Flat Earth

[Non Nobis]

When I started reading this thread, I was going to post "well at least there's nobody who believes that here".  I should have known better...

[Heinrich]

So.. if you're a flat earth homeschooler what do you do for science? Are there vflat earth science and history texts

They most likely have one of these:

[red solo cup]

Hey,

I am a traditional Catholic and accept the earth to be flat. There are lots of us.

Here is an introductory video to the topic





I'm willing to have a discussion with people as long as they are polite.

OK how big is the sun and how far from earth is it?

[Daniel]

Maybe I'll watch the video some time and judge it for myself, but I personally find flat earth to be absurd and completely incompatible with Catholicism.

Dear inlaetitia:
Thanks for posting and honestly representing your beliefs.  Question: if I start at a fixed point (say Rome, Italy) and went due West, flat earth theory would state that I would hit Antarctica and round earth theory would state that I would eventually end exactly where I started, yes?  Also, the total distance of Antarctica's coastline would be vastly different under the two theories, yes?

Thanks again...

Regarding the first question, not exactly, because (at least judging by their pictures) I am pretty sure that flat earth theory says that "due west" is not a straight line. It's all polar coordinates, yo. Due west is whatever direction is perpendicular to "due north", and due north is always the direction pointing towards the center of the world map. Due west then moves as you move due west. And so you move not in a straight line but in an arc, and you eventually return to your starting point.

[Mono no aware]

Maybe I'll watch the video some time and judge it for myself, but I personally find flat earth to be absurd and completely incompatible with Catholicism.

I don't know if it's necessarily incompatible.  I thought Matto made a good point earlier: the Church has never condemned anyone for believing in a flat earth.  A spherical earth is not de fide.

A lot of traditional Catholics are young earthers.  I am currently reading the first volume of George Painter's biography of Chateaubriand, who (coincidentally) argued for a version of the Omphalos theory I linked to earlier.  He believed the geology which demonstrated an old earth was simply measuring an earth which was created to have the appearance of great age, even though it was actually a relatively recent creation.

[Kaesekopf]

How the heck do you explain away satellites?

In the video, they allege that satellite images are faked by NASA.  They do, however, accept the veracity of air travel (although they claim the appearance of curvature from an airplane window is an optical illusion caused by defects in the plexiglass).  Allowing for air travel, I imagine that the easiest way to prove a round earth would be to let a flat earther co-pilot a flight over Antarctica.  (Their map of the earth as a disc posits the coast of Antarctica as the edges of the earth's rim).

No, how do they explain away the pieces of electronics we send up? 

I can use a ham radio to communicate with them.  How do they travel the earth?  I saw the ISS overhead one evening. 

Flat earthism is a mental disease. 

Sent from my STV100-1 using Tapatalk

[inlaetitia]

Satellites are most likely blimps.

Here is a very short clip of a crashed satellite in brazil. There is a balloon attached.

[inlaetitia]

Dear inlaetitia:
Thanks for posting and honestly representing your beliefs.  Question: if I start at a fixed point (say Rome, Italy) and went due West, flat earth theory would state that I would hit Antarctica and round earth theory would state that I would eventually end exactly where I started, yes?  Also, the total distance of Antarctica's coastline would be vastly different under the two theories, yes?

Thanks again...

Yes, you would hit Antarctica no matter which way you go, and it's coastline is much bigger than what we see on globe maps.

Access to antarctic is regulated by the Antarctic treaty, under the pretext of oil exploration. Independent explorers are not permitted to go down there.

[inlaetitia]

this hypothesis is total blasphemy, because it says God is a liar. The earth can't be both round and flat. So if there are things that seem to indicate roundness, it is just an appearance. There are greater things which disprove it.

I don't know if it can be called blasphemy per se; St. Augustine and St. Ephraim both suggested it.  If creation was ex nihilo, then everything appeared fully-formed instantaneously.  Adam and Eve were created as adults, not infants.  Had you met them, they would've had the appearance of being in their twenties or thirties, but in reality they could've been two months old.  The first sequoia trees would not have been hundreds of years old in the first week of creation, even though they had never been saplings.

If the earth is a disc, and the borders of Antarctica are at the edges of the disc, then presumably we could arrive at the outer rim of the earth just by penetrating into the coast of Antarctica.  But this is not what happens, so the appearance of a spherical earth must be a deception.

Here is what your wikipedia link says

"The Omphalos hypothesis is the pseudoscientific[1] argument that God created the universe recently (within the past ten thousand years, in keeping with flood geology), but also introduced false evidence that the universe is of great age."

If it is false evidence then God is playing tricks with us. To say so seriously is blasphemy.

In reality, it is not evidence at all. There are other explanations for certain phenomenon.

[inlaetitia]

As for homeschooling, we don't deny the bulk of science. Just that concerning the round earth. Biology, chemisty and a lot of physics is all fine.

History is not affected either, unless you believe in evolution of man.

[inlaetitia]

OK how big is the sun and how far from earth is it?

That is an open question. Since all NASA does in relation to space exploration is not serious, then we haven't been up there to follow the sun around.

We can make calculations which some have done.

People in the past have calculated it as being 3000 miles away and 30 miles across. Sounds fair enough to me. It could be different and if it is an area that interests you, then do research it and let us know.

For the moment, the focus is getting people to reject the phoney science of a sphere which is 25000 miles in circumference. After that the discussion can go onto questions of the how.

[Daniel]

Ok, I've just watched the video, but it seems to just be the same old arguments which were never really proven in the first place.

If the earth is not curved, then how do we account for the fact that ships off in the distance are only partly visible above the horizon? Same for the distant islands in the video... that part of the video is misleading because the camera was clearly very high off the ground when the first picture was taken, yet then they show a picture of a camera on a tripod 3 feet above the ground, and they go back to the other photo which was taken from much higher than 3 feet.

Here is what your wikipedia link says

"The Omphalos hypothesis is the pseudoscientific[1] argument that God created the universe recently (within the past ten thousand years, in keeping with flood geology), but also introduced false evidence that the universe is of great age."

If it is false evidence then God is playing tricks with us. To say so seriously is blasphemy.

In reality, it is not evidence at all. There are other explanations for certain phenomenon.

I'm not familiar with the Omphalos hypothesis, but, as Pon de Replay pointed out, some things were in fact created appearing older than they truly are. e.g. Newborn babies do not look like 33-year old men. It's possible that Wikipedia's "false evidence" phrasing is just a matter of poor (perhaps blasphemous) word choice, but that doesn't mean that the hypothesis itself is necessarily blasphemous.

[red solo cup]

OK how big is the sun and how far from earth is it?

That is an open question. Since all NASA does in relation to space exploration is not serious, then we haven't been up there to follow the sun around.

We can make calculations which some have done.

People in the past have calculated it as being 3000 miles away and 30 miles across. Sounds fair enough to me. It could be different and if it is an area that interests you, then do research it and let us know.

For the moment, the focus is getting people to reject the phoney science of a sphere which is 25000 miles in circumference. After that the discussion can go onto questions of the how.

So then people aboard the shuttle who have watched the earth rotate below them are either lying or have been duped?

[Quaremerepulisti]

I don't know if it's necessarily incompatible.  I thought Matto made a good point earlier: the Church has never condemned anyone for believing in a flat earth.  A spherical earth is not de fide.

A lot of traditional Catholics are young earthers.  I am currently reading the first volume of George Painter's biography of Chateaubriand, who (coincidentally) argued for a version of the Omphalos theory I linked to earlier.  He believed the geology which demonstrated an old earth was simply measuring an earth which was created to have the appearance of great age, even though it was actually a relatively recent creation.

Well there's a big difference between an appearance of age and an appearance of a history which did not occur.  The latter is just a version of Last Thursdayism, in which everything was created last Thursday and we have false memories of things which did not really happen. Adam and Eve should not have had a navel (contrary to Omphalos), for that is something which comes about as a result of birth, which they did not undergo.

And it's absolutely unacceptable to resort to a version of Last Thursdayism in order to defend faith claims from science.  If God can deceive by gratuitously inserting false and misleading evidence for whatever reason, then everything used to defend faith claims can likewise be false and misleading - there is no basis for faith on the basis of God revealing, if He can in fact deceive.

[Mono no aware]

Here is what your wikipedia link says

"The Omphalos hypothesis is the pseudoscientific[1] argument that God created the universe recently (within the past ten thousand years, in keeping with flood geology), but also introduced false evidence that the universe is of great age."

If it is false evidence then God is playing tricks with us. To say so seriously is blasphemy.

In reality, it is not evidence at all. There are other explanations for certain phenomenon.

Just to reiterate what Daniel said, the wording of the Wikipedia entry is misleading.  If you read the portions from St. Ephrem and Chateaubriand, it will become clearer what is being expressed:

Although the grasses were only a moment old at their creation, they appeared as if they were months old. Likewise, the trees, although only a day old when they sprouted forth, were nevertheless like ... years old as they were fully grown and fruits were already budding on their branches.

God might have created, and doubtless did create, the world with all the marks of antiquity and completeness which it now exhibits.

This indicates that the earth was created with the appearance of being older than it actually is.  It is an objective fact, for example, that there are appearances of geological strata.  There are rock formations with lines in them.  Either these rocks were created this way, giving only the appearance of age, or they were formed this way over a long period of time with layers of sediment being deposited gradually.  The Wikipedia entry is simply biased in favor of the geological consensus.

If Antarctica is off-limits to test whether or not it has an interior or is the rim of the earth's disc, then I suppose another way to determine whether the earth is a disc would be to measure the circles of latitude.  You would have to take a flight around the Arctic Circle and then a flight around the Antarctic Circle.  If the trip times are roughly equal, the earth is a sphere.  If the trip times are widely disparate, with the Arctic flight being much shorter, then the earth is a disc.