, is always worth re-reading. I can't link to it as I don't have enough posts, but it comes up as the first hit on google.

 

[Agonaces of Susa]

At any rate, in the quotes you posted, Gould only mentions the "flat-earth myth" in reference to a book Andrew Dickson White.

Exactly what part of the words evolution, secular, natural selection, Darwin, and Darwinian don't you understand?

 

[Agonaces of Susa]

Could you explain why you think the "Flat Earth Myth" is "a cornerstone of the Darwinist fairy tale"?

I don't need to because Stephen J. Gould did.

I'm not aware of any connection between Darwin's theory of evolution and the belief that some earlier people thought the earth was flat.

See opening post.

 

[Febble]

The part I don't understand is how the idea that Columbus's contemporaries thought the earth was flat (thanks for the wiki link, that's interesting) has anything to do with Darwin's evolutionary theory.

 

[Febble]

I don't need to because Stephen J. Gould did.


See opening post.

Well, no. Gould says nothing about the Flat Earth Myth being a cornerstone of Darwinian evolutionary theory. He says (apparently, I haven't read it in context) that it was part of the science vs religion argument of the day.

But it certainly has nothing to do with evolutionary theory.

ETA: for a start, Gould was a promotor of evolutionary theory.

 

[Agonaces of Susa]

In any case, even if were true (I don't know either way) that Flat Earth beliefs featured in the science vs religion arguments of Darwin's time (from what I have read, it was geocentrism rather than flat-earthism anyway), saying that "the Flat Earth Myth is driven and perpetuated by Darwinist motives and deception" is not at all the same thing as saying that "The Flat Earth Myth strawman fallacy is a cornerstone of the Darwinist fairy tale".

Obviously, I don't think that Darwinian evolution is a fairy tale (it's massively supported by overwhelming and consilient evidence from independent domains of science), but even if it were, it's not at all based on the "cornerstone" that medieval people thought the earth was flat.

I simply don't see any connection at all.

Stephen J. Gould certainly saw the connection.

However, on the subject of a flat earth, Asimov's wonderful essay, The Relativity of Wrong, is always worth re-reading. I can't link to it as I don't have enough posts, but it comes up as the first hit on google.

I'll have a look. Thanks...

 

[Agonaces of Susa]

Well, no. Gould says nothing about the Flat Earth Myth being a cornerstone of Darwinian evolutionary theory. He says (apparently, I haven't read it in context) that it was part of the science vs religion argument of the day.

But it certainly has nothing to do with evolutionary theory.

If that's true, then why does Stephen J. Gould say it has everything to do with evolution?

 

[Agonaces of Susa]

The Asimov paper is rubbish.

Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong

In the early days of civilization, the general feeling was that the earth was flat.

I smell Darwinist revisionism and pseudoscience.

Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete.

Absolute and unabashed dogmatism.

If something more than a small refinement were needed, then the old theory would never have endured.

LOL. How long did geocentrism endure?

Again, it is because the geological formations of the earth change so slowly

LOL. Uniformitarian pseudoscience.

"Charles Lyell was a lawyer by profession, and his book [Principles of Geology, 1830-1833] is one of the most brilliant briefs ever published by an advocate ... Lyell relied upon true bits of cunning to establish his uniformitarian views as the only true geology. First, he set up a straw man to demolish ... In fact, the catastrophists were much more empirically minded than Lyell. The geologic record does seem to require catastrophes: rocks are fractured and contorted; whole faunas are wiped out. To circumvent this literal appearance, Lyell imposed his imagination upon the evidence. The geologic record, he argued, is extremely imperfect and we must interpolate into it what we can reasonably infer but cannot see. The catastrophists were the hard-nosed empiricists of their day, not the blinded theological apologists." -- Stephen J. Gould, biologist, February 1975

"I have been trying to show how I think geology got into the hands of the theoreticians who were conditioned by the social and political history of their day more than by observation in the field&#8230;In other words, we have allowed ourselves to be brain-washed into avoiding any interpretation of the past that involves extreme and what might be termed 'catastrophic' processes." -- Derek V. Ager, biogeographer, 1981

"Gradualism was never &#8216;proved from the rocks&#8217; by Lyell and Darwin, but was rather imposed as a bias upon nature. &#8230;has had a profoundly negative impact by stifling hypotheses and by closing the minds of a profession toward reasonable empirical alternatives to the dogma of gradualism. &#8230;Lyell won with rhetoric what he could not carry with data." -- Stephen J. Gould, biologist, 1984

"With the collision of the Shoemaker comet into Jupiter, the era of uniformitarian orthodoxy must come to an end. Minds that have been closed for nearly half a millennium can now be opened to see what really has happened to our planet in the past -- and that past is not as distant as we might suppose." -- Vine Deloria Jr., historian, 1997

"I was raised a uniformitarian, but through the course of my research I have come to doubt the dogmatism that seems to be central to so much of what currently passes for science." -- Robert M. Schoch, geologist, 1999

"As has often been pointed out, by definition the uniformitarian creed precludes the very real possibility of rare and radical changes in nature. Since the late 19th century, most geologists have fondly embraced the adage of the British lawyer and geologist, Sir Chalres Lyell (1797-1875): 'The present is the key to the past.' It's naive implication is that all phenomena that have ever happened in nature still occur today and can be observed. Historical evidence is valuable precisely because it offers an even better key to the past than present-day analogues: eye-witness accounts." -- Rens Van Der Sluijs, author, August 2009

If the rate of change were more rapid, geology and evolution would have reached their modern state in ancient times.

Welcome to reality: Prisca Sapientia.

It is only because the difference between the rate of change in a static universe and the rate of change in an evolutionary one is that between zero and very nearly zero that the creationists can continue propagating their folly.

LOL. Crackpot.

 

[Febble]

If that's true, then why does Stephen J. Gould say it has everything to do with evolution?

Well, from what I can gather from your quotes (I don't have access to the source, unfortunately) he is, in his characteristic polemical fashion, pointing to the science vs religion debates of the 19th century, that were, in part, triggered by Darwin's writings, but also, the discoveries of geologists like Lyell. It was a period of huge upheaval in the way people thought about cosmology (just as the 16th century was), and it sounds like a mistaken idea of pre 16th century ideas about the spherical earth may have been part of the debate (which is interesting - I didn't know that).

But the myth is certainly not a "cornerstone" of Darwinian evolutionary theory. For a start, I've known about Darwinian evolutionary theory for over half a century, and it's the first time I've even come across evidence that any of the 19th century debate about science vs religion featured this myth

 

[sandwiches]

Exactly what part of the words evolution, secular, natural selection, Darwin, and Darwinian don't you understand?

Exactly what part of those quotes AND the entire paper not supporting your claim don't you understand? Are you a little tired, perhaps?

 

[Febble]

The Asimov paper is rubbish.

I very much disagree.

In the early days of civilization, the general feeling was that the earth was flat.

I smell Darwinist revisionism and pseudoscience.

I think you are smelling wrong Or perhaps missing Asimov's point.

Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete.

Absolute and unabashed dogmatism.

Well, no.

If something more than a small refinement were needed, then the old theory would never have endured.

LOL. How long did geocentrism endure?

You do really seem to have entirely missed Asimov's point. How odd.

Oh well.

Actually, geocentrism, oddly, is making a comeback I can't link yet, but you can find this interesting article by googling:

Earth's billion parsec bubble
​

The article I mean comes up on the first hit.

I guess what I take as Asimov's point is something fundamental to the modern scientific method, which is that all scientific theories are models. In science we fit models to data. But there are always "residuals" - the fit is never perfect, because reality is always more complex than our model (the only completely accurate model of the universe would be a copy of it )

But some models fit better than others, and, generally, we retain the models with the smallest residuals. Although often in practice we use the most useful model. Flat maps are very useful for small areas, and Newtonian physics is perfectly adequate, and a lot more handy, than Einsteinian physics or quantum mechanics for the kinds of scales we generally live with. That's why Asimov talks about the relativity of wrong. Flat earth may be absolutely wrong, but it's actually less wrong in some senses than Columbus's calculation a sphere that was too small. If American hadn't existed, Columbus's miscalculation would have ended in a disaster that a flat earth assumption would have prevented. Sometimes an answer that is too big (infinite radius) is better than an answer that is too small (Japan really quite close to Spain).

 

[Febble]

Exactly what part of those quotes AND the entire paper not supporting your claim don't you understand? Are you a little tired, perhaps?

Do you have a link to the paper? I haven't managed to find it online.

 

[Febble]

Oh golly! Your post is evolving

OK, to respond to your additional comments on the Asimov paper:

Again, it is because the geological formations of the earth change so slowly

LOL. Uniformitarian pseudoscience.

"Charles Lyell was a lawyer by profession, and his book [Principles of Geology, 1830-1833] is one of the most brilliant briefs ever published by an advocate ... Lyell relied upon true bits of cunning to establish his uniformitarian views as the only true geology. First, he set up a straw man to demolish ... In fact, the catastrophists were much more empirically minded than Lyell. The geologic record does seem to require catastrophes: rocks are fractured and contorted; whole faunas are wiped out. To circumvent this literal appearance, Lyell imposed his imagination upon the evidence. The geologic record, he argued, is extremely imperfect and we must interpolate into it what we can reasonably infer but cannot see. The catastrophists were the hard-nosed empiricists of their day, not the blinded theological apologists." -- Stephen J. Gould, biologist, February 1975

"I have been trying to show how I think geology got into the hands of the theoreticians who were conditioned by the social and political history of their day more than by observation in the field…In other words, we have allowed ourselves to be brain-washed into avoiding any interpretation of the past that involves extreme and what might be termed 'catastrophic' processes." -- Derek V. Ager, biogeographer, 1981

"Gradualism was never ‘proved from the rocks’ by Lyell and Darwin, but was rather imposed as a bias upon nature. …has had a profoundly negative impact by stifling hypotheses and by closing the minds of a profession toward reasonable empirical alternatives to the dogma of gradualism. …Lyell won with rhetoric what he could not carry with data." -- Stephen J. Gould, biologist, 1984

"With the collision of the Shoemaker comet into Jupiter, the era of uniformitarian orthodoxy must come to an end. Minds that have been closed for nearly half a millennium can now be opened to see what really has happened to our planet in the past -- and that past is not as distant as we might suppose." -- Vine Deloria Jr., historian, 1997

"I was raised a uniformitarian, but through the course of my research I have come to doubt the dogmatism that seems to be central to so much of what currently passes for science." -- Robert M. Schoch, geologist, 1999

"As has often been pointed out, by definition the uniformitarian creed precludes the very real possibility of rare and radical changes in nature. Since the late 19th century, most geologists have fondly embraced the adage of the British lawyer and geologist, Sir Chalres Lyell (1797-1875): 'The present is the key to the past.' It's naive implication is that all phenomena that have ever happened in nature still occur today and can be observed. Historical evidence is valuable precisely because it offers an even better key to the past than present-day analogues: eye-witness accounts." -- Rens Van Der Sluijs, author, August 2009

Again you are completely missing Asimov's point (and being misled, I'd say, by Gould, who seems to be a hero of yours, as he is one of mine). Asimov isn't arguing against catastrophic changes in geology, and nor is Gould arguing that most geological changes are extremely slow. Asimov's point, therefore stands, which is, in full:

Again, it is because the geological formations of the earth change so slowly and the living things upon it evolve so slowly that it seemed reasonable at first to suppose that there was no change and that the earth and life always existed as they do today. If that were so, it would make no difference whether the earth and life were billions of years old or thousands. Thousands were easier to grasp.



But when careful observation showed that the earth and life were changing at a rate that was very tiny but not zero, then it became clear that the earth and life had to be very old. Modern geology came into being, and so did the notion of biological evolution.

He is certainly not denying that catastrophes are part of the geological record - they clearly are, and as he is talking about what ancient people would have thought, clearly they would also have observed high-speed events (floods, eruptions, landslips). But in general, geological formations look stationary in comparison with the life-times of people, but, of course, are not.

If the rate of change were more rapid, geology and evolution would have reached their modern state in ancient times.

Welcome to reality: Prisca Sapientia.

huh?

It is only because the difference between the rate of change in a static universe and the rate of change in an evolutionary one is that between zero and very nearly zero that the creationists can continue propagating their folly.

LOL. Crackpot.

Ah, I'd forgotten he actually mentioned "creationists". Well, creationism is "folly" in my view, simply because Genesis doesen't work as a scientific account. I think it works well as a parable (several, in fact, some better than others) though.

But perhaps I'd better tiptoe out of the thread at this point....

 

[3sigma]

The Bible says the solar system is heliocentric.

"And he [Methuselah] was moreover with the angels of God these six jubilees of years, and they showed him everything which is on the earth and in the heavens, the rule of the sun, and he wrote down everything." -- Jubilees 4:21

-staff edit-

My original comment was that Christian theologians held to geocentrism and declared heliocentrism to be contrary to scripture. I&#8217;ve already shown that to be true with the extracts from the sentence passed on Galileo.

My other comment was that religious believers deny scientific knowledge that shows their religious beliefs are not true. The Galileo sentence confirms that as well, but we only need to look at your posts and those of other religious believers in these forums for further confirmation of that fact. Religious believers here constantly deny scientific knowledge in the fields of biology, palæontology, geology, cosmology and anything else that shows their comforting religious beliefs are not true.

You can deny scientific knowledge as much as you like, but it won&#8217;t make a scrap of difference. Each new area of knowledge explored by science reduces the territory once occupied by gods. You are running out of places to hide your God. Your bleating denials will not impede the progress of scientific knowledge one iota and they will not change reality. -staff edit-

 

[Agonaces of Susa]

Well, from what I can gather from your quotes (I don't have access to the source, unfortunately) he is, in his characteristic polemical fashion, pointing to the science vs religion debates of the 19th century, that were, in part, triggered by Darwin's writings, but also, the discoveries of geologists like Lyell. It was a period of huge upheaval in the way people thought about cosmology (just as the 16th century was), and it sounds like a mistaken idea of pre 16th century ideas about the spherical earth may have been part of the debate (which is interesting - I didn't know that).

But the myth is certainly not a "cornerstone" of Darwinian evolutionary theory.

Ironic that Stephen J. Gould says otherwise.

"It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Darwinian revolution directly triggered this influential nineteenth-century conceptualization of Western history as a war between two taxonomic categories labeled science and religion. White made an explicit connection in his statement about Agassiz (the founder of the museum where I now work, and a visiting lecturer at Cornell). Moreover, the first chapter of his book treats the battle over evolution, while the second begins with the flat-earth myth." -- Stephen J. Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack, Late Birth of a Flat Earth, 1995

For a start, I've known about Darwinian evolutionary theory for over half a century, and it's the first time I've even come across evidence that any of the 19th century debate about science vs religion featured this myth

You've never heard a Darwinist say that people thought that the Earth was flat?

I take it from that you've never actually read the Asimov paper.

 

[Greg1234]

-staff edit-

My original comment was that Christian theologians held to geocentrism and declared heliocentrism to be contrary to scripture. I&#8217;ve already shown that to be true with the extracts from the sentence passed on Galileo.

When Galileo came out with evidence opposing the scientific view of a geocentric model, he was opposed by scientists outside and within the church, and was jeered by his own peers. Though they did not have anything tangible to hold and suppress him with, the same way you cannot just fire a man who opposes Darwinism but you can systematically and intellectually strangle him, scientists within the church had something to zero in on him, and that was his faith. Galileo waited a lengthy amount of time before publishing his findings. He wasn't afraid of the church, but the power of the greater scientific community as geocentricity was being taught in schools, it had money backing it, etc.

My other comment was that religious believers deny scientific knowledge that shows their religious beliefs are not true. The Galileo sentence confirms that as well, but we only need to look at your posts and those of other religious believers in these forums for further confirmation of that fact. Religious believers here constantly deny scientific knowledge in the fields of biology, palæontology, geology, cosmology and anything else that shows their comforting religious beliefs are not true.

We don't deny anything. Strip the Darwinist speculation off and look at the science on adaptation in its purity and you find creationism. You find an intelligent adaptive feature and limits to adaptation (science Darwinists still fervently deny), tests revealing the sterility of random mutations, anomalous fossil findings completely legitimate in the real world, and so on. We are not denying science, just refusing Darwinism.

You can deny scientific knowledge as much as you like, but it won&#8217;t make a scrap of difference. Each new area of knowledge explored by science reduces the territory once occupied by gods. You are running out of places to hide your God. Your bleating denials will not impede the progress of scientific knowledge one iota and they will not change reality. -staff edit-

Thats the belief of the atheist

 

[Agonaces of Susa]

Exactly what part of those quotes AND the entire paper not supporting your claim don't you understand? Are you a little tired, perhaps?

Why does Gould make a connection between the flat-earth myth and Darwinism according to you?