enough with the Flat Earth myth

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This comes up so much, especially by people with an axe to grind against conservative Christianity, that I needed a link to permanently come back to, so I will point to the "Christianist" site, Wikipedia, Myth of the Flat Earth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia . I appreciate the quote from the most belligerent "Christianist" Stephen J. Gould, "there never was a period of 'flat earth darkness' among scholars (regardless of how the public at large may have conceptualized our planet both then and now). Greek knowledge of sphericity never faded, and all major medieval scholars accepted the earth's roundness as an established fact of cosmology."

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Comments

Joe R. said…
I've heard people say that the Bible promotes a flat earth as well. They will say things like, "the Bible talks about the 'four corners of the earth.'" This is very much a metaphor that is still in fact used today to simply mean the whole earth or all over the earth. There are four primary directions, north south, east, and west. Each point on a compass could be considered a corner.

Ironically, I've even heard Christians make the same claim about Islam and the Koran. There is much that we could say to the falseness of Islam, but claiming that they believe in a flat earth because it is in the Koran is a bit of a straw-man argument. It should be avoided by those against either Christianity or Islam.
December 08, 2011
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