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Tales Of A Flat Earth

Wasn't the whole flat Earth myth invented as a strawman argument by Washington Irving in order to ridicule religion?

The Earth was known to be a sphere (more or less) since the time of Heroditus.

Irving and some of his contemporaries couldn't resist the romantic image of Columbus proving religious nutters wrong, even though it was complete BS.

The flat Earthers today surely do it ironically, probably regarding it as an excuse for a get-together and booze up.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
Wasn't the whole flat Earth myth invented as a strawman argument by Washington Irving in order to ridicule religion? ...
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The modern flat earth mythos - which retrospectively projects a universal flat-earth cosmology onto antiquity - is a product of 19th century writers such as Irving.

However, cosmologies based on a flat / planar world can be traced back as far as the Bronze Age.
 
EnolaGaia said:
The modern flat earth mythos - which retrospectively projects a universal flat-earth cosmology onto antiquity - is a product of 19th century writers such as Irving.

However, cosmologies based on a flat / planar world can be traced back as far as the Bronze Age.
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Fair comment and I'm sure, in times of extreme antiquity, our early ancestors had no concept of a spherical Earth.
The true shape of Earth was known to Greek astronomers around 2,500 years ago though and certainly persisted right through medieval times. The flat Earth notion was only resurrected a couple of centuries ago as an unnecessary strawman argument to illustrate science triumphing over religious dogma. And, as I suggested above, I'm sure the modern manifestation of the flat Earth is just a bit of fun akin to a students' drinking society.
 
There is a difference between what would have been known by scholars and by the man in the street during medieval times.

The playwright Ludvig Holberg also talked about the belief among peasants that the Earth is flat, in a play predating Irving's birth.
 
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blessmycottonsocks said:
The flat Earthers today surely do it ironically, probably regarding it as an excuse for a get-together and booze up.
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I think some of them do.
However, I bet many take it seriously. It's probably part of their belief system.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
I seriously doubt that, Mythopoeika.
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I think modern flat earthers are mostly pranksters in the same vein as crop circle maker were in the 90's (I'm aware both existed before these dates) .. they enjoy testing peoples credibility, court jesters .. pranksters, trolls .. they like to keep a straight face and see how people react to their claims.
 
Swifty said:
I think modern flat earthers are mostly pranksters in the same vein as crop circle maker were in the 90's (I'm aware both existed before these dates) .. they enjoy testing peoples credibility, court jesters .. pranksters, trolls .. they like to keep a straight face and see how people react to their claims.
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Exactly!
 
"There is a difference between what would have been known by scholars and by the man in the street during medieval times."

I don't dispute that, but your average peasant probably didn't even contemplate such things, being more concerned with putting some gruel and a crust of bread on the table. To anyone with an interest in science though, a spherical Earth has been the accepted norm for over 2,000 years.
The flat Earth strawman BS was only invented in the mid 19th century.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
To anyone with an interest in science though, a spherical Earth has been the accepted norm for over 2,000 years.
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I agree with you, there are plenty of statues of Roman Emperors holding what seem to be globes, signalling their supremacy over the known world.
Although I remember reading that these globes may have in fact represented the cosmos or vault of the heavens. Atlas is commonly believed to be holding up the Earth, when it is actually the sky he is supporting.
 
EnolaGaia said:
The first Flat Earth UK Convention was held this past weekend. The convention website is at:

https://www.flatearthconventionuk.co.uk

An overview is posted over at Unexplained Mysteries:

https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/317665/200-attend-uks-first-flat-earth-convention
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Blimey! That surprises me.

So we do seem to have three distinct categories of contemporary flat Earther;

1) unsophisticated tribal folk, clinging to such ancestral beliefs due to traditional religious dogma.

2) ironic student types, merely out for a good time.

3) David Icke / New-Agey style conspiracy nutters.

So which group is most deserving of our ridicule?
 
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David Plankton said:
Although I remember reading that these globes may have in fact represented the cosmos or vault of the heavens. Atlas is commonly believed to be holding up the Earth, when it is actually the sky he is supporting.
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Presumably that's just a bit of artistic license, though - it's far easier to depict Atlas with the Earth on his back than to try and figure out a way to depict him propping up an infinite expanse of sky. Particularly as Atlas was a Greek figure and, as mentioned earlier, the Ancient Greeks were well aware that the Earth was round - and wants important to note is that it was no groundbreaking, controversial discovery even then. Any seafaring nation would have at least had a speculative guess at the Earth's curvature.

That said, it was believed by many cultures that the Earth, the sky, the heavens, and so on were a series of concentric spheres, so it's possible that ancient depictions of globes, or the world held up by Atlas depict both a spherical Earth and the sky.



I agree that a great many modern Flat Earthers "believe" the theory as a joke, or at the very least a thought experiment - an exercise in convincingly arguing for even the most preposterous idea. The problem, as with so much online, is that it's all but impossible to tell those who are joking from those who take it seriously - which means it's just as hard for those who believe to recognise that they're being had.
 
Sailors never had anything to fear from the edges of a flat Earth, say conspiracy theorists at the first U.K. Flat Earth convention. Instead, objects will zap to the other side of the planet when they reach the very edge, some proponents argue.

The convention saw flat-Earthers, skeptics, and the flat Earth-curious gather in the city of Birmingham, U.K. At the event, conference speaker Darren Nesbit sought to address one of the most obvious problems with flat Earth claims—why people don’t just fall off the edge of the planet if they travel too far in one direction.

http://www.newsweek.com/flat-earth-pac-man-edges-907976

(I say we should call them conspiracy hypothesists, not theorists. They're big on ideas but very much lacking in evidence)
 
Tribble said:
Sailors never had anything to fear from the edges of a flat Earth, say conspiracy theorists at the first U.K. Flat Earth convention. Instead, objects will zap to the other side of the planet when they reach the very edge, some proponents argue.
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Sounds like somebody played too many games of Asteroids in their misspent youth.
 
No guarantees as to whether it's genuine:

image001.jpg


maximus otter
 
Mythopoeika said:
So...the explanation is...teleportation?
Is that somehow easier to believe than the world being a sphere?
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My first thought, too. Like a kind of reverse Occam's razor.

You could have great fun with that kind of over-complexity though.

My first attempt is JFK.

Not killed by a lone gunman. An albatross that had eaten biscuits laced with cocaine while holidaying in Ibiza with Bernard Cribbins and Princess Margaret was blown of course when flying back to Narnia and died of exhaustion, falling on the president's head. In order to prevent the world being overwhelmed by an albatross/biscuit/cocaine/Cribbins/Princess Margaret/Narnia related panic the authorities decided to distract the public's attention with a staged assassination - filmed in the car park of Universal Studios by a young Steven Spielberg. With George Raft playing the president and a box of trained South American tree frogs filling in for Jacqueline.
 
Spookdaddy said:
My first thought, too. Like a kind of reverse Occam's razor.

You could have great fun with that kind of over-complexity though.

My first attempt is JFK.

Not killed by a lone gunman. An albatross that had eaten biscuits laced with cocaine while holidaying in Ibiza with Bernard Cribbins and Princess Margaret was blown of course when flying back to Narnia and died of exhaustion, falling on the president's head. In order to prevent the world being overwhelmed by an albatross/biscuit/cocaine/Cribbins/Princess Margaret/Narnia related panic the authorities decided to distract the public's attention with a staged assassination - filmed in the car park of Universal Studios by a young Steven Spielberg. With George Raft playing the president and a box of trained South American tree frogs filling in for Jacqueline.
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What sort of biscuits though? You can't go around throwing out theories unless you're willing to back them up.

And if you say chocolate digestives, then your theory falls flat cos they would have melted in Ibiza.
 
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