The Book the Flat Earth That Got Sued for Using Miracles Art

The Flat Earth

past Donald E. Simanek

Early on Ideas Nigh the Shape of the Earth.

Egyptian cosmogony.

The ancients had many novel ideas nigh the shape of the earth. The Babylonians thought the earth was hollow, to provide space for their underworld. The Egyptians idea the earth a square, (with iv corners) with mountains at the edge supporting the vault of the sky.

Aristotle argued for a spherical world, for these reasons:

The gradual disappearance of ships over the horizon, the tops of the sails disappearing last.
The shape of the curved shadow of the earth on the moon during eclipses.
The variation of the sun's elevation with latitude. (This was the basis of Eratosthenes' measurement.)
The variation of a star's top with latitude. The fact that one sees new stars as one moves north or s on the earth's surface.
Matter tends to class into drops or globs, and the earth, in forming from chaotic matter, did the aforementioned.
Proof past elephants: When one travels westward from Greece, 1 finds elephants (African). When 1 travels east one finds elephants (Asian). Not realizing that these elephants are different kinds, he idea that one was traveling to the same lands by going in opposite directions.

The concluding two are manifestly (to us) irrelevant, only the others stand for valid arguments based on observations of nature.

Flat earth. [George Gamow]	Round earth. [George Gamow]

The early Christian Church accepted Aristotle's spherical earth. But a few malcontents within the Church building pointed out that the Bible speaks of 'the four corners' of the earth. In the fifth century CE the monk Cosmas Indicopleustes, in his Christian Topography, described a square earth with a heavenly vault, much similar the Egyptian model. Tertulian also was a apartment-earther.

Science author Robert J. Schadewald gave me permission to quote the following paragraphs in which he summarizes the Biblical evidence which flat-earthers use to justify their position. He wrote this to a geocentrist fundamentalist who was arguing that the Bible supports a stock-still, non-moving earth, with the all the residual of the universe moving around us at about one revolution per twenty-four hours. Bob, of class agreed that the Bible does back up that view, but wonders why this particular fundamentalist did not also accept the idea that the earth is apartment, since that has basis in the Bible too.

...The Bible is, from Genesis to Revelation, a flat-globe volume. ...While the Bible nowhere states categorically that the earth is flat, numerous Onetime Testament verses clearly prove that the ancient Hebrews were flat-earthers. This comes through more clearly in mod translations such equally the New English language Bible, but it's clear enough in the Male monarch James Version. The Genesis cosmos story says the earth is covered by a vault (firmament) and that the angelic bodies move inside the vault. (See Genesis 1:6-8 and 1:17. Notation that, even in KJV, while there are waters "above" the firmament, the celestial bodies are "in" information technology.) This makes no sense unless ane assumes that the globe is essentially flat.

That the Hebrews considered the dominicus and moon to be minor bodies about to the earth is clear from Joshua 10:12, which gives specific localities [geographic] in which they stood yet. Isaiah forty:22 says that "God sits throned on the vaulted roof of globe, whose inhabitants are like grasshoppers." In the volume of Chore, Eliphaz the Temanite says God "walks to and fro on the vault of heaven.'' (Job 22:xiv. The KJV translators copped out on the last two verses, but in both cases the implications are articulate.)

That the globe was considered essentially apartment is clear from Daniel, who said, "I saw a tree of great height at the centre of the earth; the tree grew and became strong, reaching with its top to the sky and visible to the earth'due south uttermost premises." (Daniel 4:10-11) Only on a apartment world could i see a tree reaching the heaven (dome?) from "the globe'southward uttermost bounds."

The New Testament as well implies a apartment globe. For instance, Matthew 4:eight says that "The devil took him [Jesus] to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory." From a sufficiently high mountain, one could see all of the kingdoms of the world"but only if the globe were apartment. The aforementioned applies to Revelation ane:7, which says that at the second coming, "Every heart shall see him." Finally, Revelation seven:1 refers to "the iv corners of the earth," and corners are not generally associated with spheres.

Actually, if you desire a good flick of the hebrew conception of the earth, expect in a Jewish encyclopedia nether "cosmography." You might as well want to read the so-chosen "Ethiopic" Book of Enoch, written perchance 150 B.C. While not canonical, it'southward paraphrased or quoted a couple of times in the New Testament, and so it was highly regarded in those days. Its flat earth implications are even stronger.

The Biblical cosmos model derives from Egyptian sources, which had a flat earth covered by a rounded sky vault supported at the four corners of the earth past high mountains. The 'waters higher up and the waters below' in the book of Genesis refer to the Babylonian notion that the waters were divided, and some remained to a higher place the sky vault. The vault was similar a leaky roof and some of that h2o falls downwardly equally rain.

Astonishingly, some nowadays-day 'biblical creationists' now argue that this water above the sky was the source of the flood in the time of Noah. They realize that if the waters did cover the world to the highest mountain tops, there just isn't whatsoever source of that much h2o in the earth or in the atmosphere! And so it must take come from somewhere else, they argue, in their pathetic attempt to make creationism appear 'scientific'.

Eratosthenes measures the earth.

The Round Earth.

Eratosthenes (c 276 to 195 BCE) was probably the first to accurately mensurate the size of the Earth. He knew that at summertime solstice the dominicus was straight overhead in Syene (now Aswan, Egypt). On that twenty-four hour period, vertical sticks or poles cast no shadows, and sunlight fills the bottom of wells. The town of Alexandria is directly north of Syene (on the aforementioned summit), and on that same day vertical poles do cast shadows, because the sunday is then 7.2° from the zenith. Eratosthenes assumed this to be due to the globe'due south curvature.

Knowing the distance between these cities to be 5000 stadia (from land surveys), he calculated the earth's circumference to exist 250,000 stadia. [1 stadium was 1/viii of a Roman mile, or 220 yards in modern measure.] That's a circumference of a little over 24,662 miles, which is nearly the modern value of 24,900 miles. This value was considered also big by nigh of Eratosthenes' contemporaries, who preferred the smaller value worked out later by Poseidonius (18,000 miles). The latter value was accustomed by Ptolemy (and Columbus, much later).

Note that Eratosthenes made the assumption that the sun was far enough away from the world that the incoming solar rays are parallel.

Popular histories give the impression that Columbus had to contend with flat earth believers who warned that he'd sheet right off the edge of the earth. It is even said that he set out to show the globe was round. That's myth.

Geometry of Eratosthenes' measurement of the globe.

Most educated persons in Columbus' 24-hour interval accustomed a circular world. Only at that place was difference of opinion well-nigh the earth'due south size. Columbus made the mistake of relying on Ptolemey's value for the size of the earth, which was much too small. Columbus therefore underestimated the length of the proposed voyage. (He wanted to reach the Orient, only America got in the way.)

In that location were even some who accustomed a round earth, but misunderstood gravity. They idea that if you went also far y'all'd roll off. In fact, they had to postulate some sort of mountainous wall around the known earth to keep the oceans from spilling off.

Revival of Flat Globe Theories.

Bob Shadewald, who researced the apartment world idea to a greater extent than I have, tells me that the flat earth idea was revived in the 18th century past the followers of a eccentric English sectarian and tailor, Lodowick Muggleton. I take been unable to independently confirm this. Origins of eccentric ideas are usually difficult to pivot down. In any case, from the 18th century to the nowadays day the apartment earth conventionalities is bound upwardly with religious fundamentalism.

By 1800, Zetetic societies were flourishing in England. 'Zetetic' means 'seeker' or 'skeptic'. The apartment-earthers took this proper noun to symbolize their skepticism toward orthodox scientific views of the shape of the earth.

Notwithstanding, their skepticism was limited to science. And then, and now, the flat thought goes along with religious fundamentalism, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. I have yet to hear of a apartment earther who is not also a Biblical literalist.

Samuel Birley Rowbotham (1816-1884), a 19th century religious fundamentalist, headed an Owenite colony, and promoted the flat world philosophy. He'due south a shadowy figure for historians. He had a reputation of contemptuous dishonesty, and some retrieve he didn't actually believe what he promoted. He was an itinerant lecurer, and wrote under several pseudonyms: Tryon, Due south. Goulden, Parallax, and Dr. Birley. His major work was World Not a World written in 1849.

Rowbotham concocted the fiendishly clever thought of low-cal refraction in curved paths to 'save the hypothesis' of the flat earth, to account for what he called the 'optical illusions' of sunrise and sunset. Rowbotham is the first flat-earther to give the size of the sunday: 32 miles in diameter, a figure accepted by flat-earthers today. However, he gave the distance to the dominicus as 700 miles, a effigy hard to reconcile with his value for its diameter.

John Hampden (1819-1891) vigorously promoted the flat earth idea in England. He founded the Truth-Seeker'south Oracle and Scriptural Science Review in 1876. In 1870 Hampden made a bet with naturalist Alfred Wallace on the event of a test of the flatness of water in the Old Bedford Canal. Both sides claimed the test confirmed their view, and flat-earthers to this twenty-four hours assert that "h2o surfaces accept been proved to exist apartment."

Hampden was known for his piety, and his abusive language. Feeling he had been wronged in the Bedford experiment, he buried Wallace in a blizzard of vitriolic pamphlets and letters to the editor. He even resorted to abusing by letter, as this letter to Mrs. Wallace shows.

Madam

If your infernal thief of a husband is brought domicile some mean solar day on a hurdle, with every bone in his head smashed to a lurid, you volition know the reason. Do y'all tell him from me he is a lying infernal thief, and equally sure as his proper noun is Wallace he never dies in his bed.

You must be a miserable wretch to be obliged to live with a convicted felon. Do not call up or allow him recall I have done with him.

John Hampden

Hampden thought the sun only 600 miles away, and 32 miles in bore. These numbers derived from Rowotham, and added zero new to apartment earth theory.

Later on Rowbotham'south death in 1884 his followers carried on the crusade. The Universal Zetetic Social club (UZS) was founded in 1890, publishing a journal titled The Earth Not a Globe Review which had yard subscribers. The UZS remained active well into the early 20th century, but slowly declined later on World War I.

Other flat-earthers were active at this time. William Carpenter emigrated to Baltimore and wrote One Hundred Proofs that the Earth is not a Earth in 1885. Lady Blount, wife of Sir Walter de Sodrington Blount, promoted flat earth ideas. She founded and edited a journal Earth from 1900 to 1904. Scotsman John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907) studied at Edinburgh University, and so established a pastorate near Sydney Commonwealth of australia, and included flat earth dogma in his theology.

A digression on measurements.

In the concluding decades of the 19th century various models of the earth and heavens were actively promoted. Isaac Newton Vail proposed an annular theory to account for the formation of the earth and planets, but assumed a convex earth. The Gillespian theory put the earth and sun in fixed positions, assuasive the globe to rotate. A "conic" theory modeled the shape of the earth as something like a cone, its base being the Northward polar region, and its apex at the Due south pole. At that place was even a modest publication titled The Foursquare Earth promoting an earth shaped as an inverted soup bowl, the Northern hemisphere existence virtually as we know it, but with the Southern Hemisphere flaring out to a larger rim. It'south a mystery why the writer describes it every bit "foursquare", but it has something to practise with the Biblical reference to "the four corners of the globe".

The New Bedford canal experiment inspired others to measure out the flatness of water surfaces. Alexander Gleason, a civil engineer from Buffalo, NY, tested the flatness of the surface of lake Erie. He published Is the Bible from Heaven (1890) and Is the Earth a Earth? (1893).

Simply not everyone who measured water's flatness got the aforementioned upshot. In 1896 Ulysses M. Morrow made such a examination on the Old Illinois Drainage Canal, He institute the water surface concave upward. Morrow considered this "the most unmistakable evidence of the water's non-convexity." But he wasn't surprised, for he was already leaning to the view of Cyrus Reed Teed that the earth was hollow, and nosotros lived on its inside surface, with the entire universe likewise inside.

Morrow made similar sightings in 1896 from the shore of Lake Michigan at the World's Fair Grounds. Seven other sightings were fabricated from Roby, Illinois in 1896, with like results. These experiments of both flat and hollow-world advocates were easily dismissed by critics as simply due to atmospheric refraction. Morrow sought a more disarming method for measuring water surfaces, one that would non employ light. In 1897 he did the famous Naples experiment in Florida, measuring a nearly 4 mile N-S water surface using a method that did non depend on light. He concluded that the earth was concave, with a radius of a bit over 4000 miles.

During the last decades of the 19th century the flat-earthers and hollow earthers paid close attention to each other's experiments, read their opponent'south publications, and fifty-fifty corresponded, through the messages sections of their newsletters.

The globe was flat in Zion.

In 1888 Scotsman John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907) brought these ideas to America, where he founded the Christian Catholic Church in Chicago. Dowie was a religion healer, and the journal Leaves of Healing was the official publication of the church building. The church grew apace, and Dowie realized his dream of founding a christian community in 1901, the Zion community located on the Lake Michigan shore, xl miles n of Chicago.

Alexander Dowie.	Alexander Dowie drawing by Champe.

Equally the community grew and prospered, Dowie moved abroad from the unproblematic life he had earlier advocated. He resided in a 25 room mansion, and designed for himself magnificent ecclesiastical robes, modeled afterwards those worn by Aaron, the High priest, described in Leviticus. Customs members idea he was putting on too much 'manner' and his wife was criticized as also improvident. In 1906, after suffering a stroke, Dowie was forced to resign his position.

Dowie is rebuked.

Wilbur Glenn Voliva.

Wilbur Glenn Voliva (1870-1942) took over leadership of the Church, which became the Christian Cosmic Apostolic Church in Zion.

Voliva kept tight control on his 6000 followers, which made upward the customs. The church building schools taught the flat earth doctrine. His 100,000 watt radio station broadcast his diatribes confronting round earth astronomy, and the evils of development.

In its early years, Zion was a one-religion customs. A Scottish lace manufacture and a bakery were established. Zion brand fig bar cookies and White Pigeon chocolates originated there.

In the boondocks of Zion a strict lawmaking of morality was imposed, by law, on all persons who ready human foot inside city limits. Irving Wallace, in his book The Foursquare Pegs, tells of his babyhood memories of Zion. In that location it was unlawful for women to article of clothing short dresses, loftier heels, bathing suits or lipstick. Ham, bacon, oysters, liquor and tobacco were banned, as were drugstores, medical buildings and movie theaters. A ten o'clock curfew was rigidly enforced. You could be arrested for whistling on Sunday. These laws were enforced by Voliva'due south police force strength, called the Praetorian Baby-sit, whose helmets carried the word 'PATIENCE' and whose sleeves diameter images of doves. Policemen wore Bibles and clubs on their belts.

Irving Wallace interviewed Voliva in 1932. Voliva alleged that the Bible was his entire scientific library. Astronomers were 'ignorant fools'. The sun, he said, was simply 3 chiliad miles away, and only thirty-two miles in diameter. When asked why he idea the sunday so near the world, he said, "God made the sun to light the earth, and therefore must have placed information technology shut to the task it was designed to do. What would you think of a man who built a house in Zion and put a lamp to light it in Kenosha, Wisconsin?"

The Zion communal industries were mostly ruined in the depression. Rival churches fabricated special efforts to ship missionaries to Zion to interruption Voliva's religious monopoly. His political control of the town of Zion was finally broken as well. Voliva died in 1942, and Zion now has pork, lipstick, pharmacies and physicians, and yous can safely whistle on Sunday.

Voliva'south flat earth map. Modern Mechanics and Invention, October, 1931.

The church'south power declined in the 40s and 50s, partly due to financial scandals. Simply the church itself notwithstanding exists, a stake shadow of its sometime celebrity.

The White Dove, symbol of Patience.	Seal of Zion.

Zion today.

I visited Zion in the summer of 1992. It's a modest lake shore community of middle form homes and pleasant parks and beaches. Ane immediately recognizes the town'south history and heritage in the street signs, for the north-south streets are named for people and places from the Bible: Gideon, Jethro, Galilee, Gilead, Gilboa, Gabriel, Ezra, Ezekiel, Enoch. When I was there the constabulary cars still carried the town seal, an emblem of the Zion church. A lawsuit had been brought against the town considering of this inappropriate use of a religious symbol. Several residents and church members I talked to were very indignant well-nigh this attempt to separate church and state.

The original Zion church, a wooden structure, burned in 1937, and has been replaced by a church with modernistic architectural blueprint. As well gone is the Elijah Hospice, built in 1901. Information technology was considered to be the largest wood frame edifice in the world, with 350 rooms, dining rooms and parlors. It became the Zion retirement hotel and nursing home. Despite efforts to save information technology every bit a historical site, it was torn down in the late 1980s and replaced with a modern brick hospital. Zion at present has over one hundred churches of an astonishing variety, including many 1-of-a-kind churches. At that place'due south fifty-fifty a nuclear ability found adjoining city limits.

Shiloh House, a 25 room mansion congenital every bit the residence of John Alexander Dowie. The roof tiles accept a zig-zag blueprint in xanthous green and dark-brown, symbolizing the ability of God. [Photo past Donald Simanek.]

Shiloh House, the home of Alexander Dowie and afterward of Wilbur Voliva, however stands. It may exist visited just on weekends, when the local historical lodge gives public tours.

Apartment Earth Order brochure.

The flat globe in the late 20th century.

Back in England, in 1956, Samuel Shenton, a sign painter and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Royal Geographic Club, revived the UZS, changing its proper name to The International Flat Globe Society.

A brochure from the IFS forthrightly states its position.

The International Flat Earth Sociey has been established to prove past audio reasoning and factual testify that the present accepted theory that the World is a globe spinning on its axis every 24 hours and at the same time describing an orbit circular the Sun at a speed of 66,000 1000.p.h, is opposite to all feel and to audio mutual-sense.

In aboriginal times the Earh was regarded every bit plane, and this is expressed in all literature up to a few hundred of years ago. The theory has fallen into disfavour, owing mainly to the dogmatism of modern science and popular education in schools, which leads to prejudice in favour of the globular theory from the showtime.

Information technology is e'er a pity to let faux theories to laissez passer unchallenged, and it is hoped that the Flat Earth Society volition practice much to undo the harm that has been acquired. Remember that the truth of the aeroplane figure of the Earth can exist shown by irrefutable evidence, and anyone who is interested in becoming a member is asked to contact the President or the Organising Secretary. In future information technology is hoped to hold regular meetings of the Society.

December twenty^th, 1956.

The club received quite a flake of publicity when Shenton was shown photos of the 'round' globe taken from space. At first he wasn't impressed, proverb "It'south easy to meet how such a pic could fool the untrained center." [Indeed, a "problems-center" broad-angle photographic camera lens can produce a similar event.] Later, some reports said he admitted that the Flat Earth Club might accept to "reassess its position." But, after a cursory period of dubiety, he concluded that the space photos and the entire space programme was faked by scientists desperately trying to save confront by concealing the true nature of the shape of the world.

Shenton died in March 1971. His married woman helped cull a successor. The about enthusiastic potential leader within the organisation seemed to be Charles K. Johnson of Lancaster, California.

Samuel Shenton, illustrating earth's flatness.

And so Johnson became president of the Flat Earth Society in 1971 and 'inherited' a big portion of Shenton'southward valuable library of books on apartment globe history. Johnson put out a paper called The International Flat Earth News. Its masthead declares its purpose: 'Restoring the World to Sanity.'

Charles Johnson.

Johnson used Biblical potency to affirm that the earth is a flat disk with the North pole at the center and a wall of ice in the Antarctic regions, surrounding the whole perimeter of the world disk. In his universe the sun and moon were about 32 miles in bore and only 3000 miles away. They, too are flat disks. The stars are a mere 4000 miles away.

Where did Johnson get these figures? You won't observe the calculations in his paper. They may have originated with Carpenter and Robotham in England, and are accepted without question as administrative by apartment-earthers today.

Rethinking Eratosthenes.

One tin can reconstruct the origin of these numbers by doing a picayune geometry, starting from a flat globe hypothesis. Remember the experiment of Eratosthenes, who measured the angular elevation of the sunday at ii latitudes in Egypt? He assumed that the sun was effectively infinitely far away (or at least and so far compared to the earth's size that the actual distance didn't affair). Then he calculated the diameter of the earth using a 2nd supposition: that the globe was spherical.

But suppose you carelessness Eratosthenes' two assumptions, and adopt instead the assumption that the earth is flat. Then, triangulation from the aforementioned information gives the distance to the sun: 3000 miles! Come across how a simple modify of assumptions can drastically alter the entire creation? Nevertheless, the round earth was more than an arbitary supposition for Eratosthenes, for he and his contemporaries, had other very skilful reasons for knowing the earth was round. [Textbooks sometimes mislead by suggesting that his experiment was designed to prove the earth was a sphere. It was not, it was simply intended to measure the size of the sphere.]

Distance of sun from a flat earth, using Eratosthenes' method.

Finally, the angular size of the sun is 0.v°. Using this fact with a distance to the lord's day of 3000 miles, gives the sun's diameter: 32 miles. Information technology therefore appears that the flat-earther's figures are based on sun pinnacle data at only two particular latitudes, perhaps fifty-fifty Eratosthenes' values. I speculate that flat earthers may have picked these out of some book, and when the adding was finished, they looked no further. For if they had done the calculation with a multifariousness of latitudes, including big latitude differences, alien results would have been obtained.

The left diagram below shows that for two towns having latitudes within about xxx° of each other, reasonably consistent results are obtained. Simply when larger baselines are used, the triangulation gives a much smaller distance to the lord's day. For a 70° latitude difference the distance to the sun comes out less than half that for a 10° departure.

How light refracts almost the earth. Left: conventional physics. Correct: flat-earther'south physics.

Yet, ane could save the hypothesis by assuming that low-cal refracts in a peculiar way. Modernistic flat-earthers do indeed assume that refraction is at work. They attribute the disappearance of the ships over the horizon to a refraction issue, and even point out that with some atmospheric conditions, ships, icebergs, and afar mountains take been observed to rise above the horizon, and even plough upside downwards!

The diagram at the right shows how this works. The angle that the rays strike the earth's surface is right, matching the left diagram.

To complete their path from the sun to the globe the rays must curve to strike the earth at the right (observed) angle. The curvature of the rays for latitude differences of less than l° hardly shows on the diagram. Of grade this upshot can be obtained in diverse ways. The curvature could be confined to the region nigh the globe, even inside the temper. The diagram shows circular arcs, but other shapes might be used besides.

Lame answers to other objections to the flat globe idea.

How airplanes and world satellites orbit around a flat world.

And what about airliners going around the world? What about earth satellites? They are just traveling in loop orbits. What makes them practise this? Johnson doesn't say. Apartment-earthers shun whatsoever grade of gravitational force. They consider gravity to exist a mystical or occult idea. Things fall, they say, simply because they are heavy—no other explanation is needed.

What about the moon flights and the pictures from infinite showing a round earth? Johnson wasn't about to exist taken in past such nonsense. It's all a hoax, he proclaimed, an elaborate picture production written by Arthur C. Clarke, filmed on Hollywood sound stages and the Mohave desert. "Neil Armstrong stepped on a newspaper moon," Johnson asserted.

Johnson says his mission is to restore sanity to the earth. He was proud that the United Nations accepts his idea, for they put a map of his flat earth on their flag. He rejected mystical forces like gravity, accepting the Aristotelian notion that things fall naturally downwards—no explanation is needed. Who could be perverse enough to deny i's senses by doubting information technology?

Johnson also cited the testimony of his wife Marjory, who came from Commonwealth of australia. "She's sworn out an affidavit that she never hung by her feet in Commonwealth of australia. She sailed a send over here, and she did not become on it upside down and she did not sail straight upwardly. She sailed right straight across the body of water. Nosotros consider that a very important proof that the world is flat," Johnson says.

United Nations Flag. A flat world order.

Johnson claimed his apartment earth society had 1600 members worldwide, just admits some haven't kept upward their ante. The social club was always struggling financially. There were probably less than 100 hard cadre members.

By now yous may be thinking that this is an elaborate joke. Not so. Read a few issues of his newspaper, and you will run into that he is deadly serious. He put out the newspaper at a financial loss, and lived with his wife in isolation and poverty at the border of the Mohave desert. He was quite sincere, and indignant at those who would brand a joke of the apartment globe idea.

A rival theory.

Johnson was infuriated at any mention of the Canadian, Leo Ferrari, caput of an organization simply called The Flat Globe Club. Ferrari taught in the philosophy department of St. Thomas University. I'll give y'all a few gems from his promotional brochure:

We believe in terra firma, and the more firmer the less terror.
All scientific discipline, like all philosophy and all religion is ultimately metaphorical and...reality is essentially mystical and poetical.
Our aim is to restore human being's organized religion in Mutual Sense... Seeing is believing. ...Man has been blinded by metaphysics, brainwashed by popular fallacies and bullied into denying the show of his very own optics!

The encompass of his brochure says "We're on the level." He once said, in an interview, that he had traveled to the edge of the world, which he defines as the edge of what he tin see: Fogo Island, off the coast of Newfoundland. In that location he gazed over the edge into the 'abysmal chasm'. "Information technology was a horror," he said. "I managed to grasp a rock for support." He carried that stone dorsum with him, which he calls 'The Sacred Stone'.

Flyer of The Flat Earth Society. Leo Ferrari, Canada.

I practise non know to what extent Ferrari'south efforts were parody. But since the internet has made it so piece of cake for people to reach a worldwide audience, several websites of apartment earth organizations have appeard, almost certainly intended as satire.

Postscripts

March 2006.

Much has changed since I wrote the in a higher place account. Bob Shadewald brought me up to date, by supplying the following information. In tardily September 1995, the Johnsons' home defenseless burn down. Charles managed to pull Marjory, by then a semi-invalid on supplemental oxygen, to safety, just everything else in the house was destroyed—their personal possessions, the Flat Earth Society library and archives, the membership list, everything. Having no burn down insurance, the Johnsons were unable to rebuild. A dilapidated erstwhile business firm trailer, bought equally a storage shed, survived the fire, and they took refuge there. A few months later, Marjory fell and bankrupt a hip. She survived hip replacement surgery but never recovered her strength. On May sixteen, 1996, she died.

Charles Johnson immersed himself in rebuilding the membership roster. Publication of the Flat Globe News, in hiatus since 1994, was to resume with the December 1996 issue. But I accept no confirmation that it did.

Charles Johnson died in 2001. I hear rumors that some efforts take been made to discover a new leader to revive the organisation, but I've seen no evidence that it has happened.

June 2015.

Eric Dubay seems to accept revived the International Flat Earth Enquiry Society. His website recycles the archetype arguments for an unmoving flat earth, and "refutes" arguments for a spherical, rotating earth. He rejects gravity, and is clearly of the opinion that the round world is a vast conspiracy to delude everyone, promoted past Freemasons and NASA. He gives no convincing answer to the question "Why would anyone go to that much trouble to promote whatsoever particular view of the cosmos?" He admits he has no understanding of the mathematical arguments of conventional physics. He relies instead on "mutual sense" analogies. Read his ebooks, spider web postings, and lookout man his videos as fine exaples of "arguments from ignorance."

I still would similar to meet a debate between hollow earthers and flat earthers on the subject of the shape of the globe. Information technology would, I think, demonstrate how alike they are in the methods they use to support their conventionalities, and how they tin can use misinterpreted information and flawed arguments to arrive at mutually contradictory conclusions.

Sources:

Cohen, Daniel. "Is the earth flat or hollow?" Science Digest, Nov. 1972, p. 62-66.
Cook, Philip. John Alexander Dowie's Theocracy. Zion Historical Gild publication, Serial 2. 1970. (pamphlet)
Darms, Rev. Anton. Life and Work of John Alexander Dowie. (pamphlet)
Davenport, Walter. "They call me a Flathead". Collier's, May 11, 1927.
DeFord, Charles South. A reparation: universal gravitation a universal fake. Fairfield, Wash., Ye Galleon Press [1992] 62 p. illus., port. QB283.D44 1992 Reprint of the 3d ed. (New York, Fortean Society, 1931), with a new introduction by Robert J. Schadewald.
Fiske, John. A Century of Science and Other Essays. Houghton, Mifflin, 1899. XIV. "Some Cranks and their Crotchets." This essay also appears in Atlantic Monthly, March 1899, p. 292-310. Information technology discusses, among other things, the history of flat and hollow globe theories.
Flat Globe News. International Apartment Earth Research Social club.
Gardner, Martin. "Flat and hollow." In his Fads and fallacies in the name of science. [Rev. and expanded ed.] New York, Dover Publications [1957] p. xvi�27. Q173.G35 1957. Includes Voliva and the Christian Churchly Church in Zion, Sick.
Garwood, Christine. Apartment Earth, The History of an Infamous Idea. Macmillian, 2007.
Gates, David, with Jennifer Smith. "Keeping the Flat-Earth Religion." Newsweek, July 2, 1984.
Gleason, Alex. Is the Bible from sky? Is the earth a globe? 2d ed., rev. and enl. Buffalo, Due north.Y., Buffalo Electrotype and Engraving Co. [1893] xix, 402 p. illus., map, col. plates, portraits. QB638.G56
Kneitel, Tom. "WCBD, The 'Flat Earth' Radio Station". Popular Communications, June 1986.
Johnson, William J. "Flat Earth Guild." SR (date?)
Leaves of Healing. (periodical, 1888- )
Moore, Patrick. "Ameliorate and flatter earths." In his Tin you lot speak Venusian? A guide to the contained thinkers. [Newton Abbot, David & Charles, 1972] p. 16�29. illus. QB52.M66 1972.
Pfarr, Jerry. "Utopia was 40 miles north of Chicago." Chicago News-Dominicus, Sabbatum/Sun, July 15016, 1989, sec. 1.
Reinders, Robert C. "Preparation for a Prophet: The West Coast Missions of John Alexander Dowie, 1888-1890." The Pacific Historian, Spring 1986. XXX, ane, p. three.
[Rowbotham, Samuel B.] Zetetic astronomy. Globe not a earth. An experimental research into the true figure of the earth, proving it a plane, without orbital or centric move, and the only known textile globe; its true position in the universe, comparatively recent germination, nowadays chemical condition, and budgeted destruction by burn down, &c., &c. By "Parallax" [pseud.] The illus. by George Davey. 3d ed., rev. and enl. London, Day, 1881. 430 p. illus. CaBViP; CtY; ICJ
Schadewald, Robert. "He knew Earth is circular, simply his proof cruel flat." Smithsonian, April 1978. p. 101-113. An account of the 1870 'Old Bedford Canal' challenge in which naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace and flat-earther John Hampden measured the flatness of the h2o surface.
Schadewald, Robert. "The Flat-out Truth: Globe Orbits? Moon Landings? A fraud! Says This Prophet. Science Digest, July 1980, p. 58-63. Spider web re-create.
Schadewald, Robert. "Is the World in Curious Shape?" (Asimov's science fiction magazine?)
Schadewald, Robert. "Some Similar it Apartment." In Fringes of Reason by Ted Schultz, ed. New York: Harmony Books, 1989, 86-88.
Taylor, Jabez. Wilbur Glenn Voliva. Zion Historical Guild, Continuing History of Zion, 1901-1961, Series 7. (pamphlet, no date)
Taylor, Jabez. A Visit to Zion'due south Historical Shiloh House. Zion Historical Society, Shiloh House. (pamphlet, no date)
Wacker, Grant. "Marching to Zion." A/1000 Heritage. Office one, Summertime? 1986. Office 2. Autumn, 1986.
Wallace, Irving. The Square Pegs. Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. Affiliate 1. In Defence force of the Foursquare Peg.
Williams, Marjorie I. "From Realism to Reality: the Followers of Dr. John Alexander Dowie." M.A. Thesis, Rosary College, July 1963.
[Winship, Thomas] Zetetic cosmogony; or, Conclusive show that the earth is not a rotating-revolving-globe, but a stationary plane circle. By Rectangle [pseud.] 2d ed., enl. Durban, Natal, T. L. Cullingworth, 1899. 192 p. QB638.W77 First published in 1897 (46 p. QB638.W769).

Disclaimer.

This certificate is a work in progress. Consider it a first or crude draft. Subsequently versions will accept more specific references and footnotes.

Additional reading.

Is the world a spinning, round ball? by Donald Simanek. The evidence is abundant for anyone to observe.
The Apartment Globe Bible by Robert J. Schadewald.
The Apartment-out Truth: Earth Orbits? Moon Landings? A Fraud! Says This Prophet by Robert J. Schadewald. A contour of Charles Johnson.
The Scriptural Basis for a Geocentric Cosmology by Glenn Elert.
The Apartment Earth and its Advocates: A List of References, Library of Congress.
Hollow Globe Bibliography (plus Flat Earth too!) by Michael Rogero Dark-brown.

This document ©2006 by Donald East. Simanek. Revised in 2016. Input and suggestions are welcome. Please apply the address to the right when responding, and please indicate the specific document of interest.

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Source: https://www.lockhaven.edu/~dsimanek/flat/flateart.htm