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	The '''Flat Earth Society''' is an organization first based in ] and later in ] that advocates the ] that the Earth is not a ] but is flat (see ]). No modern religious groups or scientists have published support for this belief. This exposed the society to much outside ridicule and made it a popular ] for ]tic thinking and ] or ], with the term ''"Flat-Earther"'' coming to refer to anyone who promotes a counterscientific idea considered to be outlandish~~. The term is often used in a ] argument~~.		The '''Flat Earth Society''' is an organization first based in ] and later in ] that advocates the ] that the Earth is not a ] but is flat (see ]). No modern religious groups or scientists have published support for this belief. This exposed the society to much outside ridicule and made it a popular ] for ]tic thinking and ] or ], with the term ''"Flat-Earther"'' coming to refer to anyone who promotes a counterscientific idea considered to be outlandish.

	== Origins of the flat Earth movement ==		== Origins of the flat Earth movement ==

Revision as of 17:53, 17 August 2006

The Flat Earth Society is an organization first based in England and later in Lancaster, California that advocates the belief that the Earth is not a sphere but is flat (see flat Earth). No modern religious groups or scientists have published support for this belief. This exposed the society to much outside ridicule and made it a popular metaphor for dogmatic thinking and pseudoscience or bad science, with the term "Flat-Earther" coming to refer to anyone who promotes a counterscientific idea considered to be outlandish.

Origins of the flat Earth movement

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.

Flat Earth from space

In 1956, Samuel Shenton, a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Royal Geographic Society , revived the UZS as the International Flat Earth Society. With the advent of the space program, the Society found itself confronted with pictures of Earth made by orbiting satellites and, eventually, by astronauts who had landed on the moon. When confronted with the first NASA photographs of earth from deep space, Shenton reportedly remarked: "It's easy to see how a photograph like that could fool the untrained eye." The society took the position that the Apollo Moon landings were a hoax, staged by Hollywood and based on a script by Arthur C. Clarke, a position also held by some others not connected to the Flat Earth society (see Apollo moon landing hoax accusations). In a March 2001 message to a friend, Clarke responded to the society's claims as follows: "I've written to Dan Goldin saying I was never paid for this work, and unless he does something quickly he'll be hearing from my killer lawyers, Geldsnatch, Geldsnatch & Blubberclutch."

Charles K. Johnson

In 1971, Shenton died and Charles K. Johnson became the new president of the Flat Earth Society. Under his leadership, over the next three decades, the group grew in size from a few members to about 3,000. Johnson distributed newsletters, flyers, maps, etc. to anyone who asked for them, and he managed all membership applications together with his wife, Marjory, who was also a flat-earther. Membership inquiries came from several countries, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, and India.

The last world model propagated by the Flat Earth Society holds that humans live on a disc, with the North Pole at its center and a 150-foot (50 meter) high wall of ice at the outer edge. The resulting map resembles the symbol of the United Nations, something Johnson used as evidence for his position. In this model, the sun and moon are each a mere 32 miles (52 km) in diameter.

A newsletter from the society gives some insight into Johnson's mindset (all errors original):

Aim: To carefully observe, think freely rediscove forgotten fact and oppose theoretical dogmatic assumptions. To help establish the United States...of the world on this flat earth. Replace the science religion...with SANITY

The International Flat Earth Society is the oldest continuous Society existing on the world today. It began with the Creation of the Creation. First the water...the face of the deep...without form or limits...just Water. Then the Land sitting in and on the Water, the Water then as now being flat and level, as is the very Nature of Water. There are, of course, mountains and valleys on the Land but since most of the World is Water, we say, "The World is Flat". Historical accounts and spoken history tell us the Land part may have been square, all in one mass at one time, then as now, the magnetic north being the Center. Vast cataclysmic events and shaking no doubt broke the land apart, divided the Land to be our present continents or islands as they exist today. One thing we know for sure about this world...the known inhabited world is Flat, Level, a Plain World.

We maintain that what is called 'Science' today and 'scientists' consist of the same old gang of witch doctors, sorcerers, tellers of tales, the 'Priest-Entertainers' for the common people. 'Science' consists of a weird, way-out occult concoction of gibberish theory-theology...unrelated to the real world of facts, technology and inventions, tall buildings and fast cars, airplanes and other Real and Good things in life; technology is not in any way related to the web of idiotic scientific theory. ALL inventors have been anti-science. The Wright brothers said: "Science theory held us up for years. When we threw out all science, started from experiment and experience, then we invented the airplane." By the way, airplanes all fly level on this Plane earth.

Charles Johnson died on March 19, 2001, leaving the fate of the Flat Earth Society uncertain.

The Flat Earth Society today

Although there is no currently active website for the society, someone (apparently a relative of Samuel Shenton) maintains The Flat Earth Society Forums. This website, which offers a discussion forum and an on-line archive of Flat Earth Society newsletters from the 1970s and 1980s, may or may not represent a serious attempt to rejuvenate the original Flat Earth Society.

The Flat Earth Society in pop culture

California-based punk band Bad Religion include a song entitled "Flat Earth Society" on their 1990 album, Against the Grain (as well as their compilation album All Ages), written by Brett Gurewitz. A prominent feature of the song is the repetition of the words "lie, lie, lie" throughout, indicating a denouncement of the society and its mentality. The band has produced many such songs criticizing what it views as pseudoscientific movements.

Musician Thomas Dolby's official website is called "The Flat Earth Society", partially in reference to his 1984 album, The Flat Earth. The form to join Dolby's mailing list reads "If you truly believe the Earth is flat you are eligible to become a member, thus receiving information about the society", though it is clear from the context that this is intended ironically.

In the '80s, talk show host Wally George often sparred with and ridiculed members of the Flat Earth Society on his show Hot Seat. Australian talk show host Don Lane also had Flat Earth Society advocates on his show.

Steven Bischoff's novelization of Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) states that the Flat Earth Society has an office in Clamp Centre.

In 1992, when Jerry Brown, the former governor of California, ran for President on a platform of enacting a flat tax, rival candidate Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa joked that the idea was "cooked up by the Flat Earth Society."

California Indie band Wilderness Survival release a song entitled "Flat Earth Society Gala" on their 2005 debut "Stereotypes and Types of Stereos." With a chorus that includes the phrase "a banquet of fools" the song title refers to the tight knit group tendencies of drug addicts.

Also a card in the popular card game Illuminati by Steve Jackson Games.

In Stephen King's short story "The Mist", main character and narrator David Drayton dubs those refusing to believe in the bizarre, murderous monstrosities within the mist as "The Flat Earthers."

Sources and links

Archival documents: The Papers of the Flat Earth Society, University of Liverpool Library, Special Collections and Archives, reference GB 141 FES. The collection comprises in 31 boxes and folders the papers of the Flat Earth Society during Samuel Shenton's involvement with the society (1956-1971). The material includes incoming and outgoing correspondence, promotional material such as leaflets and posters, magazines, manuscripts, lecture material including maps and diagrams, photographs, press cuttings, notes, books on astromony and the Earth, and various other ephemera.
Earth Not a Globe Online text of Samuel Birley Rowbotham's 1881 treatise on Zetetic (Flat Earth) Astronomy.
The Flat-out Truth: Earth Orbits? Moon Landings? A Fraud! Says This Prophet by Robert J. Schadewald. Science Digest, July 1980. A very detailed look at the Society and its leader. Schadewald was president of the National Center for Science Education and an expert on alternative earth movements.
Looking for Lighthouses by Robert J. Schadewald, Creation/Evolution #31 (1992). This article explains the use of lighthouse data by Samuel Rowbotham.
Scientific Creationism, Geocentricity, and the Flat Earth by Robert J. Schadewald, from the Skeptical Inquirer, Winter 1981-1982. Describes the movements leading to the Flat Earth Society and discusses parallels with creationism.
The International Flat Earth Society. By Robert P. J. Day, 1993. Documents the full Flat Earth Society newsletter. Part of the Talk.Origins archive on the Evolution/Creationism archive.

Holding, James Patrick, 2000. Is the ’erets (earth) flat? TJ 14(3):51–54.
Russell, Jeffrey Burton, 1997. Inventing the Flat Earth : Columbus and Modern Historians ISBN 0-275-95904-X
Russell, Jeffrey Burton, 1997. The Myth of the Flat Earth (summary of above book).

Flat Earth Society Inc. (parody) Flat Earth Society Home Page

External links

The Flat Earth Society web site — a site collecting Flat Earth and Flat Earth Society information in an attempt to re-form the Society. Includes discussion forums and Flat Earth Society newsletters from the 1970s and 1980s.