![]() So there’s a lot of Christians out there that decided the world is flat and subscribe entirely to a flat-earth conspiracy theory. When those people are confronted with the fact that Bible references a flat-earth cosmology their reaction is binary: either 1.) the Bible is entirely false because the world is a sphere or 2.) the world is actually flat. Unfortunately, due to strict fundamentalist literalist approaches to scripture, many people discount the ability of God to communicate polemically, hyperbolically, or even to reference pop-culture in his communication with humanity. So, in short, the Bible pretty much tends to utilize a flat earth cosmology that looks something like this: From a theologians point of view, it speaks to God’s desire to establish relationship with humanity over as far outweighing the need for a scientific worldview. This is totally consistent with ancient Near Eastern conception of the cosmos, which is a phenomenological way (describing the universe from the human observer’s point of view). One area where flat-earthers are right, is that the Bible utilizes a flat-earth cosmology. As you can see though, a disk viewed with even just a bit of height will actually appear to curve… rather substantially in fact! □ How flat-earth intersects with Christianity and why it’s dangerous □įun fact: one of the biggest tenants of flat-earth is that the horizon is flat ergo the earth is flat. Like other conspiracy theories, they believe they have “truth” and are special.They are unwilling to believe anything they themselves can’t observe.They believe that NASA and other space agencies lie to keep the populace misinformed.They believe a sacred text teaches the world is flat (the majority are religious).There are a few reasons why flat-earthers will reject a spherical earth model: The modern variations began in England in the 1830’s and gained a small following throughout the 1900’s however, with the advent of the internet, the flat-earth community exploded. How do they still believe the earth is flat despite modern science?įlat-earth theories are at their roots conspiracy theories aimed at science and modernism. Most believe that the center of the disk is the North Pole and that Antartica is actually a wall of ice that surrounds the dome.īasically, flat-earth proponents believe the whole world is kind of like a massive version of The Truman Show. Usually, they follow a more or less ancient concept of cosmology: a flat disk, covered by a hard dome that is the sky, and celestial bodies move across the surface of the dome. Generationally, Millennials and Gen-Z are far more likely than Boomers and Gen-X to disagree or show uncertainty that the earth is a sphere, so it’s getting worse, not better. Yep, various studies have shown that at least 10% of the population believes that the earth is flat and that up to 30% are not certain that it is a sphere. I was a bit shocked to discover that friends and even fellow seminary students were, in fact, devoted flat-earthers! Are there actually people who believe the earth is flat? That means that even in seminary, while I knew that scripture tended to reference a flat-earth cosmology, I never took serious the notion that the earth is flat. Aside from having some of the craziest electives on my transcripts, it gave me an appreciation for the complexities of things like orbital mechanics. This week we’ll be looking at the flat-earth online community and its surprising growth and permeation into churches.ĭuring my undergrad years, I spent most of that time studying aerospace engineering before eventually changing majors. If you want to catch up on some of the previous you can find the whole series here. This week we continue our series on the online cult-like communities and groups that you will find making their way into churches.
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