The earth is fixed and immovable and lies at the center of all things. The sun moves about the earth, not the other way around. Use of the phrase "solar system" should therefore be avoided in favor of the more accurate "geosystem."
The sky is the roof over the earth — a solid impervious barrier that protects both believers and non-believers from the waters beyond. The term "outer space" is a notion perpetrated by secular humanists, new age gurus, and other freethinkers.
The stars on the sky are much smaller than the earth. (The word "on" is not a typographical error here.) The notion of "distant suns" is nothing more than a theory entertained by misguided scientists.
You'd think Ralph Reed and Jerry Falwell would be up in arms over these facts. Massive government bureaucracies send spacecraft to distant planets. The liberal media are awash in images of a spherical earth. (The Universal Studios logo is a globe!) Children in public schools are taught from Kindergarten that the earth revolves around the sun. With the exceptions of the persistent use of the terms "sunrise" and "sunset," our modern world is flooded with images of heretical cosmologies that remove the earth from its God-given place at the center of all things. Only an atheist would buy the notion that we live on a tiny rock, circling an insignificant star in a galaxy of billions of stars in a universe of billions of galaxies. Why would God place his most holy of all creations in such location? Surely, no true believer in the Scriptures — the divine and unerring word of God — would accept the scientific notion that we live in place that is not special in the eyes of our Creator. I find it quite reasonable to insist on a Constitutional amendment requiring all Supreme Court justices to swear their allegiance to geocentrism and flat-earthism. Our souls and the souls of our children lie in their hands.
A translation of this article into Hebrew (without the New Testament references) is also available through Hofesh — an organization that combats Orthodox Jewish religious coercion in Israel.
So why would I do this? What got me started on the road to endless arguments? I work as a teacher in the New York City public school system. From time to time, I'm asked quite poignant and perceptive questions.
Where, indeed? I remember learning that the earth was created in six days in Sunday school, but I don't remember anybody teaching geocentrism. And yet five hundred years ago, that would have been the case. If not in religion class, then in secular classes taught by church-sanctified masters, Europeans were learning that the earth was the center of all things and that the sun, moon, and planets revolved around it. Prior to that, they might have even learned that the earth was flat and that the sky was a solid covering that protected the earth from the waters beyond. Of course, they also learned reasonably useful things like literacy, numeracy, geography, and history. We have no problem accepting that these subjects were full of what we now recognize as errors and limitations, but when it comes to biology, the beliefs of two to four thousand years ago are accepted by some as fact. The earth and all that is on it, including all living things, were created in the literal span of six terrestrial days (today, roughly 24 hours).
O.K. If you want to play that game, then let's go. If you want to use millennia old Scripture to support your half-baked scientific notions then I can do the same with mine (which you must remember, I don't really believe in). What does the Bible actually say about the nature of cosmology? Let's open the Good Book and read it with the same uncritical eye as that of the anti-evolutionists. Let the Scriptures speak for themselves.
Then spoke Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord gave the Amorites over to the men of Israel; and he said in the sight of Israel, "Sun, stand thou still at Gibeon, and thou Moon in the valley of Aijalon." And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies. Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? The sun stayed in the midst of heaven, and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day.
Say among the nations, "The Lord reigns! Yea, the world is established, it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity."
In addition, the notion of an earth with a "foundation" is quite common. This leads one to conclude that the earth is quite stable.
The firmness of the earth's foundation is open to some discussion, however. Earthquakes may or may not be allowed.
The earth's geo-architecture is also uncertain. Compare the following passages.
In any case, the earth is not spherical. According to the Scriptures, from a very high spot (heaven, for example) one could see the entire earth such that nothing would be hidden. Such a thing is not possible with a spherical earth as the opposite side can't be seen directly. This implies that the earth is flat.
From a great distance, a sphere would look like a circle. Perhaps the phrase "circle of the earth" refers to the outline of the earth? Perhaps. But then how could one see "all the kingdoms of the world? Those on the back hemisphere would remain hidden. The next passages should remove this confusion.
If the earth were spherical, one would use a verb other than "spread out" to describe its creation (balled up, gathered up, gathered together, anything but spread out). One might say they "spread out" batter to make pancakes but no one would ever say they "spread out" hamburger to make meatballs. The earth in the Bible was "spread out" because it is flat.
The highlighted portion reads like a description of the earth as seen from outer space. The remainder is entirely obscure, however. What void are they talking about? What does it mean to "stretch out the north"? Help me somebody.
The phrase "the midst of the earth" from Daniel implies that not only does the earth have a boundary it also has a center. Since trees grow only on the earth's surface, the earth's center must also be on its surface. A sphere has its center beneath its surface which means that the earth is not a sphere but some sort of plane geometric figure. This raises another question. What is the shape of the earth's boundary? The answer is somewhat puzzling.
"And you, O son of man, thus says the Lord God to the land of Israel: An end! The end has come upon the four corners of the land.
Saint Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians spells it out more clearly — the sun and the stars are different.
And when the town clerk had quieted the crowd, he said, "Men of Ephesus, what man is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple keeper of the great Artemis, and of the sacred stone that fell from the sky?
Today we call these stones meteorites. Note how the contemporary connection between meteorites and shooting stars is not made. The Bible's authors appear not to care about its use as a scientific reference by future generations.
And God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so.
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventh day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth and the windows of the heavens were opened.
The waters beneath the earth are far stranger. I can't say that I've ever seen them, but the Israelites must have. They were prohibited from worshiping graven images of the creatures that inhabited this subterranean sea. It wouldn't make sense to prohibit the worship of creatures that don't exist so therefore they must exist.
Newton's great triumph was the unification of the terrestrial gravitation described by Galileo with the celestial gravitation described by Kepler. Much as a falling apple accelerates downward in free fall, so too does the moon accelerate radially in its orbit. Each body obeys the same law of universal gravitation. Had Newton read his Bible literally he would have seen the impossibility and insolence of his actions.
Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, "Behold they are one people, and they have one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech."
The heavens are the Lord's heavens, but the earth is given to the sons of men.
The Bible cannot help us to understand astronomy. It disagrees with centuries of observation so dramatically that it fails at even the most elementary level. Telescopic observation is five hundred years old and portions of the Bible predate that by another couple thousand years (more or less). The cosmology of the Bible is the cosmology of the Prophets. On this account and at this time it is useless.
I'm sure one could repeat this exercise with other topics. What does the Bible say about geology? chemistry? atoms? bacteria? internal organs? disease? My assumption is that it would fail over and over again; that it would disagree so strongly with our current understanding that teaching from it would be beyond preposterous. And yet, here we are in a supposedly enlightened age debating the application of Scripture to the study of biology. Why have these people not put the same zeal into reforming the astronomy curriculum? How many verses have I cited above? Are they not collectively longer than the first chapter of Genesis? How many of God's words have to be strung together before their mass exceeds the sum total of the scientific knowledge on a subject? What more "proof" is needed? The earth is flat!
The shocking truth of it all is that the pseudoscientific, anti-evolutionary forces have compartmentalized their literalism. There is a deafening silence among the aforementioned ranks when it comes to scientific theories other than the origin and evolution of life on earth. Astronomy and the Bible: Questions & Answers (Baker Book House) is probably the only work to address the problem of the Bible's flat-earth, geocentric bias. The book reads like an Internet FAQ and is hodgepodge of elementary astronomy, Scripture, and wild speculation. I think it illustrates nicely, the doublethink needed to believe in the Bible as literal truth.
"Was the fourth day of creation twenty-four hours long?"
"Did Bible writers believe the earth was flat?"
The message here is, I think, obvious. The Bible is the literal truth only when it's convenient and doesn't conflict with overwhelming evidence. In my view, this invalidates the core of the anti-evolutionary movement in its entirety. If the Bible is open to interpretation from time to time, then it is open to interpretation at any time. If the Bible is occasionally poetic, then it is possibly poetic at any time — even on the first page, even on the last page, even on every page.
The Holy Bible: Revised Standard Edition. Philadelphia: Holman, 1972. All the citations were quoted from this copy of the Bible. I referenced them using the "Reader's Concordance" in the back. Additional leads came from some of the papers mentioned in this bibliography and through electronic searches done over the Internet.
DeYoung, Donald B. Astronomy and the Bible. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1989. The fundamentalist doublethink cited in the Conclusion. Also available online with slightly modified content via http://christiananswers.net/catalog/bk-astronomy.html.
This paper originally started out as a historical treatment of the progression from geocentrism to heliocentrism. Somewhere along the way I was sidetracked while wading through the Bible looking for relevant verses to hang Galileo. Along the way, I accumulated a wealth of links on related topics that I just can't seem to throw out.
BibleGateway. Gospel Communications Network (GCN). Search the Bible in any of its version.
What does the Bible say about creation.
What does the Bible say about the physical heavens.
What does the Bible say about the Earth, moon, sun, stars.
White, Andrew Dickson. The Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. Transcribed by Cosma Rohilla Shalizi. New York: Appleton, 1896. Includes a large section on the Galileo Affair as well as stuff on geocentrism, flat-earthism, & creationism. It appears as if Shalizi has transcribed the entirety of this hundred-year-old work to hypertext. A truly excellent resource in the history of science. White founded Cornell University as the first explicitly secular university in the United States.
Copernicus. MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, School of Mathematical and Computational Sciences, University of St. Andrews.
Hagen, J. G. Nicolaus Copernicus. Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Appleton, 1908. Transcribed by Rick McCarty. New Advent Catholic Supersite.
van Helden, Albert. Copernican System. The Galileo Project. Rice University, 1995.
Faith Can Never Conflict with Reason: The Pope on Galileo. L'Osservatore Romano. 44 no. 1264 (4 November 1992). Newman Catholic Center at Caltech. John Paul II responds to a report by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on the church's case against Galileo. Address to the Plenary Session on 'The Emergence of Complexity in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology' (31 October 1992).
Galileo. MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, School of Mathematical and Computational Sciences, University of St. Andrews.
Galileo and the Church I. soc.religion.christian. ca. January & March 1994. The complete text of Julian A. Smith's article from The Mike (see below) with comments.
Galileo and the Church II. soc.religion.christian. ca. November 1992. The entry on Galileo from the Catholic Encyclopedia (see below) and an uncited article by James Kiefer with comments.
Fowler, Michael. Physics 109N. a.k.a. Galileo and Einstein. University of Virginia. 1996. A really interesting website on the history of physics, astronomy, and mathematics for students enrolled in Professor Fowler's class. Lecture notes, homework assignments, translations of Galileo's writings, etc. Also contains essays on Tycho, Kepler, and Bruno.
Gerard, John. Galileo Galilei. Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Appleton, 1908. Transcribed by Carl H. Horst. New Advent Catholic Supersite.
Gingerich, Owen. The Galileo Affair. Scientific American. March 1981: 132-143.
Haight, Anne Lyon & Chandler B. Grannis. Galilei Galileo. Banned Books 387 BC to 1978 AD. R.R. Bowker, 1978. A summary of the censoring of Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. A page in the File Room Censorship Archives. "The File Room is an illustrated archive on censorship which you can browse, as well as add cases to."
Johnston, George Sim. The Galileo Affair. Princeton, NJ: Scepter Press. 1995.
de Santillana, Giorgio. The Crime of Galileo. New York: Time, 1955.
Smith, Julian A. Galileo and the Church. The Mike. November 1992.
van Helden, Albert. The Galileo Project. Rice University. 1995. Professor van Helden and his crew have assembled numerous short essays on Galileo and Galileo-related topics. Also contains essays on Bruno.
van Helden, Albert. Giordano Bruno. The Galileo Project. Rice University, 1995.
Lerner, Lawrence S. & Edward A. Gosselin. Galileo and the Spectre of Bruno. Scientific American. November 1986: 126-33.
Pogge, Richard W. The Folly of Giordano Bruno. Ohio State University, 1996.
William, Turner. Giordano Bruno. Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Appleton, 1908. Transcribed by Fr. Paul-Dominique Masiclat, O.P. New Advent Catholic Supersite.
Zimmerman, Linda. A High Stake Gamble. Bad Astronomy.
Association for Biblical Astronomy. An organization that promotes a spherical earth in a Tychonic universe. (They were originally known as the Tychonic Society and were located at biblicalastronomer.org.) A perfectly bad marriage of science and religion. Like reading third-rate science fiction at times. This is how I image L. Ron Hubbard must sound were I to ever read his works.
Earth Mythology. soc.religion.christian. ca. 1993.
The Flat Earth Society. Just like the name says. An organization for people who believe the world is flat.
La Tierra No Se Traslada. [The Earth Does Not Move.] A site with only four web pages and no mention of an author. An odd mix of science and Scripture. The author claims that the Michelson-Morley experiment shows that the earth does not move (among other things). Written in Spanish, which limits my ability to critique it.
Bernie Brauer. Moving-Earth Deception! The Earth is NOT Moving! A webpage with thousands and thousands of words on it — and that's just page 1 of 3. The author also makes the following astounding claim, "Geocentrism is the Most Exciting, the Fastest Growing and Most Significant Truth Movement on the Internet!"
Brown, Michael Rogero. Flat Earth Society Flyer. alt.folklore.urban. n.d. A transcription of a flyer from the Flat Earth Society as posted to alt.folklore.urban.
Day, Robert P. J. The Flat Earth Society. A transcription of a flyer from the Flat Earth Society with introductory comments.
Hall, Marshall & Hall, Bonnie. Fair Education Foundation. Cornelia, GA. "The non-moving Earth & Anti-Evolution site." A wonderful source of absolute insanity. Some of the craziest stuff I've ever read.
"The ultimate Polish joke on the world is one word: C O P E R N I C A N I S M !"
"Could such an utterly squirrely MYTH have ever succeeded as it has without posing as true Science? (Answer: No way!)"
"WHAT IF Kepler's mother was a witch and he was raised a warlock assigned to wreck Brahe's work, steal his records, and twist them to promote Copernicanism and help pave the way for evolutionism (which he wrote about 250 years before Darwin)?"
Ingersoll, Robert Green. Some Mistakes of Moses. 1879. Secular Web Historical Library. A long essay about many things including Biblical flat-earthism.
Indicopleustes, Cosmas. The Fourth Book of the Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes. This page is the product of Roger Pearse. Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
Russell, Jeffrey Burton. Who invented the flat earth? An except from the book Inventing the Flat Earth. Apparently this flat earth nonsense is all the fault of recent converts, liberal historians, and secular humanists. Fundamentalist Christians have always known the earth is spherical, just as they've always known evolution is heresy.
Schadewald, Robert J. The Flat-Out Truth: Earth Orbits? Moon Landings? A Fraud! Says This Prophet. Science Digest. July 1980. A biopic piece on the head of the Flat Earth Society Charles Johnson and his late wife Marjorie.
Schadewald, Robert J. Scientific Creationism, Geocentricity and the Flat Earth. Skeptical Inquirer. Winter 1981–1982. Apparently creationists don't like being compared to flat-earthers.
Schadewald, Robert J. The Flat Earth Bible. Bulletin of the Tychonian Society. 44 (July 1987). The source of inspiration for about half of the scriptural citations. Well researched with references to the original Hebrew texts. Note: the Tychonian Society is now known as the Association for Biblical Astronomy (see above).
Schadewald, Robert J. Looking for Lighthouses. Creation/Evolution. 31 (1992). An analysis of a flat earth "proof" that works because the researcher chose only those data points that supported his contention.
Swindler, Adrian. The Flat Earth Belief of Bible Writers. The Skeptical Review. 1 (Winter 1990).
van den Heuvel, Curt. Science and the Bible. 1997. An essay that explores a few of the many scientific misconceptions of the Bible from its flat-earth geocentricity to its strange descriptions of human physiology.
Truth Cannot Contradict Truth. Roman Catholic Church. Pope John-Paul II.
"Today, almost half a century after the publication of the encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory."
Essential Questions — Christianity and Lutheranism. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
"The New Testament is the first-hand proclamation of those who lived through the events of Jesus' life, death, and Resurrection. As such, it is the authority for Christian faith and practice. The Bible is thus not a definitive record of history or science. Rather, it is the record of the drama of God's saving care for creation throughout the course of history.... Lutherans believe that God is Creator of the universe. Its dimensions of space and time are not something God made once and then left alone. God is, rather, continually creating, calling into being each moment of each day."
Creationism. Assemblies of God (AOG).
"Assemblies of God believers hold that the Genesis account should be taken literally. Admittedly, there is progression in God’s creative work. But each step was concluded: 'And there was evening, and there was morning.' This points to a specific measurement of time. The most natural reading of the creation account therefore is to place it in parallel with a 7-day week. By doing so, the burden of determining time frames and development for various components of creation is avoided. Furthermore such a literal view of God’s creation process requires no more faith than theories of science–that our world evolved to its current state by the accidental collision of molecules."
"While some think that the account of human creation is merely parabolic and not to be taken literally, Genesis pointedly declares God formed Adam from the dust of the earth and breathed into him the breath of life (2:7). Subsequently, God deliberately made Eve from Adam's rib [perhaps "side"] (2:22). Both Adam and Eve, male and female, are declared to be made in the "image" and "likeness" of God. These carefully delineated creative acts indicate that humans are distinct from animals. God did not form Adam from some previously existing creature (1 Corinthians 15:39). Any evolutionary theory, including theistic evolution/evolutionary creationism, that claims all forms of life arose from a common ancestry is thereby ruled out."
We Believe, Teach, and Confess. Evangelical Lutheran Synod (ELS).
"We confess that the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments, in their original form as written by the prophets, apostles, and evangelists, were given by inspiration of God. The Holy Scriptures are without error in everything they teach, including matters of geography, science, and history, and they are the only infallible rule and norm of Christian doctrine and practice.... We confess that God created all things in six days by the power of His Word, exactly as is set forth in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 and elsewhere in Scripture. We therefore reject the theories of 'evolution,' including 'theistic evolution,"' not only because they lack a sound basis in scientific evidence but especially because they contradict the divinely-inspired account of creation as given by Moses in the Old Testament and confirmed by Christ in the New. To attempt to describe each day of creation as a very long period of time (a 'day-age,' etc. ) is to tamper with the clear Word of God, for the first chapter of Genesis records at the end of the account of each day's creation activity that 'evening and morning were the (first, second, etc.) day.'"
Westminster Confession of Faith. Free Presbyterian Church.
"It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create, or make of nothing, the world, and all things therein whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days; and all very good."
Of Creation. Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod (LCMS).
"We teach that God has created heaven and earth, and that in the manner and in the space of time recorded in the Holy Scriptures, especially Gen. 1 and 2, namely, by His almighty creative word, and in six days. We reject every doctrine which denies or limits the work of creation as taught in Scripture. In our days it is denied or limited by those who assert, ostensibly in deference to science, that the world came into existence through a process of evolution; that is, that it has, in immense periods of time, developed more or less of itself. Since no man was present when it pleased God to create the world, we must look for a reliable account of creation to God's own record, found in God's own book, the Bible. We accept God's own record with full confidence and confess with Luther's Catechism: 'I believe that God has made me and all creatures.'"
God is Creator of all things, and has revealed in Scripture the authentic account of His creative activity. In six days the Lord made "the heaven and the earth" and all living things upon the earth, and rested on the seventh day of that first week.
What We Believe. Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS).
"The Bible and Lutherans teach that the Bible is the true word of God. It is inspired by the Holy Spirit. This means that God breathed into the writers the exact thoughts and words they were to write. As a result every statement in the Bible is the truth. One part of the Bible explains another part. It is the only guideline for the faith and life of Christians. We are to read and study it diligently. It clearly teaches all we need to know in order to obtain our eternal salvation.... The Bible and Lutherans teach that at the beginning of time God created heaven and earth and all creatures. He did this in six days. He spoke his almighty word to create all things. He made everything out of nothing. But man and woman are God's special creation."