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.

Sources and links

• The Flat Earth Society web site — a site collecting Flat Earth and Flat Earth Society information in an attempt to re-form the Society. Includes discussion forums and Flat Earth Society newsletters from the 1970s and 1980s.
• The Flat-out Truth: Earth Orbits? Moon Landings? A Fraud! Says This Prophet by Robert J. Schadewald. Science Digest, July 1980. A very detailed look at the Society and its leader. Schadewald was president of the National Center for Science Education and an expert on alternative earth movements.
• Looking for Lighthouses by Robert J. Schadewald, Creation/Evolution #31 (1992). This article explains the use of lighthouse data by Samuel Rowbotham.
• Scientific Creationism, Geocentricity, and the Flat Earth by Robert J. Schadewald, from the Skeptical Inquirer, Winter 1981-1982. Describes the movements leading to the Flat Earth Society and discusses parallels with creationism.
• The International Flat Earth Society. By Robert P. J. Day, 1993. Documents the full Flat Earth Society newsletter. Part of the Talk.Origins archive on the Evolution/Creationism archive.
• Holding, James Patrick, 2000. Is the ?erets (earth) flat? TJ 14(3):51–54.
• Russell, Jeffrey Burton, 1997. Inventing the Flat Earth : Columbus and Modern Historians ISBN 0-275-95904-X
• Russell, Jeffrey Burton, 1997. The Myth of the Flat Earth (summary of above book).