“God of the gaps” is a Christian response to the march of science. God had been used to explain many things—lightning, disease, earthquakes, and so on—but as science explained more, less remained for God to explain. God was forced to live in the gaps where questions remain, between blocks of well-established scientific knowledge.
Christians often still use it as an attack, demanding, “How did the first life come to be?” or some similar unanswered scientific question. Their conclusion: “You’ve got no answer; therefore, God did it.” Science will always have a long list of important unanswered questions, so this argument is endlessly reusable.
The atheist response
The problem is that as those gaps in scientific knowledge are filled in, fertile ground for God belief shrinks. The image that comes to mind for me is God sitting forlornly on an iceberg that is gradually melting. The Christian who builds his faith on a foundation of science risks that faith when the science shifts.
The second problem is that it assumes too much. Sure, Christianity can answer questions that science can’t, but are those answers worth listening to? “I don’t know how this works; therefore, God did it” is no solid foundation on which to build a worldview. There’s no more evidence that “God did it” than that the Flying Spaghetti Monster did it. And “God did it” is a claim, not a conclusion. It’s not supported by evidence.
But now, in the fullness of time, we have seen a great light … and this light has chased God out into the shadows. To this day, science continues to replace God-filled gaps in our understanding with all-natural ingredients. And since we don’t need God to explain the existence of the nature of the universe, we don’t need God, period. (@34:00)
[The god-of-the-gaps] objection is rooted in the idea that because a number of things throughout human history have been wrongly attributed to the supernatural activity of God or gods, we can now safely dismiss God as a cause behind anything else we observe.
In other words, these mocking characterizations imagine that science doesn’t have all the answers yet, but it will! This is the science-of-the-gaps fallacy, also called the Argument from the Future (because the future will resolve the problems we can’t today). This has been cleverly distilled into, “I don’t know, therefore not God.”
Whatever you call this argument, I don’t make it. I don’t say that God couldn’t be the explanation for anything within nature, just that that’s where the evidence points (or lack of evidence).
A counterexample?
One Christian response gives the search for extraterrestrial life to argue against God-of-the-gaps thinking. So far, it’s turned up nothing, but the search continues. If atheists reject the possibility of God, why not reject the possibility of extraterrestrials with the same logic?
First, I don’t reject the possibility of God. And second, “the supernatural” has never been shown to be an explanation for anything. The search for the supernatural is not at all parallel to the search for extraterrestrials, which is simply a search for life (which we know exists) that uses technology (ditto).
Christians point to something, not nothing?
Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason pushed back against the god-of-the-gaps charge. Taking just the Intelligent Design argument, he says it doesn’t point to a lack of evidence and then imagine a Designer; rather, it is an argument itself. And when there’s some unanswered question about evolution, each side—both ID and evolution—must fill that gap.
He tells his evolution opponent,
When you get [an answer] in the future, you can stick it in the gap…. But in the meantime, reason and rationality require that we go with the odds-on favorite given the evidence that we have right now. (@24:29)
The what? The “odds-on favorite”?? Someone’s not paying attention. No supernatural explanation has ever successfully explained anything. “Supernatural Explanation” has come in dead last in every race it’s run. No, it’s not the favorite.
And note that the naturalistic answer would depend on what the question is; that’s why the answers are hard to come up with. The ID answer is always the same—God (or “a Creator,” if you prefer) did it, breaking unknown laws in unknown ways. They’ve got a one-size-fits-all answer that’s ungrounded from reality and answers nothing.
Use science correctly
Christians, either use science or don’t. If you don’t, that’s fine, but then tell us you simply believe by faith rather than evidence. And if you do claim science is on your side, then man up and take a stand on the scientific issue that you raise. Tell us that your faith is built on there being no scientific explanation for abiogenesis (or whatever the question is), and if one is found, your faith ends.
The alternative (which I’m sure you’ll choose) is that you’re simply parroting the Unanswered Scientific Question du jour. When it gets answered by science, you’ll pick a new one and hope we don’t notice. You’re always retreating, always moving the goalposts, never taking a stand. Your argument then is nothing more than “Science has unanswered questions; therefore, God.”
Science will always have a long list of important unanswered questions, so this argument is endlessly reusable.
Imagine if Isaac Newton had taken that approach: “Apples fall to earth and planets orbit the sun because of God. Praise the Lord!” Answering every question with “God” dismantles science.
These Christians are abusing science, not using it. It’s not just that they pick and choose scientific facts to support the conclusion they’ve already chosen (rather than following the evidence), but they dishonestly imagine science’s questions are evidence against science.
An article from the Discovery Institute is an example. It begins,
It looks like 2017 could become some kind of genuine annus horribilis [horrible year] for the established scientific consensus on human evolution. It all began with five discoveries that made worldwide headlines earlier this year.
So what are you saying? That evolution is now on the ropes? Or are you just spinning interesting questions (and biologists delight in finding new puzzles to work on) to be knockout punches, knowing that they are nothing of the kind?
When the dust settles, we still have the popular Christian argument: “How do you explain abiogenesis?” or “What came before the Big Bang?” or whatever. They’re valid scientific questions, but Christianity provides no answer.
It’s like these Christians are reading a long book about science. They are impatient with the slow progress, so they turn to the back and find that the last pages are blank. Unable to stand the tension, they pencil in “God did it.”
[Do you] mean, if you don’t understand something, and the community of physicists don’t understand it, that means God did it? Is that how you want to play this game? … Then God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on. — Neil DeGrasse-Tyson
Which is odder, the claim that the earth is a flat disk rather than a sphere or the claim that a god spoke our universe into existence? Given how many parallels there are, it looks like an even match.
Last time we found 8 parallels between flat earth (FE) thinking and either Christianity or Creationism (or both). This article will conclude the comparison by highlighting 7 more.
This series began with an imaginary argument from a flat earth proponent. I hope you observed that even if an argument is completely wrong, if someone has studied its intricacies and you haven’t, they will likely be able to outsmart you on a number of points.
Compare that with Christian thought, which has put infinitely more effort into shoring up its claims. Yes, those claims are from the Bronze Age, but unless you have put some effort in studying them from both sides, you should expect many Christian arguments to leave you scratching your head.
Let’s look for more parallels.
9. “God did it” resolves every problem
Flat earth thinkers and Christians rarely give a thought to the work of materials scientists, quantum physicists, or chemists. And they happily use the fruits of modern science like computers, electricity, and airplanes. They only lose sleep over those scientific fields that step on their theological toes such as geology which gives an old dating of the earth (and annoys young-earth Creationists), astronomy which gives round planets circling the sun (flat earthers), or biology which explains life through evolution (conservative Christians).
When faced with a tough problem, the scientist may admit, “I don’t know.” But flat earthers and Christians always have the God card that they can’t resist playing. They’ll point to science when they like its conclusions, and otherwise declare that God did it (or God is inscrutable, or God’s ways are not our ways, or some similar argument). It’s nice having a God that can be reshaped to fit any need, I guess.
Flat earthers demand, “What does it look like?” when they see a flat earth. And Creationists demand, “What does it look like?” when they see the God who must’ve made our world this complicated.
Creationists, next time you get the urge to impose your religion on all school children, ask yourself if you’d also allow in flat earth theory.
10. Indoctrination
In the FE argument, those of us who remain skeptical were called indoctrinated. Apparently we can’t see the clarity of the FE worldview because we’ve marinated too long in a round-earth environment. We’re too devoted to authority figures who tell us what to think.
But the lady doth protest too much. The difference is that those of us who get our reality about nature from the scientific consensus can point to a remarkable track record. By contrast, FE thinking and Christianity have taught us zero new things about reality, and their disciplines’ track records show only failure.
Naturalist laypeople can accept the scientific consensus as the provisional truth, but we have no authority figures whose declarations we must embrace or which we refuse to challenge.
To those who place themselves as science’s ultimate authority and reserve for themselves the right to pick and choose the science they’ll accept, I have a challenge. They must fill in the blank in this declaration: “I reject the scientific consensus of field X, even though I’m an outsider to that field, because ___.”
11. Science is hard
The flat-earth argument is correct when it points out that science is hard, and that’s a weakness for the round-earth position. To those of us who care about which worldview is correct and nothing more, it can be frustrating to realize that some might embrace a worldview despite its not being correct.
This is the problem with the science-based approach. We’re subjected to a Gish gallop of our own making. Yes, you can explain the science, but it’s a slog that demands patience from our audience.
Consider some of the topics that may come up in a debate over the flat vs. round earth models. Defending a round earth might involve the Coriolis force, mirages, the green flash, tidal lock, rainbows and glories, the Big Bang, stellar spectroscopy, auroras (polar lights), magnetic poles and why they move, precession in both gyroscopes and the earth, and more. Each model must explain these.
Why does the moon look bigger at horizon, and why is the sky blue? Why are there two tide cycles per day, and why is an eclipsed moon red? What causes the seasons, and why is it colder at the north pole? Why can’t we walk through walls if atoms are almost all space, and why do long-distance airplane routes follow a great circle? Science has answers, but science has no obligation to be simple.
The Webb telescope was recently placed at Lagrange point L2. What is L2, and why is it a good place for a telescope? Where are the other Lagrange points, and why?
Want some physics closer to home? Buoyancy is a commonplace concept, but it can be trickier than you expect. Try the cannonball in the rowboat puzzle. For a tougher challenge, solve the dreaded balls and beakers puzzle.
The science explanation makes clear that the earth is round, but FE thinking is simple and intuitive. Science won’t always win this contest.
The Christian connection is that Christians might also consider more than just which worldview is correct. For example, apologist Greg Koukl asked, “Wouldn’t it be more satisfying” for God to ground morality? Many would respond, “Who cares? I want to be in harmony with the truth.” But to some, Koukl’s appeal has force.
A similar argument with equally flawed reasoning is the claim that atheism is depressing, so therefore you should adopt Christianity.
But of course that won’t satisfy a FE zealot. If inconvenient facts get in the way, they might explain them as a conspiracy.
Creationists, which includes most conservative Christians, have their own inconvenient facts. Evolution convulses their world, so it must be wrong. Again, apologist Greg Koukl is our example. He says that not only is evolution flawed but those within the field know it’s flawed. In other words, it’s a conspiracy.
But here’s an odd problem. Apologist and fellow evolution denier Jim Wallace comes at the question of conspiracy theories from another angle. He says an invented resurrection of Jesus is an incredible conspiracy.
So these apologists tell us that it’s plausible that tens of thousands of evolutionary biologists are part of a conspiracy today but implausible that a small group of people would invent and support the Resurrection claim centuries ago. I’ll let them fight it out.
13. Playing the skeptic
The FE proponent was just being skeptical. Who can complain about that since science welcomes challenges, right? If it’s correct, it can tolerate a few friendly questions.
But “friendly questions” of this nature have consequences. Remember how anti-vax media asked whether hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin or even bleach could be effective treatments for COVID. They were just asking questions—where’s the problem?
The problem was that inventing a worldview based on fake news undercut the credibility of the worldview that was based on real science.
Creationism is a far bigger industry than the FE, with researchers busily undermining the credibility of evolution with pseudoscience. They’ve been fairly successful, and 66 percent of white evangelical Protestants in the U.S. accept Creationism over evolution. The problem here is false stories that encourage people to reject the truth.
Do you remember the Ken Ham (Creationist) vs. Bill Nye (scientist) debate? They were asked what would change their minds. Nye quickly gave a couple of examples of potential new data that would change his mind. But what would change Ken Ham’s mind? Nothing, he admitted.
And that’s the problem with FE proponents and Creationists. Remember point #5: Always attack. They ask questions, but these are only meant to sow doubt. They don’t actually want them answered. It’s not like they have any intention of changing their minds because of new information.
14. Sweeping, unfalsifiable claims
FE proponents are usually Christian, and they’ll point to the obvious flat earth models in the Bible. This means that if an argument isn’t going the way they’d hoped, they have the option to fall back on an omnipotent God. They’ll say that if God’s actions are surprising, you can take it up with him. God moves in mysterious ways, we’re in no position to judge God, blah blah blah.
But it’s not possible to falsify “God did X” since God is always a dozen steps ahead of us. And by being unfalsifiable, this claim is unscientific.
The Creationist or Christian is hoist by the same petard. Perhaps if they see parallels with FE thinking, they’ll be less likely to make the FE proponent’s claims.
Scientific claims are falsifiable, … while pseudo-scientific claims fit with any imaginable set of observable outcomes. What this means is that you could do a test that shows a scientific claim to be false, but no conceivable test could show a pseudo-scientific claim to be false. Sciences are testable, pseudo-sciences are not.
15. Teach it in schools?
I haven’t seen any FE proponent demand that their alternate reality be taught in schools. I’m sure the average Christian would be as outraged at the suggestion as any atheist. But if that’s the case, Christians should help keep all pseudoscience, including Creationism, out of schools.
In 2011, then Texas governor Rick Perry put it this way, “In Texas we teach both creationism and evolution in our public schools, because I figure you’re smart enough to figure out which one is right.”
So which one is right, and how do you know? If you already know, why don’t we just teach that instead of wasting class time teaching both? Or is “figure out which one is right” a personal thing so that any answer is correct? That would certainly making grading tests in biology class easier if personal opinions count as correct answers.
We teach science in science class, not discarded theories like astrology, alchemy, or Creationism. Within biology, there is no controversy.
Creationists, next time you get the urge to impose your religion on all school children, ask yourself if you’d also allow in flat earth theory. Or is only your pseudoscience allowed in?
The science explanation makes clear that the earth is round, but flat earth thinking is simple and intuitive. Science won’t always win this contest.
Conclusion
Creationists and Christians have questions and arguments that the layperson can’t immediately answer, but the same is true for flat earthers. Assign a Christian apologist to develop a case for Bigfoot or alien visitors or that all world leaders are lizard people, and that would also take some effort to rebut. Christians have been working on their case for two thousand years. It’s not surprising that it initially sounds impressive.
Christian arguments are effective because they’re confusing, not because they’re sound. They’re weighty enough to convince someone who wants to be convinced, but the patient skeptic can eventually remove all the paint to see that there’s no wood underneath. Apologists raise a lot of dust, but at bottom all they have is, “Well, you haven’t proven there’s no God,” which counts for nothing since they have the burden of proof.
Christians, how can you accept Christianity but reject flat earth theory when these 15 parallels show how similar they are? Christianity is in present society only because it was in past society. It’s been grandfathered in. It didn’t earn its way in with evidence like science.
[The flat earth claim] is ultimately lazy, childish, and self-indulgent, resulting in a profound level of ignorance drowning in motivated reasoning. — Steven Novella
Is the earth a flat disk? I hope we can agree that it’s not, that the earth is a sphere, and that flat earth thinking is bullshit. My last article was a dialogue with an imaginary flat earther, and while I tried to give as strong an account as possible, I hope it was obvious that my feet are firmly planted on a round earth.
With few exceptions, atheists and Christians are on the same page with respect to flat earth thinking. It’s a nice change to be starting with a point of agreement. Sadly, this beautiful concord is not to last, because I think Christianity is little more than flat earth thinking with centuries of patina.
There are surprisingly many parallels between flat earth thinking and Christianity. As you analyzed the argument from our mythical flat earth (FE) proponent, I hope you regularly got the sense of, “Hmm—that feels familiar.” That feeling probably pointed you to either Creationism or Christianity, and often both. Let’s look for those parallels.
1. Sufficient evidence
Who is the audience for the argument? Not a scientist, if the argument is coming from a flat earther or a Creationist*. If Creationists were trying to do real science, they’d be going to conferences and writing papers for secular journals, like the real scientists.
If you donate to a Creationist organization, will that fund scientific research? Of course not—it will be used to convince lay Christians that they’ve backed the right horse and to appeal for more donations.
The standard of evidence for the FE proponent, Creationist, or Christian is low. They want the available evidence to be sufficient, and they’re convinced before the argument begins.
2. Misdirection by focusing on minutia
The FE proponent had lots of odd arguments. While they might have been confusing, which could have been their purpose, they were trivial. For example, our FE proponent was all over the literal map with questions about long-distance flight routes in the southern hemisphere.
The same is true for Christians and their complicated claims like the Fine Tuning argument or Ontological argument. This is what you lead with? If there were an omniscient and omnipotent god who wanted to be known, he’d be known! The very need for apologetics proves that such a god doesn’t exist.
In Christian parlance, they focus on the gnat but ignore the camel.
3. Gish gallop
The Gish gallop is a technique named after Creationist debater Duane Gish. His style was to pile many quick attacks onto his debating opponent while ignoring attacks to his own position. Even if his opponent were familiar with each attack and had a rebuttal, to thoroughly respond would mean descending into long, tedious explanations that would bore the audience and wouldn’t fit into a formal debate.
We see this in the FE argument. It contained rapid-fire arguments about the amount of sun in Arctic, why the moon doesn’t rotate, flat map projections, gyroscopes, and so on. This focus on quantity over quality takes advantage of the typical person’s scientific ignorance.
You see this in the Christian domain when they talk about a cumulative case. That is, any one argument may not be sufficient, but look how many there are! But consider this when applied to pseudo-sciences like astrology or Bigfoot. Crappy arguments don’t turn to gold just because you have a pile of them.
And, as with Gish, a debate or article with a pile-up of one terse argument after another is still popular among Creationists.
4. Errors and lies
My goal in writing the FE position was a compelling argument, not a factual one. For a few points, I tossed out a claim that either I didn’t know was true or knew was false. I suspect this approach is common within FE arguments. If not that, then I can only conclude careless scholarship is the cause of the many errors.
I wonder how many times the typical FE proponent has been corrected. And I wonder how many corrections lead to that flawed argument never being used by that person again. In my case it takes just one such correction.
In the Creationist camp, Ray Comfort (to take one well-known example) has been schooled many times how evolution doesn’t predict a crocoduck. My guess is that he values the useful argument more than he is repelled by the broken one.
5. Always attack
The FE argument is a stringing together of arguments of the form, “Didya ever wonder about natural feature X? A round earth model is supposed to explain that? That’s crazy!”
It’s easier to attack a scientific model than to defend one when the audience is poorly educated in science. FE (and Creationist) arguments try to keep the opponent off balance, always on the defensive.
If they throw ten punches, only two of which land with any impact, that’s two more than they started with. A layperson poorly educated in the material and predisposed to root for the anti-science argument might give the decision to the attacker.
With an argument that intends to be scientific, the opposite is true, and a new theory is explained, supported with evidence, and defended. Not only should it explain what the old theory explains well (and a round earth and evolution explain a lot), it must explain additional puzzles that tripped up the old theory.
The Creationist hopes that no one notices their Achilles’ heel. An attack on evolution does nothing to build up any competing theory of their own.
6. Burden of proof
The FE proponent explicitly rejected the burden of proof, saying that they had common sense on their side. But no one would accept this. They ignored the Sagan standard, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” and rejecting centuries of scientific consensus is the extraordinary position.
It’s also in vogue for Christians to insist that both parties in its debates—the Christian and the atheist—are making claims, and so both must defend their positions. But while the atheist has the option to defend “There is no God” or “There is no supernatural,” that’s not necessary. Either of these could be the default position, leaving the burden of proof solely on the Christian.
I find it amazing that Christians will, without embarrassment, insist on this concession—aren’t they eager to share the Good News without prerequisite?—but here again, they know it’s easier for them to attack than defend.
If there were an omniscient and omnipotent god who wanted to be known, he’d be known!
7. Circular reasoning
The proponent of any theory could show how, starting with a set of widely accepted initial assumptions, an unbiased observer can follow the evidence and conclude with their theory. For example, think of a university course in physics where the professor starts with basic facts that everyone shares and uses evidence to gradually build from there.
FE believers and Christians often follow that approach backwards. They assume their theory and then show how their worldview is consistent with the facts of the world. The best they can do is show that their worldview isn’t falsified by reality and insist that the burden of proof is actually shouldered by their opponent. This is circular reasoning.
8. Appeal to common sense
The FE argument want you to use your eyes and trust your senses. Look at the horizon—it’s flat! Climb a mountain or look over the ocean, and the horizon is still flat. “If flat earth theory is wrong, it’s got to be the rightest wrong theory ever.”
The Creationist equivalent is to say that humans and worms and even bacteria are so complicated that they certain look designed. A Christian example is the Kalam Cosmological Argument, where the first premise has a twist on the common sense idea that everything must have a cause.
No, common sense isn’t reliable at the frontier of science. If it were simply a matter of following one’s common sense, someone like Isaac Newton would’ve resolved all of science’s loose ends centuries ago. Or even Aristotle, millennia ago. “Life is complicated—it must be designed” is common sensical but wrong. The same is likely true for the insistence that everything in nature had a cause.
Suppose you were curious about the flat earth model, the claim that the earth is a flat disk rather than a sphere. You wonder what the fuss is about, so you find an expert who can provide the highlights. Let’s consider that brief summary. I think you’ll find it stronger than you expect at first.
After that, we’ll look at parallels between the arguments for a flat earth and for Christianity. As I take the role of an imaginary flat earth theorist below (in blue), I’d like you to do two things. First, think how you’d respond. Are these childish claims to which you can respond with the math and physics that explains them much better, or must you admit that some arguments, at first glance, can’t be easily knocked down? And second, imagine the Christian parallel and how arguments of the same structure are used to defend Christianity.
(I’ve used “round” earth instead of the more precise “spherical” because that’s the word typically used.)
This article is part of an ongoing series of “silver bullet” arguments against Christianity. Part 1 is here.
The flat earth scholar takes the stage
Go outside and look around. Your horizon maybe be smooth with fields or bumpy with mountains, but it’s flat, not curved. Climb a mountain and look at the horizon, and it’s flat. Go to the beach—the ocean horizon is still flat. Look at a map of your town or your continent or at any scale in between—it’s flat! If flat earth theory is wrong, it’s got to be the rightest wrong theory ever.
But you still have the burden of proof.
When I have common sense on my side? Are my eyes lying to me? I’m happy to present my case in detail, but you’re the one with the extraordinary claims. At best, you can say that you’re comfortable with the round model, but that’s just a matter of familiarity or even indoctrination.
Go ahead then—what does the flat earth look like?
Just like the map in the United Nations logo [see above]. It rather makes me wonder if someone knows more than they’re letting on!
In round-earth terms, that’s an azimuthal projection. You should browse all the map projections out there—Mercator, Peters, Dymaxion, and a hundred more. It almost looks like you guys can’t get your own story straight!
You believe because you’ve been indoctrinated.
Spherical earth
We’ve known for centuries that the earth is spherical.
We’ve known for centuries that matter was solid, and then we found out we were wrong. Atoms are almost all space. Explanations get overturned sometimes—that’s science.
But Eratosthenes proved it more than 2000 years ago! He knew that on the summer solstice each year, in a city south of his home of Alexandria, the sides of a straight well would cast no shadow at noon. But on that day in Alexandria, a vertical pole would cast a shadow. Go further north, and that shadow would be longer. The geometry is simple, and he was even able to compute the circumference of the spherical earth with decent accuracy.
That doesn’t prove a round earth. It just means that a round earth is compatible with the data. With a flat earth and the sun a few thousand miles away, vertical poles would also cast shadows of different lengths.
And ask yourself how many people could derive his conclusions, given the data Eratosthenes started with—one person out of a hundred? There’s your problem. You say, “Give me half an hour and a truckload of patience, and I’ll explain it to you.” You’ve got one tedious explanation for how to manually compute the circumference of the earth, another for how tides work, another for eclipses, another for earthquakes, and yet another for why hurricanes are counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere (or is it clockwise?). You’re buried under complexity.
If it were up to me, I’d just take you outside and say, “Use your senses, including your common sense—what does it look like?”
And have you ever wondered, why a sphere? Why isn’t the earth a cube or an ellipsoid or a blob? But let’s just accept that it’s a sphere. What they’ll tell you is the earth’s 6 × 1024 kg was shaped into a sphere by gravity. Does no one stop to think about the consequences? There’s enough gravity at the surface to crush a million billion billion kilos of material into a sphere, and yet this is a safe environment for children to grow up in? It doesn’t add up.
Magellan circumnavigated the globe five centuries ago. We know it’s a sphere!
Magellan kept going west, and he arrived back in Spain. How is that proof of a round earth? Take that flat UN world map and draw his route on it. It’s a very rough circle. Where’s the puzzle?
Polar conditions and airline routes
Speaking of Magellan and exploration, what happens to the South Pole?
Have you ever been to Antarctica? How about to the South Pole? You believe the South Pole exists because you were told it. You believe on authority. How convenient that we can’t fly there to check. I don’t want to hear that “we all just know” or “the scientists tell us.” You need to give me an argument yourself and show your work.
Look at the flight routes between distant cities in the “northern hemisphere,” like Los Angeles to Moscow or New York to Beijing. They’re straight lines in a flat earth model, and they go across the Arctic.
But where are the equivalent southern hemisphere routes that go over Antarctica? Try Buenos Aires to Sydney or Johannesburg to Auckland. A flat earth map shows why those flight routes don’t exist—they’re not even close to being direct routes. If you actually want to make one of those trips on a commercial airline, you find instead a stopover somewhere in the northern “hemisphere.”
And think about aircraft navigation. Ignoring the takeoff and landing, pilots want to fly straight. That’s the quickest way. And to help them, they have a gyroscope guidance system. The axis of the spinning gyroscope always points in one direction, regardless of the orientation of the airplane. But a “straight path” as dictated by the gyroscope would be a line, not a curve that hugs a round earth! Again, a flat earth explains the facts.
The round model also says that the Arctic and Antarctic get the same amount of sun in a year. Why then does the South Pole have an average summer temperature 50 degrees colder than the North? South Georgia island in the South Atlantic has just 18 species of plants and little animal life. Iceland is more than ten degrees closer to the North Pole, and yet it supports 870 species of native plants and much animal life.
Trustworthy photos?
There are photos of Antarctica.
Sure—at the edges.
There are photos of the South Pole.
There are Photoshoped photos of the South Pole.
And I suppose the photos of the earth from space, showing it to be round, are unreliable as well?
Let’s just say that I’m skeptical. Stalin was erasing his enemies from photos a century ago. The results were so convincing you wouldn’t know it without the before photo for comparison.
NASA had limitless resources during the Apollo program, and it would’ve been far easier and more reliable to invent the evidence than do it the hard way. How much easier is building a moon studio than a moon rocket? I’ve heard of examples where they’ve been caught passing off doctored photos as authentic.
Look more carefully at photos and videos from NASA, and you’ll often see them labeled “composite.” In other words, it doesn’t look like that, and they had to piece images together to create that image. Makes me suspicious—were they trying to cover up something?
I’m sure you’ve seen the Neil Armstrong man-on-the-moon video, but did you wonder why they it was so fuzzy? It’s harder to find flaws in a blurred video.
Browse nature photos online, and you often see beautiful, stark images of deserts or barren terrain that don’t look that different from images passed off as being the “moon” or “Mars.” Makes you wonder.
A photo of earth as a full disk or even as a crescent could be compatible with a flat earth. And keep in mind the distortion a wide-angle camera lens can add. A flat horizon can be made to curve down. It can just as easily be made to curve up!
So there’s a conspiracy here? People in back rooms know the truth but want to keep the little people in the dark for their own good?
I’m just saying it’s possible. Maybe it’s like the science fiction scenario where there’s a huge comet heading our way, and we can’t do anything about it, so what’s the use in worrying? Or maybe it’s just billionaires or high tech executives who find value in keeping some information to themselves. I honestly don’t know.
And let me not pound the table too hard here. I don’t know that NASA is deceiving us or that the round-earth arguments are all flawed. I’m being skeptical. I’m not blindly swallowing what an authority figure dictates, like I imagine you’d want me to be. I’m just the jester, asking questions and pointing out problems.
I’d just take you outside and say, “Use your senses, including your common sense—what does it look like?”
The moon
We get clues to the shape of the earth and moon by looking at other planets. They’re round.
If the moon were a sphere, rotating like the earth, wouldn’t we see the back side? But look at the moon. It goes through phases, but from our vantage point, it never rotates. If it’s round, where’s the back side? Somehow one orbit and one rotation are exactly the same? That’s a crazy coincidence. A flat moon is much simpler.
And where did the moon come from? In round-earth thinking, it orbits the earth at the right rate. Just the right rate. Any slower, and it would spiral in and crash into the earth. Faster, and it would fly away. How would such a just-so balance take place in your model?
The moon does explain the tides.
So the moon, with one percent the mass of the earth, pulls at the ocean and makes it bulge up on the moon side. So gravity is now a sucking force? Even if we grant that the moon reduces the earth’s gravity, why would the water bulge up, moving away from the earth? What’s the pushing force?
And why are there two pairs of tides (a high and a low) per day? If it’s a full moon and the moon and sun are on opposite sides of a round earth, I can imagine two high tides at once. But two weeks later it’s the new moon when the moon and sun are on the same side of the earth, and we still have two high tides!
If the tides work this way, shouldn’t we see tides in lakes, especially large ones? Go to a lake—do you see the water sloshing back and forth like in a bathtub? I certainly don’t.
Timekeeping
Think about how timekeeping works with the round model. The duration of a day is one rotation of the earth—24 hours. Simple, right? But don’t forget that the earth isn’t supposed to just rotate on its axis; it also orbits the sun once per year. So after that exactly-24-hour day, the sun is back to where it was in the sky, but the stars behind the sun appear to have moved slightly because of that small progression of the orbit.
Suppose you want to instead use the fixed background of stars as your time standard—one day is the time for a particular star to return to being overhead. Then your day is 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.0905 seconds long. This is “sidereal time,” and things aren’t so simple anymore. What this means is that our noon-to-noon day is 24 hours long (using the sun’s position as our reference), but the earth rotates once in one sidereal day, 23:56:4.0905 hours long (using the fixed stars). Confused yet? And don’t get me started on leap seconds.
I applaud Kepler’s heliocentric, elliptical orbit model of the solar system—much simpler than the Ptolemaic epicycle model. You shouldn’t be surprised that I favor the flat earth model, which is simpler still.
So if it’s simple, it must be true?
You’re not far off. Scientists look for simple explanations and openly appeal to Occam’s Razor to evaluate competing hypotheses. I’ll emphasize again, I’m not saying that a flat earth model has all the answers. And cut us a little slack—we’re at a disadvantage in this game since we’re not the ones getting the funding.
Space, atmosphere, and a spinning globe
Have you thought about how space works? How can earth’s atmosphere exist next to the vacuum of space? Shouldn’t it be sucked away? If the International Space Station is floating in space, why doesn’t it float away? If the astronauts inside feel earth’s gravity, why aren’t they pulled to the earth-side of the ISS?
Or think about a spinning earth. Spin a sodden tennis ball, and watch the water fly off. That’s roughly analogous to us being on a rotating round earth. So I’m on a sphere spinning at 1000 miles per hour at the equator … and I feel nothing? Shouldn’t we fly off like the tennis ball sheds water?
Or think about a flying drone hovering over the earth. How does that work when the earth is supposedly rotating at 1000 mph? In that situation, drones could just hover and wait for their destination to rotate beneath them. Another analogy: shoot a bullet precisely straight up, and it should land well behind where it was shot.
Have you ever seen the Rays of Buddha? That’s just one name for when the sun is hidden by clouds but sunbeams (rays from the sun that illuminate dust or water vapor suspended by the atmosphere) are visible through breaks in the clouds. Did you ever wonder what it means that these sunbeams are not parallel? The sun is supposed to be 93 million miles away—from a parallax standpoint, effectively infinitely far away. The rays should be parallel, pointing back to an infinitely far-away sun. Why then do these sunbeams converge? Obviously they point to a sun that isn’t that far away!
If flat earth theory is wrong, it’s got to be the rightest wrong theory ever.
Christianity
How important is the Bible to your flat earth views?
For me, very. The Bible is what flat earth thinking is built on, though some flat earth proponents aren’t Christian. We read about the earth being immovable, with pillars and foundations. God surveys “the circle of the earth.”
One of the biggest embarrassments for modern Christians is that God created Man on an insignificant dust speck orbiting one star out of hundreds of billions in our galaxy, just one out of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. But with flat earth theory, that’s not true anymore, and Man is back at the center of God’s creation.
Some Christians say that “circle” means “sphere.”
No—in biblical Hebrew, circle and ball are two different words. “Circle” was used in the context of “perimeter,” like what a sentry would walk around a camp at night.
What about the New Testament?
We find more evidence. The devil tempted Jesus by taking him to a high mountain from which he could see all the kingdoms of the world. Jesus tells us that the end times will include the stars falling from the sky. The Bible is talking about a flat earth.
Christians who reserve the right to figure it out on their own and who don’t just accept what an authority tells them should by rights be flat earthers given the Bible’s clear support for that model. They’re in no position to criticize flat earthers for rejecting conventional science on the shape of the earth but then reject conventional science themselves when it comes to evolution, climate change, covid treatment, and so on.
The Christian backing of flat earth thinking is a handy backstop. If all else fails, the assumption of a Designer and “God works in mysterious ways” can answer just about any attack on the features of the flat earth model.
Let me leave you with some parting recommendations. You believe because you’ve been indoctrinated. Don’t ignore authorities like scientists, but don’t blindly accept what they say, either. Trust your eyes, your intuition, your common sense. Think for yourself.
Taking stock
And there’s more—whether up or down are absolute or relative, whether gravity is its own force or if buoyancy and density explain why some things are heavier than others, whether engineers need to accommodate the curvature of the earth when building large projects like railroads or tunnels, and so on. But this should be plenty to illustrate the ideas.
You’re welcome to rebut these claims and attack flat earth thinking in the comments, but debunking the flat earth isn’t the purpose. In the next article, I’ll pursue the two points that I do want to make. First, even a completely false worldview can make a semi-reasonable account of itself to someone who isn’t prepared. Second, an argument for Christianity shares many of the traits of this argument for the flat earth.
Continue: consider the parallels between flat-earth thinking and Christianity here.
People’s opinions are mainly designed to make them feel comfortable; truth, for most people, is a secondary consideration. — Bertrand Russell
Let’s take back some atheists’ quotes that have been misinterpreted by Christian apologists. In this final segment, we look at a historian, a philosopher, and a cosmologist (part 1 here).
7. A. N. Sherwin-White, historian
The gospels were written roughly 40 to 60 years after the events they supposedly describe. Christian apologist William Lane Craig has cited Sherwin-White to argue that legendary additions to oral history happen slowly enough that the gospels are still reliable despite that long gap. This is Craig:
According to Sherwin-White, the writings of Herodotus enable us to determine the rate at which legend accumulates, and the tests show that even two generations is too short a time span to allow legendary tendencies to wipe out the hard core of historical facts. When Professor Sherwin-White turns to the gospels, he states that for the gospels to be legends, the rate of legendary accumulation would have to be “unbelievable.” More generations would be needed. (Source)
Lots of problems here.
Misquote: Sherwin-White never said “unbelievable” in this context. But it sounds so much better when Craig says it, so (in a curious bit of evolutionary survival of the fittest), his quote is always cited by subsequent apologists rather than Sherwin-White’s original.
Wrong interpretation: Craig interprets the passage to say that myth never prevails over historic truth within two generations. What Sherwin-White actually claims is that myth doesn’t always prevail over historic truth.
Overselling: Sherwin-White was not proposing a law that governs legendary accretion and offered no algorithm that would winnow out the legendary chaff from a historical account.
Delicate balance: Craig is defending the extraordinary claims of the supernatural, and he needs extraordinary evidence. He wants legendary development to be slow to argue for the gospels’ accuracy, but it must be quick so that the many second-century noncanonical gospels couldn’t arguably be historically reliable as well.
Russell wrestled with religion and how we should see the world in “A Free Man’s Worship” (1903). The paragraph that Christian apologists always quote begins with a ponderous 134-word sentence in which he gives us some existential tough love. Not only will we all die, he reminds us, but all that we strive for and care about will be dust eventually. The sentence ends with the warning, “No philosophy which rejects [these facts] can hope to stand.” And then, the bombshell:
Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul’s habitation be safely built.
Christians have interpreted this to mean that the atheist outlook is despair. That atheists should be suicidal, with their worldview to blame.
That’s not what it means. If I say, “I despair of winning this game,” I’ve fully accepted the fact that I won’t win. The matter is hopeless, but only in that I have fully accepted the facts and hold no hope that they will be overturned. It doesn’t mean that I’m sobbing with grief.
“Unyielding despair” means that you must accept Russell’s list without caveat. You should despair of finding a loophole like a god who has created an afterlife for you. Russell is saying we can’t look away from the facts: we’re just animals that happened to evolve on one ordinary, insignificant dust speck in a universe that has trillions of such dust specks. We’re not immortal, we’re not even special, and Mankind is just temporary.
It’s a discouraging, even depressing existential fact that we’re going to die and our achievements will eventually be forgotten, but that’s life. Few of us let it get in the way of making the most of our limited time on earth. Russell’s point is that we can’t sidestep this but must face it. If we hold out that we are special, we will be held back—that was what he meant by “no philosophy which rejects [these facts] can hope to stand.”
And even if you think atheism is depressing, this does nothing to say that atheism is wrong. Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson offers some lighthearted clarity: “If you are depressed after being exposed to the cosmic perspective, you started your day with an unjustifiably large ego.”
Conclusion: Russell makes a reasonable point that only seems like an attack on atheism.
[William Lane Craig] wants legendary development to be slow to argue for the gospels’ accuracy, but not so slow that the many second-century noncanonical gospels could arguably be historically reliable as well.
9. Alexander Vilenkin, cosmologist
Apologist William Lane Craig often cites the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem, which concludes (given certain assumptions) that the universe can’t be infinite in duration. Here he quotes Vilenkin’sMany Worlds in One:
It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning. (Alexander Vilenkin, Many Worlds in One [2007], p. 176)
Theologians have often welcomed any evidence for the beginning of the universe, regarding it as evidence for the existence of God…. So what do we make of a proof that the beginning is unavoidable? Is it a proof of the existence of God? This view would be far too simplistic. Anyone who attempts to understand the origin of the universe should be prepared to address its logical paradoxes. In this regard, the theorem that I proved with my colleagues does not give much of an advantage to the theologian over the scientist.
Apparently, taking the first quote out of context made for a stronger story than acknowledging the second quote and addressing the tension between them.
Conclusion: quote taken out of context.
But am I consistent?
Let’s return to the challenge I set for myself in the first article in this series, that I must quote Christians like Francis Collins correctly while avoiding the problems I highlighted in the nine examples that followed.
Christians quoting atheists can be legitimately done. They just need to follow the basic rules of research that one might learn in eight grade: a quote can be used only if it’s accurately quoted, correctly understood, excerpted in its context, and cited accurately.
You’re welcome to hold me to these standards, because you know I will be doing that to the Christian apologists.
Never rely on a priest to provide objective analysis of his theological product. He always has a used car to sell. — David Madison
We’ve looked at the odd interpretation of atheism by “John the atheist” in an earlier article. Several commenters suggested that such a bizarre interpretation must be a Christian parody, but no, this seems to be an honest claim.
In part 2, we looked at the even odder embrace by Christian apologists of John’s conclusions. I suppose John’s ideas fit their agenda to make atheism look ridiculous, but why not stop to consider whether John’s views are shared by other atheists? Or if the views are at all defensible?
First, this post tries to establish that John is not some maverick, either an idiot who doesn’t know which end is up within atheism or a prescient pioneer who sees what no one else can see. Rather, he says that this is already admitted by other atheists and should be a standard part of the discussion. He quotes Richard Dawkins:
In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, or any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference…. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.
This is supposed to mirror John’s position? Nope. Dawkins is simply observing that there is no evidence for a benevolent supernatural that looks out for us or a wise supernatural that created us. And this Christian blogger offers no reason to believe otherwise.
Nature just exists without emotion or mind. Mt. Everest doesn’t care who climbs it or dies trying. It doesn’t celebrate if you get to the top, and it doesn’t lament if you fall to your death. When a fox chases a rabbit, “good” is relative, and what’s good for the fox is bad for the rabbit and vice versa. Germs don’t want to replicate or hurt you—it’s just biology. The tea in my cup doesn’t want to stay hot or cool down—it’s just physics. Why imagine the universe as a whole acts any differently?
Dawkins points out that there is no human justice in nature, but that doesn’t mean that there is no justice. Merriam-Webster gives several definitions of justice (none of which appeal to objective anything) including “the assignment of merited rewards or punishments,” “the administration of law,” and “the quality of being just, impartial, or fair.” It’s clear that humans can strive for this kind of justice, even though we don’t have the objective or transcendent kind.
At first you marvel at how well God knows you to give such an appropriate gift, but then you notice your name written on the inside cover, in your handwriting. And all the margin notes that you added. And the gap on the bookshelf where you remember that book being.
Atheist Michael Ruse cited
Next, the Christian blog quotes philosopher of science and atheist Michael Ruse.
Morality is an [evolutionary] adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth…. Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate when someone says, “Love thy neighbor as thyself” [but] such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, … and any deeper meaning is illusory.
And again, this is quite different from what John said—John imagined that only objective morality exists, and any other morality doesn’t count. That the blogger doesn’t understand this simple distinction between objective morality and the regular kind as defined in the dictionary threatens my lofty evaluation of Christian apologetics.
Wintry Knight’s wrapup
The post draws its conclusions:
I see a lot of atheists these days thinking that they can help themselves to a robust notion of consciousness, to real libertarian free will, to objective moral values and duties, to objective human rights, and to objective meaning in life, without giving credit to theism…. [As Cornelius Van Til observed,] atheists have to sit in God’s lap to slap his face. We should be calling them out on it.
Wait—who should be calling out whom? You’ve got no argument. You’re just presupposing God into existence. With no sense of irony, a sentence later in the same paragraph begins, “This is not to say that we should go all presuppositional on them,” but I’m afraid that ship has sailed.
You can point to issues that science still has questions about, like consciousness, but let’s not imagine Christianity is any better and gives reliable answers backed up by evidence. And as for objective morality and meaning, the ball’s in your court to show that these exist apart from the ordinary kind that we all experience in our own lives.
A better metaphor
The image shouldn’t be sitting in God’s lap to slap his face. Instead, imagine unwrapping a present from God on Christmas morning to find a book. The book is one of your favorites. At first you marvel at how well God knows you to give such an appropriate gift, but then you notice your name written on the inside cover, in your handwriting. And all the margin notes that you added. And the gap on the bookshelf where you remember that book being.
Morality isn’t something we get from God. Morality is already part of humanity, but “God” pretends to give it back to us.
I think it’s particularly important not to let atheists utter a word of moral judgment on any topic, since they cannot ground an objective standard that allows them to make statements of morality.
Why complain about atheists’ lack of an objective standard when you don’t have one yourself? All you have are empty claims.
Further, I think that they should have every immorality ever committed presented to them, and then they should be told “your worldview does not allow you to condemn this as wrong.” They can’t praise anything as right, either.
I will with pleasure judge things as right and wrong. You’ll say that those would be subjective judgments. Yes, that’s true—just like yours.
The problem for most Christians is that they can’t fairly judge God’s actions. I’m happy to label his crimes as bad, from hardening Pharaoh’s heart to maximize his downfall, to the global flood, to hell. Those Christians can’t call God wrong if they declare whatever God does as right by definition.
It can be hard making an honest characterization of your opponent’s position. This, I’m afraid, isn’t an example.
I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. — Umberto Eco
(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 2017-9-4.)
