The Flat Earth Society

The world is filled with people who have all kinds of crazy ideas, theories and beliefs, most of them not as well thought out as mine, of course.  These people operate on the fringe.  You never seem to actually meet people who believe these things, and when you run them past most people you know, they tend to agree that they sound crazy.  Yet, these people must be out there.  Apparently, there are people who believe that alien lizards are secretly controlling the world.  Still others believe that the government is brainwashing you with messages hidden in bar codes.  But if I had to give out a prize for the absolutely craziest, stupidest, and most flat-out ignorant idea floating about out there, the award would go hands down and without a doubt to the The Flat Earth Society.

These people believe exactly what their name suggests.  They do the geocentric theory one better, and claim that the Earth is flat.  Their membership is small, naturally, but the fact that anyone at all believes this in this day and age is appalling and astonishing at the same time.  My favorite part about their belief is that while other crazy ideas focus on either one narrow aspect of reality or propose a shadowy phenomenon operating behind the scenes and only subtly apparent in the world, the Flat Earth concept represents a completely warped view of the universe.  As a bonus, if you click on the image below showing their model of their world which basically resembles a giant roulette wheel, you'll be able to read the text below the image providing bible verses which "condemn the globe theory."  You knew religion had to come into this sooner or later.

You might be thinking that that's an old picture, but regardless of that, rest assured this group is still quite active.  Some newer images I found also show that they haven't changed their basic model much over the years.  They still locate the Arctic, or what the rest of us in our ignorance designate as "The North Pole", at the center of their flat, disc shaped map.  Antarctica, on the other hand, is a snowy ring that circles the circumference of reality's outer limits.  I'm not sure how they account for the cold climates in these places under their model.  I didn't find any mention of that in my research, and I suspect that they never thought to address the issue.  At least they had the foresight to place the Antarctic on a steep slope.  If you're going to designate an edge to the world, you should at least have the decency to make it fairly inaccessible.  We wouldn't want people unwittingly stumbling into the void.  That was thoughtful of them.

Not all their arguments are based on scripture.  Oh, no.  They've actually got some "science" to back them up.  Their evidence includes such gems as pointing out that all the people and even our oceans would immediately fall off the world if it was round.  After all, you don't see oceans on the side of a beach ball.  Yes, they actually make this argument.  I don't suppose that there's any point in explaining how gravity works to these people or that there's no "down" in the cosmic sense.  Clearly it's beyond their comprehension that water falls off a ball because it's pulled there by the Earth's gravity, not because it's falling "down."  Likewise, they obviously don't understand that things wouldn't fall off the Earth simply because maps of the solar system depict things facing certain directions.  The empty space beyond The South Pole isn't "below" or "under" the Earth anymore than the space is "above" The North Pole.  If we favored "overhead" depictions of the solar system, would they be scoffing that the Earth would fall into the sun?  This is the kind of idiocy that makes witch trials sound downright sensible.

The motion of a round Earth is also problematic for them.  They argue that we would be thrown out into space as we rounded the celestial corner.  This one is a little more subtle.  If the first argument employed a toddler's logic, then this one at least employs a ten year old's logic. Granted it's a ten year old that's had a large rusty spike driven through the comprehension centers of the brain, but at least it suggests a basic understanding of inertia and motion.  The problem is that these concepts are completely misapplied.  For one thing, inertia pulls on the occupant of a swerving car because the car is deviating suddenly from a straight path and there's a struggle between the occupant being compelled to continue on that path, and the pull from the sudden shift in direction.  The Earth moves in an elliptical orbit.  None of its turns are a sudden deviation from a straight path.  Plus, once again there's the play of the Earth's gravity in this and the fact that it can't be transposed to some arbitrary place below the Earth and...but why am I even trying to refute this nonsense?

The funny thing about these arguments is that they're based in The Flat Earth Society's own idiotic misunderstanding of science.  It would be one thing if they had a coherent understanding of the heliocentric model and they were able to stand toe for toe against it.  As it is, they've constructed a straw man even more brainless than the Scarecrow himself.  They see gravity as merely something that makes things fall downward, and under this view a round Earth is unfathomable to them.  They're not engaged in a battle with science, but rather with their own gross ignorance of it.

Wikipedia reports that at the close of the last century, there were at least 3,000 members of the society.  Again, it's a small minority, but they are out there.  Think about that the next time you're standing in a long line at the grocery store.  There could be someone in that line with you that actually believes this garbage.  It shouldn't be hard to spot them.  Look for the drool on the front of their shirt.