Flat Earth Society - do they really believe the world's flat or just in it as a gimmick?

Question

AnTisH wow i didnt know any of this, thanks for info!

Answer 1

Some of them do believe it is flat, but some are just there for a lark. Note that they don't necessarily believe it's level: they explain that a flight from New York to London takes less time than a flight from London to New York because it's downhill.

Answer 2

The modern flat earth movement was originated by an eccentric English inventor, Samuel Birley Rowbotham (1816-1884), who, inspired by his religious convictions that certain passages in the Bible are meant to be taken literally, published a 16-page pamphlet, which he later expanded into a 430 page book expounding his views. According to Rowbotham's system, which he called Zetetic Astronomy, the earth is a flat disk centered at the North Pole and bounded along its southern edge by a wall of ice, with the sun, moon, planets, and stars only a few hundred miles above the surface of the earth.

Rowbotham and his followers gained notoriety by engaging in raucous public debates with leading scientists of the day. One such clash, involving the prominent naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, led to several lawsuits for fraud and libel.

After Rowbotham's death, his followers established the Universal Zetetic Society, published a magazine entitled The Earth Not a Globe Review and remained active well into the early part of the 20th century. After World War I, the movement underwent a slow decline.

In the United States Rowbotham's ideas were taken up by a religious cult, the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church. Founded by a Scottish faith healer, John Alexander Dowie, in 1895, the church established the theocratic community of Zion, Illinois on the shore of Lake Michigan forty miles (seventy kilometers) north of Chicago. In 1905, Dowie was deposed as leader of the cult by his lieutenant, Wilbur Glenn Voliva. Voliva ruled his some 6000 followers with an iron hand, ruthlessly exploiting their labor in the church-run corporation, Zion Industries. The flat earth doctrine was exclusively taught in community schools. Voliva was a pioneer in religious radio broadcasting. Listeners to his 100,000-watt (0.1 MW) radio station were treated to thundering denunciations of the evils of evolution and round earth astronomy. Voliva died in 1942 and the church disintegrated under a cloud of financial scandals. A few die-hard flat earth supporters persisted in Zion into the 1950s.

The storyteller Washington Irving almost singlehandedly invented the rumor, in 1828, that Christopher Columbus was an American hero who woke the church and people of the Middle Ages to the reality of a spherical globe. Though this falsehood has often been repeated in modern children's books, Western opinion has not supported flat earth ideas since at least Ptolemy, and mainstream Christian groups have never espoused this, even in the Middle Ages. This misperception persists and no doubt the straw man arguments are related to the comedically obscure Society that espouses flat earth theories recently.

Answer 3

Gimmick

Answer 4

some people will do anything for money, its just a gimmick

Answer 5

Climb a mountain, You can see the curvature of the Earth!!

Answer 6

Don't the flat earthers ever wonder why no one falls off?

Answer 7

I think so, I know for their yearly holiday they wont go any farther than France.

Answer 8

They are off their heads on cider all the time. Don't listen to them.

Answer 9

I believe they are just having fun!

Answer 10

its definitely round