Capricorn Too

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While seeking the official Flat Earth Society website (don’t ask) I became aware of the fact that several such societies exist. Frequently used as a slur against Luddites and troglodytes alike, the Flat Earth Society would best be classified as a modern religion based on ancient paradigms. This is clear when considering the motivation of Samuel Birley Rowbotham, the erstwhile founder of the movement and author of Zetetic Astronomy. Rowbotham also published a broadside entitled “The Inconsistency of Modern Astronomy and its Opposition to the Scriptures!!” (c. 1850, exclamation points in the original). Those who still doubt the religious nature of the movement should consider that the full-text of Zetetic Astronomy is available on Sacred-Texts.com. The objection to non-geocentric astronomy, although now based on several factors, is religious in origin.

The clashing of worldviews is inevitable when empirical evidence comes into play. As early as the days of Pythagoras and Aristotle thinkers were questioning how physical reality fared against apparent reality. As animals who evolved to cope with apparent reality, the fact that the earth bolts around the sun at a dizzying speed is of little practical value to humans. Making that successful hunt, however, depends on the beneficence of the gods—incredibly important. In such scenarios religion wins out against science every time. The truth of actual existence is more fascinating but indescribably less rich than a mythological worldview. Instead of Dagan, Baal, Zeus, or Thor, we have static electricity. Sure, lightning still behaves in unpredictable ways, but there’s not a god out their hurling it towards sinners. Abstruse laws of fluid dynamics and the flow of electrons determine what is actually happening. Yet we flock to theaters to watch Thor.

While most educated religious believers seldom put too much credibility toward the biblical worldview, they often sense relief at having “flat earthers” to ridicule. Ironically, the stated goal of websites such as Sacred-Texts.com is to promote religious tolerance. For most modern believers, already under the gun of science, tolerance is understood to extend to religions like ours. Those that are outside: modern paganism, flat earth beliefs, ufo religions—such belief-structures deserve ridicule. Is such a mentality not indicative of a certain level of discomfort with “mainstream religions” as well? No matter how far Hubble peers, even to the ends of the universe, it spies no God. No matter how deeply geologists sound, no Hell is beneath our feet. We cannot easily let go of such concepts, no matter how pre-Enlightenment they may be. It may be a good exercise for modern-day people to occasionally read Zetetic Astronomy to remind ourselves that religion comes in all shapes and sizes.

Daniel in the Lyin’s Den

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Yesterday I found myself. Online, that is. I was cited ambivalently as “some guy” in the Uncommon Descent blog comments, noting my Creationism’s White Box podcast. For those unfamiliar with Uncommon Descent, this is a blog hosting many posts by William Dembski, a leading creationist. Finding myself there, I instantly recalled that Daniel was never masticated in the lion’s den.

Not being one to judge without good cause, I read the critique with care. It read: “Some guy I read in the last few days here [link to my podcast] has suggested (to the approval of a few clerics) that creationism is an early 20th century phenomenon but all he’s really done is conflate creationism with the Creationist movement that grew out of, or was associated with, the publication of ‘The Fundamentals’.” Since academics like to split hairs (and even atoms), I thought I’d use today’s post to explain, in History 101 style, the problems with this assertion.

Creationism, like any other human enterprise, has a history. Christianity was born in a literalistic age, of sorts. Early Christians took the Hebrew Bible (pretty much The Bible in those days) literally. Belief in a flat earth and mythic beings still predominated the upper cortices of early brains too. My detractor could have been correct had the conflationism charges been laid at my door prior to the Enlightenment. The fact is that everyone born since the eighteenth century (academically speaking) has had access to science and the facts we’ve ascertained about our world. One of those sets of facts has had to do with evolution, and another with the history of the Bible. Interestingly, both of these sets of facts coincide perfectly: biological evolution took place and the Bible was a product of its environment. These truths have been available for centuries for any who would look at them.

The veracity of this statement is attested by the nearly universal acceptance of evolutionary theory by Christians in the western world in the late nineteenth century. Creationism, as such, did not exist at this time. It was in reaction to a number of social and theological factors that Creationism first hatched around the turn of the twentieth century. It was a new bird (I’ll avoid saying “hopeful monster”). Any claim that it was a default version of Christianity is strictly Retro — any such claim is tantamount to declaring that the Enlightenment never happened. I’m not a supporter of revisionist history, so I just can’t accept this flimsy construct. Fact is, Creationism is relatively new.

There is a great bibliography out there for anyone interested in getting the actual facts. Start with Ronald Number’s The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism (University of California Press, 1992) and read on. Otherwise, feel free to believe in a flat earth — you can find good proof of this in central Illinois or Kansas.