if earth was proven to be flat, what difference would it make? would all the teachings of Jesus change? i dont get the flat earth, why it matters.
It matters because of the impact on something else.
If the earth really is flat, then the entirety of science is overthrown and shown to be a lie. All of the physics derived from astronomy and rotations about stars and the like is overthrown. What is more, our teachings about the world themselves are revealed to be an intentional, massive lie - meaning that literally nothing ever said by any authority or teacher can be trusted as being true. Everything is a lie.
That is the implication of flat earth. The entirety of science collapses as a lie. So do all of our institutions: the complete erasure of all trust in all teachers, scientists, everything.
But that's not why flat earth is brought up. Rather, it is an indirect argument in the other direction.
Nobody really argues for a flat earth. There is no human being on earth, not a single one, who actually believes in a flat earth. There are babies and severely handicapped who have never thought about such things, but everybody who has, has been taught by some other person that the world is round. This, like the existence of gravity (fall down, go boom!), or that water quenches thirst, is one of the pieces of universal human knowledge.
To attack the round earth is to be perverse - and to be a liar. Nobody who espouses flat earth theory really believes it. None would swear under oath on a lie detector that they believed it if there were any consequences, because there is not one single human being with a beating heart in existence who really believes it.
So, why does it get brought up, then?
Because to many, many people, probably most people, the origins of life and of the earth itself, are matters of ultimate religious importance, for very simple and straightforward reasons: we live in creation - which means somebody created it. Unless, of course, it all created itself through immutable natural processes, in which case there is no Creator at all. If there is a Creator, there is an intelligent overmind, and all of the time, effort and money spent on appeasing or understanding or communicating with, the overmind, is worth it - and the power and influence over other human beings, and the accumulation of wealth and authority of those devoted to communication with God, is inevitable and acceptable.
But if there isn't, then religion is a monstrous fraud in its entirety, all of the death engendered by religion over the ages is all just psychopathic murder, and religion is a gargantuan waste of real resources in the service of a millennial delusion. All of the power and authority accumulated by men devoted to trying to contact the figment of the human imagination called "God" is the product of delusion and fraud, and the concentration of wealth in religious buildings and efforts is the willful squandering of resources that could be used to better the lot of mankind.
The origins of the world, and of life, matter a great deal. That life originated with a Creator God is an existentially necessary belief for religion to continue to exist at all.
The evolution of species provides a naturalistic explanation for the different species, but abiogenesis, the spontaneous generation of life from non-living things, without intelligent intervention by any God - this renders God and religion obsolete.
We have all heard Occam's Razor paraphrased as "The simplest explanation is the best." What William of Ockham actually said was "We should not multiply entities unnecessarily." In other words, we should not ascribe to some new force that which can be explained by a known force.
So, if life can arise spontaneously through mindless chemical processes from the primordial soup, and continue spontaneously through the chemical process of evolution, then it is unreasonable to postulate the existence of a second entity - God - to explain life, because life generated itself and propagates itself. No additional entity is necessary, and therefore, the superfluous additional entity very probably does not exist.
The flat earth is ridiculous to everybody.
To those who believe in abiogenesis and evolution, those two things have been established as solid facts that no reasonable person can contest any longer. To contest abiogenesis and evolution, to such people, is to proclaim the flat earth. We know the earth isn't flat, and we know that species evolved, and people who oppose evolution are just as patently ridiculous as flat earthers - functionally, they are the same thing.
THAT is the argument.
Now, abiogenesis and evolution do NOT perforce destroy the existence of God at all. THAT is simple-mindedness by the atheists. For why does the natural law that gives rise to abiogenesis and evolution itself exist, and indeed exist out of nothing? It doesn't. The Catholic is quite comfortable with abiogenesis and evolution of species. God still created everything, because God is the creator of the natural law by which this chemistry works.
That's simple and obvious, to Catholics, because it follows logically back to the point where science fails (there is nothing to observe on which to form conclusions, and God is the originator). But Catholics are not Sola Scripturalists. The Catholic religion is not shaken by the fact that abiogenesis and evolution over eons contradicts Genesis 1 in many ways. Catholics don't think that Genesis 1 is history, they think it is allegoric poetry, written by men, carrying the intuitive truth that God is ultimately the creator of everything. It doesn't matter to the Catholic that the poetry is mythical, and that the real way that animals and man came about was not the poetic way described in genesis, but through things struggling forth as bacteria out of the primordial soup.
To the Protestant, however, there is danger here, particularly to the fundamentalist Sola Scripturalist. For to him, the Bible is the inerrant perfect word of God, and every word must not be literally true. To call Genesis 1 an allegory that isn't literally true is to say that it is a lie, and if Genesis 1, or any other part of the Bible is not strictly true, then it's all a lie and the whole of religion itself shatters like glass. Therefore, the most disciplined, consistent and vocal opponents of evolution and abiogenesis are fundamentalist Protestants. For if abiogenesis and evolution are true, the Bible is a lie and their religion is false. Everything is at stake in this argument.
Both the Protestants know this, but also their adversaries, the scientific atheists know it too. So the invocation of "flat earth" is a way to attack Fundamentalist Christians directly as ridiculous and absurd people... because EVERYBODY knows that the earth is not flat, and "everybody knows" that abiogenesis and evolution stand on the same scientific ground as the round earth.
So, that's why it matters, Jaybird88. That's what is at stake, and why the flat earth gets brought up.
