The Flat Earth Society: It’s Back!

Yes, dear reader, our title is correct. We’ve written before about Biblical Astronomy and The Fixed Earth, but we seem to have neglected the Flat Earth believers. It’s time to remedy that oversight.

In the UK newspaper, the Guardian. we read The Earth is flat? What planet is he on? Here are some excerpts, with bold added by us:

Daniel Shenton should be the most irrational man in the world. As the new president of the Flat Earth Society, you’d ­imagine he would also think that evolution is a scam and ­global warming a myth. He should ­argue that smoking does not cause ­cancer and HIV does not lead to Aids.

[...]

In fact, Shenton turns out to have resolutely mainstream views on most issues. The 33-year-old American, ­originally from Virginia but now living and working in London, is happy with the work of Charles Darwin. He thinks the evidence for man-made global warming is strong, and he dismisses suggestions that his own government was involved with the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Most unusual. We generally find that a kook on one issue is often a kook on several others. There isn’t even a creationist angle in this story. Well, let’s read on:

He is mainstream on most issues, but not all. For when Shenton rides his motorbike, he says it is not gravity that pins him to the road, but the rapid upward motion of a disc-shaped planet. Countries, according to him, spread across this flat world as they appear to do on a map, with Antarctica as a ring of mountains strung around the edge. And, yes, you can fall off.

So that’s what happened to Amelia Earhart! We continue:

The Earth is flat, he argues, because it appears flat. The sun and moon are spherical, but much smaller than mainstream science says, and they rotate around a plane of the Earth, because they appear to do so.

Perfectly logical. Here’s more:

The International Flat Earth Society was formally founded in 1956. Shenton resurrected the society and claimed its presidency last year, ­following years of inaction after the death of former ­president Charles Johnson in 2001, who had some 3,000 registered followers. He has so far recruited 60 members through the society’s website, which boasts about 9,000 visitors to its discussion forums.

This is the website of Shenton’s organization: Flat Earth Society. You’ll want to bookmark it. They’ve got a lively discussion forum.

The Wikipedia article on the Flat Earth Society indicates that it’s inactive. That needs to be updated. We are delighted to see this venerable movement being reborn. Moving along:

The modern Flat Earth movement dates back to Victorian England, and biblical literalist Samuel Rowbotham and his followers, who promoted their cause by engaging top scientists of the day in public debate.

A familiar tactic. Here’s another excerpt:

Shenton himself used to accept that the Earth was round, but began ­asking questions after hearing musician Thomas Dolby’s 1984 album The Flat Earth. (When Shenton reconvened the society last year, Dolby accepted membership number 00001.) “It was the late 1990s and I started doing research into what the Flat Earth Society was. I had heard of it and, when I did some more research, I eventually ended up believing its ideas were true.”

That takes intellectual courage. Or something. And now we come to the end:

“I haven’t taken this position just to be difficult. To look around, the world does appear to be flat, so I think it is ­incumbent on others to prove ­decisively that it isn’t. And I don’t think that burden of proof has been met yet.”

Yet another controversy that needs to be taught. We wish them well.

Copyright © 2010. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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