An Open Letter to a Flat-Earth Denier.

First of all, I need to explain why I'm writing this. Harrison Cother, an ex-Jehovah's Witness turned atheist, had recently posted a video on his YouTube channel. It contains a very plausible set of explanations on why the Bible must be discredited as historic. His presentation is so powerful in making sense that anyone unwary is likely to be convinced that the Bible is ridiculously unscientific, and even accuses God, who inspired the Bible, of deliberate falsehood by telling the ancient Hebrews that the Earth is flat, thus presenting a small but significant social and spiritual danger. I feel that it's the right thing to stand up for Jesus Christ and the Faith delivered to His saints.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Harrison Cother,

May I, first of all, say that you're the sort of chap I would feel privileged to have as a friend, a man I can trust, someone I would respect, the person I'm quite happy to have a chat with at a Costa or Starbucks. And, in no way would I feel that whatever you say to me would pose any threat to my faith in Jesus Christ and my belief in the truthfulness of the Bible. Also, I'll be the first to say that your videos are well and professionally made. A skill which, unfortunately, I don't have. Therefore, I fully commend the skill required for your presentation.

However, on Twitter, you asked me how I accused you of mocking the Bible after reading the title of my last blog, How an Atheist Mocks the Bible. I was unable to answer your question on Twitter due to the website's restricted input. Therefore I thought it would be better to answer your question here on this page.

Why am I writing an open letter instead of a private one to you?

It seems fair to both of us that since you posted a video on YouTube to be viewed publicly, it's also appropriate to write an open letter in reply. But I have wondered whether I have used the word mock correctly in the title or not. If I rightly understand the English language, the meaning of the word is either to tease, to poke fun at, to scorn with sarcasm, or even to treat a serious matter as a joke. It could also mean to imitate. For example, a recently-built property could have its exterior facelifted to make it look as if it was built during Tudor times. Therefore, we refer to that house as mock Tudor.

Cother's Video from his channel, The Truth Hurts.

After I read your question on Twitter, I watched your video again to get a better idea of what you're trying to say. Afterwards, I realised that it might have been better had I titled my blog as How an Atheist mocks the Christian Creationist, or How an Atheist Mock Modern Christians. However, I still feel that the word mock was correctly used in this context, even if I should have been more accurate with the object of the title. As such, I apologise if you find my blog title disturbing.

Harrison, I'm aware that you have bad feelings against the Watchtower organisation. I wouldn't be surprised if you're harbouring a feeling of bitterness or even anger over your realisation that you grew up under a deception. And I'm also aware that your motives behind the making of your video were not poking fun. Rather, it was to expose a supposed fallacy of the Bible teaching or endorsing a flat-Earth cosmology. Therefore, I ask you to keep on reading what I'm writing here. With as much kindness and fraternal love I have for you, I would like to demonstrate that the Bible does not teach or imply a flat-Earth model. Indeed, it cannot.

In your video, you centre your argument on the belief that the ancient Hebrews thought that the Earth was a flat disc under a vaulted dome you call the Firmament, implying a hard inverted bowl which within, the sun, the moon and all the stars rotate. Here, I come straight to the point. No way does the Bible endorse your interpretation of its texts! And here is the reason why I used the word mock in my last blog title. I sincerely believe that you are more intelligent and have more common sense than what you allow me to see in your videos.

Here, I'll illustrate what I mean. You say that the ancient Hebrews believed that the Earth is flat, and furthermore, God inspires his prophets to endorse this cosmological model and then, years later, inspires Paul to write that all Scripture is "breathed" by God and therefore, He cannot lie.

Take another look at your flat Earth model, Harrison. You see that the sun, moon and stars are all inside the dome, and the sun and moon are moving on a level circular path some distance above the Earth disc. This results in multiple problems - the main error is that no ancient Hebrew would have backed your theory nor testify of any truth in it.

In your model, the North Pole is bang at the centre of the disc. There is no South Pole. Instead, Antarctica is presented as an ice ring marking the edge of the Earth, and it's on the edge where the mouth of the Firmament meets, thus resulting in a sealed vault enclosed by the dome. Since the sun is always above the surface of a flat Earth, there cannot be any sunrise nor sunset. 

Yet the Bible says,

The sun rises and the sun sets - and hurries back to where it rises - Ecclesiastes 1:5, also Psalm 19:1-6.

Ecclesiastes 1:5 is exactly how any ancient Hebrew would see the sun - it rises from the horizon towards the East and sets at the horizon towards the West. This is a poetic statement rather than a scientific one, also known as an idiom, but it always was, and is, and will be seen by every human.

But your flat-Earth cosmology does not allow for this phenomenon. Imagine yourself standing on the Shard lookout in London. At 309 metres high, the Shard is the tallest structure in London, if not in the whole of the UK. Then imagine a friend of yours in New Zealand, standing on the summit of one of the Southern Alps mountain peaks. Assuming it's a clear day and, to make things a little easier, it's March 21st, Spring and Autumn Equinox in the UK and New Zealand respectively.

It's 12.00 noon in the UK. As you face directly North, the sun would be just behind you, positioned directly towards the South. However, your friend in New Zealand can also see the sun above the horizon, far in front of him whilst facing North. Across a flat Earth, the sun never rises or sets. Instead, the sun would always be in the visible sky. The sun, being so far away, would be seen by your friend as a very bright star, but considerably smaller than the sun you can see from your angle. Neither would it be totally dark over New Zealand. Rather, the twilight from a faraway sun would still be strong enough to obliterate all but the very brightest stars. If both of you remain standing where you are for the next twelve hours, then the whole scene would be reversed. You will see the faraway sun as a bright star while your friend will have it just in front of him, positioned directly towards the North.

That contradicts Ecclesiastes 1:5. Apparently, Harrison, the Bible does not teach a flat Earth.

Back in 1994, I was a volunteer at a Christian Conference Centre near Haifa in Northern Israel. It was late June and the sun blazed down as I worked around midday. I looked down at my own shadow. It appeared directly below me. Actually, the Centre was located in a small village of Isfiya, which is 32.43 degrees north of the Equator, or approximately nine degrees north of the Tropic of Cancer. A vertical pole fixed to the ground where I was standing would have thrown a short shadow pointing northward, with its tip forming an angle of nine degrees from vertical. If I was to return to the same spot six months later in late December, assuming it was also sunny, the shadow cast by the pole at midday would be considerably longer, with its tip approximately 55 degrees from vertical, as the sun would be directly over the Tropic of Capricorn, 23 degrees south of the Equator.

And it was precisely that which inspired the ancient Greek astronomer Eratosthenes. In 240 BC, he used the angle of the shadow at two locations to work out the circumference of the Earth. Therefore, it must be assumed that the Greeks at that time had already known that the Earth was spherical. If ancient Greeks, Babylonians and Egyptians going as far back as Abraham's day and beyond, knowing that the earth was spherical by their accumulated knowledge of astronomy and astrology, then there is no reason why any Hebrew throughout history would believe that the Earth is flat.

Erastothenes' demonstration.

Eratosthenes had most likely believed that the known Universe was geocentric. He, along with all other ancients before Galileo, thought that the spherical Earth was at the centre of what we now call the Celestial Sphere, and the rotation of this imaginary sphere is why the sun rises and sets. Astronomers of the present use this model as a means of studying the stars, and the famous London Planetarium is also based on geocentric cosmology.

Harrison, you should also note that the flat-Earth theory arose around 1880, and that was to counter Charles Darwin's evolutionary theories. The original idea of the Hebrews believed that the Earth is flat was concocted by Darwin's followers to specifically ridicule the Bible and deny its historicity, thus enforcing Darwin's theories as truth. But before Galileo, the Church always taught that our planet was spherical. This was taken from Aristotle (born 384 BC) who taught that the Earth was spherical, and he might have influenced Eratosthenes more than two hundred years later. Until Galileo, the Church believed that the Earth was round and geocentric.

When Galileo observed the moons of Jupiter through a telescope for the first time in 1609 AD, he thought up the idea that, rather than the Earth being geocentric, instead, the then-known Universe may be heliocentric. This brought him into conflict with the Church, who believed that the Bible taught a geocentric Earth which was backed by the pagan Greek philosophers of ancient times. Actually, the Bible doesn't teach either a flat Earth or a geocentric Earth.

The Celestial Sphere is used as a model by today's astronomers.

As for the Firmament, you mention a great deal about this in your video. The first chapter of Genesis correctly refers to it as expanse, rather than firmament, as in a hard or solid dome. Also, God calls the firmament heaven. Yet, Paul refers to "a third heaven" that one of his associates had experienced and lived to tell his story (2 Corinthians 12:2-4.) This says a lot! If there are "three heavens" - then one can conclude that:

The first heaven is our atmosphere. Within this zone, all the "birds of the air" fly. Above the atmosphere is "the abode of the sun, moon and the stars" - that is, outer space, but included as within the "expanse" -as, from ground level, the first and second heaven is indistinguishable, especially at night. Then the "third heaven" - this is the spiritual realm and therefore not physical to our five senses - is where the throne of God is. If this is all true, then to make the language fully understandable to the ancient Hebrew and at the same time also scientifically verifiable, the "waters above the firmament" refers to a layer of water vapour in the primaeval atmosphere that was separated from "the waters below" when God created the Earth's atmosphere on the second day of Creation. 

The collapse or a partial collapse of the water vapour above the atmosphere was most likely the source of the waters "from the windows of heaven" - from above the firmament. If the waters were "restrained" rather than fully emptied when the windows were closed, that could mean that not all of the vapour had dispersed, as you insist.

Also, you should consider, Harrison, that most of the Bible references you have quoted in your video were poetic idioms. The Bible is not a science book. It was never intended to be. Therefore, God had to communicate to His people in a way they can understand. One example is the Hebrew word raqiya, meaning to beat into shape like gold being beaten into sheets. Since the expanse is not solid, God used a Hebrew word as an idiom to represent that once created, no other agency can change the properties of what he had made. The same applies to the "pillars" of the Earth, set on a firm foundation and thus immovable. The ancient Hebrew understands the word "pillar" far better than if he would understand the words "mantle" and "core" of the Earth.

Yours in Christ,

Frank.