RSR Trying to Launch Flat-earther into Space. Really!

We raised $34,000 at Kickstarter to Launch a flat-earth author into space. (We invite you to listen to this on today's program and to read the text or see the 2-minute video about the launch effort, below).

* Oppositely Roating Stars: Have you noticed that the stars rotate in the OPPOSITE direction, and that the "man in the moon" is upside down, in the southern hemisphere? (Remember Bob's New Zealand trip.) Compared to viewing it from the northern hemisphere, you don't see a different side of the Moon (see below) in the southern hemisphere, as you would with the flat earth's nearby moon, but it merely appears upside down, which is a simple cure for the flat earth syndrome:

As for the stars rotating in the opposite directions, seeing that in photos including at NASA and in animation or video is really awesome! Many flat earthers claim the Moon is only 3,000 miles away, yet if so, northern and southern observers would see its different sides rather than merely see it upside down:

Bob Enyart and Fred Williams announce the Real Science Radio Kickstarter project, Launch a flat-earther into space! Our goal is to purchase a $250,000 ticket aboard a Virgin Galactic space flight for one of the top five flat-earth authors so they can give their firsthand account of whatever they experience.

Update: Our producer met with a popular YouTuber with 435,000 subscribers and 45 million views. One of his videos, btw, on dinosaurs, with 800,000 views, features Bob E.) That YouTuber reached out for us to a couple of the top flat-earthers whom he is on good terms with. He explained the project and asked them, politely of course, if they might consider accepting such an offer. As we expected, rather than excited about the opportunity, they immediately became angered by the idea. They should have been thrilled with a firsthand opportunity to see and expose a "conspiracy" up close and personal. But instead they demonstrated their fear of this public opportunity.]

2021 Update: In Scotland another bloke began a GoFundMe campaign to launch a flat-earther, just fyi.

* Flat Earth Diagnosis: Flat earth is not a hypothesis, it's a diagnosis. When you think everyone is lying to you about almost everything, you are paranoid, so belief in a flat earth is a diagnostic symptom and not a scientific claim. On today's broadcast (just click the Play icon above), after hearing from the garage door guy who stopped by the studio to pick up a check, and from Lou Monte singing the ole' favorite, Please, Mr. Columbus, the guys list some of their own experiences and observations of the spherical earth having traveled the globe.

- All the stars down under rotating  around the sky in the opposite direction as the counterclockwise rotation they travel around Polaris in the northern hemisphere.
- Many times the guys have driven Interstate 70 from Kansas to Denver seeing the upper portions of the Rocky Mountains 14,000-foot peaks looming long before seeing the nearer foothills and Denver's skyline.
- Bob saw the same effect driving the Alaska-Canadian Highway to Fairbanks and for many hours seeing the upper part of the 20,000-foot Mt. McKinley (now Denali) before the lower portions of the mountain became visible.
- The guys also described seeing the Southern Cross constellation in New Zealand, only visible from the Southern Hemisphere.
- The opposite rotational directions of hurricanes in the southern and northern hemispheres.
- The guys have sailed and seen the mountains behind the seaports before seeing the cities including Seattle, Anchorage, Athens, and Ephesus.
- Like Luigi's crow's nest on Columbus' ship, builders through the centuries have so equipped their ships.
- Using levels and plumbs anywhere on earth point to the center of gravity, i.e., straight downward, which is one reason why flat-earthers deny gravity. 
- Then the guys extend their own experiences with the firsthand testimonies of friends and those interviewed on RSR including the fourth man to walk on the Moon Commander Alan Bean, Dr. Henry Richter scientific equipment designer for our earliest lunar missions and satellites, one of the world's leading telescope designers, and ground system administrator for NASA's Cassini Saturn mission.

* RSR's Related Resources:
- rsr.org/launch-a-flat-earther-into-space
- rsr.org/flat-earth-society president a Darwinist
- rsr.org/flat-earth interview with an astronomer
- rsr.org/which-popes-taught-a-flat-earth (none)
- rsr.org/flat-earthers-dont-take-the-bible-literally
- Moon Landing Conspiracy Hoax Refuted
- Rebutting Geocentrism
- The Cosmological Principle
- RSR's Interview with James Hannam on the medieval world
- RSR's The Firmament (raqia) of Day Two.

* The Epidemic: Seven percent of Brazil's adults believe the Earth is flat; 10% of the French doubt it's a globe; and ScienceAlert reports on a YouGov survey showing that nearly three million U.S. "adults" 18 to 24 claim the earth is flat.

* Paranoia Explains Today's Flat Earth Syndrome: Ten percent of Frenchmen (and women) believe that the Earth may be flat. This modern phenomenon reveals not a scientific hypothesis but a slow-growing symptom of distrust and paranoia caused by widespread fake news and other environmental factors. In the U.S., 34% of Americans 18 to 24 years old are unsure about whether the world is a sphere, with three million of that group claiming the world is flat. (The percent of the population convinced the world is round gradually approaches 95% as ages increase to over 55.) Despite having access to more information than any time in history, an alarming number of people are falling into the trap of believing the myth of a flat earth. Many of these are Christians who unwittingly play into the hands of atheists who have long ridiculed the Bible as teaching a flat earth (its ironic that the president of the Flat Earth Society is, in fact, an evolutionist!) Believing this myth is a direct attack and insult to the Book of Genesis which from chapter one teaches that God created the Earth, Sun, Moon and stars for signs "and seasons". Scientists and Bible scholars have held for centuries that the earth is a sphere. Among these scholars is the prophet Isaiah, who wrote that God "sits above the circle of the earth" (Isaiah 40:22), using a Hebrew word that means both circle and sphere (see below).

* RSR Interviews Flat Earth Documentary Makers: Bob Enyart interviews creation guys Kyle Justice and Pat Roy about their hit, Faith on the Edge offering a cure for the flat earth syndrome.

From rsr.org/flat-earth-society:

* Flat Earth Society President Believes in Darwinism: As reported by LiveScience and in Creation magazine's Fall 2011 issue, the Flat Earth Society's president Daniel Shenton not only believes that the earth is flat, but he also believes in global warming and he's a Darwinian evolutionist. Ha! The irony of course is that evolutionists mock creationists by asking if we believe in a flat earth, whereas the Flat Earth Society itself aligns itself not with creationists but with evolutionists.

* Flat Earth, Geocentrism, and the Moon Landing Hoax: LiveScience reporter Natalie Wolchover offered to Shenton a NASA image of our western hemisphere which should lead the Darwinist flat-earthers to wonder where Europe, Africa, and Asia were hiding. And by the way, those who still claim that the sun orbits the earth have far more supporters than do the flat-earthers. For a rebuttal to that view, see rsr.org/geocentrism-rebuttal. And for a rebuttal to the moon landing hoax conspiracy claim, please see rsr.org/moon-landing-hoax-refuted.
 

* UC History Prof. Debunks Myth of the Flat Earth: Dr. Jeffrey Russell, Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has also taught history and religious studies at Berkeley, Harvard, and Notre Dame. His book, Inventing the Flat Earth, documents that in the 19th century a French archaeologist and an American essayist invented and spread the falsehood that educated people in the Middle Ages believed that the earth was flat. RSR notes that the anti-Christians spreading this fabrication allegedly include some of Darwin's promoters like David White, and that the targets of this smear included Christian scholars. Prejudice and myth die hard, and a small army of professional historians have been unable to correct this evolutionist libel against Christians. Toward that end, however, see Dr. Russell's brief article, The Myth of the Flat Earth. Russell there mentions the widespread false belief that in 1491 Christopher Columbus faced inquisitors and theologians who held that the Earth was flat, which mini-myth has been widely debunked and identified as a pure invention of the author Washington Irving.

* Christian Denominations that Taught a Flat Earth: None. No Christian denominations have ever taught that the Earth was flat. No Christian religious orders, denominations, creeds, councils, etc., have ever taught a flat earth, including the the Nicean and Constantinople councils and those of Ephesus and Chalcedon, the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Protestant denominations, the Franciscan, Dominican, Augustinian, Benedictine, Trappist, and Carmelite orders, none of the dozens of creeds, and none of the seminaries through the centuries. So, the Christian orders, denominations, creeds, councils, schools, etc., that have taught that the earth is flat, over a 2,000 year period, is NONE. If the Bible actually taught a flat earth, especially during the many centuries when most people were geocentrists (starting back even with Plato's claim that the Sun orbited the Earth, see rsr.org/geocentrism), plenty of Christian schools, Popes, etc., could have taught the flat earth. But it doesn't, so they didn't.

* Flat Earth Bible Verses: Flat earthers claim that taking the Bible literally shows that the Earth is flat. However, if instead of a pizza-shaped earth they claimed a pizza-box shaped earth, they would take as literal what is obviously a figure of speech, the Scriptures' "four corners" of the Earth. Instead, they correctly recognize this as a figure of speech indicating four regions. Whereas a sphere has no corners, north, south, east, and west could easily label a square's sides. But flat earthers prioritize their most popular model (the pizza) above taking the Bible "literally". Besides, as just above, if the Bible literally taught a flat earth, then for the millennia with no (imagined) "NASA conspiracy" to confuse matters, one would expect the church to have taught the flat earth, but it never has. Back though to reality, from above as from every direction, a sphere is viewed as a circle. Dominic Stratham's article, Isaiah 40:22 the Shape of the Earth, provides many indicators that khûg, the ancient Hebrew word used 2,700 years ago, typically translated into English as "circle", also means sphere. In modern Hebrew both khûg and kaddar mean sphere, as do similar words in other languages, whether possibly coincidental or borrowed or cognate, as with Arabic kura (which word appears in this verse in the most popular Arabic Bible which was translated in 1865). An old German word kugel, the Polish word kula, and the Serbian/Croatian word kugla all mean sphere apparently from the Proto-Indo-European root gug. Also, the pre-modern era renderings of this word khûg as an orb include Bible translations in the 1500s, as sphaera. And as a minor aside, whereas a pizza box has great length and width, it has relatively much less depth, yet the Bible implies a tremendous depth to the Earth (Prov. 25:3). Consider also rsr.org/geocentrism#bible where we go through various verses and demonstrate the different ways that those who reject the Copernican model of the solar system, including flat earthers, mishandle the Scriptures.

* RSR Friends Richter, Carter, & Sarfati: For those tricked into believing in a flat earth, over at creation.com our friends have published a two-minute rescue video. Flat-earthers don't trust NASA (or their scientists like our friend Henry Richter). Yet, of course, dozens of nations are now involved in space exploration along with a growing number of private firms. If they wanted to, the flat-earthers could crowdfund a ticket to space for their leading author who could then see with his own eyes as he orbits the Earth. In CMI's fun video, Dr. Jonathan Sarfati points out that at night, folks in Germany, in the same timezone as those in South Africa, see the North Star while those in the southern hemisphere can't see the North Star but instead see the southern cross and the same constellations as seen from those in New Zealand in a different timezone. Further, Sarfati reminds us that Jesus, being the Creator, of course knew of the different time zones required by a spherical earth, and so in Matthew 24 the Lord speaks of His Second Coming that everyone on Earth will see, even those who were working in the fields and those who were asleep in bed:

 

* Rob Carter's Direct Test Disproves Flat Earth Model: Check the flight times from Johannesburg to Sydney. And Rob notes that "passengers on the Johannesburg to Sydney flight have fairly monotonous scenery for nearly the entire trip: the southern Indian Ocean [whereas] on a flat earth, the flight would go over the Himalayas (which would be hard to miss!) and other land."

* NASA's lying! Previously, that simple single sentence summed up the conspiracy part of the flat-earthers claim. NASA's lying. But then, well, Russia started lying too, even though the Russians hated the Americans, for some reason, their lie covered up for our government’s lie. But then, the Chinese, who hated everybody, starting lying also with their orbital launches, spaceships and satellites. And then Japan, even though they hated the Chinese and the Russians, they told the same lie. And then India, and Israel, and Iran, and even North Korea, all with space capabilities, all supported the same lie. Then it turns out, Elon Musk is lying regarding his SpaceX private company! And Boeing, and Jeff Bezos with his Blue Origin, and Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Draper, and McDonnell Douglas (Bob used to work for them), and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. So, it went from NASA’s lying, to NASA and Russia, and China, and Japan, and Iran, and Israel, and SpaceX, and Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic, and Andrews, and Bigelow, and dozens of other companies, all combined with tens of thousands of engineers and scientists, are ALL lying. Right.

And remember that in the most ancient book in the Bible, at Job 26:7, written almost 4,000 years ago in the time of Abraham's great-grandchildren, we read an amazing statement consistent with astronomy's latest models of the solar system, that God "hangs the earth on nothing." 

* There's Hope Even for Daniel Shenton: Even though this evolutionist runs the Flat Earth Society, there's hope for him. Consider this, from Bob Enyart's published paper, Dobzhansky: 40 Years Later Nothing Makes Sense:

[In his famed paper, Theodosius Dobzhansky's] first prediction regarded Saudi Arabia’s late Sheik Abd el Aziz bin Baz, who had recently insisted that the sun orbited the earth. Dobzhansky declared that it would be useless to present evidence to those who “fear enlightenment,” asserting that the Sheik was “so hopelessly biased that no amount of evidence would impress him” (Dobzhansky, 1973, p. 125). However, in 1985 the U.S. invited Prince Sultan bin Salman to fly aboard the space shuttle Discovery. Later, hearing a firsthand account of the evidence from a source that he trusted, bin Baz changed his mind, falsifying Dobzhansky’s prediction (Bin Baz, 2005).

* Fake Interview of Director Stanley Kubrick's 'Faked Moon Landing': Those vulnerable to the falsehoods of flat-earth proponents make themselves vulnerable to all kinds of hoaxes. For example, various versions of the fake interview of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick confessing to faking the moon landing have deceived many. Eventually, however, an uncut version, embedded here, was published. If you're interested, you'll especially want to see the section beginning at 12:19 into the video. Enjoy! :)

* Friends of Bob on the Flat Earth and Geocentrism: This is a longer version of the above video with CMI's Gary Bates and RSR friends Dr. Henry Richter, Rob Carter, and Jonathan Sarfati...

* And on the Lighter Side: A funny lookin' flat earth eclipse...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* It's called Foreshortening: only in real life...

* Which Ancient Cultures Believed the Sky was a Solid Dome: Based on a scholarly book, Interpreting Eden, by Harvard Ph.D. Vern Poythress, a blogger wrote, Stop saying the ancient Israelites believed the sky was a big solid dome with a heavenly sea above it. Poythress himself wrote that, "the ancient Near Eastern myths did not say that the sky is literally a solid dome. Rather, they merely used a stock of poetic or symbolic pictures to communicate what they considered to be religious truths about the gods and their relation to the visible sky (its appearance). Therefore, Genesis 1 cannot be using or including false physicalistic comsology borrowed from the myths because such comsology did not exist." Hmm.

Related to our work over at rsr.org/raqia, Poythress writes, "It is sometimes alleged that the division of Tiamat in two parts, like a fish (line 137), corresponds to the division in Genesis 1:6-8 between upper and lower waters." RSR sees these as corresponding; Poythress does not. Just previously he presented "the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish. tablet IV describes how, after Marduk killed Tiamat, 'He split her in two, like a fish for drying, Half of her he set up and made as a cover, heaven.'" (The online snippet ends there but the myth continues: "He stretched out the hide and assigned watchmen, And ordered them not to let her waters escape. He crossed heaven and inspected (its) firmament... Tablet 5"

* Perhaps Related to Egypt's 36 Decans: Enuma Elish, Tablet 5, excerpt: "He established (in) constellations the stars, their likenesses. He marked the year, described its boundaries, He set up twelve months of three stars each."

* From Traditional Cosmology, 2011: by Marinus Anthony Van Der Sluijs...

 

* From In the Path of the Moon, 2010: by Francesca Rochberg...