The Flat Earth Society
Other Discussion Boards => Philosophy, Religion & Society => Topic started by: zalphodbeeblebrox on March 02, 2018, 11:07:13 PM
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As I look through the forms, I'm noticing a that a ton of flat earth believers are Christian/Catholic etc. I'm skeptical of globe earth, but I'm also not religious, and was wondering if this was just something for believers.
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As I look through the forms, I'm noticing a that a ton of flat earth believers are Christian/Catholic etc.
I think you are not looking at the right "forms" if you are talking about this place, or you haven't actually done much lurking. It is mostly atheist/agnostic types around here.
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Flat Earth has a history of Christian Witness, because basically, the Bible describes a motionless flat earth plane with a firmanent so yeah, this idea attracts Christians who take the Bible literally. (Like Me :) )
Anyway, there's only a couple of us (Christians) on this site and I mostly stay down below nowdays, but its the weekend and I'm bored so I'm posting in the upper fora. Welcome to the forum...
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Also these forums are English so most members are from the Us or UK or Austrailia. All of which have a high Christian population.
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That does not seem to be the case. For your viewing pleasure:
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=7447.0
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Yeah. It's simply not the case. Some people who dislike us want to paint us as disproportionately religious, mostly because they also dislike religious people.
They are sad, desperate individuals. You can do better than that.
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I think the jury's out on this one, with conflicting evidence both for and against.
Whenever the question is asked here, flat earth members say it's not true.
A recent yougov poll (https://today.yougov.com/topics/philosophy/articles-reports/2018/04/02/most-flat-earthers-consider-themselves-religious) of over 8000 Americans, however, returned figures saying that 52% of flat earthers considered themselves "very religious", while another 31% considered themselves "somewhat religious".
Most flat earthers live in the States, where about 75% of the population identify as Christian - so it stands to reason that there'd be a fairly high crossover there.
And some of the most prominent flatearthers, such as Samuel Rowbotham and Rob Skiba are most definitely Christians, while many people I've talked to believe the reason The Powers That Be teach the globe is "to hide God."
Anyway, if we assume most flat earthers are Christian, one of the the reasons "why?" would be because they find the notion of a spherical earth orbiting a sun in contradiction to The Bible, and to their belief that we humans are at the centre of God's creation.
Note: only a small percentage of Christians believe The Bible to be "literally true" - these are known as "Biblical Literalists" - and so, for them, they are required to shoot down anything that challenges that belief, and to perform the most dextrous mental gymnastics to explain away the inconsistencies and errors (see: cognitive dissonance).
For most Christians, it isn't important that The Bible is viewed as "literally and word-for-word true", and they understand that many of the notions contained within it are merely reflective of the understanding of the people at the time - including views on science, cosmology, the universe, etc.
To summarise:
Are most flat earthers Christian? We're not sure.
Are quite a lot of flat earthers Christian? Looks like it.
Why would the belief in the flat earth particularly appeal to Christians? Partly because it helps them feel more secure in the world and in their faith in The Bible; and partly because it helps them feel less insecure if they believe we're being watched over and are especially loved by God, in an enclosed space, rather than floating through the unimaginable vastness of the mostly empty - as far as we know - universe. Plus other reasons besides.
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Most of the world is religious, so it only makes sense that the most of every belief is going to contain religious people. Barring things obviously contrary to religious belief, such as atheism, since the majority of atheists cannot be religious as that inherently makes no sense. It's not surprising that the majority of FE'ers are religious, just like it isn't surprising that the majority of RE'ers are religious, or that the majority of pretty much anything is religious.
Regardless, this statistic isn't relevant, because the majority of FE regulars on this forum are non-religious agnostics or atheists.
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More interesting question: Why do so many people associate Flat Earthers with Christianity? We get this question all the time, what's driving it?
The only tie I can think is usually in the ramblings of some of the more long-winded and, uh, perhaps not coherent ranters.
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Maybe another part of the reason we associate flat earthism with Christianity is because we can understand the motivation for it.
Understanding why a non-Christian/atheist/agnostic would believe in the flat earth is more difficult. What motivation could there possibly be, if God's not in the equation?
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Understanding why a non-Christian/atheist/agnostic would believe in the flat earth is more difficult. What motivation could there possibly be, if God's not in the equation?
Empiricism and trust towards one's own experiences above authority telling you what's what seems to be a common trend.
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Exactly. And that's difficult to understand, in this day and age.
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I'm a christian and I believe the earth is roughly spherical. I'm pretty open to hollow earth theory however.