The idea that the Earth is, in reality, flat and a shadowy world government has tricked people into believing in a globe-shaped planet has recently been increasing. Anybody would say that there's enough evidence that the Earth is spherical. Nevertheless, and against all logic, more people assert that our planet is flat.
Christine Garwood, the author of “Flat Earth: The Story of an Infamous Idea” claims that it's “a fallacy of history” that everybody from Antiquity to Darkness believed Earth was flat and they were only disillusioned with this “crazy idea” “when Columbus succeeded in reaching the American continent” without falling on the edge of the world.”
As said historian Jeffrey Burton Russell in 1997: “With extraordinary few exceptions, no educated person in the history of Western civilization from the third century onwards believed that the Earth was flat.”
In the same year, the eminent scientist Stephen Jay Gould wrote that “there was never a period of ‘flat earth obscurity’ among scholars. Greek knowledge of sphericity never disappeared, and all medieval scholars accepted the roundness of the Earth as an established fact of cosmology.”
With the rise of scientific rationalism, which appeared to undermine the authority of the Bible, several Christian thinkers launched an attack on established science. English inventor, Samuel Birley Rowbotham (1816-1884), assumed the pseudonym “Parallax” and founded a new school of “Zetetic Astronomy” (which means “skeptic,” from ancient Greek zētētikós, “inquisitive”).
Rowbotham toured England and argued that the Earth was a stationary disk and the Sun was just 400 miles away. In 1870, John Hampden, known for pioneering polemics, described the Flat Earth and spoke of Isaac Newton – the writer of the theory of gravity – as “a drunk or a madman.”
Watch the video of the First Flat Earth Conference in the video below:
Hampden’s ideas, similar to those of lots of flat-earthers, were based on religion: several of the proofs of his theory came from the Holy Scriptures. Religion and science were confronted. So from religion to ancient astronomical knowledge, the primary question here is why do some people still believe that we live on a flat Earth?
There's ample evidence to disprove that theory. Not long ago we wrote about one Ph.D. student who had presented a thesis arguing that the Earth is totally FLAT, stationary, the center of the universe and only about 13,500 years old.
The thesis rejected scientific ideas presented by Newton and Einstein, the Big Bang theory, atmospheric and geological activity, astronomical discoveries made by Copernicus and Kepler, most of the modern climatology, and basically any other scientific teaching made in the past.
The Flat Earth debate goes on, so how do we end this once and for all? A Reddit user came up with a fascinating idea: Let’s make a reality show to ‘cure’ the Flat Earth issue: a group of flat Earther’s should be sent out on an expedition where they're trying to discover the ‘edge’ of the World.
All those who back the Flat Earth theory are convinced that it isn't possible to reach the ‘edge’ of the world as the ‘end of the Earth’ is blocked by a massive wall composed of Ice, which is in turn ‘guarded’ by the world’s military.
As Reddit users suggest, perhaps the group of Flat Earthers should be taken to both the North as well as the South Pole, to see for themselves that it isn't flat and that there's no ‘edge.’ Other users on social network suggest that we should take a group of Flat Earthers into space, so they can realize that the Earth is in fact round. However, this is perhaps a more expensive solution.