What most modern people learned in elementary school is the Copernican system of astronomy, with its rotating round earth orbiting around the sun. But let's take a walk on the wild side. Who has ever thought that the earth was flat?:

Lactantius

Lactantius, a Christian author of the fourth century, is unimpressed with the speculations of the astronomers:

Lactantius finds the concept of the antipodes absurd. The idea that people in Australia are walking around upside-down tickled his funny-bone:

Unfortunately Lactantius never does describe his own system, and in other works he seemingly reverts to the normal Roman conception of the earth as a globe; arguing against the atomic theory, he says: "By what counsel, then, by what plan, did the atoms from a confused mass collect themselves, so that from some the earth below was formed into a globe, and the heaven stretched out above, adorned with so great a variety of constellations that nothing can be conceived more embellished?" (Lactantius, A Treatise on the Anger of God, Chapter 10). . .seeming to concede it is of that shape, although he could be referring to the circuit of the Eurasian land mass. Though he plainly did not like the idea of the antipodes, his own scheme of the universe is difficult to elicit.

There are a lot of people, though, both in antiquity and even with the revival of flat-earthism today, who find the concept of the antipodes problematical. They seem to want to take 'up' and 'down' as absolutes, drawn according to a Cartesian x and y applicable everywhere in the universe. Gravity pulls toward the center of the earth, in Australia as well as here. People are not upside-down anywhere on the earth, they have their feet planted on the ground and their head in the air.

In some cases, people perplexed by the antipodes were able to assuage their concern, not by abandoning the rotundity of the earth, but by positing that the antipodes were not inhabited. Going back to the beginning, when Pythagoras' followers talked about an anti-earth, did they mean another planet earth, serving perhaps as a counter-balance, or another continent, the antipodes? Are the antipodes just a problem for the round-earth system, able to be resolved within that system? In some cases it would seem so. And as it happens, for some reason, there is less land mass in the Southern hemisphere than in the Northern, and so not every one of us has our counterpart in the 'other' earth, walking around upside-down relative to ourselves, in defiance of all common sense. But Lactantius seems to be a true flat-earther, not just an antipode-protestor, who says, "But I should be able to prove by many arguments that it is impossible for the heaven to be lower than the earth. . ." He never does, though.

In vain the philosophers pointed out that people walking around in Australia had their feet down on the ground, just the same as people in Athens; no one was upside down:

"For as the universe is in the form of a sphere, all the extremities, being equidistant from the centre, are equally extremities, and the centre, which is equidistant from them, is equally to be regarded as the opposite of them all. Such being the nature of the world, when a person says that any of these points is above or below, may he not be justly charged with using an improper expression? For the centre of the world cannot be rightly called either above or below, but is the centre and nothing else; and the circumference is not the centre, and has in no one part of itself a different relation to the centre from what it has in any of the opposite parts. . .and if a person were to go round the world in a circle, he would often, when standing at the antipodes of his former position, speak of the same point as above and below; for, as I was saying just now, to speak of the whole which is in the form of a globe as having one part above and another below is not like a sensible man." (Plato, Timaeus).

Many of the early Christian writers say nothing at all about the configuration of the cosmos. Others, like Origen, are into counting spheres alongside Ptolemy and company: "Nevertheless, above that sphere which they call non-wandering, they will have another sphere to exist, which they say, exactly as our heaven contains all things which are under it, comprehends by its immense size and indescribable extent the spaces of all the spheres together within its more magnificent circumference; so that all things are within it, as this earth of ours is under heaven." (Origen, De Principiis, Book 2, Chapter 3, Section 6, ANF 4, p. 527).

In Ptolemaic astronomy, not only is the surface of the earth a sphere, but the earth is surrounded by a gigantic sphere carrying the fixed stars. There are smaller spheres within that structure which carry the orbits of the various planets, the moon, and the sun (Ptolemaic astronomy is geocentric). So the author of the apocryphal 'Clementine Recognitions' mentions that the 'roof' of the universe is spherical:

"For what man is there, having even a particle of sense, who, when he sees a house having all things necessary for useful purposes, its roof fashioned into the form of a globe, painted with various splendor and diverse figures, adorned with large and splendid lights; who is there, I say, that, seeing such a structure, would not immediately pronounce that it was constructed by a most wise and powerful artificer? And so, who can be found so foolish, as, when he gazes upon the fabric of the heaven, perceives the splendor of the sun and moon, sees the courses and beauty of the stars, and their paths assigned to them by fixed laws and periods, will not cry out that these things are made, not so much by a wise and rational artificer, as by wisdom and reason itself?" (Clementine Recognitions, Book 8,  Chapter 20, p. 344 ANF Volume 8).

In Copernican-Newtonian astronomy there is no such structure, but rather space is an empty plenum. Since the Ptolemaic system of astronomy is what was taught in the schools, it is scarcely astonishing or anything out of the ordinary that Christians would assume its accuracy. (There were heliocentrists in antiquity, but it was a minority view.)

Part of the problem here is the assumption that writers on religion must be consumed by interest in cosmography, drawing the map of the heavens and the earth. In reality, some of them don't seem to care about it at all. You would think, from gnostic literature with its ascensions and its peregrinations around the heavenlies, that it is a central concern, but orthodoxy is little interested, although there are also authors like Hippolytus of Rome, who go into great detail explaining how Archimedes says this, Hipparchus says that, giving numbers for the circumference of the earth, the distance to Mercury, etc.

Cosmas Indicopleustes

Our next contrarian was more ambitious. He produced a treatise, not just a protest. Cosmas Indicopleustes was a world explorer who may have made it as far as the Southern hemisphere, or at least talked with people who had been there, "For the sources of the river Nile lie somewhere in these parts, and in winter, on account of the heavy rains, the numerous rivers which they generate obstruct the path of the traveller. The people there have their winter at the time we have our summer." (Cosmas Indicopleustes, Christian Topography, Book II, p. 53). He travelled to regions as remote as India in pursuit of merchandise to trade in the Byzantine emporiums. He says he himself went so far south as 'Axiomis' in Africa: ". . .and next from what we ourselves saw with our own eyes in the parts of Axiomis in Ethiopia. For, at the beginning of the summer solstice on the twenty-fifth day of the month Payni at the sixth hour of the day when the sun is now at the meridian, we plainly saw that a man's shadow inclined to the south." (Cosmas Indicopleustes, Christian Topography, Book VI, p. 245). It's not clear what the furthest extent of his travels was, but he did travel through what the pagan geographers intended by the torrid zone, and found it not to be as described. He felt that this fact tended to disprove their system. Isn't that, after all, how scientific questions are to be decided, by putting things to an empirical test? Yes, but. . .

While he had a bit of Columbus and Magellan in him, unfortunately he also had a touch of Kyrie Irving. In his treatise on geography he describes a flat-earth system, which he defended in part on rational and empirical grounds based on his own experiences as a mariner. We discover, from the marvels of atheist historiography, that Cosmas' system was adopted by the church, so that any who dissented and said the earth was round were labelled as heretics:

Atheist historiography is marvellous indeed, because history records that medieval astronomy was based on the Ptolemaic system, which features a round earth. You have to be incapable of reading the medieval primary sources to believe Colonel Ingersoll's claims.

Cosmas admonishes the reader to study carefully his account of his travels, detailing where he went and what he found there:

Cosmas' case against the Ptolemaic system was both positive and negative. His negative critique, it must be acknowledged, does not fail to hit the mark. Who was it that kept dinning in Cosmas' ears the idea that the torrid zone, the region between the two tropics and the equator, was uninhabitable by reason of excessive heat? Aristotle, among others, who said,

"There are two inhabitable sections of the earth: one near our upper, or northern pole, the other near the other or southern pole; and their shape is like that of a tambourine. If you draw lines from the center of the earth they cut out a drum-shaped figure. The lines form two cones; the base of the one is the tropic, of the other the ever visible circle, their vertex is at the center of the earth. Two other cones towards the south pole give corresponding segments of the earth. These sections alone are habitable. Beyond the tropics no one can live: for there the shade would not fall to the north, whereas the earth is known to be uninhabitable before the sun is in the zenith or the shade is thrown to the south: and the regions below the Bear are uninhabitable because of the cold." (Aristotle, Meteorology).

This idea, that the torrid zone is uninhabited, is not one of Aristotle's better ideas, like the round earth itself, of which he was aware, but rather one of the worse. How many millions of people live in Quito, Ecuador? Though they didn't, then. It's surprising the claim was still being made in the sixth century A.D., but evidently it was: "And they assert that none can inhabit the torrid zone,— yea, even that the northern part of the world which is inhabited by us is many stages distant from the torrid zone." (Cosmas Indicopleustes, Christian Topography, Book VI, p. 249).  But when Cosmas travelled as far as India, much of which is in the torrid zone,— and which is where he gets his designation as 'Indicopleustes' from,— he must have noticed the region was densely settled. So Aristotle was wrong, totally wrong, wrong without any possibility of salvaging. But does the round earth stand or fall with this error? If you say fall, why? Two things can simultaneously be true: that millions of people live in Quito, Ecuador, and that the earth is round. Even the normally sensible Cicero repeats the canard Cosmas understandably found so annoying:

"You may likewise observe that the same globe of the earth is girt and surrounded with certain zones, whereof those two that are most remote from each other, and lie under the opposite poles of heaven, are congealed with frost; but that one in the middle, which is far the largest, is scorched with the intense heat of the sun. The other two are habitable, one towards the south, the inhabitants of which are your antipodes, with whom you have no connection; the other, towards the north, is that which you inhabit, whereof a very small part, as you may see, falls to your share."

(Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Delphi Complete Works of Cicero (pp. 3103-3104). Commonwealth, Book VI, Scipio's Dream, Chapter 20).

Let me be the first to give Cosmas his due. If he, by travelling to remote regions which the pagan geographers believed were too close to the equator to be inhabited, had discovered by observation that lots of people lived there, he is quite within his rights to point out the error. Their mistakes should be corrected! Cosmas was right! Geography must be evidence-based, if anything is. But it is throwing the baby out with the bath-water to throw out the whole system of Greek astronomy, including the spherical earth, because they were wrong about some of the details of equatorial geography. He actually went to places the geographers were pretty vague about, like India. He did not find what they said he would find. He found lots of people living there. Score the point for Cosmas, he was right, they were wrong. And he was the one who bothered to look. Nevertheless, the earth remains a sphere.

Other Greek authors differ from Aristotle as to the dimensions of the torrid zone, while not disputing that there is, in principle, such a thing:

"Posidonius informs us that Parmenides was the first to make this division of the earth into five zones, but that he almost doubled the size of the torrid zone, which is situated between the tropics, by bringing it beyond these into the temperate zones. But according to Aristotle the torrid zone is contained between the tropics, the temperate zones occupying the whole space between the tropics and the arctic circles. Both of these divisions Posidonius justly condemns, for the torrid zone is properly the space rendered uninhabitable by the heat. Whereas more than half of the space between the tropics is inhabited, as we may judge by the Ethiopians who dwell above Egypt. The equator divides the whole of this space into two equal parts. Now from Syene, which is the limit of the summer tropic, to Meroe, there are 5000 stadia, and thence to the parallel of the Cinnamon region, where the torrid zone commences, 3000 stadia. The whole of this distance has been measured, and it may be gone over either by sea or land; the remaining portion to the equator is, if we adopt the measure of the earth supplied by Eratosthenes, 8800 stadia." (Strabo, Geography 2.2.2).

As Cosmas discovered, there is no "space rendered uninhabitable by the heat." It's a bad idea that should have been discarded, not trimmed down. While it's easy to mock Cosmas as a flat-earther, he did it right. The Greek astronomers said that there was a region called the torrid zone which was uninhabitable owing to heat. So Cosmas went there, discovered women wearing colorful saris, and came home, explaining there is no torrid zone. What misfired? He went too far, though; he thought he could bring down the whole elaborate edifice of Greek astronomy, including the round earth. But that is too well established, it's set on a firm foundation (metaphorically speaking). Who started the project of climate zones in the first place? Plutarch says it was Pythagoras:

"Pythagoras says that, as the celestial sphere is distributed into five zones, into the same number is the terrestrial; which zones are the arctic and antarctic, the summer and winter tropics (or temperate zones), and the equinoctial; the middle of which zones equally divides the earth and constitutes the torrid zone; but that portion which is in between the summer and winter tropics is habitable, by reason the air is there temperate." (Plutarch, On the Opinions of the Philosophers, Book III, Chapter XIV).

Who actually started the notion that the habitable world was confined to the two solstitial (or temperate) zones? Plutarch says it was Parmenides: "Parmenides was the first that confined the habitable world to the two solstitial (or temperate) zones." (Plutarch, On the Opinions of the Philosophers, Book III, Chapter XI).

It's only fair to note, however, that not all ancient writers ever were on board with the notion that the torrid zone was uninhabitable. Pliny, for example, talks about people in India living on the equator, about whom he proceeds to tell his usual tall tales: "According to Onesicritus, in those parts of India where there is no shadow, the bodies of men attain a height of five cubits and two palms, and their life is prolonged to one hundred and thirty years; they die without any symptoms of old age, and just as if they were in the middle period of life. Crates of Pergamus calls the Indians, whose age exceeds one hundred years, by the name of Gymnetæ; but not a few authors style them Macrobii." (Pliny, Natural History, 7.2). So some people either had never heard Aristotle's climate science, or disputed it.

Other ancient civilizations must have known better than Aristotle did. The Carthaginians, it is claimed, had already circumnavigated Africa, and maintained established trade routes with Sub-Saharan Africa. Alas, when Hasdrubal's wife threw herself and her children into the flames of the burning temple, that light was extinguished from the world. The Romans did not pick up these discontinued trade routes. Though later Nero Caesar would commission an expedition to find the sources of the Nile, Rome's contacts with areas to the south and to the east was fitful and indirect. You could buy, in Rome, a bun with cinnamon on it, which came from Indonesia. But they could not tell you just exactly where Indonesia was. Probably the belief, totally false as noted, that the torrid zone was uninhabitable acted as a bar on exploration. So to that extent, Cosmas emerges from his contest with the pagan astronomers as the winner; he was right, they were wrong. But he went too far; they were not wrong about the rotundity of the earth.

Cosmas' scathing criticism of the Ptolemaic system is sometimes on point. He wonders what is the mechanism moving the spheres. What, indeed? Aristotle posited that circular motion is natural, and thus no explanation is needed for why the whole contraption moves in a circle. As Cosmas points out, things don't move without being pushed, or drawn, and what possible mechanism is there behind these nested spheres, animating them and setting them in motion?:

These are good questions which need to be asked. A huge sphere rotates with incredible rapidity around the earth. What force moves it? Mustn't such a large object be incredibly massive? Well, it's made of the 'quintessence,' the fifth element not found on the earth, so maybe it's something like gossamer wings and moonbeams? But Cosmas' own system is certainly no improvement. He proposes a large mountain in the north, which will produce the appearance of sunset and solar eclipse when the sun hides behind the mountain. He has pusher angels shoving the luminaries around; though for that matter, so did Johannes Kepler. He realized the Ptolemaic system of astronomy can successfully predict when eclipses will occur. His system cannot. Although he claims there were flat-earthers who could predict eclipses, I strongly suspect these people were using the Ptolemaic system to predict the eclipses, which at least works, and not this mess. To the trash bin it must go.

Cosmas also claimed his system was derived from the scriptures. On what possible basis? Where in the Bible is there any system of flat-earth astronomy set forth? Why, in the description of the tabernacle, of course. Moses gives detailed instructions for the erection of a portable shrine, made of fabric and wood, collapsible for easy transport. The table enclosed within is flat and rectangular, as is in the nature of tables. This, according to Cosmas, is a scale model of the earth: "Moses, likewise, in describing the table in the Tabernacle, which is an image of the earth, ordered its length to be of two cubits, and its breadth of one cubit." (Cosmas Indicopleustes, Book II, p. 31, The Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes).

There's no hint in the Bible that the tabernacle is intended to be a scale model of the cosmos. But that is how we get Cosmas' flat earth: "He [God] then afterwards direct him [Moses] to construct the Tabernacle according to the pattern which he had seen in the mountain — being a pattern, so to say, of the whole world. He therefore made the Tabernacle, designing that as far as possible it should be a copy of the figure of the world. . ." (Cosmas Indicopleustes, Book III, p. 110, The Christian Topography of Cosmas, an Egyptian Monk). The text says that Moses should make the tabernacle after the pattern shown him on the mount, not that the tabernacle should be the pattern for the world! Where did that idea come from? In Cosmas' case, from an older monk, but where did he get it from? It seems to have been an established idea of the old heathen Egyptian religion that a shrine or a temple ought to be a simulacrum of the cosmos, even though human-constructed buildings tend to be a bit boxy (the temple of Vesta was a circular exception to the rule). The closest verse which an ambitious heresiarch, mining the scriptures to find some hint of this pre-existing pagan belief, hit upon is Hebrews 9:1: "Then verily the first covenant had also ordinances of divine service, and a worldly [κοσμικον] sanctuary." The word 'cosmikos' means 'worldly,' 'pertaining to this world,' not 'a scale model of the earth system' (in Cosmas' scheme, it's only the flat table which represents the earth; the candlestick gives us the luminaries). So you take a pagan idea, combine it with the Bible, and then you get the earth as a rectangular plane so that it can be modeled by a table. This isn't a case of finding a picture in the Bible, but of importing it, indeed shoe-horning it in there.

Which of these two competing world views won the hearts and minds of Christendom? According to the atheists, Cosmas' flat-earth system prevailed, driving the Ptolemaic system underground for two hundred years: "Cosmas Indicopleustes also attacked the doctrine with especial bitterness, citing a passage from St. Luke to prove that antipodes are theologically impossible. . .Under such pressure this scientific truth seems to have disappeared for nearly two hundred years; but by the eighth century the sphericity of the earth had come to be generally accepted among the leaders of thought. . ." (Andrew D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science and Theology, p. 132). On the other side of the equation, all of three manuscript copies exist of Cosmas' treatise. We are in the realm here of 'alternative facts.' How influential a man was Cosmas? He is quoted hardly at all, other than dismissively by Photius. The best that can be said of Andrew Dickson White is that he was the kind of person who could not bring himself to believe that anyone who held views differing from his own could be honest, brave and true, and that inventing facts and circumstances tending to preserve this conviction was worth the freight.

Compare the three extant copies of Cosmas' magnum opus with the hundreds of surviving manuscript copies of John of Hollywood's (Johannes de Sacrobosco) thirteenth century treatise, "On the Sphere of the World (De sphaera mundi)." John's textbook is essentially an introduction to the Ptolemaic system. Counting up manuscripts, it is difficult to award Cosmas the prize for winning the debate, but that is just what some people want to do.

Surely the mere articulation of Cosmas' view cannot suffice for proof that it overturned the established round earth consensus. Flat-earth cosmology is upheld in the present day by a society which ascribes the space program to Hollywood special effects. Yet no one takes this to demonstrate that people in the twenty-first century are flat-earthers! The claim by the nay-sayers that the early Christians believed in a flat earth is based on these two guys,— count 'em, two,— Cosmas Indicopleustes, not otherwise known, and Lactantius, a fourth century Latin rhetorician: "In the sixth century this development culminated in what was nothing less than a complete and detailed system of the universe, claiming to be based upon Scripture, its author being the Egyptian monk Cosmas Indicopleustes. Egypt was a great treasure-house of theologic thought to various religions of antiquity, and Cosmas appears to have urged upon the early Church this Egyptian idea of the construction of the world, just as another Egyptian ecclesiastic, Athanasius, urged upon the Church the Egyptian idea of a triune deity ruling the world. According to Cosmas, the earth is a parallelogram, flat and surrounded by four seas." (Andrew D. White, The History of Warfare of Science with Theology, p. 122). Where in scripture is found the plan of the earth as a parallelogram? Well, it isn't there, of course, unless you count the flat table in the tabernacle. Rather, even this anti-Christian author realizes the scheme was based on a pre-existing pagan Egyptian concept. Why this revival of Egyptian paganism proves the early church believed in a flat earth, he doesn't say.

Where did Cosmas go wrong? He elicited from round-earth astronomy a testable prediction: that the torrid zone is uninhabitable. They did make this prediction. He then proceeded to test this prediction, by travelling to a locale in the torrid zone. And what did he find there? People! So round-earth astronomy is disconfirmed, right? No, because we're going to start moving the goal-posts. In fact this idea of an uninhabitable torrid zone is not essential or inherent in round-earthism. The best way to salvage round-earthism is just to drop it.

Why did Parmenides find this an attractive idea in the first place, that the torrid zone was uninhabitable by reason by heat? We can only speculate. Perhaps, realizing that if you travelled south from Libya, you were stopped dead in your tracks by a hot, waterless, trackless desert, the Sahara, he over-generalized and explained that deserted sandy waste by proximity to the torrid zone. It is striking that, when you look at a map with topographic zones marked by different colors, there is nearly a continent-wide desert across Africa, and then a desert takes up most of the Arabian peninsula. Certainly, they must have realized, things are not so to the north of Greece; Europe is green.

Even in the absence of human habitation, the leeward side of mountain chains tends to be dry, as the peaks wring the rain out of the moisture-laden air blowing across them. The American plains must have been dry before they were peopled, on account of the Rocky Mountains. The Atlas mountains likely left an arid 'shadow' before there was any human being swimming in the rivers of the Sahara, as they then ran. But continent-wide? Every year we see human beings extend the Sahara, even to the present day, by over-intensive agriculture and overgrazing goats. Realizing they've been doing so for millenia, that could explain how a small natural desert grew immense. Just as beavers are the wetlands-producing animals, perhaps we are the desert-producing creatures, assiduously terra-forming green parklands into sand deserts. Perhaps this tell-tale tan blot expanding on the map tells the story of where we've been. But Parmenides must have realized the Alps leave no dry wasteland in their shadow. Perhaps it's the heat in the torrid zone? A plausible conjecture led to over-generalization, because some areas round about the equator are rain-forests, lush green jungles, not deserts.

The mystery really is why people were still telling Cosmas, in the sixth century A.D., even dinning it into his ears, that he was wasting his time trying to travel to India because much of southern India is in the torrid zone. Why didn't they know better by then? Modern science has achieved a ratcheting effect, where things discovered tend not to be undiscovered, but ancient science never quite got there. Although perhaps by now we have discovered the undo button, as flat-earthism takes over YouTube.

Cosmas himself is unaware that he revolutionized astronomy, and that everyone came streaming into his new system as soon as he proclaimed it. Far from meeting with acclaim on every hand, he was accused of innovation: "How then do those lovers of strife cry out against us, as if we have gone a strange road — a road that is known to nobody?" (Cosmas Indicopleustes, Christian Topography, Book X, p. 351). He is indignant that he has been accused of forging a new path, though. Cosmas perceives more actual agreement than is there, because he marks out as fellow-travelers everyone who talks about any human being being in heaven, now or in the future. But all Christians talk about human beings in heaven! Except, in his mind, the pagans who believe in the sphere, a sphere which must needs be, in his mind, ever revolving and untenanted.

For example, he outs a certain Timotheus as a flat earther, showing that "he also unwillingly assents to what we have written." (Cosmas Indicopleustes, Christian Topography, Chapter X, p. 353). How did Timotheus unwillingly assent to flat-earthism? Expounding the saying, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me," he said, "For it is natural for the soul to love to dwell always in the body, and to be vexed at taking leave of life." (Cosmas Indicopleustes, Christian Topography, Chapter X, pp. 353-354). That's it, that's the proof. How's that for unwilling? These unwilling witnesses are not flat-earthers; their coerced testimony must be rejected, inasmuch as he gives no evidence to prove flat-earthism. So far we have a two-count, Lactantius and Cosmas Indicopleustes.

So to summarize, let's step back and look at the big picture. Here we have an incident in the history of the conflict between religion and science, or a skirmish in that never-ending war, if you prefer. The dissenters like Cosmas were not really very interested in the shape of the earth for its own sake, rather they were indignant at hearing the outermost heavens being described as a sphere that goes round with great rapidity. It should be noted, scripture is silent about the alleged presence of a set of nested transparent but solid spheres filling up the space between the earth and the furthest stars. But that's OK, really, because there ain't no spheres. Cosmas seems to have thought these spheres would present an impassible obstacle to those wishing to make the heavenly journey, like Jesus upon His ascension, or past voyagers like Elijah and Enoch, and those of us getting our passports in order, bound for that locale in the future. But the cognoscenti who read the Koran or gnostic literature know these spheres are way-stations, fitted out for tourism, not barriers blocking the way. Or they would be if they existed, which they don't.

Furthermore, the anti-science group thought that you could live just fine in Quito, Ecuador; after all, two million people do. Cosmas, though a world traveller for his time and place, never made it quite that far, though he thought the 'torrid zone' was just fine and dandy for human habitation. He went there after all and did not die, nor did the throngs of sari-clad locals crowding around to see his merchandise. The scientists meanwhile cautioned that you would die if you tried to live in Quito, Ecuador. But they could, on the other hand, predict eclipses, which Cosmas, if we cut out his fibbing, could not. There seem to be too many balls in the air to catch all of them without any accident. But Cosmas, by his own admission, did not succeed in winning over his contemporaries. This much at least should be stated accurately.

He should have won the debate about the habitability of the equatorial regions, though, because he was right about that. It is distressing to read, in John of Hollywood (Johannes de Sacrobosco)'s thirteenth century treatise, "On the sphere of the world (De sphaera mundi)," "For those are said to have the sphere right who dwell at the equator, if anyone can live there." (Johannes de Sacrobosco, De sphaera mundi, Chapter One). "If anyone can live there"? Millions of people live in Quito, Ecuador.

John Chrysostom

But surely John Chrysostom, who is often stated to be a flat-earther, must be the real deal! I can concur that he was not a follower of Ptolemy, because speaking of the heavenly tabernacle pitched by God, as described in Hebrews 8, he says:

Certainly here we are on suspect terrain. This same discussion of the tabernacle in the letter to Hebrews is Cosmas' proof-text for a flat earth! Cosmas did not originate this interpretation of Hebrews 8, though he picked it up and ran with it. Taken literally and exhaustively, it might lead to a flat earth, because the table inside the tabernacle is flat, at any event. John does seem willing to take the tabernacle as a picture of the world: “'For' (he says) 'there was a tabernacle made; the first, which is called holy, wherein was the Candlestick, and the Table, and the Shew-bread.' These things are symbols of the world.” (John Chrysostom, Homily 15, Hebrews 9, Section 1, p. 942). However, it is one thing to make the tabernacle a symbol of the world, it is another to insist the earth is flat because the table is flat. Biblical types and antitypes are not usually driven into the ground with such force. And we, too, do not believe that the heavens are either spherical or whirl around, any more than John did. It's not clear where he's going with this, and elsewhere he expresses doubt and perplexity on the topic. The proof-texts I've encountered for John being a flat-earther are this kind of thing:

"I speak not concerning God, he says, but concerning everything. For what? wouldest thou learn about the earth? What dost thou know? Tell me. How great is its measure? What is its size? What is its manner of position? What is its essence? What is its place? Where does it stand, and upon what? None of these things can you tell?" (John Chrysostom, Homily VII, 1 Thessalonians 4, p. 733).

This is preacher-man boiler-plate and nothing to the point. If John is indeed a flat-earther, I have as yet found no clear statement to that effect. Perhaps mark him down as an astronomical skeptic, which is also the category Augustine belongs in. He, too, found it hard to wrap his mind around the antipodes; but in the end, he deferred to the astronomers and did not set up any rival system.

Did Cosmas have any followers? You would think the whole church followed him, if you listened to the tall tales of 'historians' like Draper and White, who claim his discovery of the flat earth swept the Christian world, without however being able to produce the names of his followers. It does seem that Cosmas was not alone in his view, however, because the great sixth-century Christian physicist John Philoponos contended with flat-earthers:

"John Philoponos, the eccentric Christian professor at Alexandria, attacked the last pagans for believing that the Heavens were divine and imperishable -- and so anticipated Galileo in some of his arguments on the perishable, material nature of the stars: and he defended himself against 'fundamentalist' Christians by proving that the earth was round..." (Peter Brown, 'The World of Late Antiquity,' p. 177).

While certainly he was not arguing with nobody, it is not entirely fair to evaluate figures like Theodore of Mopsuestia or Diodorus of Tarsus on the strength of critical attacks against them. Where their own writings on this topic do not survive, it is unclear to what extent they would concede the accuracy of the critics' summary of their views.

Against these few dissenters we can identify are arrayed the vast majority of Christians whose views we can discover. They most acquiesced to the then-prevalent understanding of celestial mechanics. It is unfair to blame the early Christians for accepting the Ptolemaic system, realizing it was the dominant secular astronomy of the day. It is even more unfair to pretend that, because we can name a few actual flat-earthers of that early period, flat-earthism was secretly and unascertainably the dominant view! Yet so the atheists insist; they even claim that the bishops of Rome, as late as the voyages of discovery, found themselves embarrassed by the journeys of Columbus, Vasco de Gama, and Magellan, because,

"The political consequences that at once ensued placed the Papal Government in a position of great embarrassment. Its traditions and policy forbade it to admit any other than the flat figure of the earth, as revealed in the Scriptures. Concealment of the facts was impossible, sophistry was unavailing." (John William Draper, History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science, p. 156).

This reconstruction of history is fanciful.

Mohammed ibn Abdallah

Was Mohammed ibn Abdallah, the unlettered Arabian prophet, a flat-earther? He seems to believe that the sun sets at a particular location on the earth, which is tough to manage in any other system than flat-earthism:

But wait, things get more complicated, not less. Mohammed goes on an excursion, riding on the animal Buraq. Ptolemy's nested spheres almost beckon the traveller to begin his peregrinations, helped along perhaps by a flying animal, if you happen to have one in your stable:

Just to keep score, how many 'heavens' have we racked up? By Mohammed's count, there are seven:

This seven-count of heavens is not unusual for the time and place. It's actually kind of a familiar concept, you see it all over the place. Where does it come from? From the Ptolemaic system of astronomy. The planets do not arise from this astronomical system; they are a fact of nature. But a structure built up of nested spheres does not occur in nature, and an itinerary plotting travel from one sphere to the next is meaningless, in real life:

What is going on here? If the seven heavens come from Ptolemaic astronomy,— as one would expect,— how can Mohammed also be a flat-earther? Ptolemy was not; his system features a round earth. Ptolemaic astronomy involves a series of nested concentric spheres, the sublunary sphere being the lowest, and the sphere which conveys motion to the fixed stars the furthest. The system is geocentric. The spheres are variously conceived by different authors; some consider them as astronomical abstractions, orbits basically; to others they are solid crystalline objects, vehicles serving to convey momentum to the planets they carry about. The earth is round under this system of astronomy, believe it or not. Ptolemy discusses this question at length in his Almagest and concludes, for very good reasons, that the earth is spherical.

Living after Newton, we are inclined to say that gravity makes the system go. They thought that gravity makes things stop. Could they resort to the pusher angels of Johannes Kepler? No, they were naturalists! So they considered that circular motion was 'natural' and thus tended to be self-perpetuating and self-propagating. Thus, to account for the fact the orbits are not perfect circles but rather slightly eccentric ellipses, they popped epicycles, small rotating circles, onto the planetary orbits. Thus they 'saved the hypothesis' of uniform circular motion. Though this seven-tiered cosmology originated in astronomy, it proved readily adaptable to religious systems as well, including pagan gnosticism as well as Christianity: think of the poet Dante. His entire theology is mapped onto the Ptolemaic universe.

Cosmas Indicopleustes, a merchant those voyages of exploration convinced him of flat-earthism, is confident that the seven heavens come from the astronomer. They certainly don't come from the Christian scriptures; he is indeed correct that they are not found there:

"Since therefore according to the great cosmographer Moses, and according to Paul, that most divine teacher of the Church, in whom the Lord Christ speaks, two heavens, and two only, were created by God, and not seven or eight, or nine, how is it possible to listen to the pagans advocating views based on conjecture, sophistries, and arrogant assumptions, and inventing fables. . . " (Cosmas Indicopleustes, Christian Topography, Book III, p. 114).

The Bible in fact enumerates three heavens. Expositors sometimes enumerate them as the sky, the starry heavens, and the throne of God. Cosmas, though his flat-earthism is unfortunate, is correct in noting that the Bible doesn't enumerate the seven heavens of the Ptolemaic system. That was not invented here. Moreover, as Cosmas realized, the system was tied into pagan divination from the outset. Claudio Ptolemy was himself not only an astronomer but an astrologer as well. To which of the seven heavens did Jesus ascend, wondered Cosmas?:

"In the second place, since their sphere is solid, let them tell us whether, along with the moon, He cleaves His way, like a fish in the water, through the body of heaven, going in the opposite direction to that which it pursues, or whether, along with the universe, He is violently whirled round in its direction -- which is all the most ridiculous nonsense. In the third place, it is in agreement with your error, that above Him are the other planets which are gods of yours, namely, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the father of your gods — gods to whom ye have been seen offering sacrifice — then also those fixed houses of the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and the six-and-thirty decani. . .But if they shall say that He is in the second sphere, they will be confronted again with the same difficulties, and so will they be if they say that He who is above all is in the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth. . ." (Cosmas Indicopleustes, Christian Topography, Book VII, p. 300).

What might have seemed a weakness when the Ptolemaic system was still going strong has turned out to be a strength, though. The more modern Islam was saddled with an obsolete astronomy, though I suspect most Muslims are unaware of the problem. As to the difficulty with the solid spheres, if indeed they were ever so understood, that was easily resolved by the pagan imagination: poke little doors in them, with a door-keeper seated near-by, to whom the traveller must give the secret password! It not only became a part of Islam, this system had also been ported into Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity as well. Though Ptolemy's system is not Biblical, it did enter into the minds and hearts of Christian believers, who understood it to be the best available astronomy. They took it to be an accurate description of the way the world is. Christianity and the Ptolemaic system were stitched together, and stuck together throughout the Middle Ages, though their joining was not seamless.

The Koran is a pastiche. Mohammed tossed into it everything he happened to have heard. He made no real effort to edit the material for consistency or coherence. So he's got a flat earth, probably unaware it wasn't supposed to be; and then he plops on top of it the seven heavens of the Ptolemaic system, without particularly believing in that system or even understanding it.

Incidentally, how the Ptolemaic system 'fits' with Christian eschatology is a complex, difficult question. Maybe it doesn't! Thomas Aquinas ends up with the spheres stuck, like a Ferris wheel ride that has broken down:

Ptolemaic astronomy, of course, features a round earth, not a flat earth. How Mohammed envisioned his borrowed "heavens" in relation to the earth is hard to say. How the seven spheres could revolve around a flat earth, I can't say. Here, at least, is an original contribution from the unlettered Arabian prophet, his own signature.

Or is it even possible he encountered, in his travels, Christian flat-earthers, who did exist at the time? Perhaps at some lonely outpost on the fringes of the Byzantine empire, they were reading Cosmas's memoir? If so, that would explain the flat-earthism; but it wouldn't explain the embrace of the seven spheres or seven heavens. Cosmas was against them, not for them. This seems to be a case of taking a little bit from here, a little bit from there, which is Mohammed's standard operating procedure.

Where do the "seven" come from, which the Rabbis count? They come from Ptolemaic astronomy. They are enumerated as follows: the then-known planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, plus the Sun and the Moon. These luminaries exist, of course; even modern Copernicans believe they are up there. But that they occupy delimited spaces with marked-off boundaries, described as spheres, perhaps even solid or at least perceptible, is neither self-evident nor even a natural fact; these structures in the heavenlies were an aspect of a particular astronomic theory, not a verifiable fact of nature. We've discarded them, with no sense of loss.

A diagram of the Ptolemaic system draws a series of concentric spheres clustered about the earth, freighted down with epicycles, which carry these heavenly bodies along on their periodic rounds. The outermost sphere whirls the entire structure completely around within the span of one day, with incredible rapidity, because the earth is as a point by contrast with the heavens. Is it really possible for such a massive sphere to spin round that fast? Won't it tear itself apart? Not to worry, it's made of the 'quintessence,' the fifth element; things up there are not as fragile and short-lived as things down here.

How are these heavenly peregrinations accomplished? There's a whole body of pagan and gnostic literature explaining the procedure. You knock on the door and are admitted to each new level by a porter, after you've given him the watch-word. Look up at the sky, at the planets; do you see any structure which could be identified as a gate, leading from one to the next of a series of multiple concentric levels? No; but look at a model of the Ptolemaic system; there they are! The 'seven heavens' are concentric spheres centered about the earth. In theory, a traveller could make just such a procession, if oxygen deprivation weren't an issue, with a little help from a flying burro like Buraq. There are not any "seven heavens" in the Bible, and from the time of Copernicus and his followers, there have not been any in astronomy either. They never were in the Bible; they came over into Christianity from scientific astronomy. But they aren't there any more. Is that a problem?

Heliocentrism was not the dominant view of antiquity. Heliocentric theories were proposed in antiquity, by the Pythagoreans among others, but were mostly rejected, for reasons of physics not religion. Riding on a cart bumping down the road, we know we are moving. Hold onto your hat, or it will fly off! Is it really possible this whole massive earth is hurtling through space, and we don't feel even a slight vibration? Copernicus came up with 'the ship,' a closed system, as a demonstration, and Galileo solved the problems in physics using that as an instrument. Once heliocentrism became possible, physically, it also became preferable, because of its simplicity.

So this is where our 'seven heavens' come from: Ptolemaic astronomy! Alas, there ain't  no spheres; this astronomy has been disconfirmed and discarded. Mohammed got it from the Rabbis, as he got so much of his material; the Rabbis got it from pagan astronomy, from Ptolemy and his colleagues. Those who adopted the Ptolemaic system, while it was still viable scientific astronomy, in no way deserve scorn or contempt. Thomas Aquinas, Moses Maimonides, and Philo Judaeus, were not stupid or ill-intentioned in looking to science to tell them how the heavens were configured. Ptolemaic astronomy was serious science, offering high predictive value; if you wanted to predict when the next eclipse would occur, Ptolemy could do that for you. Copernicus could do no better. Alas, this beautiful system has become outmoded and obsolete; no one really promotes it any more.

When somebody thinks that the sun sets itself down on a particular spot on the earth, he is probably thinking of a huge flat earth and small sun, neither of which is characteristic of Ptolemy's astronomy. Can a flat-earther go on one of these heavenly ascent package tours? It would seem so; 'Baruch' and 'Enoch' give substantial evidence of flat-earthism, with their 'gates' through which the sun enters onto its diurnal procession through the sky, returning at night, no doubt exhausted, back to rest for the night in its hangar-barn. These authors seems to have picked up on the popular theme of a heavenly journey without quite understanding the landscape through which the traveller progressed.

The seven heavens concept refers to a nested set of concentric spheres, which are quite beside the point for flat-earth astronomy. But missing the point is a frequent theme with the unlettered Arabian prophet, Mohammed ibn Abdallah. He picks up that Jesus is the Messiah, but does not really understand what that means; he picks up that Jesus is the Word, but does not really understand what that means. He may have picked up the 'seven heavens' without really understanding where they came from, at least if I am not mistaken as to where that is:

The Book of Enoch

The Book of Enoch has been described as a library rather than a book. This is a work of the Jewish apocrypha from roughly around the time of the New Testament. One version of it incorporates a flat-earth system of astronomy. At least, the concept that the heavenly luminaries spend their days resting in a barn and are brought out at night, exiting through various gates, seems to suggest a flat-earth system. If you have the luxury of a round earth, it's a bit more parsimonious to send them around the other side during the day; you economize that way.

But parsimony is not preferred by all. Even more prodigally, the flat earth pagan philosopher Xenophanes creates a new sun to rise every day: "The sun is composed of fiery particles collected from the moist exhalation and massed together, or of burning clouds. 24; 354. Eclipses occur by extinction of the sun; and the sun is born anew at its risings." (Xenophanes Fragments, Aet. ii. 4; Dox. 332.) Not a very parsimonious procedure! Better to recycle the existing sun, the sun which set yesterday night, rather than having to create a new one each morning. Like they say, "The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose." (Ecclesiastes 1:5).

When was the Book of Enoch dropped from the canon of Christian scripture, atheists wonder? Never; it was never part of the canon.

It is an article of faith with flat-earthers that Jews,— all +of 'em,— are flat-earthers. The evidence advanced in favor of this idea, however, tends to be in conflict with the thesis. For instance Rashi, a medieval Jewish commentator on the Bible and the Talmud, is brought forth as a flat-earther, because he likened the sky to an eyelid covering the human eyeball:

"We read about this in homiletic stories: The eye is a mini representation of the world. The upper eyelid represents the rakia (the vault over the sky that contains the stars) and the lower lid represents the earth." (Rashi, quoted at talmudology. com).

Rashi is referring to a passage from Derech Eretz Zuta which states: "The world can be compared to the eyes of a person. The whites of the eyes are the ocean that encircles the entire world. The dark part is the world, the iris is Jerusalem, and the pupil is the Temple, may it be rebuilt speedily and in our days and the days of all of Israel, Amen." (Derech Eretz Zuta, end of the ninth chapter, quoted at talmudology.com). Given that the human eyeball is approximately spherical, it is not obvious why this is taken as evidence for flat-earthism. One might as well hear, 'the earth is like a tennis ball,' and exclaim triumphantly, 'Aha! Flat-earthism!' The idea that the inhabited earth is surrounded by the ocean comes from the fact that the Eurasian land mass is surrounded by oceans. The analogy in its details is perplexing; but an analogy pointing to a round earth which doesn't entirely 'fit' in every detail is a far cry from flat-earthism. Certainly there were some Jewish flat-earthers: 'Enoch' is a flat-earther, and there were flat-earthers who disputed with Moses Maimondes. It is however a minority viewpoint.

At one point this was in dispute: "The Jewish Sages say that during the day the sun travels beneath the firmament and is therefore visible, and at night it travels above the firmament. And the sages of the nations of the world say that during the day the sun travels beneath the firmament, and at night it travels beneath the earth and around to the other side of the world. Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi said: And the statement of the sages of the nations of the world appears to be more accurate than our statement." (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Pesachim 94b). The flat-earthers lost the debate. Thereafter the Sages' view, if it ever had been dominant, became the minority report: there were still flerfers, but they were in the minority. This shows good sense; if you're right, you're right. The losing side of the argument should retreat. The Rabbis did what the Catholic Church would ultimately do with Copernicus' legacy; they dealt with reality.

Judah the Prince was a second century figure who wrote the Mishnah. After Judaea had lost two wars, badly, the Jewish revolt and the Bar Kochba revolt, he realized the way forward for Judaism was as a voluntary communal religion, of which there were many in the Roman world. The temple state was gone and restoring it could not be achieved, certainly not by military conflict, which had produced nothing but disaster. He was a realist, and thus a round-earther. The world really is round. However, it's not like he was a pioneer. At least part of the reason for the recurring popularity of round-earthism and its tendency to dominate the field is the fact that round-earthers like Ptolemy offer very powerful, compelling arguments for its truth. In the end all truth is God's truth.

The Zohar is a medieval text, foundational to the Kabbalah, which subscribes to round-earthism:

"Rav Hamnuna Saba (the elder) explains further in his book that the entire inhabited land rolls around like a ball, so that some are up and some are down. To wit, the creatures around the globe are opposite each other and the seven sections of the globe are seven lands. . .There is an inhabited place, so that when there is light on some — on that side of the globe — it is dark for others on the other side of the world. Thus when it is day for one group, it is night for the others." (English Zohar Vayikra Volume 14 vs. 141-142, quoted at kabbalah.com).

Some Christian writers are evidently fond of the Ptolemaic universe, even though it started life as a pagan-sponsored product and thereafter remained closely allied with astrology, a system of pagan divination. Clement of Alexandria seems to have been a fan of the Ptolemaic system: "Whether, then, the time be that which through the seven periods enumerated returns to the chiefest rest, or the seven heavens, which some reckon one above the other; or whether also the fixed sphere which borders on the intellectual world be called the eighth, the expression denotes that the Gnostic ought to rise out of the sphere of creation and of sin." (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata or Miscellanies, Book 4, Chapter 25, pp. 877-878). John of Damascus finds "no injury done" by the seven-tiered Ptolemaic layer cake, with which this late writer is quite familiar, though he is aware the Biblical heavens-count is three:

"They say also that there are seven zones of the heaven, one higher than the other. And its nature, they say, is of extreme fineness, like that of smoke, and each zone contains one of the planets. For there are said to be seven planets: Sol, Luna, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Venus and Saturn. . .So here we have three heavens, as the divine Apostle said. But if you should wish to look upon the seven zones as seven heavens there is no injury done to the word of truth. For it is usual in the Hebrew tongue to speak of heaven in the plural, that is, as heavens, and when a Hebrew wishes to say heaven of heaven, he usually says heavens of heavens, and this clearly means heaven of heaven, which is above the firmament, and the waters which are above the heavens, whether it is the air and the firmament, or the seven zones of the firmament, or the firmament itself which are spoken of in the plural as heavens according to the Hebrew custom." (John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book 2, Chapter 6).

In time Christian authors, like the poet Dante, would come, not only to tolerate, but to love the Ptolemaic system with its whirring machinery. It came to be naturalized within the Christian worldview, so much so that some could hardly bear to part with it when it came time for it to go. Whether the Ptolemaic system did any injury to Christianity is subject to dispute, but it is not the popular option today, which remains Copernicus' heliocentric system. The Book of Enoch was the path not taken; there is no flat-earth 'Divine Comedy.'

Pope Zachary

The principle of uniformitarianism holds that, as things happen today, so they happened in prior times. While this principle can certainly be overplayed, it is at least reliable enough to tell us that, knowing we have flat-earthers today, we know also they must have had them in the Dark Ages. And so they did. The evidence is unfortunately scanty, but Virgilius, who would later become bishop of Salzburg, got into trouble for teaching that there were men living underneath the earth. Pope Zachary and his informant Boniface may not have been flat-earthers exactly, but they do seem to have been skeptics when it comes to the antipodes. They may have been following Augustine in this matter, because Augustine was an avowed skeptic of the antipodes:

"But as to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets to us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours, that is on no ground credible. And, indeed, it is not affirmed that this has been learned by historical knowledge, but by scientific conjecture, on the ground that the earth is suspended within the concavity of the sky, and that it has as much room on the one side of it as on the other: hence they say that the part which is beneath must also be inhabited. But they do not remark that, although it be supposed or scientifically demonstrated that the world is of a round and spherical form, yet it does not follow that the other side of the earth is bare of water; nor even, though it be bare, does it immediately follow that it is peopled." (Augustine, City of God, Book 16, Chapter 9).

This view is not a denial of the earth's rotundity, but rather looks for daylight between affirming a round earth and affirming antipodes, which Augustine is loath to do, as evidently were Boniface and Zachary. What's worse, they were willing to have belief in the antipodes declared to be damnable heresy. They came this close to doing it; but somehow Virgilius eluded their grasp and was acquitted:

Qualms about the antipodes go back long before Augustine, as do efforts to split the difference by conceding that the earth is round but denying that the antipodes are inhabited. In his day, Pliny understood there to be a dispute between the learned and the vulgar on this point: "On this point there is a great contest between the learned and the vulgar. We maintain, that there are men dispersed over every part of the earth, that they stand with their feet turned towards each other, that the vault of the heavens appears alike to all of them, and that they, all of them, appear to tread equally on the middle of the earth. If any one should ask, why those situated opposite to us do not fall, we directly ask in return, whether those on the opposite side do not wonder that we do not fall." (Pliny, Natural History, Book II, Chapter 65). It's easy enough to say, in reply, that gravitation draws them toward the center of the earth, but gravity not yet having been defined as it would later be by Newton, the astronomers' answers on this point were understandably a bit sketchy. Nevertheless the antipodes are a natural fact that should not have been confuted.

Flat Earthism Today

For reasons beyond my ability to fathom, flat earthism seems to be undergoing a revival in the world today. "Mad Mike" Hughes even died in 2020 in his attempt to launch a homemade rocket to see for himself whether the earth was curved. While flat earthers like Xenophanes and Anaximenes did not need to be conspiracy theorists back in antiquity to explore this option, being a flat earther today necessitates believing the entire space program is an elaborate hoax. Flat earthers accuse NASA of sprinkling globes strategically round and about to brainwash people into thinking the earth is round, and therefore willingly paying taxes some of which end up in NASA's coffers.

At any rate so stated Kandiss Taylor, who, however, denies that she is a flat-earther. When you total up all the astronauts from various nations who have ascended high enough into the sky to see for themselves that the earth's surface is curved, whether the unfortunate "Mad Mike" realized this in his last moments or not, there must be thousands of people whose silence has been brought, or coerced through threats. Yet without a single defection! It's one thing for these issues to be debated, still, within the lifetime of Ferdinand Magellan, who never actually made it around the world, because he died in the Philippines. Yet there is no generation that has lived on the earth with more tangible evidence of its sphericity, in terms of photos and personal testimony, than we have. The way conspiracy theories work, that very abundance of evidence is taken as a suspicious circumstance, by brain donors like Kandiss Taylor, who wonders, if the earth is indeed round, why are there all these globes lying around? There should be what, cubes?

Watergate started as a third rate burglary, yet the small group initially implicated was unable to maintain discipline enough to keep it quiet. How the rotundity hoax has mobilized pilots, sea captains, and just about everybody else in its clutches is mind-boggling. Where does the money come from to buy such loyalty? And for what? Who even benefits from thinking the earth is round? It's hard to imagine how so many people can be so gullible.

Some time ago basketball player Kyrie Irving stated a flat-earth perspective. Whether he still holds to this view I can't say, as I don't keep up with him. He has gone on to other conspiracy-theory type of views, though, such as anti-vax. He received quite a bit of pushback at the time from his employer, the National Basketball Association. Why the NBA holds any policy on flat-earthism I couldn't say; whether the earth is round like a basketball or flat like the cement paving of the play-ground concerns them, why exactly? They need to know that the basketball is round, beyond that they should have no policy, I would think. Should the basketball happen to get deflated, they should pump it back up; but beyond that, what does the NBA care whether anything is round or flat? They should stick to their sphere of competence.

What conclusions would it be fair to draw from the Kyrie Irving kerfuffle? That, a.) everyone in 21st century America is now a flat-earther, who will even venture to persecute round-earthers; or that b.) some people in 21st century America are flat-earthers. B.) it is, in my view; I can't see the case for A.) If everyone in 21st century is a flat-earther, why did the NBA try to stuff a rag in Kyrie's mouth when he expressed that opinion? Same with Cosmas Indicopleustes; his mere existence cannot prove his viewpoint was ever the dominant one. There have been flat earthers at all times and place, I'm sure; detecting the existence of one is not the same as discovering flat-earthism to have been the dominant viewpoint in that time and place.

There are individuals who are privileged to change the way everybody, all their contemporaries, think about a given topic. Sir Isaac Newton was one like that. After his death, physics and astronomy simply were not taught the same way as they had been before he lived. His laws of motion gained universal or near-universal assent, not after long, dry years in the wilderness but pretty much on first publication. The average person is not like that; there are more Kyrie Irvings in the world than Isaac Newtons. We know of two individuals we can name from the early church era who were flat-earthers: Lactantius and Cosmas Indicopleustes. So these two spoke and immediately the astronomy curriculum was changed to reflect their views? All prior textbooks were shredded and new ones brought in? Who made that happen? Who could have made it happen? What is the evidence that it ever did happen? All available evidence is that it did not happen, rather, these were two oddballs who deviated from the existing social consensus on this topic. Those not blinded by atheist malice ought to be able to see that. Beyond those we can name, we know there were flat earthers at various periods; John Philoponus encountered them, as did Moses Maimonides in the middle ages. So there were flat earthers afoot here and there; and you know what? There still are today.

I would suggest that people drawn to flat-earthism reflect upon the observable phenomenon that, if you plant a stick in the ground and measure the length of the shadow that falls at noon-time, the time when the shadow is smallest, the length of this shadow will change as you travel north-to-south, but not east-to-west. Why? If the earth is spherical, it is apparent why. As I understand their response, they dispute this, apparently because they are thinking of a vast earth spread out beneath a tiny sun. A tiny sun might behave like a point source of light.

Then they should empirically compare shadows cast by the sun with the shadows cast by a point source of light, like a candle. Trace the outline of a friend's face in profile, at the time of the setting sun, on a wall perpendicular to the direction of the sun's rays. Measure the length of the resulting drawing from chin to the top of the head. Is it bigger than your friend's head, as the shadow cast by a point source like a candle would be, or is it the same size, so that the rays of the sun can be taken as effectively parallel? If the latter, then the drawing of your friend is in orthographic projection. Instead of focusing on imaginary conspiracies with nil chance of potential success, try to find a simpler and more elegant solution to your observations than a round earth. You will not find one.

The story of the triumph of Copernicus is not usually told as a revenge fantasy carried out by Christians tired of being ridiculed because the Bible knows nothing of Ptolemaic astronomy. In fact the system had grown so naturalized by then that many were sorry to see it go. But you know what? Mother Nature knows nothing about it either! Or does the Bible give it a secret handshake? Moses Maimonides thought that he had found the Philosopher's Stone, the secret place in the Bible where God's word does endorse Ptolemaic astronomy: