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The Flat Earth Error Exposed!! The flat earth and the rotating earth fables exposed!! |
For the past 150 years, Christians who held to the traditional geocentric view of the universe were ridiculed at FLAT EARTH PEOPLE....Unfortunately many were driven from the rock of geocentricity to the sinking sands of helliocentricity because of the fear of ridicule or of being called "unscientific."
Ridicule is an old weapon of the devil that he uses when he seeks to hinder or destroy the work of God. When Nehemiah was repairing the walls of Jerusalem, after the Babylonian Captivity of the Jews, the devil sent 4 of his disciples to mock and discourage the mighty prophet and reformer:
"Then said I (Nehemiah) unto them, Ye see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire: come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach.
Then I told them of the hand of my God which was good upon me; as also the king's words that he had spoken unto me. And they said, Let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for this good work.
But when Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, and Geshem the Arabian, heard it, they laughed us to scorn, and despised us, and said, What is this thing that ye do? will ye rebel against the king?
Then answered I them, and said unto them, The God of heaven, he will prosper us; therefore we his servants will arise and build: but ye have no portion, nor right, nor memorial, in Jerusalem." (Nehemiah 2:17-19).
Galileo's Dialogue used ridicule to defeats his opponents!!
In his book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican, Galileo used RIDICULE or SATIRE by referring to the person who holds the geocentric view as SIMPLICIO or SIMPLETON!!!!!
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2 wise men and one simpleton discuss how the heavens go in this Dialogue by Galileo. |
In that book there are 3 characters: Salviati (representing Galileo), Sagredo (the intelligent layman), and Simplicio represents all those who hold the geocentric model. Therefore, in Galileo's Dialogue, Simplicio represents the MAJORITY of the human race up to that time (1620). The book is about a 3 way conversation in which the different models of the universe are discussed. Here is an answer to this profound question by SIMPLICIO: "SIMPLICIO. To tell the truth, I have not made such long and careful observations that I can qualify as an authority on the facts of this matter; but certainly I wish to do so, and then to see whether I can once more succeed in reconciling what experience presents to us with what Aristotle teaches. For obviously two truths cannot contradict one another" (Dialogue, p. 55). |
Washington Irving invented the FLAT EARTH ERROR!!
Since the beginning of time, people knew that the world was ROUND. This was apparent by the shadow of the earth cast on the moon during an eclipse; by a ship appearing or disappearing over the horizon, by different stars appearing at different latitudes and by the longer view at higher elevations etc., etc., etc. By the time of Columbus, despite the Dark Ages, most educated people believed that the world was round.
The inventor of the FLAT EARTH ERROR was a writer named Washington Irving. In 1828, Irving wrote a book entitled The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. The book was HISTORICAL FICTION in which Irving invented a fictitious Columbus and then exalted him to the status of a semi divine hero.
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U.S. author Washington Irving (1783-1859). |
Irving—another dupe of the Jesuits— lived in Spain for 4 years. During that time, he was given access to the Spanish archives and wrote a "biography" of Christopher Columbus. Irving knew how to use libraries and archives, and the public was fooled into taking his historical FICTION as actual facts. Since the landing of the Pilgrims, Columbus was IGNORED by the English colonists. They KNEW that their claim to the New World rested on the prior discovery of John Cabot. The Jesuits were extremely anxious to fulfill the Bull of Pope Alexander VI and so the book by Irving exalting Portuguese Columbus.
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Irving's Columbus had to convince the Spanish doctors that the world was round!!
According to Columbus biographer Irving, Columbus had an uphill fight to convince the Spanish doctors that the world was a sphere. Irving wrote that a big conference with the professors took place at the university of Salamanca—the great seat of learning in Spain—at the Dominican convent of St. Stephen. Here is a quote from Irving:
"Such was the period when a council of clerical sages was convened in the collegiate convent of St. Stephen, to investigate the new theory of Columbus. It was composed of professors of astronomy, geography, mathematics, and other branches of science, together with various dignitaries of the church, and learned friars. Before this erudite assembly, Columbus presented himself to propound and defend his conclusions. He had been scoffed at as a visionary by the vulgar and the ignorant; but he was convinced that he only required a body of enlightened men to listen dispassionately to his reasonings, to insure triumphant conviction." (Irving, Life & Voyages, p. 61).
Irving must have had the trial of Galileo in mind when he wrote his Life & Voyages:
"Such were the unlooked for prejudices which Columbus had to encounter at the very outset of his conference, and which certainly relish more of the convent than the university. To his simplest proposition, the spherical form of the earth, were opposed figurative texts of Scripture. They observed that in the Psalms the heavens are said to be extended like a hide, that is, according to commentators, the curtain or covering of a tent, which, among the ancient pastoral nations, was formed of the hides of animals; and that St. Paul, in his epistle to the Hebrews, compares the heavens to a tabernacle, or tent, extended over the earth, which they thence inferred must be flat" (Irving, Life & Voyages, p. 63).
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Council of Salamanca in which Columbus tried to convince the university professors that the world was ROUND!! |
This fictitious conference was almost copied word for word from the trial of Galileo. Poor Columbus, trying to advance human knowledge and discover new worlds stands alone before the bigoted Inquisition and argues his case that the world was round. Like Galileo, Irving has Columbus barely escaping with his life for defending the roundness of the earth.
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For advocating a spherical earth, Irving maintains that Columbus barely escaped a trip to the dungeons of the Inquisition . . . instead of a voyage to the New World:
"Columbus, who was a devoutly religious man, found that he was in danger of being convicted not merely of error, but of heterodoxy. Others more versed in science admitted the globular form of the earth, and the possibility of an opposite and habitable hemisphere; but they brought up the chimera of the ancients, and maintained that it would be impossible to arrive there, in consequence of the insupportable heat of the torrid zone." (Irving, Life & Voyages, pp. 63-64).
The ancients knew that the world was round!!
Since the beginning of time, people knew that the world was round just as they knew that the sun rises and sets every day!!
The Greeks— the 3rd universal empire— were the great intellectuals of the ancient world. Towering intellects like Pythagoras, Archimedes, Plato, Socrates and Aristotle believed in a spherical earth.
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Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). |
Aristotle was one of the greatest geniuses of ancient Greece. He was the tutor of Alexander the Great and a prolific writer. He believed in a spherical and IMMOVABLE earth. Before Galileo, people who believed in an earth centered universe were called Aristotelians. Here is a quote on the spherical earth by Aristotle: "Either then the earth is spherical or it is at least naturally spherical. And it is right to call anything that which nature intends it to be, and which belongs to it, rather than which it is by constraint and contrary to nature. The evidence of the senses further corroborates this. How else would eclipses of the moon show segments shaped as we see them? As it is, the shapes which the moon itself each month shows are of every kind—straight, gibbous, and concave—but in eclipses the outline is always curved: and, since it is the interposition of the earth that makes the eclipse, the form of this line will be caused by the form of the earth's surface, which is therefore spherical." (Works of Aristotle, vol., I, p. 389). |
Eclipses of the moon prove that the world is round!!
The ancients could view eclipses of the moon just as we do today. The shadow cast on the moon is always SPHERICAL like the earth. The earth is 4 times larger than the moon and the earth to moon distance is about 250,000 miles (402,335 kilos) but a total eclipse fills the face of the moon exactly. Unlike a solar eclipse which lasts for minutes, the moon can take up to 7 hours to clear the earth's entire shadow.
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Photo of a lunar eclipse taken in 2002. |
During a lunar eclipse, the earth casts its ROUND shadow on the moon. During an eclipse, the moon which is supposed to move only 13° per day clears the earth's shadow in about 7 hours. |
Lunar eclipses prove that the moon orbits the earth in about 24 hours!!
Lunar eclipses can only occur at the time of the full moon and the fast moving moon can clear the earth's shadow in about 7 hours.
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A typical total lunar eclipse lasts about 1 hour and the moon clears the penumbra or shadow of the earth in about 7 hours. That means that the moon has moved about 1/2 way around the earth in about 7 hours. |
Lunar eclipses occurs when the moon passes through the shadow of the earth. When the moon is within the umbra (or darkest) part of the earth's shadow, it is illuminated only by the light refracted through the earth's atmosphere. This light is usually orange or brick-red. Totality, the length of time the moon is totally within the umbra, may last as long as 1 hour and 40 minutes. Before the moon moves into the umbra, it passes through an area of partial illumination, called the penumbra. In the penumbra, the moon appears nearly the same as when it's in the full light of the sun. The passage of the moon through the penumbra takes about 7 hours. |
The heliocentric theory has a monthly orbit of the moon only!!
The heliocentric theory ignores the DAILY orbit of the moon and allows for a monthly orbit only!! On closer examination, this proves to be a deadly counterfeit system because it cannot account for the movement of the moon during an eclipse. Here is a quote from the Encyclopedia Britannica:
"The Moon rotates about its own axis in 27.322 days, which is also the time that it takes to complete ONE orbit around the Earth. As a result, the Moon always presents nearly the same face to the Earth. Whereas the actual rate of rotation is uniform, the distance through which the Moon moves in its orbit from day to day varies somewhat. Accordingly, the face that the Moon turns to Earth is subject to a corresponding cyclical variation, the lunar globe oscillating slightly (as seen over time by a terrestrial observer) with a period nearly equal to that of revolution. The amount of this apparent oscillation, which is called libration, is commonly between 6 and 7 degrees." (New Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 17, p. 299).
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The heliocentric theory IGNORES the moon's daily orbit and cannot account for the rapid movement of the moon during a lunar eclipse. |
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The heliocentric system has the moon moving very, very slowly around the earth. One month is required to complete its orbit. This ignoring of the moon's daily orbit is done in order to get the earth rotating. The heliocentric theory IGNORES the moon's daily orbit and cannot account for the rapid movement of the moon during a lunar eclipse. The moon is supposed to move at a speed of about 2,000 mph (3,219 km) or about 13° per day to an observer on earth.
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The Farnese Atlas!!
Today we call a map of the world an ATLAS after the Greek god Atlas who was depicted as carrying the world on his shoulders.
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The Farnese Atlas in the National Archaeological Museum, Naples, Italy. |
Rockefeller Center Atlas reminds us that the ancients believed in a spherical earth. |
The Farnese Atlas is a 2nd-century Roman marble copy of a Hellenistic sculpture of Atlas kneeling with a globe weighing heavily on his shoulders. It is the oldest extant statue of the Titan of Greek mythology, who is represented in an earlier vase painting, and more importantly the oldest known representation of the celestial sphere. The sculpture is at the National Archaeological Museum (Museo Archeologico Nazionale) in Naples, Italy. It stands seven feet (2.1 meters) tall, and the globe is 65 cm in diameter.
The Romans knew that the world was round!!
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Statue of the Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar holding a globe in his hand as a symbol of his universal dominion. |
The coin above is the image of Pope Constantine in armor. His helmet bears a small chi-rho, the mythological Roman wolf and twins appear on his shield. The cross is prominent with a globe indicating the GLOBAL pretensions of the Papal Roman Empire. |
References
Aristotle, The Works of Aristotle. (In 2 Volumes), Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., The University of Chicago Press, 1952.
Galileo, Galilei. (Stillman Drake Translator). Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican. University of California Press, Berkeley & Los Angeles, 1967.
Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder). Pliny's Natural History. An Account by a Roman of What the Romans Knew and Did and Valued. Frederick Ungar Publishing, New York, 1957. (Originally written about 67 A.D.).
Irving, Washington. The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. Belford Company Publishers, New York. 1836.
Russell, Jeffrey Burton. Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians. Praeger Publishers, New York, 1991,
The New Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, ILL, 2005.
Copyright © 2007 by Niall Kilkenny