*

Offline AATW

  • *
  • Posts: 6488
    • View Profile
Re: Why should the Earth be flat?
« Reply #160 on: September 01, 2019, 07:19:17 AM »
Flat Earth belief tied to Christianity is an extremely recent thing, relatively speaking. The Catholic Church, which represented the massive bulk of the religion for a millennium and a half, has always maintained that the Earth is spherical. I don't think the Bible was used as justification that the Earth is flat until the 19th century, and that only by a small number of extreme fundamentalist sects.

It is, of course, a myth that it was the prevailing belief that the Earth was flat until Columbus discovered America.
Correct although Rowbotham and Shenton were both motivated by their interpretation of Scripture and modern FE conferences are quite heavy with Christian young earth creationists.
Ironically, FE belief almost seems to have become a religion.
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

ashenlight

Re: Why should the Earth be flat?
« Reply #161 on: September 01, 2019, 08:53:45 PM »
Quote
If nobody is going to believe it, is there any point in making it your life's mission to fly into space to prove a point? Probably not.....
I think it is safe to say that no one who has gone through the time and personal commitment which training to be an astronaut involves has put themselves through it just to prove to themselves that the Earth is not flat. It would be equally safe to say I think that the thought didn't even enter their minds.

Those who train to become astronauts (and of course simply completing the training doesn't guarantee you of being selected to go into space) do so for far more pertinent and specific reasons than to discover the true shape of the Earth.
« Last Edit: September 01, 2019, 08:55:19 PM by ashenlight »

jerinr1

Re: Why should the Earth be flat?
« Reply #162 on: September 09, 2019, 05:57:18 AM »
Having known that astronauts have seen the shape of the earth to be spherical, are we saying that they repeatedly lie to the media despite sending pictures all the time? That would be baseless. If all the planets in the universe are round in shape, why should earth alone be flat?