Flat earth beliefs are totally in error.

A_Thinker · Apr 12, 2019

mcarans said:
I am wondering how Christians who do believe the Bible was pretty much dictated by God but don't believe in a flat earth respond to these points from flat earthers?

The Bible doesn't say that it was dictated by God. It says that it was written by men ... by the inspiration of God.

1 Timothy 3:16

mcarans · Apr 12, 2019

A_Thinker said:
The Bible doesn't say that it was dictated by God. It says that it was written by men ... by the inspiration of God.

1 Timothy 3:16

I agree with you, but there are many who don't.

JacksBratt · Apr 12, 2019

A_Thinker said:
Of course ... all photos rely upon the telescopic/photographic capability and skill of the photographer.

You mean like these? I mean seriously..... I have argued about giants being real and everyone says that every single picture, article and newspaper clipping is a hoax.... every single one.. is photo shopped..... BUT... planets... ya.. every single one of them is bona fide truth?

I gotta say that that is bit hypocritical.

1213 · Apr 12, 2019

mcarans said:
1.Joshua 10:13: "And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies. Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? The sun stopped in the midst of heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day."

Sun or earth standing still is not actually about the form of earth. It is about rotating. And on human point of view sun rotates around earth, even if planet is round.

mcarans said:
2.Matthew 4:8 "Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory."

Even in a flat earth and very high mountain, it would be difficult to physically see glory of some kingdom. And actually, the higher the mountain, the more difficult to see to lower regions. Other thing is also, what were the kingdoms? If there were just a few and they were near, it doesn’t matter was earth flat or not.

I think glory is matter that can be seen in a vision more likely than visually by eye sight. But any way, this also is not same as that Bible would really claim planet is flat. I think it is silly interpretation.

The way Matthew 4 describes the event, how Devil takes him first to city on the pinnacle of temple and right after that to a high mountain sounds very much of that it all happened in a vision, not physically. But maybe Jesus really went to the mountain and then looked from a device a 3D presentation of all the kingdoms. The point is, there are many ways to see things, not only the basic eye sight.

mcarans said:
3.“The Genesis creation story provides the first key to the Hebrew cosmology. The order of creation makes no sense from a conventional perspective but is perfectly logical from a flat-earth viewpoint. The earth was created on the first day, and it was “without form and void (Genesis 1:2).” On the second day, a vault the “firmament” of the King James version was created to divide the waters, some being above and some below the vault. Only on the fourth day were the sun, moon, and stars created, and they were placed “in” (not “above”) the vault.” from here.

In this, I think the very important thing to understand is “earth” means only dry land in that, not planet earth. If you ignore this fact, then there is not much hope for you to understand Bible well. And then it seems you don’t care about the truth, just want to promote your own agenda.

God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters he called Seas. God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:10

“Earth” being void and without form means, it didn’t exist. There was no dry land. There was only water covered planet. And then God formed earth on top of it, similarly as presented in images here:

http://www.kolumbus.fi/r.berg/geology.html

But still, even in the most ignorant view, nothing of it really says or indicates earth was flat.

I believe firmament means atmosphere, but that is only my understanding of the matter. And the lights were put in “the expanse of the heavens”. I think “expanse” means space in the Bible.

And God saith, `Let luminaries be in the expanse of the heavens, to make a separation between the day and the night, then they have been for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years,
Gen. 1:14

A_Thinker · Apr 12, 2019

JacksBratt said:
You mean like these? I mean seriously..... I have argued about giants being real and everyone says that every single picture, article and newspaper clipping is a hoax.... every single one.. is photo shopped..... BUT... planets... ya.. every single one of them is bona fide truth?

I gotta say that that is bit hypocritical.

No one says that every single photo of a planet has to real, but then again, ... you only need ONE ....

_Dave_ · Apr 12, 2019

I just read at GQ.com an interesting interview with Daniel Clark, who directed the documentary "Behind the Curve" that I mentioned in my first post in this topic. Here are some excerpts:

GQ: What were some of the things you learned by spending so much time with flat earthers?

Daniel Clark: The fascinating thing was there were so many different school of thoughts in the community on what they believe to be true. There’s a dome. There are walls on the edge of the Earth. But do the walls end at some point, or does it just go on forever? There are a lot of questions these people don’t have answers to. They don’t know what’s in the sky, because we’re not allowed to go there. They don’t know what’s on the ends of the Earth because we’re not allowed past the border. So, they start becoming more accepting of theories that are introduced to them.

Because they’re flat earthers, they don’t have to believe anything they don’t have definitive proof of, which means the only thing they know for sure is that the Earth is flat. But it’s a very open and accepting group. As long as your starting point is the Earth is flat, everyone is open to listening.

What was it about flat earthers that interested you?

When we started making the documentary, we realized we had an opportunity to use flat earthers as an extreme example of conspiracy theorists. I had worked with a camera operator who was a huge conspiracy theorist, like he had solved the O.J. Simpson case, and even he said flat earth was a step too far for him. Flat earth is the ultimate conspiracy theory, because most people can agree the Earth is in fact a globe. But you see the same traits and actions from groups who, whether it is political ideologies or religion, will defend themselves and their beliefs and always ignore the evidence. You see the same traits and actions in flat earthers, and hopefully you see those traits within yourself too if you choose to be self reflective.

And there is a danger in believing in things that are not true.

Yeah. There’s a danger in taking your beliefs so far that you’re willing to harm people because of them. If you can’t trust anyone, or trust anything, and everyone is your enemy, that can manifest itself in very dangerous ways, and we’ve seen that all over the world in really horrible ways. It’s great to be skeptical, but you can’t always start from nothing.

And the point of bringing in psychiatrists and psychologists was not to tell them that what they believe in isn’t true.

We didn’t bring psychiatrists and psychologists into the movie to tell us what’s wrong with flat earthers. We wanted them to talk about the cognitive behavior behind it and how someone can believe in something so strongly. What’s going on in their brains, that they won’t accept the evidence that has been presented to them over and over. How can they believe every photo ever from NASA was a lie? It’s tough for people to get to that point. But these people have.

What do you think would have to happen for flat earthers to believe, either 100 percent that they are correct, that the Earth is definitely flat, or to change their mind and be convinced that the Earth isn’t actually flat?

For some people, whatever they believe is never going to change no matter what you show them. If you sent a flat earther to space, even if they saw the globe through the window, they would say they’re in an anti-gravity chamber that the government created, that they had been drugged to believe they walked into a shuttle, and that what was outside their window was a projection. Now, that’s not everybody. There are certain people who are on the fence, and there’s a lot of experiments you can do to test the curvature of the Earth. But to do that, you need a lot of precise equipment and to work with people that you can trust. You also have to be able to believe your own evidence.

Some people just don’t want to believe it.

When people do experiments and get the answers they don’t want, they just ignore it, and they say, let’s try it again. If you’re not willing to set a hypothesis and have the hypothesis disproved, you can say what you want, but you’re just not mentally prepared to have it disproven, then there’s nothing that’s ever going to change.

mcarans · Apr 12, 2019

_Dave_ said:
For some people, whatever they believe is never going to change no matter what you show them.

That's because the only evidence they'll accept is the Bible and specifically their literal interpretation of it. This is true of other things than just a flat earth - it is true of anything where science conflicts with a plain reading of the Bible.

I have a thread Are science and the Bible compatible? which uses flat earth as an example.

_Dave_ · Apr 12, 2019

Here's an interesting drawing of a flat earth that answers the question as to how a round, flat earth could have corners. The article that explains how this drawing came about is here.

No matter how utterly false the premise, you have to appreciate the artistic value of this drawing and the work that went into it.

JacksBratt · Apr 12, 2019

A_Thinker said:
No one says that every single photo of a planet has to real, but then again, ... you only need ONE ....

Like I said... nobody allows even one picture of a giant... but they need to have only one picture of a planet..... How would you ever know if it is real or a painting or CGI...

JacksBratt · Apr 12, 2019

_Dave_ said:
I just read at GQ.com an interesting interview with Daniel Clark, who directed the documentary "Behind the Curve" that I mentioned in my first post in this topic. Here are some excerpts:

GQ: What were some of the things you learned by spending so much time with flat earthers?

Daniel Clark: The fascinating thing was there were so many different school of thoughts in the community on what they believe to be true. There’s a dome. There are walls on the edge of the Earth. But do the walls end at some point, or does it just go on forever? There are a lot of questions these people don’t have answers to. They don’t know what’s in the sky, because we’re not allowed to go there. They don’t know what’s on the ends of the Earth because we’re not allowed past the border. So, they start becoming more accepting of theories that are introduced to them.

Because they’re flat earthers, they don’t have to believe anything they don’t have definitive proof of, which means the only thing they know for sure is that the Earth is flat. But it’s a very open and accepting group. As long as your starting point is the Earth is flat, everyone is open to listening.

What was it about flat earthers that interested you?

When we started making the documentary, we realized we had an opportunity to use flat earthers as an extreme example of conspiracy theorists. I had worked with a camera operator who was a huge conspiracy theorist, like he had solved the O.J. Simpson case, and even he said flat earth was a step too far for him. Flat earth is the ultimate conspiracy theory, because most people can agree the Earth is in fact a globe. But you see the same traits and actions from groups who, whether it is political ideologies or religion, will defend themselves and their beliefs and always ignore the evidence. You see the same traits and actions in flat earthers, and hopefully you see those traits within yourself too if you choose to be self reflective.

And there is a danger in believing in things that are not true.

Yeah. There’s a danger in taking your beliefs so far that you’re willing to harm people because of them. If you can’t trust anyone, or trust anything, and everyone is your enemy, that can manifest itself in very dangerous ways, and we’ve seen that all over the world in really horrible ways. It’s great to be skeptical, but you can’t always start from nothing.

And the point of bringing in psychiatrists and psychologists was not to tell them that what they believe in isn’t true.

We didn’t bring psychiatrists and psychologists into the movie to tell us what’s wrong with flat earthers. We wanted them to talk about the cognitive behavior behind it and how someone can believe in something so strongly. What’s going on in their brains, that they won’t accept the evidence that has been presented to them over and over. How can they believe every photo ever from NASA was a lie? It’s tough for people to get to that point. But these people have.

What do you think would have to happen for flat earthers to believe, either 100 percent that they are correct, that the Earth is definitely flat, or to change their mind and be convinced that the Earth isn’t actually flat?

For some people, whatever they believe is never going to change no matter what you show them. If you sent a flat earther to space, even if they saw the globe through the window, they would say they’re in an anti-gravity chamber that the government created, that they had been drugged to believe they walked into a shuttle, and that what was outside their window was a projection. Now, that’s not everybody. There are certain people who are on the fence, and there’s a lot of experiments you can do to test the curvature of the Earth. But to do that, you need a lot of precise equipment and to work with people that you can trust. You also have to be able to believe your own evidence.

Some people just don’t want to believe it.

When people do experiments and get the answers they don’t want, they just ignore it, and they say, let’s try it again. If you’re not willing to set a hypothesis and have the hypothesis disproved, you can say what you want, but you’re just not mentally prepared to have it disproven, then there’s nothing that’s ever going to change.

Nice.... another post of the opinion of another person....So, he made a movie and was around a bunch of FE'ers... So.... he can ridicule them and it's OK? Talk about them like they are a certain breed or something...

His overtone is that they are wrong.... He has no right to say so not without rebuttal from them.

_Dave_ · Apr 12, 2019

JacksBratt said:
Nice.... another post of the opinion of another person....So, he made a movie and was around a bunch of FE'ers... So.... he can ridicule them and it's OK? Talk about them like they are a certain breed or something...

His overtone is that they are wrong.... He has no right to say so not without rebuttal from them.

Actually, Jack, the documentary was surprisingly level in its treatment of the flat earth movement. He could have filmed psychologists and got lengthy interviews with them about what's wrong with the brains of people that they have so much denial in the face of absolute reality, but he didn't.

Instead, the documentary went on with quite a lot of what the FEers believe in their own words, in their own element at the FE convention and such. He gave them much more fair treatment in the documentary than the "globehead" population does as a whole.

And, let's be clear, FE is wrong. It is dead, flat wrong. The scary thing is that it is rapidly growing in popularity especially among millennials, many of whom have a dangerously skewed mindset about a lot more than just the shape of the earth. It portends ill for the future of culture and society unless we do everything we can to offset this aberrant belief.

_Dave_ · Apr 12, 2019

I'm curious about something that maybe an FEer can fill me in on.

Do any FEers use GPS devices in their cars or, more popularly now, the location services on their phones to access GPS features?

If so, where do they think the GPS data comes from? If it isn't from geosynchronous satellites orbiting the earth, then what is it?

As Christians we're not supposed to believe in some kind of magic. So, I'm curious how FEers think the GPS data gets into their devices.

A_Thinker · Apr 12, 2019

JacksBratt said:
Like I said... nobody allows even one picture of a giant... but they need to have only one picture of a planet..... How would you ever know if it is real or a painting or CGI...

You could always take a look through a quality telescope ...

JacksBratt · Apr 12, 2019

_Dave_ said:
Actually, Jack, the documentary was surprisingly level in its treatment of the flat earth movement. He could have filmed psychologists and got lengthy interviews with them about what's wrong with the brains of people that they have so much denial in the face of absolute reality, but he didn't.

Instead, the documentary went on with quite a lot of what the FEers believe in their own words, in their own element at the FE convention and such. He gave them much more fair treatment in the documentary than the "globehead" population does as a whole.

And, let's be clear, FE is wrong. It is dead, flat wrong. The scary thing is that it is rapidly growing in popularity especially among millennials, many of whom have a dangerously skewed mindset about a lot more than just the shape of the earth. It portends ill for the future of culture and society unless we do everything we can to offset this aberrant belief.

Well, you have to at least give him credit for taking on that project... others wouldn't.
However nice it is to hear another opinion about those with a unique view.... it's always nice to let them justify their opinions too.

JacksBratt · Apr 12, 2019

A_Thinker said:
You could always take a look through a quality telescope ...

I have a quality camera with a 24 2000 mm lens.. that has stabilization..
I can take pictures of the moons around Jupiter.
I have zoomed in on Venus and Mars and seen very different images than those put out by NASA. In fact very similar to those that I posted...

A_Thinker · Apr 12, 2019

JacksBratt said:
I have a quality camera with a 24 2000 mm lens.. that has stabilization..
I can take pictures of the moons around Jupiter.
I have zoomed in on Venus and Mars and seen very different images than those put out by NASA. In fact very similar to those that I posted...

A camera is not a telescope.

But even with your camera, you saw the moons of Jupiter, confirming images from NASA, the organization you love to hate.

Get access to a proper telescope and you'll confirm even more.

The Barbarian · Apr 13, 2019

jacks said:
People that believe the earth is flat have never bothered me. As long as they love God and are kind to others, who's to judge? Imagine if our worth or "ignorance" was judged by our grammar and sentence structure...

Yes. It's not a moral failing. It's just an odd misconception, and really says nothing at all about the person's heart.

Norman70 · Apr 13, 2019

_Dave_ said:
And, let's be clear, FE is wrong. It is dead, flat wrong. The scary thing is that it is rapidly growing in popularity especially among millennials, many of whom have a dangerously skewed mindset about a lot more than just the shape of the earth. It portends ill for the future of culture and society unless we do everything

The Barbarian said:
Yes. It's not a moral failing. It's just an odd misconception, and really says nothing at all about the person's heart.

I totally agree with both of these posts!! But being old I leave it to God.
Also when I was a youth club leader and the members were breaking the place up I let them get on with it. I even made a film of it which they enjoyed watching afterwards. Eventually they saw the consequences of their behaviour, took over the club-house and repaired it. I just prayed to God.

The Barbarian · Apr 13, 2019

Norman70 said:
I totally agree with both of these posts!! But being old I leave it to God.
Also when I was a youth club leader and the members were breaking the place up I let them get on with it. I even made a film of it which they enjoyed watching afterwards. Eventually they saw the consequences of their behaviour, took over the club-house and repaired it. I just prayed to God.

Not everyone has the faith and self-control to teach that way. Well done.

Norman70 · Apr 13, 2019

I have to ask, as Christians do we believe in the devil? I believe he was at work ever since he took control of the world. Yes, I believe the authors of the Bible were inspired by God (do not we believe that of ourselves when ever we write anything?) but we are all mere mortals, including the writers of the Scriptures, and the devil is in control. The result is that the Bible is open to interpretation. Perhaps I should become a Muslim!?
Not at all. We read our Bible to bring us closer to the Word of God, who is Jesus, and that means the written words, in any version or language, takes second place. It helps us with our spiritual connection with God, and it is our spiritual connection with God through Jesus which defeats the devil.
I sometimes wonder just how spiritual some of us are. We seem more concerned about winning a worldly disagreement. The devil must be laughing his head off. I wish he would.

Flat earth beliefs are totally in error.

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