# Bible/Flat earth/Geocentric universe ??? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 29, 2001, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885 "2001-05-29T13:49:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2001, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885/21 "2001-05-30T01:04:19Z")
:ahem: > [@](#): > > The idea is simply to point out that Biblical literalism is untenable. Non-Christians really don’t believe that all fundamentalists are flatearthers. Really. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2001, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885/22 "2001-05-30T19:15:17Z")
andros wrote: > [@](#): > > S’ok, **Tracer**. I thought it was funny. Not sure why people wanted to take that seriously. Because they’re round-earth heathens who are not card-carrying members of [The International Square Earth Society](http://www.netcom.com/~rogermw/square_earth.html) like I am. And I’m not just sayin’ that because I threw that webpage together in 2 hours this morning, either! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2001, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885/23 "2001-05-30T19:56:27Z")
**Carl Sagan believed earth was flat** > [@](#): > > Job 37:3 (“ends of the earth”) The Planetary Society, founded in 1980 by Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman, believes the earth is square, or flat, or whatever!!! Here’s proof from their own [website](http://www.planetary.org/html/society/society-history.html)… > [@](#): > > The region just above Earth’s atmosphere is rapidly becoming an arena for many of humanity’s mundane activities, with only slight connection to the outward reach that took humans to the **ends of the Earth** in past centuries, has taken them already to the Moon and leads onward toward the stars. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2001, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885/24 "2001-05-30T22:27:03Z")
“Lord, my load is heavy.” ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2001, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885/25 "2001-05-31T00:19:47Z")
I wrote: > [@](#): > > [The International Square Earth Society](http://www.netcom.com/~rogermw/square_earth.html) > > And I’m not just sayin’ that because I threw that webpage together in 2 hours this morning, either! 😉 Darn it, here I go to all the trouble to build an entire webpage devoted to the Biblical evidence for a square Earth, and I don’t even get so much as one little “Dude, you’ve got way too much time on your hands”! What am I around here, anyway, chopped liver? (No offense to chopped liver was intended or should be inferred.) ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2001, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885/26 "2001-05-31T00:34:31Z")
Dude, you’ve got way too much time on your hands. There. Happy? ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2001, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885/27 "2001-05-31T00:45:52Z")
I was worried that … hey! ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2001, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885/28 "2001-05-31T01:06:29Z")
Heh heh heh . . . ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2001, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885/29 "2001-05-31T07:32:24Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by astorian \* > **The Bible DOES indicate that the Earth is the center of the Universe, and that the sun revolves around it. Hence, it is asserted that “the sun stood still” for Joshua.** Hmmmm Does this mean then that every time I hear someone say **‘The sun is going down’** or **‘What a lovely sunrise’** , that they have a geocentric view of the universe? - I think not. ---
**Author:** ![Podkayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Podkayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Podkayne)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2001, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885/30 "2001-05-31T14:21:41Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Libertarian \* > \*\ ***Carl Sagan believed earth was flat** > > > [@](#): > > > > Job 37:3 (“ends of the earth”) > > The Planetary Society, founded in 1980 by Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman, believes the earth is square, or flat, or whatever!!! Here’s proof from their own [website](http://www.planetary.org/html/society/society-history.html)… > > > [@](#): > > > > The region just above Earth’s atmosphere is rapidly becoming an arena for many of humanity’s mundane activities, with only slight connection to the outward reach that took humans to the **ends of the Earth** in past centuries, has taken them already to the Moon and leads onward toward the stars. > > :eek: \*\* Yawn. Nice try, **Lib**. But in leafing through another of Dr. Sagan’s works, _Cosmos_, I’ve found without any effort many passages in which he implies or states explicitly that the Earth is a sphere. Can you point out a preponderance passages where the biblical authors referred to the Earth as a sphere? A couple of flat-earth passages can be taken as poetic. . . but when the Earth is _never_ discussed as a sphere, or a ball, or, indeed, anything that’s not flat, well, then I begin to wonder. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2001, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885/31 "2001-05-31T15:51:54Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Podkayne \* > \*\*A couple of flat-earth passages can be taken as poetic. . . but when the Earth is _never_ discussed as a sphere, or a ball, or, indeed, anything that’s not flat, well, then I begin to wonder. \*\* I’m still looking for those verses that explicitly state it **is** flat; saying that there **aren’t** any that say it’s **not** seems a bit specious. and all of those passages from the cite you posted to begin with, seem a bit tenuous; in their wider context they are talking about God, not the Earth, so you could read anything you like into them (as indeed you can in many passages in the bible). Besides, all the references to being able to see all the kingdoms of the world simultaneously would be answered by saying that God isn’t a mere three-dimensional being (a four-dimensional being would be able to observe all points on the surface of any solid simultaneously, much as we, three-dimensional beings can observe all points on the circumference of a cirle. “Ah yes”, says the Atheist, “but This was Daniel and John, not God” To which the Biblical Literalist replies “Yes, but the vision was from God, which is why it was so difficult for the men to describe, beings with four faces and multiple heads, a single tree on _both_ sides of a river etc…” What I was really after in the OP is a reference that _states_ the earth is flat, rather than _implies_ it when an interpretation is imposed. But it seems that there will be no firm conclusion to this debate. ---
**Author:** ![Podkayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Podkayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Podkayne)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2001, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885/32 "2001-05-31T16:44:17Z")
You did check out that article I linked to, right? No, there’s no one passage that says, “And lo, the Lord made the earth as flat as a matzo.” However, taken as a whole, the passages listed there imply strongly that the biblical authors thought of the earth as flat–particularly given the lack of contradictory passages implying that the earth is a sphere. If you took all the passages refering to cosmology and found that about half imply that the earth as flat and about half refer to the earth as spherical, and about half imply that the earth as fixed and about half refer to the earth rotating on its axis and revolving around the sun, fine, maybe some of the authors of the Bible, or Abraham, or God, or whoever, might have thought of the Earth as a planet. But that’s not what we read, is it? Not that it’s anything to be ashamed of. I wouldn’t expect a primitive people to know that the Earth is a sphere–they don’t have the technology to measure it, it’s go no impact on their lives, so, big whup. But it also implies that the Guy in the Sky isn’t slipping them advanced scientific knowledge. Either they weren’t really in direct contact, or He was dumbing it down for them, or, as you say, His nature is so incomprehensible that we can’t really interpret anything He says. Bottom line: in a head-to-head fight on the nature of the earth, the Bible loses and modern cosmology wins. Almost every fundmentalist acknowledges this. But then along comes the book of Genesis, suddenly God _is_ handing down science from on high. God never once mentioned that the stars are distant suns, or that the “wandering stars” are worlds like earth, or that the earth is a sphere that turns on its axis–but He had the straight dope on the origin and evolution of life? Huh? ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2001, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885/33 "2001-05-31T16:56:49Z")
> [@](#): > > Yawn. Nice try, Lib. But in leafing through another of Dr. Sagan’s works, Cosmos, I’ve found without any effort many passages in which he implies or states explicitly that the Earth is a sphere. Can you point out a preponderance passages where the biblical authors referred to the Earth as a sphere? A couple of flat-earth passages can be taken as poetic. . . but when the Earth is never discussed as a sphere, or a ball, or, indeed, anything that’s not flat, well, then I begin to wonder. You’re making things too difficult. The way I resolve the problem is that when I have a question about science, I consult Sagan. When I have a question about morality, I consult God. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2001, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885/34 "2001-05-31T21:15:36Z")
**astorian:** \*On the other hand, there has NEVER been a church doctrine that the Earth is flat. Numerous church fathers (including Augustine and Aquinas) allude to the earth’s roundness. They got the shape of the solar system wrong, but NOT the shape of the Earth. The notion that Christians believed in a flat Earth was popularized by Washington Irving, in a snide attempt at humor.\* Whoopsie **astorian** , sounds as though you’ve been reading Jeffrey Russell without the recommended precautionary grain of salt. 🙂 The flatness of the earth has indeed never been official Christian Church doctrine, but several early Church Fathers did indeed argue for it and believed that the Bible supported them in so doing. I quote from a discussion of this topic on a mailing list: > [@](#): > > [another poster:] As I recall it, I believe the general consensus among people who have looked at this question from the standpoint of its fictional nature is that this error emanated in the USA from a work by the writer Washington Irving (1783-1859). Evidently the error was also propagated in France about the same time by Antoine-Jean Letronne (1787-1848). There is a sketch of Russell’s research on this by Russell himself at [http://id-www.ucsb.edu/fscf/LIBRARY/RUSSELL/FlatEarth.html](http://id-www.ucsb.edu/fscf/LIBRARY/RUSSELL/FlatEarth.html) > > [me:] Russell is very categorical about this conclusion, and I don’t doubt that he’s right overall; but I’m puzzled by some of his remarks. At the above website, he says: > > _It must first be reiterated that with extraordinary few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat. […] Nor did this situation change with the advent of Christianity. A few–at least two and at most five–early Christian fathers denied the sphericity of earth by mistakenly taking passages such as Ps. 104:2-3 as geographical rather than metaphorical statements. On the other side tens of thousands of Christian theologians, poets, artists, and scientists took the spherical view throughout the early, medieval, and modern church. The point is that no educated person believed otherwise._ > > I suppose the force of this statement depends on what is meant by an educated person, and how many of them there were, and what the uneducated ones believed. One of Russell’s exceptions is the third/fourth-century Church father Lacantius, whose writings to this effect are transcribed at > [http://ccel.wheaton.edu/fathers2/ANF-07/anf07-06.htm#P823\_327125](http://ccel.wheaton.edu/fathers2/ANF-07/anf07-06.htm#P823_327125) > > From this text it’s obvious that Lacantius is a highly educated person, very well versed in classical philosophy. Yet he says: > > _How is it with those who imagine that there are antipodes opposite to our footsteps? Do they say anything to the purpose? Or is there any one so senseless as to believe that there are men whose footsteps are higher than their heads? or that the things which with us are in a recumbent position, with them hang in an inverted direction? that the crops and trees grow downwards? that the rains, and snow, and hail fall upwards to the earth?_ > > and much more in rebuttal of the earth’s sphericity. This is not quite a case of merely taking Biblical passages as geographical rather than metaphorical; Lacantius is presenting what he believes to be a coherent physical argument. As I understand it, a few of his fellow theologians including Severian of Gabala and Diodore of Tarsus in the fourth century and Kosmas Indicopleustes in the sixth also rejected the earth’s sphericity. Now this certainly falls within Russell’s limit of at most five early Christian fathers who were anti-sphericist; but considering that these people were educated and influential (Lacantius was tutor to the Emperor Constantine’s son), doesn’t it seem possible that they represented views that, though rejected by the vast majority of those who wrote on the subject, were nonetheless well established? A flat earth was never official Christian cosmology, and dismissed by almost all who wrote on cosmology, but what does that tell us about what “people” believed? So while most Church leaders have always taken the flat-earth references in the Bible metaphorically, there were also some who did take them literally; and as I pointed out, the majority view among educated elite Christians was not necessarily the same as that among Christians as a whole (or non-Christians, for that matter). As for **Mangetout** ’s question of whether the Biblical references were originally **intended** literally or metaphorically, I think that the similarity of their imagery to other flat-earth cosmologies in the ancient Mediterranean region argues for the notion that the people who wrote the Biblical sources did believe the earth was actually flat. And after all, there is no historical evidence for any discovery of the earth’s sphericity until a couple of centuries before Plato at the earliest. It’s clear that most people in the ancient Near East believed, quite reasonably, that the earth was some sort of slab of something rather than a sphere, and there’s no good reason to assume that the ancient Hebrews thought differently. Robert Schadewald, a well-known researcher on modern flat-earthism, remarks: > [@](#): > > On the other hand, the ancient Hebrews, like all of their contemporaries, were flat earthers, and their flat earth cosmology is written between the lines in numerous passages of the Hebrew Bible. This was not lost on many of the Fathers of the Church. Lactantius, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Diodorus of Tarsus have been correctly cited by others as flat earthers. I could name many more, some minor figures, some major (John Chrysostom, for example, and probably Basil of Caesarea). Flat earthism seems to have been uncommon among the Latin Fathers (Tertullian seems to have been one exception). Among the Greek Fathers, the Alexandrians tended to interpret scripture allegorically, and they likewise could accept sphericity without a problem. The Antiochene theologians, however, originated the grammatical-historical interpretation of the Bible beloved by modern fundamentalists, and I can’t name a single one of them who endorsed sphericity but several who condemned it. The Old Syrian Church seems likewise to have been hostile to sphericity. (Jeffrey Burton Russell’s treatment of the Fathers’ views on the shape of the earth is no more reliable than Andrew Dickson White’s, though he castigates White for inaccuracy.) > > Contra Russell, who portrays Cosmas Indicopleustes as a weird latter-day (c. 548) innovator, I think Cosmas (who wrote in Greek, not Latin) preserved a minor but interesting tradition. He says in his book that he learned his system from the man who later became Bishop Catholic of all of Persia (head of the Nestorian Church). For those interested in Cosmas’s views, I was astonished some weeks ago to find a Web page with the English (and Greek) text of the crucial chapter of his Christian Topography, complete with scans of all the illustrations! The URL is: > > [http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/aweisner/cosmas.html](http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/aweisner/cosmas.html) This casts an interesting light on the fundamentalism issue, as the Antiochene school was more “Bible-literalist” about questions including the shape of the earth than the Alexandrians or the Latin Fathers, and today’s “Bible literalists” (especially the “King James Version Only” types) are in return more enthusiastic about the Antiochenes than the Alexandrians. (The SDMB’s favorite fundamentalist, tract author Jack Chick, has a [marvelous diatribe](http://www.chick.com/reading/books/158/158_08.asp) on why the Antiochene ideology supports “God’s Bible” and the Alexandrian one is the “Devil’s Bible”! :)) But at least almost all fundamentalists have now dropped the Antiochene insistence on the flatness of the earth, so never say progress is impossible. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2001, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885/35 "2001-05-31T21:25:17Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Podkayne \* > \*\*Almost every fundmentalist acknowledges this. But then along comes the book of Genesis, suddenly God _is_ handing down science from on high. God never once mentioned that the stars are distant suns, or that the “wandering stars” are worlds like earth, or that the earth is a sphere that turns on its axis–but He had the straight dope on the origin and evolution of life? Huh? \*\* This is a very good point; thanks. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2001, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885/36 "2001-05-31T21:53:27Z")
Kimstu wrote: > [@](#): > > The SDMB’s favorite fundamentalist, tract author Jack Chick, has a [marvelous diatribe](http://www.chick.com/reading/books/158/158_08.asp) on why the Antiochene ideology supports “God’s Bible” and the Alexandrian one is the “Devil’s Bible”! 🙂 Ol’ Jack Chick has [a Chick tract](http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0031/0031_01.asp) about this topic, too. In it, he claims that the King James bible was translated from the “true” Antioch Scriptures and **every other English-language bible on the Earth today** was translated from the “false” Alexandrian Scriptures. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2001, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885/37 "2001-05-31T23:16:20Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by tracer \* > \*\*Kimstu wrote: > > > [@](#): > > > > The SDMB’s favorite fundamentalist, tract author Jack Chick, has a [marvelous diatribe](http://www.chick.com/reading/books/158/158_08.asp) on why the Antiochene ideology supports “God’s Bible” and the Alexandrian one is the “Devil’s Bible”! 🙂 > > Ol’ Jack Chick has [a Chick tract](http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0031/0031_01.asp) about this topic, too. > > In it, he claims that the King James bible was translated from the “true” Antioch Scriptures and **every other English-language bible on the Earth today** was translated from the “false” Alexandrian Scriptures. \*\* What on earth does Jack Chick think he’s doing? surely this must be doing more damage than good to the reputation of Christianity. Oh, and why would a sly, devious, cunning, wily adversary like Satan do such a poor wishy-washy job of distorting the bible into modern translations? - they scarcely differ from the KJV except in terms of readability. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2001, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885/38 "2001-06-01T00:51:32Z")
Unfortunately, Jack Chick is our cross to bear, much like the atheists must bear the cross of [American Atheists](http://www.americanatheist.org/), where you’ll find such gems as this: > [@](#): > > Ancient humans could not understand the real reason for the passing seasons. They associated what they observed with all sorts of mystical goings on. In this short pamphlet, Frank R. Zindler explains the natural seasons. Now, when a theist tries to tell you about the “reason for the season,” you’ll know better. And here I thought thunder was Thor’s stomach rumbling. My bad. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2001, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885/39 "2001-06-01T04:12:30Z")
Hmmm … I couldn’t find that text on the American Atheists webpage, Lib – although a keyword search for “Zindler season” on their website **did** bring up a different foaming-at-the-mouth article by Frank R. Zindler about how wonderful Doherty’s _The Jesus Puzzle_ is. (Apparently, Zindler was preparing to write a book on the same subject.) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Bad\_Astronomer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f05b48/32.png) [@The\_Bad\_Astronomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Bad_Astronomer)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2001, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885/40 "2001-06-01T04:33:57Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mangetout \* > \*\*… which is the same as saying that London is in the centre of a map of the earth’s surface; it can be, if you like. \*\* But not if the map is curved into a sphere. Then _no_ point on the surface is at the center. That’s a better (though still not terribly accurate) analogy to the Universe. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bible-flat-earth-geocentric-universe/66885.md?page=3)