Christian Fundamentalists Embrace Flat Earth.

I'm ashamed to say that recently resurgent
beliefs in  flat earthism, like young earthism, 
has strong christian fundamentalist leanings

An interesting web-article on the Flat Earth movement can be read here. It was written by Lee McIntyre a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science, Boston University. To further his research into the contemporary burgeoning of anti-science sub-cultures he attended a flat earth conference and his web-article tells of his experiences. 

I have touched on flat earth theory before but as with young earthism (unless like McIntyre you are a researcher in the field) I regard it as time wasted spending too much effort refuting the work of people who have a knack of tying themselves up in intellectual knots when there are other things I should be pursuing.  There is no way of stopping this lunacy because, as the saying goes, one can make a refutation idiot proof but these kinds of movement have a way of finding even better idiots from a bottomless pit of idiocy. 

As I have pointed out before flat earth theory necessarily includes huge dollops of conspiracy theorism in order to work as a "theoretical framework"; by necessity conspiracy theorism is part and parcel with the flat earthist mindset. Conspiracy theorism is itself a narrative which attempts to make sense of life, but less in an intellectual way than in the sense of satisfying certain emotional, ego and group needs, catalysed in part by a failure to identify with society's establishment. Generalised conspiracy theorism is itself a theoretical non-starter  (See here, here, here), but no doubt the connectivity of the internet has helped promote the contemporary sub-culture of conspiracy theorism. Moreover, I have a growing conviction that these anti-science sub-cultures are bound up with the rise of anti-establishment popularism and the ascendancy of people like Donald Trump, a man who has (probably) cynically courted the professional conspiracy theorist Alex Jones (who also makes claims to being a Christian) in his attempts to secure the large American anti-establishment popularist vote; and this includes many Christian fundamentalists.  

What I would like to highlight here is a quote from McIntyre's article providing evidence that Christian fundamentalism is implicated as one of the factors driving the rise of flat earthism. Viz (My emphases): 

For the first day, I kept my mouth shut and just listened. I wore the conference badge and took notes. The second day, I came out hard as a philosopher of science. After numerous conversations, I came away with the conclusion that Flat Earth is a curious mixture of fundamentalist Christianity and conspiracy theory, where outsiders are distrusted and belief in Flat Earth is (for some) tantamount to religious faith. This is not to say that most Christians believe in Flat Earth, but almost all of the Flat Earthers I met (with a few notable exceptions) were Christians. While they claimed not to rely on faith as proof of their beliefs—and were anxious to present their own "scientific evidence"—most did seek empirical findings that would make all of their beliefs (both spiritual and worldly) consistent with one another. And once they started looking, the evidence was all around them.

Further evidence of the rise of flat earthism among fundamentalists can be found from the testimony of the young earthist fundamentalist organisation Answers in Genesis who are aghast at the idea of the flat earth movement identifying itself with a Biblical literalist fundamentalism.  For example in a blog post dated 2nd June this year Ken Ham said: 

In the past, one question I rarely ever received was, “What about the flat earth?” But now I hear it all the time! And that holds true for our other AiG speakers, particularly our astronomer, Dr. Danny Faulkner.

Clearly then something is afoot among Christian fundamentalists and it is alarming AiG. Here is the original link to Ham's post although the post has recently been taken offline for some unknown reason. If you go to the AiG web site and type in "flat earth" in the search field it returns quite a few articles arguing against flat earth ideas; one of the few times I can get behind AiG! Some of the articles, I think, are less about the flat earth movement per se than worrying the subject of whether or not the Bible writers had a flat earth world view; after all if some of them did then this would raise questions over AiG's literalist paradigm of scripture. 

Also of interest is a flat earth discussion on the Answers in Genesis Facebook page*.  This discussion succeeds in bringing out the flat earth fundamentalists in opposition to the original young earthists who oppose flat earth. The thing to note is how acrimonious the discussion gets when there are fundamentalists on both sides of the debate. This is really no surprise: After all both sides believe their opinions to have the divine authority of a very angry God of eternal damnation so what do you expect? There is, however, poetic justice in the fact that young earthists are being hoist by their own petard as a crass Biblical literalist paradigm is being turned on them by Christian flat earthists. They are very effectively consuming one another's time by arguing among themselves!**.

In many ways flat earthism is a natural outcome of young earthist culture (and in fact fundamentalism in general); the latter believe that there is kind of world-wide conspiracy of scientists, all of whom are spreading ideas of "millions of years and evolution". That a myriad independent scientists across the world manage to largely march in lock step on this question is put down to the fundamentalist notion that because they are all in rebellion to God they are all fixated on the concept of an old earth and shoe horn the data into this preconception. But this requires such a feat of organised behaviour among many independent scientists that the fundamentalist has to invoke the concept of world-wide Satanic influences being at work behind the scenes prompting scientists to work from a false starting point. They are, of course, also many Christians in the academic establishment who accept mainstream science. But according to Ken Ham, AiG's supremo, Christians who contradict his views are wilfully and knowingly compromising their faith; presumably as all part of the world-wide Satanically inspired conspiracy! It is this kind of distrust of outsiders (an observation also made by McIntyre at the flat earth conference - see above) that is an important precursor of conspiracy theorism. 


FOOTNOTES
* In case this  discussion should go offline I think I have managed to capture most of it and copied it here

** It is worth comparing the AiG discussion with the following argument I published between two Christian fundamentalists one of whom is a geocentrist.

https://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.com/2010/11/fundamentalist-argument-clinic-part-1.html
https://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundamentalist-argument-clinic-part-2.html
https://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.com/2011/02/fundamentalist-argument-clinic-part-3.html
https://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.com/2011/03/fundamentalist-argument-clinic-part-4.html

In 2011 when I published that discussion I would never have guessed that Christian fundamentalism was set to get a lot worse and start turning to flat earthism! - it goes to show how quickly it has come to the fore; within less than a decade in fact. By comparison it would be worth researching how long it took for young earthism to gain acceptance among 1960s fundamentalists without the aid of the internet.

ADDENDUM  24/06/2019

There's an interesting post here by PZ Myers where he once again indulges his passion for lampooning fundamentalist lunacy. In this case his target is a very recent (June 22) article on the AiG web site by Ken Ham's tame astronomer Danny Faulkner. The article is a critique of flat earthism and as Myers remarks it is very ironic in that much of the article could be about AiG itself if one simply replaces "flat earth" by "young earth". The article can be found here:

https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/earth/reflections-flat-earth-movement/

Before I read the article I thought my many years of observing fundamentalism had pretty much hardened me to its irony and that therefore my own irony meter would survive the reading intact. However, when I read the following my meter did become dangerously overloaded! Viz:

This extreme suspicion of anyone with any amount of advanced education is common in certain brands of Christian fundamentalism. This type of fundamentalism is committed to a very wooden, hyper-literal approach to the Bible. The fear is that if one admits that any part of the Bible is not literal, then one is free to interpret any and all the Bible in a nonliteral sense. But this fear is unwarranted, for some parts of the Bible clearly are not literal.

Additionally, many flat-earth pastors are very domineering and dictatorial. This rubs many people the wrong way, particularly when other, much smaller, differences arise. 

Flat-earthers insist that their understanding of the Bible is the only true meaning of Scripture, dismissing all others as the mere teachings of men at best, and at worst, the work of the devil. This is the major defining characteristic of a cult.

Pastors who are very domineering and dictatorial?  Insistence that  their understanding of the Bible is the only true meaning of Scripture, dismissing all others as the mere teachings of men at best, and at worst, the work of the devil ? Suspicion of outsiders, particularly of academia? That non-literal interpretations are the thin end of the satanic wedge? 

I wonder where have I seen this kind of thing before? Perhaps here,  here,  here, here, here,  here and here?