Entering the Flat Earth Theory Controversy
Strebe, Azimuthal equidistant projection SW, CC BY-SA 3.0
STATEMENT by
T Mark Hightower
9/11/2017
WHY I FEEL I
MUST GET INVOLVED IN THIS FLAT EARTH THEORY CONTROVERSY AT THIS TIME
INTRODUCTION
Within the
last 2 weeks or so I have started getting into researching this flat earth
theory that has become so popular in the last few years on the web by starting
to do some of my own research. So far I
have found strong evidence in favor of the spherical earth theory that relates
to the spherical earth model being able to explain accurate navigation and land
surveying in the real world whereas the flat earth model fails miserably in
this regard. Notice that I am not making
a dogmatic pronouncement that “the earth is a sphere” based on my findings so
far. I simply want to report on the
results of my analyses and experiments, and will continue to do so in the
future, regardless of which side of the argument they support.
DO FLAT
EARTH ADVOCATES HAVE A FLAT EARTH MAP THAT CAN BE TESTED?
Most flat
earth theory advocates have been using the azimuthal equidistant (AE) map as
their flat earth map for a long time.
But I have just recently learned that when you start pointing out to
them problems with it, they will say that it is not right and that they are
still working on getting an accurate flat earth map. What I say to that is that if you do not have
a flat earth map, then your flat earth theory is not even a scientific theory,
because it is not falsifiable. You can’t
run tests to verify the model because you do not even know what the model is.
SHOWING THAT
AE MAP CLEARLY FAILS AS A FLAT EARTH MAP
But using
the azimuthal equidistant (AE) map as the flat earth map it is very easy to
show its discrepancies with many examples. I will offer two.
Basically
what you do is calculate distances between well established geographical
locations on both the spherical earth map and the flat earth map and compare
them to each other as well as against actual measured distances on the earth.
So I took Perth Australia and Sydney Australia. For spherical earth map
shortest distance (great circle distance on spherical surface) is about 2050
miles. For flat earth map shortest distance (straight line between two points)
is about 5160 miles. Google maps shows driving distance of about 2440 miles.
Now all we need is to get someone in Australia to drive from city to city and
see what distance they get with their car's odometer. The google map also shows
a flying time between the two cities of 5 h 5 min. This means that if the flat
earth distance is correct the plane would need to fly around 1000 mph. This is absurd and clearly shows that the AE
map as a flat earth map fails.
The next
example is similar but for an around the world route. I discovered a guy’s web site
walter.bislins.ch where he has calculators for comparing the flat earth model
to the spherical earth model. He just
added a flat earth flight planner calculator which I have used in this
example. So this is an around the world
in the southern hemisphere test. Sao Paulo Brazil GRU to Johannesburg South
Africa JNB to Sydney Australia SYD to Santiago Chile SCL and back to Sao Paulo
Brazil GRU. Spherical Miles (hrs) are: 4627 (8:46) 6859 (12:46) 7054 (13:07)
1627 (3:25) for a total of 20167 miles in 38.07 hrs = 530 mph. Flat Miles are: 9626 14576 15956 3512 for a
total of 43670 miles. If this could be covered in the spherical time of 38.07
hrs the flight speed would need to be 43670/38.07 = 1147 mph. This is absurd and clearly shows that the AE
map as the flat earth map fails.
For the
spherical calculations I found it easiest to enter the flights in
FlightMemory.com with the airport symbols and save the web page with the
tabular results as an html file, and then I used OpenFlights.org where I
imported the html file which generated a nice map of the flights. From there it
was easy to click on the points on the map and select to get the latitude and
longitude for the airports, which I then used as input into Walter’s
calculator. I also found oneworld.com
useful where I was able to find the airports for the around the world southern
hemisphere route that I chose.
MY CONCERN
THAT FLAT EARTH ADVOCATES ARE DEFAMING GOD AND CHRISTIANITY
I just got
through watching the video “Scientism Exposed” for the first time two nights
ago. Although this video makes some
interesting and good points, it also troubles me because I feel that it defames
and holds out for ridicule the things that are the most important to me in my
life, my faith in a loving God, and Jesus Christ, who I believe is the ultimate
savior of all.
MY CHRISTIAN
FAITH
I need to
say a little about my Christian faith here, but it is not my purpose to elaborate
too much on this in this writing. I am a
devout Christian with a lot of beliefs in common with many Christians, but also
with some significant differing beliefs from many Christians. A common theme of my differing beliefs is
that they relate to areas where I feel that there are different views and
interpretations where even though I have tried I am unable to determine for
myself what is true and what is false, although I may lean toward favoring one
view over another. So many Christians
will (like I once did) take dogmatic views on things because that is what they
were taught, so they proceed thinking they are 100 % sure of many things when
they haven’t even looked at other views, and likely they have been taught that
any views not in keeping with what they have been taught are of the devil.
So I
consider it to be a sin to claim certainty over things which you cannot be
certain of. So whereas there was a time
in the past where I might when giving the gospel threaten never ending
punishment in hell for those who do not in this life put their faith in Jesus
Christ as their savior, I can no longer do this in clear conscience, because I
feel I would be defaming God’s character by doing so. This would make God out to be the God of
never ending hate, and a hypocrite because He commands humankind to love their
enemies. So to me the greatest truth is
that God will ultimately save all through Jesus Christ, even those who do not
come to know Him until after their life on this earth. The term I like the best is that I am a
Christian Universalist. And amazingly,
Christian Universalism has been around since the earliest centuries after
Christ. And I am also a religious
pluralist in the sense that I would rather learn from the faiths of others than
feel that I need to convince them to leave their faith in favor of my faith. But I will gladly share my faith with others
but not force it on them.
RESTATING MY
CONCERN ABOUT FLAT EARTH MOVEMENT DISCREDITING GOD AND CHRISTIANITY
So it is my
judgment that those who are pushing flat earth theory as an overriding ultimate
truth to lead people to the truth of God over atheism, are risking bringing
defamation and ridicule upon God should their flat earth theories ultimately be
determined to be flawed.
MY
UPBRINGING AND UP TO RECENT PAST AND HOW MY THINKING IS STILL BEING SHAPED INTO
BECOMING MORE PLURALISTIC IN SEEKING TRUTHS
I am 61
years old now. I was raised in a Christian
home, attending Peninsula Bible Church (PBC) in Palo Alto, a non-denominational
Bible believing Church. My father, after
high school, attended a Bible college in southern California for a year or two,
but did not earn a degree there as far as I know. He then served in the Navy for 4 years where
he learned radio and electronics and afterwards went to college and got a
degree in electrical engineering. Either
while in the Navy or shortly afterwards he got his ham radio license. Prior to joining the Navy he had gotten his
pilot’s license in 1947 at the age of 19 flying out of Reid Hillview airport in
San Jose, CA. After college he first
worked for private companies in aerospace.
Eventually he got a job with NASA Ames Research Center in 1963. He was never involved with freemasonry. He retired from NASA in 1988. So I was raised around ham radio, flying,
electronics, and these things were some of my favorite hobbies while growing
up. I was quite interested in the space
program and science and had posters of the planets and solar system up on the
walls of my bedroom. I also had pictures
of my hero, Herb Alpert, up on the wall, as I was also into music, playing the
trumpet and the piano.
I simply
accepted what I was taught about the earth and the solar system and it made
sense to me. I remember learning what
latitude and longitude were in elementary school. My dad had friends at church who were also
into scientific pursuits, and also I recall friends from NASA who were also
devout Christians. There was nothing
about what I had learned about the earth or solar system while growing up that
in any way shook my faith in my creator God or even encouraged me to believe in
evolution.
I don’t want
to get too much into my education and career here, but I at least want to
mention it. I ended up majoring in
chemical engineering and started out in the chemical industry but ended up
going to work for NASA in 1989. The fact
that my dad had worked for NASA had nothing to do with me ending up working
there, as far as I can tell. I was job
hunting and saw that there were some contractor job openings at NASA Ames for
chemical engineers, so I applied and got a job.
The following year I was hired to work directly for NASA as a civil
servant. I retired from NASA Ames in
2015.
While working
at NASA Ames I met a lot of people who had known my dad. And I also came to know some devout
Christians, although I never did join a Bible study group at Ames.
I remember a
time around 1990 when a famous Christian astronomer from South Africa came to Peninsula
Bible Church to speak. I think his name
was David Block. I think he is still
alive to this day. His presentation in
no way diminished my faith, but instead enhanced my faith by showing me marvelous
beauty in God’s creation that I had never seen before. Hugh Ross is another Christian astronomer who
may have spoken at PBC at some point. I
know I ended up reading one of his books, I think it was called “The
Fingerprint of God.”
Around 3 or
4 years ago, out of my own interest I was looking for information about Hugh
Ross, and I knew he had an organization called Reasons to Believe, and I went
to their web site and ended up getting some books. And then later I picked up a several hour
long DVD set where there was a debate between old earth creationists (Hugh Ross
was one of these) and young earth creationists.
I watched all of it with my dad. I
then discovered a young earth creationist organization called Creation
Ministries International. So I ended up
getting some books from their organization.
So this
becomes a good example of an area where I have opened myself up to hearing both
sides, and I really don’t think I can figure out which side is right, or which
side is more right from my view. And
there are some pretty big differences between the viewpoints of these two
groups, yet I am quite sure that both of these groups agree on the spherical
earth theory, and reject the flat earth theory.
So are we to
now have young flat earth creationists versus young spherical earth
creationists?
Another
example I could give is Francis Collins, a scientist who headed up the human
genome project who is a devout Christian, and he believes in evolution. I am quite far into reading one of his books
right now. Very interesting.
I am trying
to read more books on philosophy, theology, Christianity, religion, science,
psychology, and history to broaden my understanding in these areas. The more I read and study the more I realize
how much more I don’t know than what I thought I knew. Things are quite up in the air in a lot of
areas, including science, philosophy, and theology. There were probably wrong turns that were
made in all of these areas that remain to be discovered and corrected in the
future.
I recommend
the writings of Dr. Mitch Stokes, a devout Christian with degrees in
engineering and philosophy. He makes a
very strong case for why we should be much more skeptical toward what science
can tell us than what a lot of scientists would have us believe.
Another area
I am finding worth looking into is process philosophy and process
theology. There is David Ray Griffin,
John Cobb, Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, Alfred North Whitehead, and Charles Hartshorne.
There is Philip
Mauro, an attorney who became a Christian later in life, and ended up writing
extensively on Christianity. He was a
contemporary of Cyrus Scofield of Scofield Reference Bible fame. Scofield’s Bible popularized dispensationalism,
which has had a major impact on Christianity especially in the United
States. This is where the concept of the
Rapture of the Church came from. Mauro
was critical of Dispensationalism in some of his writings, even though he had
initially bought into it. If you want to
look at views on the complete other side from Dispensationalism, look at books
on Preterism, the view that most if not all Bible prophecy has already been
fulfilled with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
I have read
many books on Christian Universalism over the last 10 years or so, and have
written reviews on Amazon for some of them.
Most recently I was introduced to the work of Dr. Boyd Purcell and ended
up reading both of his books, which are fantastic.
MY FOLLOWING
OF ROB SKIBA’S WORK AND RECENT DISAPPOINTMENT IN HIS DISPLAY OF MATHEMATICAL
IGNORANCE
I have read
a couple of books by Rob Skiba related to Biblical prophecy and the Giants
interpretation of Genesis 6 and other passages and extra Biblical sources, and
I found this all quite interesting, but I am not sure how this information will
change the way that I live my life.
And of
course I have ended up watching a fair amount of Rob Skiba’s flat earth
presentations.
And the
other day I watched one of Skiba’s Youtube videos that was at least a year old
where he claims to be getting to the issue of flights in the southern
hemisphere and properly interpreting the azimuthal equidistant map (the so
called flat earth map). And he was
struggling with what it meant that the map was “equidistant.” And he ended up showing that a flight in the
southern hemisphere on this map as the shortest distance between two points was
not a straight line on this map, but instead a very much curved line that was
much longer on this map than a straight line between the two points on this
map. What he had just shown was that to
obtain reality on this map, he had to interpret it as what it is, a projection
of a spherical surface onto a circular disk.
His observation was consistent with a spherical earth model, not a flat
earth model.
And all you
need to do to understand where the azimuthal equidistant map came from is go to
the Wikipedia article on the subject. It
is azimuthal and equidistant from the north pole, which means that all points
on the spherical earth project onto the circular disk taking the center of the
disk as the north pole and taking the same heading angle (azimuth) and distance
from the north pole of the sphere to each point on the sphere as the angle and
distance from the center of the disk to each corresponding point on the
disk. The map is equidistant in the
sense that the distance from the north pole to any point on the sphere will be
the same distance from the center of the disk to the corresponding point on the
disk.
HOPEFULLY
SOME GOOD CAN COME OUT OF THIS FLAT EARTH MOVEMENT
I think that
the attention that is being drawn to this flat earth issue can end up being a
good thing if: everyone remains respectful of each other’s search for reality
and the views they hold and/or come to; analyses and experiments are conducted
that bear upon the issues being raised and the procedures and results are openly
and freely shared so others can reproduce the results if they wish to; we all
use this as an opportunity to practice love toward one another rather than
strife and hatred.
We should
recognize that none of us are capable of understanding everything. For those who believe in a creator God, our
ability to understand comes from God.
People do vary tremendously in their natural abilities and what they
have been able to learn in their education and life.
So I think
that each individual should be able to admit that there are things that they
may not be capable of understanding.
SOME FINAL
SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES TO REFLECT UPON
I can
remember when I was a teenager my dad telling me the Biblical principle “By
their fruits you shall know them.” My
take on this now is pluralistic. I look
at one’s actions rather than at their beliefs.
If one is of
some religious bent, and also believes the earth is flat, I can accept that,
and I will look to their actions to see if they are of love and respect for the
sanctity of everyone’s search for truth.
If they are
dogmatic in trying to convince all others that they are of the one true faith,
and that faith includes belief in the flat earth, and they bad mouth those who
do not believe as they do, then I will find their fruits to be not in keeping
with respect for “the free and responsible search for truth and meaning” of
every individual.
I borrowed
the above quote from Unitarian Universalist Association Principles which I
copied from the web site of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Sunnyvale
and pasted below for reference.
http://uufs.org/believe/
When I do
the thought experiment of what sort of school or theological seminary would I consider
going to if I had the will and energy and opportunity to do so at this late
stage in my life, I feel it would have to be something along the lines of the
principles of the UUA, because I would want to be totally free to explore
things without constraint, although I would want to put emphasis on my
Christian faith.
UNITARIAN
UNIVERSALIST ASSOCIATION PRINCIPLES AS AN EXAMPLE
So I present
the UUA principles below simply as the best example I know of respecting and encompassing
a wide variety of viewpoints.
UUA
Principles copied from http://uufs.org/believe/
Unitarian
Universalism encompasses a wide range of beliefs. These seven principles sum up
the core values that our congregations promise to affirm and promote.
The Seven
Principles
The inherent worth and dignity of every
person
Justice, equity and compassion in human
relations
Acceptance of one another and encouragement
to spiritual growth in our congregations
A free and responsible search for truth and
meaning
The right of conscience and the use of the
democratic process within our congregations and in society at large
The goal of world community with peace,
liberty, and justice for all
Respect for the interdependent web of all
existence of which we are a part
Unitarian
Universalism draws from many sources.
The Six
Sources
Direct experience of that transcending
mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of
the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life
Words and deeds of prophetic women and men
which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice,
compassion, and the transforming power of love
Wisdom from the world’s religions which
inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life
Jewish and Christian teachings which call
us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves
Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed
the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against
idolatries of the mind and spirit
Spiritual teachings of earth-centered
traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in
harmony with the rhythms of nature
Grateful for the religious pluralism which
enriches and ennobles our faith, we are inspired to deepen our understanding
and expand our vision. As free congregations we enter into this covenant,
promising to one another our mutual trust and support.
END
T Mark
Hightower 9/11/2017
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