This is a draft of the introduction page.
Introduction
Welcome reader, to the 21st Century Edition of Earth Not a Globe. This is a living document based on the seminal teachings of the book Earth Not a Globe by Samuel Birley Rowbotham, an inquiry into the shape of the world written over 150 years ago. We invite you to join us on a free thinking adventure into the shape of the earth, the foundations of science, and the philosophy of truth.
We are the Flat Earth Society, a community of intellectuals who believe that the earth is flat. The earth is not the globe of popular credulity, but a vast plane of unknown extent. The earth is flat for many reasons and much evidence points towards this flatness. This book will explore the evidence, address the opposition, and discuss ramifications hereto.
Built on Ancient Greek theories, bankrolled by the misinformed and corrupt, the globular dogma has brainwashed nearly every man, woman and child on earth. The idea that the earth is round is accepted without question or hesitation, as if they were words from a higher power. The necessity of things like peer review are hardly considered. Even more troubling, it goes further than blind acceptance. Our society teaches that to question is to be ignorant. If you question a supposed truth, you are mocked. We live a world where “skeptics” of any subject are painted with disdain, where the President of the United States feels the need to insult the Flat Earth Society on national television for questioning the status quo.
The Flat Earth Society is a bastion of disobedience, a shining buoy of rebellion on a dark sea of compliance, a declaration that we must not blindly accept a truth without compelling evidence. We are skeptics, and rightly so. The role of the skeptic is to examine both the claims and the evidence, to expose any internal or external inconsistencies, and to prefer those conclusions that are more consistent with real-world facts than competing claims, rejecting any that are manifestly inconsistent with themselves and with the truth.
To accept blindly is to live in ignorance. To question the world around you is to be free. So we seek to question -- to endlessly question and question again -- to unravel the mysteries of reality for ourselves, allowing truth to be our compass and to follow it wherever it leads us.
The idea of a round earth is much more than just a shape. It is the cornerstone of western science, of our perception of the universe and of our own humanity. As we will demonstrate, a blow against the shape of the earth is a blow against everything, with far reaching consequences from the nature of the universe, down to the scientific method itself. The stakes are high and the reader is encouraged to weigh the subject matter with care.