Flat Earth Society

The Flat Earth Society was an organization based in Lancaster, California that advocated the belief that the Earth is not a sphere but is flat (see flat Earth). No other modern religious fundamentalists have published support for this belief, and scientists universally reject it. This exposed the society to much outside ridicule and made it a popular metaphor for dogmatic thinking and pseudoscience or bad science.

Origins: Zetetic Astronomy

A renewed belief in a flat Earth was popularized in the 19th century by the Englishman Samuel Birley Rowbotham, who, after his 1849 publication of a 16-page-pamphlet, Zetetic Astronomy: A Description of Several Experiments which Prove that the Surface of the Sea Is a Perfect Plane and that the Earth Is Not a Globe!, spent the next 35 years publishing and lecturing about his beliefs. He supported his statements both with observational claims and scriptural references. For example, Rowbotham believed that observations of lighthouses by mariners at considerable distances defied the theory of the Earth's rotundity. However, it was shown by his contemporaries that he selectively chose only data from lighthouses that supported his view (about 1.5% of the sample), and ignored that which did not (lighthouses which were no longer visible); the remaining deviation could be explained with atmospheric refraction. He also uses biblical references such as Revelation 7:1 where it refers to the "four corners" of the earth, though "circle of the earth" appears in Isaiah 40:22. Rather than take the common view that this was "language of appearance", he interpreted it as a literal flat earth teaching. Regardless, Rowbotham's devotion paid off as the Universal Zetetic Society opened branches in Britain and the United States (New York, 1873).

Related Topics:
Samuel Birley Rowbotham - Scriptural - Lighthouse - Atmospheric refraction - Revelation

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