No matter where you live or how long you’ve spent on the Internet, there’s no way you haven’t heard the Flat Earth Theory or the conspiracy theory that our planet is not a globe, but a flat surface.
We decided to dedicate this article to this always popular theory by dissecting the most widely used arguments (and some obscure ones) of the proponents of the Flat Earth Theory.
Historical Perspective
Before we discuss the arguments of the flat Earth believers, we thought it was necessary to bring up historical accounts of this belief, as well as various myths from all around the world. This belief, after all, is not a modern creation, but a sort of revival of the old understanding of our world.
The great poet Homer (8th c. BC), along with famed historian Hesiod (8th c. BC), described a disc-like Earth that encircles the ocean. Ancient Egyptians, on the other hand, imagined the ocean encircling the land, but again in a disk-like structure. Many other cultures of the time had similar ideas.
Similarly to Egyptian texts, the Torah (and its Christian interpretation, The Old Testament) describes a disc floating in water with a somewhat solid dome overhead that contains the Sun, the Moon, stars, and other planets. It goes without saying that this idea is the one that truly stuck and was used in the following centuries to cement the theory that the Earth is flat.
Modern theologians, along with many devout Jews and Christians, however, mostly reject this interpretation. The reason? It’s too literal and it was never meant to be taken literally. Of course, it makes sense not to look at holy texts, that contain so many metaphors and allegories, so literally. For centuries though, that wasn’t the case for people who dared question the church doctrine.
It wasn’t, however, people like Galileo and Magellan who first thought of the spherical Earth that revolves around the Sun. In fact, ancient Greeks have expressed these same ideas millennia earlier, so one of the arguments of contemporary flat earthers that the spherical shape is a modern invention can be easily disproven.
NASA
One argument that is widely used by flat earthers, and it’s actually quite interesting, is that we only have two full pictures of the Earth and they come from the same source – NASA. You might have thought that you’ve seen countless of real images of our planet, but most (if not all) pictures you’ve seen are reproductions.
The most first and most famous picture is titled “The Blue Marble” and it was taken on 7 December, 1973. The second one was taken more than 40 years later on 20 July 2015. This fact can surprise even the most sphere-loving enthusiasts out there.
However, the nail in the coffin is the fact that these images are composites. This means that they are composed of several images that were edited in together. Thus, no picture of a full Earth exists just yet.
Not only that, but NASA has admitted that there are gaps between the meridians when the satellites are circling around the Earth, so you can find certain inconsistencies with the images.
Another way to look at the NASA argument would be to question the agency itself. Everyone’s heard the theory that the Moon Landing was faked to win the Space Race, so once you distrust NASA, you’re more likely to interrogate their stance and evidence that the Earth is spherical.
Theories and Theories
Many flat earthers hold other unorthodox, for our time, beliefs such as those that the theory of gravity and the theory of the Big Bang are false. It should be noted that the Flat Earth community is very large and diverse, so individuals often hold different beliefs (some even believe that round planets exist, e.g., Jupiter) that might not be in line with this argument.
Rather than trying to contain all viewpoints concerning gravity and the Big Bang, let’s summarize them thusly: they are theories, not facts. There is evidence for the existence of gravity, for example, but it’s not concrete and it doesn’t explain all instances of universal gravity.
Consequently, the question is: why are these two theories accepted as universal facts when they are not yet facts? This opens the Pandora box of possibilities. If these things we’ve taken for granted all our lives are false, then why not the spherical Earth fact?
Antarctica
By contrast to popular belief, flat earthers don’t think that the oceans are flowing freely into the ether, rather most of them believe that the Earth is surrounded by Antarctica. Yes, the south pole is thought to be the edge (although some propose there might be something beyond it).
Antarctica is the ice wall that surrounds the Earth and keeps the oceans from “flowing out”. The matter becomes even more complicated when you consider that although Antarctica belongs to no-one, you still need certain permissions to go and you certainly can’t explore it on your own.
Moreover, no man has ever circumnavigated Antarctica. Captain Cook and James Clarke Ross are two famous examples of explorers who failed with that task. In fact, the first successful attempt was that of an unmanned saildrone in 2019.
This was, however, another proof to flat earthers that the shape and size of Antarctica are fabricated since only a drone could supposedly circumnavigate the icy continent.