This is the black kitten’s fault … as the white kitten was engaged with her bath at the time …
No, it doesn’t. That’s like saying that the world is flat because a map of the world is flat. A circle necessarily implies a sphere.
Anybody who claims that the Bible supports a flat earth is taking verses out of context.
It’s a tough argument either way … starting with the (Aramaic ->) Greek -> Latin -> English translation issues and considering the mystical nature of Isaiah, we can finish up with prescription strength stupid pills and reach the Flat Earth interpretation.
As counter-argument, I think Mangetout post works well … there’s enough ambiguity in any proper prophecy to reach any conclusion … I don’t happen to believe it but that’s just me …
Verses out of context? That’s impossible! Stone him!!
All verses are inerrantly true in isolation. In fact the words, letters, and individuals strokes are themselves separately inerrant.
“I” is the first letter of the English language bible and therefore the first letter of all human alphabets for all time; even for those languages that don’t *have *alphabets.
Yes I’m kidding. But the true believers believe stuff like this.
Except! Isaiah 11:12 says “He will set up a banner for the nations, And will assemble the outcasts of Israel, And gather together the dispersed of Judah From the four corners of the earth.” So the earth is clearly a square!
I’m not sure defining the shape of the Earth as “Earth-shaped” is particularly useful.
Quadrilateral, please. And that assumes there are no curved boundaries mucking things up. 
Just a note: the bit noted previously about being able to show all the nations of the Earth from the top of a mountain does tend to support the idea that the Earth is flat(ish). Either that, or at that point in time, there weren’t (won’t be? haven’t been?) many nations, and all were located near the mountain.
My question: why does anyone bother trying to figure out what motivation or thought process people have who are advocating an idea manifestly incompatible with known facts? As well ask why someone thinks marmite is edible. 
On the second thing:
Hold on, hold on.
This is waaaay too common of an argument. “My interpretation of the Bible is The One True one and any other interpretation of The Bible is heretical.”
In case you hadn’t noticed Christianity (and all other religions and their holy texts) is incredibly fragmented regarding interpreting stuff. This should be completely obvious. So saying “I’m right, you’re wrong.” about such matters doesn’t hold a drop of water, logic-wise. It’s all about interpretations.
So people really do interpret passages of the Bible as saying the Earth is flat and their interpretation cannot be dismissed so easily. Esp. with that passage from Matthew: You can’t see all the nations of the world from a high mountain unless the Earth is flat.
On the first thing: The Flat Earth types cosmological diagram shows a big dome (behind which the Flood waters were held) which meets the Earth and stops there. So it is a hemisphere. Not a sphere. Highly rooted in Biblical sources, not so much in logic or physics.
The Earth is not geoid-shaped. The geoid is the equipotential surface which matches sea level, but continued through the continents as well. It’s a lot smoother than the actual surface: A mountain will cause a rise in the level of the geoid, but only a slight one, not nearly as high as the actual mountain. The geoid is a better approximation to the Earth’s shape than an oblate spheroid is, but only a little better, not enough better to justify the much more complicated description of the shape. An approximation should be easy to describe.
One of my favorite throwaway lines in a news article:
Police, firefighters called in after flat Earth debate turns heated
It’s not clear if anyone at the campfire put forth the argument that the Earth’s equatorial bulge makes it not perfectly round, but instead a shape known as an oblate spheroid.
There’s actually more than that in the Bible about 4 corners of the Earth. Since everything in the Bible is true, obviously the Earth is a four-cornered circle…
From this passage I’m getting an oval Earth … not a circle … well, an oval of pseudo-geopotential … I suppose technically mountains and valleys only make it “look” like an oval … but circle is right out I should say …
Geoid? Come on, I just learned to pronounce and spell Oblate Spheroid.
Bob
This is what I get for trying to be a smart arse.
One thought I had was…if the south pole is surrounded by an infinite plain of ice…why not explore outward, as far as we can?
You know those old math problems, where you go out a way and leave a fuel cache, then use that to go farther, to leave more distant fuel caches, etc. Let’s try to make and beat new records. Who has gone farthest out into the infinite wasteland?
I asked this of Charles K. Johnson (in correspondence) back when I had a membership in the International Flat Earth Research Society (I thought it would be fun: it was not.) He told me I was a fool for wanting to do something that extravagantly pointless.
(Yeah, yeah, he oughta know!)
Didn’t we have an honest-to-gosh hollow earth promoter for a while here on the SDMB a few years ago?
Oh, it’s worse than that. The argument runs more like “I don’t interpret the Bible. I read it literally, and everyone else interprets it. Therefore, I’m correct and everyone else is trying to deceive you.”
The religious objections to Postmodernism and the idea that all meaning comes from interpretation are because that gives the game away, you see: It lays bare the fact everyone is interpreting, there is literally no such thing as a literal reading, and, therefore, nobody can claim the absolutely incorruptible position of being the one who reads the Bible literally.
There was a poster named Karol who argued that not only was Earth hollow, but that we live on the inside.
Sounds like me … nice catch …
It’s been done, but no one who went that far ever came back.
That’s just what they want you to think. Photoshop rulez!