The Earth Not Flat
Only five hundred years ago many were convinced that Columbus would fall off the edge of the earth, because our planet was believed to be flat.
This suggestion must have sounded rather foolish to the Bible believers of that day, for God had already told them that the earth was a CIRCLE in Isaiah 40:22: "It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth..."
60 comments
Circle, round, sphere... all these words can be confused when translating from languages that don't operate the same as English.
And how is this fundy? It is a logically true statement regarding the views held in 1492.
The flat earth hypothesis was never a theory as It was disproved in ancient Greece.
Nobody was convinced Columbus would fall off the earth, they just didn't think it would be quicker to travel west to india instead of east.
The whole point of the expedition is not Columbus's scientific foresight, it was his stupidity as he calculated that the earth was smaller than it actually was.
A circle is a flat 2d shape ...
Columbus was ridiculed when he said he could get to the India faster by going the other way raound. He thought the earth was about half the size of what it really was. He only got funding because the Spanish royalty was tired of him whining about it.
But, Earth is not a circle. It's more like a ball. If Earth was actually a circle, it would have been flat. Only someone who's watching from a mountain would say it's a circle. If God, someone who can look at Earth from space , was describing Earth, He'd describe it as a ball or something like that.not 100% error-free? YOU HERETIC!
@whatever
Except nobody believed that the earth was flat in 1492. The Ancient Greeks calculated the circumference of the Earth pretty accurately, and it was well known to European scholars (and sailors) by the Middle Ages.
What Columbus actually believed was that the world is considerably smaller than it really is. He was very fortunate that the Americas exist, because otherwise he would probably have perished, and be totally forgotten today. If anyone's mentality was similar to modern creationists, it was his.
@Creedence
OK, I didn't know that.
1. The Greeks found the Earth to be a curved surface centuries before the Bu¥Bull was written.
2. The Hebrew word the Bu¥Bull uses there means disc, not sphere. So the Bu¥Bull is promoting a flat earth--no bones about it.
3. Very few people at the time actually believed the world was flat. That myth originated with Washington Irving's satirical biography of Christopher Columbus.
Funny how the circumference of the earth was calculated by the "heretic and uncivilised" arabs. Along with decent medicine.
HEALTHCARE SOCIALISTS!!!!!! GOD SAID THOU SHALT CUT THINE LEG OFF TO CURETH HEADACHES!!!!
A circle would be more like a disk. Round, but still flat with edges.
Besides, didn't Satan take Jesus up onto the tallest mountain to show him all the kingdoms of the earth? That's kind of hard to do with a spherical planet.
Interesting factoid I only discovered a couple of years ago:
Only American (and Canadian by market) textbooks claimed "our planet was believed to be flat" during Columbus' time. Apparently Europe mostly knew and already educated of a round Earth and is estimated size.
I do remember this part of my education and the globe in the classroom showing the folly of that.
If the world were flat, why would you think you could get to India sailing the opposite way? One of these historical "facts" must be wrong. I was hardly the only young one that noticed that problem.
I'm thinking Columbus was hoping to catch some great currents and tradewinds, you can't stop fucking optimists from expecting the best.
> This suggestion must have sounded rather foolish to the Bible believers of that day
But most people of that era were Bible-believers. After all, Christianity was so popular back then that it goes without saying that the Creator in the Declaration of Independence is the Christian god.
@Canadiest
America always makes shit up about itself and puts it in History books. Apparently Paul Revere's ride was a legend too. (I can't be arsed to look the links up so that's why I say apparently.) And of course conservatives probably teach their home-schooled kids that America invented democracy and were the first to abolish slavery and is the only country with freedom in the whole world. Unless your gay, or an atheist, or a transsexual, or a muslim, or a liberal, or a socialist. You are not free to be any of those things because they have no place in the land of the free.
No, the Bible says the Earth is flat. By "circle of the Earth", it means that the world is a disk, basically.
Uh....circles are flat. Also, the idea that most of the world thought that the Earth was flat in 1492 is a myth. Sailors, merchants, mathematicians, and people who actually paid attention knew the Earth was round. You only have to walk or sail so far before you realize that the horizon keeps moving. It was known even in ancient Greece that the Earth was a sphere. They even calculated the size of the Earth fairly accurately using nothing more than shadows and math. Contrary to your very point, about the only people that insisted the Earth was flat were sedentary nobles and uncurious people who simply took the Bible's word for it. Oh, and as always you had that era's version of modern creationists who insisted the Earth was flat despite the evidence to the contrary. Hell, we STILL have people claiming the Earth is flat because the Bible says so. Thankfully, their number is very, very small.
@Malingspann : dunno, but probably the same place as the myth that he was some sort of heroic discoverer. the actual fact --- that he was a gigantic jerk who needed three ships because he couldn't fit his ego onto any two of them --- gets lost in translation, usually.
> many were convinced that Columbus would fall off the edge of the earth, because our planet was believed to be flat.
Most were convinced he would starve out in the middle of the ocean because they knew that the Earth was much larger than his proposal stated it was. That's why he had such trouble getting his expedition financed.
> God had already told them that the earth was a CIRCLE
In other words, God managed to get reality wrong. Again. It's a sphere(oid), not a circle.
Although if you consider that a circle is the 1-sphere S1, then you might alternatively interpret a sphere as a 2-circle. Maybe.
"God had already told them that the earth was a CIRCLE in Isaiah 40:22: "It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth..."
...and yet, the ancient Greeks had mathematically proved that the Earth was spherical way before the Bible was written. So indeed, who are the foolish ones now?!
And mathematically, 'Circle' does not equate with Sphere ; but then, even your supposedly 'Omniscient ' God didn't know that Pi = 3.141592...
Yet, the ancient Greeks had calculated Pi to 75 decimal places before the Bible had been written. Pi to just 39 decimal places can describe a perfect circle the size of our observable universe.
PROTIP: One of the languages used in the writing of the Bible? Greek ; along with Hebrew & Aramaic. Can you say 'Mistranslation'? I know you can. Example: the Hebrew 'Sheol' =/= Hell. So there's your 'Revenge Fantasy' destroyed, o fundies.
...and that's why you can't take the Bible entirely literally. It's not written in literal sort of language.
@#1738080
The Earth is no more an inmate spheroid than it is a sphere, that's just something smug smartarses say to sound clever. The Earth has mountains, valleys and all sorts of geographical features that make it a shape that doesn't have a technical name. However, scaled down the Earth is more perfect a sphere than any ball bearing the human race can routinely manufacture.
It's the bible belivers of that day who were convinced Columbus would ball off the earth, for god had told them in Matt 4:8
Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;
Which is impossible if the earth is a sphere.
...A circle's not a sphere, genius. It's a flat disc, unlike the earth which is a ball.
That's pretty much basic geometry. Did you never go to school as a child?
The "Columbus proved the world was round" myth comes from Washington Irving's poorly-researched biography, which was largely responsible for most of the BS stories about Columbus, such as Queen Isabella pawning her jewels to finance the voyage and Columbus volunteering to be hanged if his ships didn't reach land.
There were people arguing that the world was flat in 1492, though...from the church. And they argued this because the Bible indicated a flat Earth. Not only were "the Bible believers of that day" not arguing the world was round, they were the ONLY ONES arguing it was flat. Don't you fundies ever get tired of being completely wrong about everything?
1600s:
Bible-basher: Thou shalt fall off the earth because the bible says so!
Columbus (and everybody else): The earth not flat
Today:
2400s:
Actually screw my last comment because according to what we see on fstdt and the sister projects we will either:
Have had the rapture and be rid of annoying fundies forever
Be extinct because the reptilian chemtrails rendered the human race sterile
The jews will succeed in making black people exterminate the white race
Circle: 2d planar object
Even then the earth isnt THAT spherical. Either way, if god is pefect, why did he say "circle" instead of sphere? Or even just "circular"
@TB Tabby
Hey, don't blame Irving. He was a humourist known for his satire, and the biography of Columbus was most likely a satire as well.
He was no more serious than David Irving was correct.
Only people who were uneducated thought that Columbus would fall of the edge of the Earth.
A circle is a flat disc, silly. The Bible also talks about the four corners of the Earth.
Only five hundred years ago many were convinced that Columbus would fall off the edge of the earth
Sorry, but anecdotes and urban legends aren't a substitution for historical facts. Unless, of course, you believe in Genesis. In that case you're used to substituting anecdotes for facts.
Columbus had a cabin boy,
Send ten dollars plus self-addressed, stamped envelope for next two l1nes.
No-one who was educated believed the world was flat. The only problem was how far away China and India were. Columbus thought they were a bit closer than the Americas actually are, hence his conviction that the Americas were actually the (East) Indies. Everybody else knew China was too far away to reach by any European ship.
@Old Viking
Columbus had a cabin boy,
Send ten dollars plus self-addressed, stamped envelope for next two l1nes.
He brought the captain his daily meal
God had already told them that the earth was a CIRCLE in Isaiah 40:22
Which was all a bit confusing as he'd just told them it had four corners in Isaiah 11:12
@ Old Viking
'He filled his arse with broken glass
Only five hundred years ago many were convinced that Columbus would fall off the edge of the earth, because our planet was believed to be flat.
Nonsense. Educated people have believed the earth was a sphere for millennia. The Greeks even calculated a fairly accurate diameter, and they certainly didn't get it from the Bible. Dante provided a pretty detailed description of a spherical earth in Purgatorio almost 200 years before Columbus. That old American grade-school myth about people thinking the earth was flat was probably influenced by anti-Italian sentiments in the earlier 20th century (Italian immigrants were the "Mexicans" of the 1920's): the dumb Italians thought the earth was flat, so Columbus went to Spain, where the clever Spaniards believed him. Actually, the Italians and Spanish were both smart: they knew a western route to China would benefit Spain and Portugal and put Genoa out of the shipping business. The Genovese didn't tell Columbus to stuff it because they thought he would fail; they told him to stuff it because they were afraid he wouldn't .
Actually, he also told them that it was fixed, immobile, in space (neither orbiting the sun or rotating on an axis) and that it rested on four pillars.
And he told it it had four corners and the entire earth could be seen from a sufficiently high vantage point (sounds flat to me).
Sounds like he said all sorts of contradictory and/or false things, and just got lucky with one.
"Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the centre of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow .
- K (Tommy Lee Jones) to James Darrell Edwards III [soon to be 'J'] (Will Smith), "MiB"
The lander component of the Rosetta probe, now on that comet. I suggest you never watch the anime series "Stratos 4/Advance", if you know what's good for you. [/"X-Files"]
Nor the beginning of the film "Prometheus".
Has that thought blown your mind, like a missile fired at a meteor from a TSR-2, as per that flown by Honjyou Mikaze, little Jimmy...?! >:D
Lo and behold; some nutjob has evolved to think that the flat Earth is a flat circle instead of a square pancake.
Maybe in, say, 50000 years someone gets it right (if there's any religions left by then).
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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