Flat Earth Theory
Flat Earther's base their disbelief in a spherical earth on what they cannot personally see or experience. They refuse to trust science, and don’t understand the physics behind the study of the earth. Math plays a large part in determining things that can’t understand. And math is hard!
Math can help us understand a little bit about just how large the earth really is, and why we can’t see the curve from anywhere on earth, or even notice it from most airplanes at 35,000 on a perfectly clear day; and not at all on a day that is not clear.
Using mathematical calculations that are above my education level, we can calculate similar distances on a globe – something we can actually see with our own eyes. I won’t bother showing those calculations, but they are available for anyone who cares. You only need to look them up online.
Calculating, using the known distances across the earth in miles, we can use math to determine how far any particular distance would be in miles on a 12-inch globe in comparison. For example, if we want to know how far it is in miles across the tip part of California at the Oregon state line, it is not hard to come up with an accurate distance of 212 miles. The math to get this number for a 12” globe uses the radius of 6 divided by the radius of the earth which is 3959 miles – times the 212 miles we are wanting to convert. This comes to .321 inches, or about 5/16 of an inch. That’s just barely over ¼ inch. If we look at 5/16 of an inch on a 12” globe, or just look across the top part of California; tis can give us some perspective of what 212 miles looks like on a globe, so we can imagine what the earth is really like in size.
Now, the human eye can only see so far across the horizon. We would need to be 30,000 feet above the earth to see this 212 miles across the horizon. This is only .0086 inches, which is about the thickness of 2 sheets of printer paper. So, being that close to the 12” globe, try to imagine being in a plane that you can’t even see, and being so much smaller than that plane; while looking across just 5/16 inch of that globe. Even by standing back and only focusing on 5/16 of an inch, you can’t notice a curve. How much less do you suppose you would be able to notice a curve being a human at the height who is .0000017 inches tall? That’s 1.7 millionths of an inch, which is comparable to a spec of dust. This is the basic math in comparison to the math I was referring to. But it can help put things into perspective if people will just think about it. You cannot see the curve! And not being able to see it can never prove it isn’t there at all!
Using the same math to determine distance above the earth on the globe in comparison to 70,000 feet above the earth (13.26 miles), we come up with .49 inches of distance that we can see across the horizon (which is about the thickness of a credit card). At this height we would be able to see 324 miles across the horizon of the earth, which calculates to about ½ inch on the globe.
So, now we can get a picture of what it looks like to at least some degree by using the globe and show the distances. Even then it can be very difficult to understand. When we look at a 12-inch globe, image a credit cards distance above the earth looking across only ½” inch distance of the globe. At this height we could see across the entire state of Iowa. Try to eliminate everything outside of the very small area, then tell me how much curve you can see. A few aircraft have flow to this height, and at these different heights people have claimed to have seen the curve. However, it is unlikely that even at this height they have truly noticed the curve, but more likely are seeing the curve of the circular area of the horizon as they could turn around in a complete circle. At this height the horizon is only 324 miles away. This is not much more than the state of Iowa from one side to the other. So, in this case, you could see that distance in every direction. So, from left to right you would see a distance of a total of 648 miles – or two states of Iowa. Double the state of Iowa and draw a circle that width. That is all you can see at 70,000 feet. Take that distance and look across it from the side of the globe. Now you can see a curve, but it’s not extreme.
The International Space Station is 260 miles above the earth. 35,000 feet is only 6.63 miles above the earth. So, the ISS is around 40 times higher. Using the same math, the ISS in comparison would be .39 inches above a 12-inch globe. From the ISS you would only see 2,870 miles across the earths surface. Although the curve is definitely visible from this height, the surface of the earth that is seen at this height is still only 4.35 inches on the globe. This is the distance across the United States from Washington to Maine and 3.1% of the earth’s surface.
The last example I will use is with the moon. The moon is 238,855 miles above the earth (918 times further away than the ISS is). This is approximately 30 feet away from the 12-inch globe. When we look at the moon in the sky when it is full, the earth from the moon would be 3.8 times larger. So basically, like a blue marble in the sky – as reported by NASA.
Flat Earth Maps versus the Globe
When we use the typical Flat Earth map that has Antarctica around the perimeter as the so-called “Ice Wall”, and compare it to the Globe model of the earth; We see a very serious problem with the flat earth model that Flat Earthers will ignore and never answer.
There are some things that just are not debatable to anyone willing to accept the facts and reality. One of those things is the distance and time it takes to travel from one point to another on the earth. We know that the distance from Santiago, Chile to Perth, Australia is around 7900 miles and takes between 22 to 25 hours flight time to get there. This is just a fact that we know and can prove easily by looking up flight times. The problem arises when we look at the flat earth map in comparison.
Since the flat Earth map stretches out the globe from the bottom at antarctica all the way out to make it flat, all of the southern areas end up being much further apart, when they really are not that far apart. Using their theory with their own map, the distance in comparison is much furth and would be equivalent to 25,000 to 35,000 miles apart from each other, and would take 50 to 70 hours of flight time. This is a major difference that cannot be overlooked! This should be a major red flag for anyone looking at the two opposing claims. The globe model lines up perfectly with the distance and time it actually takes to travel from one place to another anywhere in the world. Airlines use the globe model to calculate their flight times and patterns. The flat earth model is completely useless and can’t work for anything we do for flights, patterns, or other global calculations. We have many technologies that are based off of the earth being a globe that could not work if the earth was flat.
Some of the things that could not work on a flay earth model include GPS, satellite navigation, satellite communications, satellite imagery and weather forecasting, commercial airline routes, and even fiber optic cables and global networking which require circular routes around the globe. Then there are the lunar eclipses when the round earth casts its shadow on the moon. The moon then loses its light from the sun, proving that the moon does not have its own light, but reflects light from the sun. There are even more than these things that can only happen on a globe. Yet flat earthers will deny it all and hold strong to their crazy claims as they call those who believe in the facts all kinds of degrading names. It really makes it not worth the time to debate when they can’t even be reasonable in a discussion and only want to call everything fake or a lie, without any evidence of such a claim.
The amount of evidence to support a sphere is really quite massive. I am trying to focus mostly just on the most logical facts from the spherical earth perspective. Distances from one point to another should be enough to disprove it all, but they just won’t have that! Deception is a very powerful thing! So, it takes more than a few things to make them even think about being wrong. Most won’t even consider it when given it all! That’s simply because they don’t want to change. They like opposing the majority! Hopefully there are a few reasonable people out there willing to think for themselves and consider the true facts, and not just a bunch of badly uneducated opinions they call facts. So, let’s move onto the next point.
Antarctica. The Ice Wall?
According the Flat Earthers and their map, Antarctica is not a continent at the southern tip of the earth, but it an ice wall that goes all the way around the circumference of the earth. Now, just to appeal to logic for a moment, how far do you thing is would be around the circumference of the whole earth in comparison to how far it would be around a continent at the southern end of a globe?
The continent of Antarctica is round, yet not a perfect circle at all. However, for comparison purposes, if we were to draw a perfect circle around it, it would amount to around 9,990 miles total in circumference. If we were to figure the amount of miles around the circumference of the inside of the Flat Earth Ice Wall it would come to around 25,000 to 40,000 miles. That’s a huge difference! With all of the scientific research that is done with Antarctica, I think it would be a bit hard to miss an extra 15,000 to 25,000 miles of area!
We actually do know the physical size of Antarctica, and we know it is a round shaped continent at the south tip of the planet. Flat Earthers will make the claim that we cannot go to the edge of the earth simply because it is impossibly unsafe to travel into the extreme cold weather of Antarctica. They will state that it is illegal to go into Antarctica and there is a treaty that will not allow anyone to attempt to do so. The truth is, there is a treaty that governs activities in Antarctica, but it does not forbid people from going into it. This is a false claim the Flat Earthers hold to so they can claim that the edge can never be reached.
The purpose of the treaty is actually to keep all uses of the land peaceful, forbidding military activity, nuclear explosions, and nuclear wastes being disposed of there. The truth is, this frozen land at the far south part of the earth has 70 stations all over the continent that are used for research and exploration of space. Antarctica is the best place on earth to explore space from, since there are not lights on the continent, and for several moths no sun or moon light to interfere. The largest station there is in the middle of the continent is the McMurdo station, which is operated by the United States and is manned year-round. Travel to and from it is done in the summer months, but cannot be done in the winter months. So, a small number of people stay all winter and cannot go anywhere.
These are all facts that anyone can look up online. And they are facts that prove that Antarctica is not impassible in the summer months, and those who have crossed it know very well that it does not stretch around the circumference of the flat earth, and that there is no edge anywhere down there.
24-hour sun
It is a well-known fact that as the path of the sun reaches its most southern path in our winter months, these are the summer months for the south. During these months the sun shines for 24 hours are it can be observed moving completely around the circumference of the continent in a 24-hour period. This is only possible on a spherical earth.
We have time zones and daylight savings times that change every spring and fall. This is because the path of the sun changes from being more northern to more southern. This is what changes our 4 seasons that we experience in most parts of the world. When the sun is southern, it reaches a part of the earth that is a little bit shorter distance around, making for a little less sunlight in our days. The 24-hour day does not change at all, which proves that it is not truly the sun that is moving, but the earth. A light is factual science goes with this logic that most Flat Earths are simply ignorant about.
In the different seasons, the North pole experiences the complete opposite. When the south pole has a 24-hour sun, the north pole has 24-hour darkness. Then the opposite is true when it is summer in the north, and the North Pole will have a 24-hour sun. This only works in a 24hour time frame on a globe, and cannot work on a flat earth. In order for it to work on a flat earth, their idea of the sun being local and moving around the flat surface would require the sun to speed up in the winter and slow down in the summer. This is illogical and makes no sense at all with how anything we understand things to work scientifically and according to physics.
These facts about Antarctica should also be enough to convince anyone that the earth cannot possibly be flat. Yet it still gets ignored by Flat Earthers, and as logical as it should be, they will call us dumb and gullible for believing it. This is incredible to see them respond in such a way as this, but it is true. The deception behind the Flat Earth Cult is very powerful! And yes, it is a cult. Amazingly, a lot of Christians have even fallen for it and think it is actually biblical. This simply is not true at all!
The Bible and the shape of the earth
As a Christian for a very long time, knowing what the bible actually teaches and what it does not teach have always been very important to me. As a pastor and teacher, I would never want to claim that it teaches something that it doesn’t teach! Yet there are many Christians who have been convinced that the bible teaches the earth is flat and that there is a solid impassable dome above the earth. Let’s take a look at some scriptures they want to insist teach or support the idea of a flat earth. We will see that they not only do no such thing, but a few of them actually work against them.
The Firmament
Genesis 1:16-18 “And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness:” KJV
This scripture is used by Flat Earthers to teach that God created a solid impassable dome over the earth called the Firmament. According to this passage, it would appear that the sun and the moon and even the stars are within the firmament or dome. This idea is just like a snow globe. After all, it says that these lights were all placed within the firmament, so that would appear to teach what they believe. And because it is the bible, which I believe as they do, that it cannot be wrong if it is truly God’s Word; they take it over anything else that science, NASA, and anyone else will say. This is what makes Flat Earth theory a cult. Christians who know the earth is a sphere do not claim it to be biblical, nor do they believe anything without considering both scripture and science. Yet for Flat earthers to be convinced that a scripture supports their view is all it takes for them to lock into it and refuse all logic.
The word Firmament in this scripture is defined as “an expanse”, not as a solid dome. An expanse is a large expanded area that we know as the atmosphere that we live in, with clouds above, oxygen we can breathe, and an ozone layer the divides this expanse from outer space. These things we know to be proven through science and technology, the flat earther will laugh at, thinking they have the “greater knowledge” from the Bible of other resources of their own. This deception is really that powerful over these people.
It is a simple fact that we have many satellites in lower orbit and the International Space Station there as well. Whether or not men have been to the moon or not is another subject and not worth getting into here. I only want to cover the actual shape of the earth. The truth is simply that the firmament cannot prove to be a solid dome at all, but this can only be assumed by the Flat Earthers. And the definition simply implies that it is a contained area, which science does factually explain how it is held within itself. They will argue that a pressurized atmosphere cannot exist next to a vacuum in space without a solid dome. They simply do not understand God’s amazing creation of gravity. As a matter of fact, they completely deny the existence of gravity. Amazing and convenient.
We know for a fact that the higher you go, the thinner the air gets. This also means the higher you go the lower the pressure is. A vacuum does not suck air out and it does not pull at all. Gravity holds the air down, since air has weight to it. Air is made up of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and carbon dioxide. All of these molecules have mass to them that add up to measurable weight. This weight isn’t enough to simply fall to the ground, but enough to remain in place. Heat and humidity also have an effect on the atmosphere. Heat makes air lighter or less dense, so molecules move faster and spread further apart, making the heat rise. Humidity can be carried in the air and rise with the heat, drying up wet land. Humidity actually makes air lighter, not heavier and most people suppose. Humidity fuels storms and clouds, as the heat and humidity are lighter, fueling the clouds to give us rain.
These are scientific facts that have been proven over and over again. It is by knowing what is happening down below at our level that we can learn what is happening far above also. Gravity has a direct effect on all of it. And gravity keeps our atmosphere holding together. Therefore, the idea of a pressurized are not being able to exist near a vacuum without a solid dome is scientifically debunked. There is a lot more information on these scientific facts that go far beyond my knowledge. Yet the Flat Earthers who likely know less than I do think they know more than those scientists who work with these things every day year after year.
The Firmament simply is not a solid dome. Not scientifically, and not biblically. To insist on such a thing is ignorance at best, total deception at worst. You are not denying the scriptures or the words of God by understanding what science has proven. They both agree completely and do not work against each other.
The Ends of the Earth
Isaiah 11:12 “and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.”
Some Flat Earthers will use this scripture to teach that the earth is actually square and has 4 literal corners to it. They clearly do not understand the biblical use of figurative words and phrases. There are hundreds of examples of this, but that is another study completely. This phrase is a figure of speech, a Hebrew idiom, simply meaning the entire world in every direction. There is no purpose in it to teach that the earth has 4 literal corners, but only that it has 4 different directions, North, South, East, and West.
Daniel 4:10-11 “Thus were the visions of mine head in my bed; I saw, and behold a tree in the midst of the earth, and the height thereof was great. The tree grew, and was strong, and the height thereof reached unto heaven, and the sight thereof to the end of all the earth:”
This is a vision in which a tree was in the middle of the earth. Flat Earthers will assume this means the middle of a Flat Earth, since you can place something in the middle of a flat map, but not a globe. Where would the middle of the globe be? At its core? This can seem logical in their minds, but the middle of a Flat Earth map would be the North Pole. So that doesn’t work any better. The phrase “the midst of the earth” is not referring to a geological location on the Earth. It means “prominently located among all peoples”. It is a dream that is symbolically saying that this tree is placed for everyone on Earth to see by reaching the heavens.
Who has ever seen anything even hundreds of miles away, much less thousands of miles? Even the rockets that blast off from Florida and disappear into the sky cannot be seen from other states on the west coast. No technology is powerful enough even to do this. That’s because the earth is not flat! So, with the curve, it is impossible to see things in the sky even across the United States, much less the entire world!
Secondly, with this scripture, it says in the next verse that this tree will be seen to the end of the earth. Again, like the first part of the scripture, this is symbolic. It only refers to “everywhere on earth – the whole known world”. There is no language in these scriptures confirming a flat earth in any way whatsoever. Such an idea can only be read into these scriptures. When you understand the figurative in the bible, you won’t be able to deny these facts.
The immoveable Earth
1 Chronicles 16:30 “The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.”
Psalms 104:5 “ He set the earth on its foundations;
it can never be moved.”
These 2 scriptures mention that the earth cannot be moved. It is set firmly in place. This is not literal, because the bible is not a science book, but rather a theological book. These are not statements about geology, physics, or astronomy; but rather statements about God’s sovereignty, order, and stability, written in poetic Hebrew.
These scriptures have nothing at all to do with the idea that the earth if stationary and never moves. The bible gives spiritual messages, not scientific messages. Yet the Flat Earther’s cannot see this fact. They think they have evidence for biblical support, thus making their false belief into a “spiritual” belief they hold to. It is far from that! Those who believe in a Sphere don’t even so that with their belief. It is just common knowledge and truth, not a spiritual message.
The Sun moves
Joshua 10:12-13 – “Sun, stand still over Gibeon,
and you, moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.”
So the sun stood still,
and the moon stopped”.
Ecclesiastes 1:5 “The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.”
In these scriptures they speak of the Sun moving or stopping (by God’s power and authority); and the moon doing the same. The Flat Earther sees this as evidence that it is the Sun and Moon that move, and not the earth/ The earth stands still, as shown in the previous scriptures. This is a matter of perspective. All my life I have always heard and talked about the sun rising and going down. This is exactly how we see things from our perspective. Therefore, this is how we speak also. Who would ever say, “When the earth turns to put the sun out of focus”? Doesn’t that sound silly? We speak according to how we see things, even though we know that is not how it really works.
The Circle of the Earth
Isaiah 40:22 “He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth”.
This scripture is often used to say that the Flat Earth we live on is created in a circle. So, one scripture that speaks of the 4 corners teaches it is a square shape, while this one teaches it is a circle. Not all Flat Earther’s can agree on which one it is. Yet the reality is, neither can work in their favor. We know that a circle can just as easily refer to a sphere, which is a circular shape.
Job 26:7 says “He hangs the earth on nothing”.
Job seems to believe that the earth isn’t so stationary, but hangs on nothing. This means the earth is suspended with no visible support. There is nothing underneath it to hold it up. This means it is in a galaxy without supports. God’s magnificent creation of the universe that is beyond our comprehension keeps the earth where it is.