Did the apostles and the early Church believe the Earth was flat?

Shrewd Manager said:

Well I've never seen a curved body of water.

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You've actually never seen any other kind.

We can consistently see much much much much further than we should.

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How far should we see?

Independent expert-verified laser test results here:

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Sorry mate, too many ways to cheat that one.

No engineer designing long distance infrastructure, eg railroads, bridges, canals etc - ever allows for curvature.

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That's pretty hilarious. Roads, railroads, and suchlike follow terrain. If they followed the curvature of the earth they'd always either be tunneling their way through mountains of running on trestles over low places. Canals follow curvature, but it's relatively easy, just maintain a consistent depth (you'e not running to be running a canal over a mountain.) Bridges run from support to support, and man made supports generally have to be vertical, which is to say pointing toward the center of the earth. That means they're never precisely parallel.

Don't like it, go answer one of the FE contests, they offer $10k for proof of curvature.

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The ship on the horizon proves that, and if they're to crooked to admit that, then they can try to explain "long path" HF communications. I doubt they'll pay up in any case
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ViaCrucis said:

Well I guess then I have one of two choices:

1) Deny observable, empirical reality and blindly accept your fallible reading of Scripture or
2) Believe in one God, the Maker of all things, both seen and unseen.

I guess I'll have to go with number 2.

-CryptoLutheran

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Whatever you wanna do is fine with me.

Jipsah said:

I doubt they'll pay up in any case

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Of course they will not pay up, they like to pretend to be searching for the truth all the while denying it with every claim that they make. One Flat Earther I met online explained that gravity does not exist, falling has to do with density. I guess that means that fat people have greater density because they weigh more ... or is weight caused by gravity after all?

Shrewd Manager said:

I see it ultimately as a question of 'Who do you trust?'

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I'll trust the sailors and navigators and astronomers going back centuries who made observations of the way God ad constructed the cosmos that enabled them to find their way
across trackless oceans or vast reaches of the sky, as opposed to the casual observations of people who were compiling the revelations of God and who had little or no interest in the shape of the earth or the behavior of celestial objects.

It works this way. My neighbor is a good Christian, but his knowledge of Calculus is sketchy, be he ever so devout. My old Calculus professor may have been a heathen for all I know, but I trust her knowledge on the subject lf number crunching more than that of a stack of preachers a mile high.

It's easy when there's no controversy between scripture and the world's teaching

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And in fact there isn't any. Just a few folks wanting to fetch something out of Scripture that isn't there.

so are you going to trust your eyes, which are so easily deceived (by eg optical illusions, mirages, tricks of perspective etc) or God, walk in faith or in sight?

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The question is rather do I trust the observations of thousands over thousands of years as to the working of God's creation, or the addle-headed notions of a few folks who believe they've discovered what the Scripture really means. Y'all are telling me, in effect, that bumble bees can't fly. I see 'em flying

Tell ya what, you 'splain why I can point an HF antenna north and talk to Australia like they were next door, and I may give some creedence to your flat earth stuff. Until then I consider it mumbo jumbo.

That's why it's so liberating to just let God be true

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That He is, and His works are manifest to those who look at them, not to those who seek that knowledge where it was never given. You wanna know about the moon and stars, or bugs and rocks, study them. Don't look in the Bible for recipes or how to fix your car.

if inerrancy of scripture means anything, it means that the HS doesn't employ limited or imperfect analogies and figures of speech.

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That's nice. The Bible says the sun rises. So do we. The Bible doesn't say "the earth rotated so that the edge of the sun became visible above the eastern horizon. Neither do we. The latter is accurate, the former is a lot easier to say, and describes what appears to be happening so that even the veriest dunce can understand it. That's why we, and the Bible, say it that way. The Bible says "The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them" I assume you believe that the earth has a mouth, and possibly teeth and a tongue to go with it. Or perhaps that was rather like saying "the sun rose in the east"?

Aussie Pete said:

I'd imagine that they believed God's word, which says that the earth was round and suspended in space. (Isaiah 40:22, Job 26:7) Some being sailors, they may have noticed the curvature of the earth revealed as a ship comes over the horizon. I was told by a history teacher that's how the Greeks came to believe that the earth was round.

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Isaiah 40:22 does not state that the earth is round. In that verse, the word "circle" or "chug in Hebrew - by definition is two dimensional. Round by definition is three dimensional. Therefore, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit Isaiah described the earth as a two-dimensional flat circle. Furthermore in Isaiah 22:18, he used the word "ball" or "dur" in Hebrew. Thus Isaiah knew the difference between a circle and a ball/orb but used the word circle instead of ball to describe the shape of he earth.
As for the ship going over the horizon scenario, one can simply take a pair of powerful binoculars and when the ship disappears "over the horizon", it reappears and comes into view using the binoculars disproving the round earth.

Oldmantook said:

As for the ship going over the horizon scenario, one can simply take a pair of powerful binoculars and when the ship disappears "over the horizon", it reappears and comes into view using the binoculars disproving the round earth.

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I have done this many times, and you are mistaken.

Oldmantook said:

I
As for the ship going over the horizon scenario, one can simply take a pair of powerful binoculars and when the ship disappears "over the horizon", it reappears and comes into view using the binoculars disproving the round earth.

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No, that it most emphatically does not. If it's hull down as you view it unaided, it will still be hull down through the binocs, just bigger. Try it and see.

prodromos said:

I have done this many times, and you are mistaken.

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No, quite the contrary.

Jipsah said:

No, that it most emphatically does not. If it's hull down as you view it unaided, it will still be hull down through the binocs, just bigger. Try it and see.

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The person I responded to wrote that ships when viewed with the unaided eye disappear over the horizon. I wrote that they do not disappear as they "reappear" when viewed with binocs. Even with hull down, they do not disappear over a horizon supposedly caused by an orbed earth.

Oldmantook said:

The person I responded to wrote that ships when viewed with the unaided eye disappear over the horizon. I wrote that they do not disappear as they "reappear" when viewed with binocs. Even with hull down, they do not disappear over a horizon supposedly caused by an orbed earth.

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Well yeah, they do. if you're standing at water level, let's say on the beach, as the ship steams away fro you, you're gona start losing him when he's about 12 miles fro, you. You'll lose the hull first, then the upper works, and finally the masts. And no matter how fine a pair of binoculars you have, you're not going to see any part of that ship once it's dropped below the horizon. If only the masts are still visible, and you have a 12 inch telescope to look through, you're gonna get a really clear view of the masts, and that's all. The rest of the ship is below the curvature of the earth, and unless you climb up on something that allows you to see over a wider area, you ain't gonna see it, punto.

Radar has the same problem, or any radio signal at frequencies above the HF bands. It's strictly line of sight, and thus stops at the horizon. That's why your local broadcast teevee stations put up such absurdly high towers. Their broadcast footprint is defined by what can be seen from the top of that tower. Their actual antennae aren't very big at all, the tower is for elevation. The old Medium Wave stations (600-1700 khz) used much shorter towers, but the entire tower was typically driven as an antenna, and they depended on skywave propagation for distance, something that doesn't happen at >HF frequencies.

Back in the 60's, the Russians tried to come up with a Below Visual Horizon radar, using a huge HF antenna array, not far from Chernobyl in the Ukraine. The idea was to use HF skywave propagation to be able to "see" ICBMs launched from the US. It never worked, for a variety of very obvious reasons, but you could easily pick it up on any HF (aka shortwave) receiver. It gained notoriety as "the Russian Woodpecker" because of the sound of its pings. Duga radar - Wikipedia

Oldmantook said:

No, quite the contrary.

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No.
Simply, no.
The only way you could possibly see all of the boat would be due to the fata morgana illusion, which more often than not will cause the boat to appear to be floating above the water.

Oldmantook said:

The person I responded to wrote that ships when viewed with the unaided eye disappear over the horizon. I wrote that they do not disappear as they "reappear" when viewed with binocs. Even with hull down, they do not disappear over a horizon supposedly caused by an orbed earth.

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This is an example of what flat earthers use to prove their point

They always choose a small boat because at distance it blends into the surroundings and appears to have disappeared even though it is still in front of the horizon.

No amount of zoom will bring the hull of this boat into view. It is not sinking, BTW.

A simple experiment to demonstrate the curvature of the earth is to use a water level (a transparent "U" shaped tube almost filled with colored water).
Look out towards the horizon and hold the water level with the vertical tubes in line with each other so that the meniscus in each tube line up. This is eye level and is parallel to the earth's surface at that point.
On a flat earth, eye level will meet with the horizon due to perspective. The apparent distance between eye level and the earth's surface will get smaller and smaller with distance until it appears to be zero at the extent of our vision.
On a globe earth, the horizon will always be slightly below eye level, as the surface drops away from eye level as the distance increases. If you look out to sea from higher up, the drop below eye level will be greater. On a flat earth there would be no difference.

Anyone can do this experiment with some flexible transparent hose and a bit of food coloring. The horizon will always be below eye level.

prodromos said:

I have done this many times, and you are mistaken.

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I spent 3-1/2 years at sea on a warship. The earth is round. Otherwise I'd have gone over the edge.

Jipsah said:

Well yeah, they do. if you're standing at water level, let's say on the beach, as the ship steams away fro you, you're gona start losing him when he's about 12 miles fro, you. You'll lose the hull first, then the upper works, and finally the masts. And no matter how fine a pair of binoculars you have, you're not going to see any part of that ship once it's dropped below the horizon. If only the masts are still visible, and you have a 12 inch telescope to look through, you're gonna get a really clear view of the masts, and that's all. The rest of the ship is below the curvature of the earth, and unless you climb up on something that allows you to see over a wider area, you ain't gonna see it, punto.

Radar has the same problem, or any radio signal at frequencies above the HF bands. It's strictly line of sight, and thus stops at the horizon. That's why your local broadcast teevee stations put up such absurdly high towers. Their broadcast footprint is defined by what can be seen from the top of that tower. Their actual antennae aren't very big at all, the tower is for elevation. The old Medium Wave stations (600-1700 khz) used much shorter towers, but the entire tower was typically driven as an antenna, and they depended on skywave propagation for distance, something that doesn't happen at >HF frequencies.

Back in the 60's, the Russians tried to come up with a Below Visual Horizon radar, using a huge HF antenna array, not far from Chernobyl in the Ukraine. The idea was to use HF skywave propagation to be able to "see" ICBMs launched from the US. It never worked, for a variety of very obvious reasons, but you could easily pick it up on any HF (aka shortwave) receiver. It gained notoriety as "the Russian Woodpecker" because of the sound of its pings. Duga radar - Wikipedia

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I believe what you're referring to is not due to an object dipping over the horizon. Rather, it is due to the vanishing point. We may disagree here on our observation of the physical world around us which is fine. The bottom line for me though is that I prefer to stick with Scripture which as far as I'm aware, never describes the earth as a moving orb that circles the sun. Instead we find the opposite as Scripture depicts the earth as a stationary circle (two-dimensional) around which the moon and sun move.

prodromos said:

This is an example of what flat earthers use to prove their point
View attachment 264482
They always choose a small boat because at distance it blends into the surroundings and appears to have disappeared even though it is still in front of the horizon.

No amount of zoom will bring the hull of this boat into view. It is not sinking, BTW.
View attachment 264483

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I think what you describe is the vanishing point where the bottom of objects at a distance "disappear" from the bottom up. It could be an object on the water or on the road - doesn't matter as the visual laws of perspective rule. The hull of the ship appears to get closer surface to the surface of the water and it "sinks" as it recedes into the distance.

Oldmantook said:

I think what you describe is the vanishing point where the bottom of objects at a distance "disappear" from the bottom up. It could be an object on the water or on the road - doesn't matter as the visual laws of perspective rule. The hull of the ship appears to get closer surface to the surface of the water and it "sinks" as it recedes into the distance.

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Nope. Vanishing point is simply scale. Everything appears smaller as it gets further away. If an object is in front of the horizon all of the hull will be visible when zoomed in. It will not appear to sink, it will simply appear smaller.

Oldmantook said:

The bottom line for me though is that I prefer to stick with Scripture which as far as I'm aware, never describes the earth as a moving orb that circles the sun. Instead we find the opposite as Scripture depicts the earth as a stationary circle (two-dimensional) around which the moon and sun move.

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The Scriptures describe creation relative to the viewpoint of man on the earth's surface. Man is at the centre of God's creation and relative to him, and the sorts of distances able to be covered on foot, the land does indeed appear to be flat and the sun, moon and stars do appear to move East to West in the sky. You will notice, however, that God does not reveal everything in the Genesis account, rather His revelation is progressive throughout the Old Testament. There is no mention of angels for example, because the Jews had a propensity to fall into the error of worshipping such as if they were gods.
If the true nature of the earth and its orbit around the sun were revealed from the beginning, they likely would have quickly fallen into the error of treating the sun and earth, and certainly the planets as gods themselves, which we actually see in many pagan cultures.

prodromos said:

Nope. Vanishing point is simply scale. Everything appears smaller as it gets further away. If an object is in front of the horizon all of the hull will be visible when zoomed in. It will not appear to sink, it will simply appear smaller.

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You just showed me photos of a hull beneath the water line. From the perspective of a vanishing point, things disappear from the bottom up. Eventually, as the perspective diminishes, the sails also sink beneath the water.

prodromos said:

The Scriptures describe creation relative to the viewpoint of man on the earth's surface. Man is at the centre of God's creation and relative to him, and the sorts of distances able to be covered on foot, the land does indeed appear to be flat and the sun, moon and stars do appear to move East to West in the sky. You will notice, however, that God does not reveal everything in the Genesis account, rather His revelation is progressive throughout the Old Testament. There is no mention of angels for example, because the Jews had a propensity to fall into the error of worshipping such as if they were gods.
If the true nature of the earth and its orbit around the sun were revealed from the beginning, they likely would have quickly fallen into the error of treating the sun and earth, and certainly the planets as gods themselves, which we actually see in many pagan cultures.

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I do not subscribe to your anthropocentric view of Scripture. The Bible states that all Scripture is God-breathed; inspired by the direction of the Holy Spirit. Therefore it is not "man's viewpoint" but the viewpoint of God himself as written in Scripture. God knows what he created and it is not according to the imaginings of man.