Flat Earthers: What They Believe and Why

Job 33:6 · Jan 28, 2025

DennisF said:
Thank God for Lutherans, in maintaining a Christological emphasis in understanding the word of God.

There is a book titled The Meaning of Creation (John Knox Press) by Lutheran pastor-scholar Conrad Hyers in which he makes the case that the Gen. 1 text is a refutation of the various gods comprising the regions of nature. The account of creation avoids using, for instance, the Hebrew words for sun and moon and uses descriptive language instead because the literal words in Hebrew are sun-god and moon-god. The creation account ends (Gen 2:4) with a touch of satire: These are the generations (genealogies of the gods), when they were created (instead).

Second, it is my hope that eventually the missionary accommodation of putting a plastic Jesus overlay over pagan holidays such as Christmas and Easter will be replaced with the holidays (holy-days) Yahweh gave us to celebrate instead. Recognizing the Passover as one of them instead of Easter (the pagan Norse eoster) is a good start. Some churches have church camps, which is an unwitting move toward bringing back the "Feast of Booths" or what I translate in the vernacular as the Camping Festival, which reminds us that we are sojourners seeking to travel in God's tent (Psalm 15). The two groups of Yahwist holidays are in the spring and the fall. It is not surprising that the feast of Trumpets - trumpets sounding the arrival of the king - should be around the time of the birth of Jesus.

The whole YEC idea is based on faulty biblical exegesis. Nobody tries to interpret the Sumerian or Egyptian writings as modern science. Why should the Bible be any different? The Genesis account answers that Yahweh gave adam "dominion" over the physical surroundings, where dominion implies the ability to know it. That effort in our time is called science, whether physical or social.

I think this is how many Christians view egyptian history:

DennisF · Jan 28, 2025

Job 33:6 said:
And yes, it is in a dream, but the earth in this dream is flat, nonetheless.

Job 28:24 NRSVUE
[24] For he looks to the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens.

Id say that the easiest explanation is to simply view the text as phenomenological, or describing the sky with figurative language.

Later rabbinic writings speak about breaking through the raqia with drills. Various nations around the world also have ancient stories about shooting the sky with arrows and climbing ladders up to it to ascend through its windows to heaven, as well.

On that note, there is a verse in Genesis about angels ascending a ladder to heaven as well.

Genesis 28:12-13 NIV
[12] He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. [13] There above it stood the Lord, and he said: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.

And a lot of creationists like to repeat "well like Daniel 4:20, this is a dream". But I think this response misses the point that these texts are affirmations of the same cosmology of Job, Exodus, Genesis, Ezekiel and everywhere else in the Bible. As if people would mysterious dream of a flat earth despite not thinking of such a thing when they were awake (Daniel 4:20).

It's more reasonable, much like most people do when they read Genesis 7:11 and 8:2 about windows opening and closing in the sky to release water, to simply conclude that Genesis and the old testament are figuratively expressing an ancient Israelite cosmology.

Genesis 8:2 ESV
[2] The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained,

It need not be more complicated than this.

It's the same thing with Joshua 10 or old test references about kidneys, or Job or proverbs describing boundaries for the sea etc.

Job 7:12 NIV
[12] Am I the sea, or the monster of the deep, that you put me under guard?

Psalm 89:9-11 ESV
[9] You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them. [10] You crushed Rahab like a carcass; you scattered your enemies with your mighty arm. [11] The heavens are yours; the earth also is yours; the world and all that is in it, you have founded them.

Proverbs 8:28-29 ESV
[28] when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, [29] when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth,

Job 38:8-10 ESV
[8] “Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb, [9] when I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, [10] and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors,

And some of this relates to the crushing of leviathan, a representation of the sea. But much like the waters above, the waters below were also held back by a figuratively solid structure.

And then you get flat earthers that will say, "well maybe the earth actually is flat like in Daniel, and maybe the sky actually is or was solid". Um no, there never were nor will there ever be, windows in the sky opening and closing to release and restrain water. The Bible is not an astronomy textbook.

Then you get people making up ideas about vapor canopies during the flood or ice particles at the edge of the universe and all sorts of absurd ideas, because people don't want to just come to terms with the fact that the Bible uses figurative language.

Yes, the whole pattern of thinking about the physical world in scripture - that is, the Hebrew-Yahwist way of thinking - is phenomenological; that is, descriptions are given as observed. This might help to explain why in the Genesis 1 account, which orders the events of creation in how we would think about them, except the fourth day. For us, no star (sun), no light. One explanation for this is that on the earth, it is not until the fourth day that the heavy cloud layer expected by modern science over an early earth would have dissipated enough to allow sunlight to reach the ground. I don't know if this is the right way to regard the fourth day, but for anyone seeking a concordist understanding, it would possibly resolve the conflict between the Genesis ordering of events and a contemporary understanding from science (but not YEC science).

P.S. Flat-earth is science in that it is a hypothesis based on observations, but it has so much observable evidence against it that it fits into the rejected category of "good ideas" (except by flat-earthers) along with the phlogiston theory of heat. Which leads to a story ...

I was once a member the American Scientific Affiliation, and one of the persons who gave talks at the Annual Meeting was a Lutheran pastor and astrophysicist, George Murphy (whose father, a professor of classics at Ohio U. was my wife's early Latin mentor - a small-world story in itself). He once gave a talk about how a few centuries ago, it was believed (the phlogiston theory of heat) that heat was a substance, and that the Russian Orthodox believed it was important to be baptized in pure water. So, George recounted, baptism - being buried in death with Christ - in the cold Russian winter took on literal meaning!

Putting on a flat-earth hat for the moment, my best argument for a flat earth comes from Tom McNamara on Quora, a fellow electoniker with a PhD in optronics from MIT, who says: The earth looks flat where I am. How about where you are? He proposes an experiment whereby others from all over the world observe whether the earth is flat where they are and report in. If the consensus is that it is flat, then the matter is resolved, no?

DennisF · Jan 14, 2026

Apple Sky said:
Sigh - Done it multitude of times go look up some of my posts.

Furthermore, the NASA guy never says that the Van Allen radiation belts cannot be safely traversed, as they were multiple times by the Apollo moon missions.

Citing the NASA video, you open yourself up to additional Flat Earth rebuttals. At about 3:43 into the video is this:

That's the earth, isn't it? Does it look like a flat plate or a sphere? Or do you suppose it is a flat circular plate? The light shows it to have a second dimension like the reflection of light off a ball. Although this picture is a simulation, it shows that NASA people believe it is a sphere. And they are the ones sending spacecraft into space, not you. So who is more credible?

Time to rethink silly ideas - or better yet, start thinking about them with additional "signs from the heavens".

prodromos · Jan 14, 2026

Holy thread necromancy Batman!

Apple Sky · Jan 15, 2026

DennisF said:
That's the earth, isn't it? Does it look like a flat plate or a sphere?

That's b/c the image is either CGI or taken with a fish eyed lens as it is what they luv to do.

Apple Sky · Jan 15, 2026

prodromos said:
Holy thread necromancy Batman!
View attachment 375358

How silly & immature.

prodromos · Jan 15, 2026

Apple Sky said:
How silly & immature.

Having a bit of self reflection, are you?

If a thread has been dormant for a year, it probably deserves to be left in the graveyard of forgotten threads.

Apple Sky · Jan 15, 2026

prodromos said:
If a thread has been dormant for a year, it probably deserves to be left in the graveyard of forgotten threads.

Why ?

David Lamb · Jan 15, 2026

Apple Sky said:
That's b/c the image is either CGI or taken with a fish eyed lens as it is what they luv to do.

Where's your proof that taking an image of a disc with a fish eye lens makes it look like a sphere?

Apple Sky · Jan 15, 2026

David Lamb said:
Where's your proof that taking an image of a disc with a fish eye lens makes it look like a sphere?

You've seen the images.

David Lamb · Jan 15, 2026

Apple Sky said:
You've seen the images.

What images? I tried a search for "fish eye lens photo of coin", and the nearest I got was a photo of a fish eye lens with a coin, the idea being to show how small the lens was, I imagine.

prodromos · Jan 15, 2026

Apple Sky said:
You've seen the images.

It seems like this A.I. bot is hallucinating

Apple Sky · Jan 15, 2026

David Lamb said:
What images? I tried a search for "fish eye lens photo of coin", and the nearest I got was a photo of a fish eye lens with a coin, the idea being to show how small the lens was, I imagine.

Really, why would a fish eyed lens take an image of something that is round already ? What a silly request.

Apple Sky · Jan 15, 2026

prodromos said:
It seems like this A.I. bot is hallucinating

No you must be if you cannot see it.

David Lamb · Jan 15, 2026

Apple Sky said:
Really, why would a fish eyed lens take an image of something that is round already ? What a silly request.

It is you who keeps claiming that photos showing a globe earth are really a flat earth taken with a fish eye lens. What I am asking for is proof that using a fish eye lens would make something that everybody agrees is a flat disc look like a globe.

Apple Sky · Jan 15, 2026

David Lamb said:
It is you who keeps claiming that photos showing a globe earth are really a flat earth taken with a fish eye lens. What I am asking for is proof that using a fish eye lens would make something that everybody agrees is a flat disc look like a globe.

I've showed you these pictures back on the 'Seed'

Bradskii · Jan 15, 2026

DennisF said:
Putting on a flat-earth hat for the moment, my best argument for a flat earth comes from Tom McNamara on Quora, a fellow electoniker with a PhD in optronics from MIT, who says: The earth looks flat where I am. How about where you are? He proposes an experiment whereby others from all over the world observe whether the earth is flat where they are and report in.

It looks round wherever I've flown my drone. If a ship gradually disapears over the horizon then as I fly the drone higher it gradually reappears. Tom should buy a drone.

DennisF said:
If the consensus is that it is flat, then the matter is resolved, no?

We should try another test. Ask everyone who lives in London why the moon appears upside down compared to what we see in Sydney. And maybe another: Ask those Londoners why they can't see the Souther Cross. And those in Sydney why they can't see the North Star.

David Lamb · Jan 15, 2026

Apple Sky said:
I've showed you these pictures back on the 'Seed'

I am sorry, I have seen you post photos of the earth that you claim have been taken with a fish eye lens, but you haven't shown a fish eye photo of something that everybody agrees is a flat disc, like a coin or a dvd. If you have, and I missed it, I apologise.

prodromos · Jan 15, 2026

Apple Sky said:
I've showed you these pictures back on the 'Seed'

Lying again.

Jipsah · Jan 15, 2026

d taylor said:
Just think of all the true literal accounts in The Bible.

None of which say the earth is flat, which is good, because it isn't.

d taylor said:
You will eventually have to accept as actually being true accounts given by God and not parables or metaphors teaching spiritual truths

I've examined God's truth first hand - by looking at it. Weird, huh? I've seen ships drop below the horizon, and slowly rise above it' All the "it's just perspective" rubbish falls apart I've looked at the craters on the moon (no hubcap reflector handing from the ceiling there). II've looked at the rings of Saturn and the red spot on magnificent Jupiter the same way (a 12 inch Dobsonian telescope is fairly expensive, but I 've had the blessing of raising prosperous children).

I've talked to people in other continents by bouncing HF signals off the ionosphere, which you say doesn't exist. I've done the same by working via OSCAR satellites orbiting the earth thousands of kilometers above where you insist that a solid barrier exists that nothing can pass beyond. I've talked to people in Australia via "long path" propagation, I.e., "around the world the wrong way. No way in a flat Earth to get a signal from McMinnville TN to Perth Australia and back, then turn the antenna 180 degrees and talk to the same old man. (BTW, all malr ham operators are addressed as "old man" or simply "OM") In the real spherical world the signal bounces its way around the world equally as well as one the precise opposite direction, because they're going around a ball. In the imaginary flet world the signal aimed the "wrong" way simply beams out into space (yeah, space exists too) and is lost.

Is any of that contrary to Scirpture? Of course not. It's just contrary to some peopl weakly formed strongly held opinions of what Scripture "reallyare contrary means". Well sorry, mate, but your opinions of what the Bible "really means" are contrary to how things really are in the world God really made.

d taylor said:
The creation account in Genesis 1, the creation of Adam and Eve, The Flood account, the tower of Babel, The sun standing still, on and on.

None of which have anything to do with the shape of the earth.

d taylor said:
Just think of all the true literal accounts in The Bible.

None of which have anything to do with the shape of the earth.

d taylor said:
You will eventually have to accept as actually being true accounts given by God and not parables or metaphors teaching spiritual truths

None of which have anything to do with the shape of the eart

d taylor said:
The creation account in Genesis 1, the creation of Adam and Eve, The Flood account, the tower of Babel, The sun standing still, on and on.

None of which have anything to do with the shape of the earth.

See a pattern developing there?

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Flat Earthers: What They Believe and Why

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