Re: The flat Earth

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

> This will blow your mind. I'm citing this in phys-L. Looks OK to me.
>
> http://www.creationresearch.org/creation_matters/97/cm9711.html
>
> (The first article!)
>
> Leigh

Interesting. As you say, the first article looks OK factually, or at
least astronomically. I don't know much about his historiography. It
seems to me that he has set up a few straw men along the way.
Although it was "well known" among my classmates in elementary school
that Columbus' voyage was to prove the world was round, probably
because we read stories written by the same ilk as Parson Weems and
his bio of G. Washington. But by the time we got to high school, we
all knew that wasn't the case, and it wasn't long before I learned
about Eratosthenes.

It is certainly also true that most creationists believe in the
heliocentric theory of the solar system and a spherical earth, etc.,
etc. But there are people who still believe in a flat earth. I taped
an interview on CNN with the president of the Flat Earth Society,
made at Edwards AFB on the day that those two intrepid souls whose
names escape me at the moment, completed their round-the-world
non-stop unrefueled airplane trip some years back. Of course his
arguments were biblically-based. While it is true that not all
creationists are flat-earthers, it is also true that all flat-
earthers are creationists. The difference seems to be where they draw
the line on the literal interpretation of scripture. The
flat-earthers are a small segment of the fundamentalist movement, but
are a thorn in their side that just refuses to go away. When you read
reports of the various creationist conferences, the flat-earthers are
a small but noticeable presence in most of them.

Note in the second article on the page you reference, the author goes
to some pains to point out that it isn't necessary to take the bible
literally when they make those references that seem to refer to a
flat earth. It's nice that they have the ability to pick and choose
what parts of the bible are inerrant.

Now for another reference. In this month's issue of The Sciences,
from the NY Academy of Sciences, there is a very interesting article
by J. L. Heilbron about how the astronomers who followed Galileo used
the meridian lines that were constructed in many cathedrals (for
purposes of calendar tracking) to show that the sun followed a
Keplerian orbit around the earth (or the other way around) rather
than an eccentric circle, as used by Ptolemy. Its a great read for
anyone interested in historical astronomy and the ancient measurement
of time. ("The Sun in the Church," J. L. Heilbron, The Sciences,
Sept/Oct, 1999, p. 29).

Hugh


Hugh Haskell
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
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