This month we have a guest "Fact of the Month" by Dr. Danny Faulkner. He addresses the comment made by an Old Earth Creationist; "The Flat Earth mentality of many Christians worries me."
Danny's answer: "The charge of flat earthism is often thrown at (young Earth) creationists. The truth of the matter is, the church never believed nor taught that the earth was flat. This was a false argument put forth by John W. Draper and Andrew Dickson White in the latter half of the 19th century. They attempted to shame the church into accepting Darwinian evolution by falsely claiming that the church got it wrong on the shape of the earth a few hundred years earlier and now had an opportunity to redeem itself on the issues of origins. Unfortunately, far too many people bought this lie, as evidenced by the faux history of Christopher Columbus and the shape of the earth that is taught in schools. All of this was well documented by the medieval scholar J. B. Russell in his book, "Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians." BTW, Russell, by his own admission, is not a Christian.
We have only fragmentary copies of copies of copies, etc. of the earliest scientific and philosophical writings. The clearest sources that we have are copies of sources that go back about 2500 years to the time of Pythagoras and his school. That is the earliest clear teaching of the earth's sphericity, though I suspect that the idea was not new then. My sources don't explicitly state that Thales was a flat earther, but since he predated Pythagoras, that is an inference some could make. Thales did know of the Saros cycle and certainly understood eclipses. The circular shape of the earth's shadow during all lunar eclipses is a good argument for the earth being an orb. A flat but round earth would cast circular shadows only during eclipses at midnight. Eclipses near sunrise or sunset would not cast circular shadows if the earth were round but flat. My point is that Thales had the information available to him to deduce the shape of the earth. Whether he acted upon that information is unknown. Keep in mind that we don't have copies of the original writings of these early people, but instead have copies of the writings of much later people who recorded what these earlier people said or wrote. I suspect that the sphericity of the earth was known before 2500 years ago, though no one can prove that.
Earlier people did believe in a flat earth, but the question is when that belief was abandoned. Certainly by Alexander the flat earth was a minority belief. As for the church's role, you really ought to read Russell's book - it isn't that long. He finds only one person in the church, the name of which escapes me, who may have taught a flat earth. My objection in all this is the indiscriminate use of flat earth belief as if this was every seriously held by even a small minority in the church. Russell does an excellent job in refuting this. This is a sore spot with me, so I don't like to ever let this go unchallenged.
Danny R. Faulkner; a stellar astronomer; Email drfaulkn@gwm.sc.edu