Jason Lisle on Flat Earth, fractals, and the Universe

It's fascinating to me how easily someone in one religion can find the fallacies and biases in another religion.

I think that what's fascinating...

You're razor sharp on your criticism of Islam here.

Yeah, but what I find fascinating, Jeff, is that you recognize that with other religions, but you don't do it with your own. That may be the case.

I'm just saying. And there's that confirmation bias coming up again. One, two, three!

Welcome to Apologetics Live

Welcome to Apologetics Live. We're here to answer your questions and challenges about God and the Bible. Meet your hosts from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport, Dr. Anthony Silvestro, and Pastor Justin Pierce.

Well, we are live, Apologetics. Live, here to answer your theological questions. Any question you have about God and the Bible, we argue that we can answer them. You don't believe that? Well, come on in and join us.

Give us those challenges. We have a special show tonight. We've got a very excited guest. Let me bring in my co-host here, Mr. Justin Pierce. How are you, sir? You're doing good. Stressed and blessed.

There you go. That's what school is, yes. That's right. That's exactly what it is. Stressed and blessed.

So, we have another co-host with us. It always gets confusing with you two. There he is, Mr. Justin Pierce. How are you, sir?

Doing all right. Doing well. How about y 'all? Doing great. I've been missing you, brother. I haven't got to see you in a while. It's been like, every time you try to get on, I can't get on. When you're on, I can't get on, or vice versa.

I'm glad to see my brother. I really am. Thanks, Justin. Good to see you too, brother.

Real quick, before we bring in our guest, Dr. Jason Lyle. Justin, I know you've got an event coming up in Ohio. I believe next week, correct? That's right. Justin Peters. You're going to be down, I believe, at Dr. Silvestro's church, correct?

Correct. That is Olmstead Falls Baptist Church. In Olmstead Falls, Ohio. If any of you are out that way and want to hear Justin Peters, go check that out. That is going to be next weekend. If you're not sure what that is, that turns out to be the 10th and the 11th.

You're doing a seminar? I think you're doing half a seminar, right? Yeah, kind of half a seminar. Elements of my seminar. Okay. And then preaching on Sunday? Yep. Okay. That's the only one. Anything else?

I think that's the only thing you've got coming up until G3. Yep. You and I will both be right after G3. You and I are both headed out to the pastors' conference at the Creation Museum, where you'll be speaking.

So if folks want to come see us there, I encourage you guys to check that out if you're anywhere in that area, pastors especially. Chance to get to hear Justin and Simone. I'm trying to remember now I'm drawing a complete blank on who else is speaking.

Oh, that's so bad of me.

Technically, it's at the ARC. It's the ARC Encounter. Oh, is it at the ARC? Yeah. Yeah, it's at the ARC. Conrad and Beway. That's right. H .B. Charles and some others, but those are the only names that I can remember.

You're the headliner, right? No.

I'm the B team. Okay. Well, I'm going to bring in Dr. Jason Lyle. How are you doing, sir? Good. Very good. Good. A lot of people were interested when we said you were having you on. I will see if people actually come in.

I don't know why, but everyone was like, oh, I'll have questions. Maybe you bring that out in people. Yeah, they will. I think what I did, I put this as we're going to talk flat earth, and I think someone thinks that you're going to be arguing for flat earth, which tells me they didn't really know who you were.

I was like, okay. Maybe before you accuse someone of making Christianity look ridiculous, you should know who they are and what they're actually going to say. Just a thought. I always love telling this story, Jason, because it is my favorite evangelism story.

Folks, just picture this scene. Here we are. We're on the boardwalk in the Jersey Shore. We had, I don't know, maybe 70, 80 people out there evangelizing. There's this one pastor, and he is talking to this military guy for a while.

We had a code. I told people if I come up and say TW means time waster, it's someone that's wasting your time, move on. Well, we go and realize that I see this guy. He's talking to him 40 minutes. I say, TW.

He's like, no, no, it's good. Okay, 40 minutes later. Hey, TW. He's like, no, no, no. Another 20 minutes I come by. I'm like, okay, let me get in on this conversation and see what it is you're talking about.

The guy just turns, and he's like, well, there's no intelligent Christian. I'm asking him, how do you define an intelligent Christian? Each of the things he's trying to define it as, I'm able to easily knock down.

Then he goes, well, you show me one intelligent Christian that has a PhD. That would be an intelligent Christian. I said a PhD. What if he had a dual PhD in astrophysics, astronomy and physics? With that impression, he's like, no such person exists.

Now, what he didn't know is I had a shot. I could see there's Jason just sitting on a bench. I said, Jason, can you come over here for a second? Jason just walks up, comes over. I said, meet Dr. Jason Lau, dual PhD astrophysicist.

Jason puts his hand out, says hello. The guy just turns and walked away. That was the end of that. Proving the point that this gentleman really didn't want he was a time waster. He didn't want to learn anything.

To the pastor, he probably sounded really intelligent, but he didn't even get Jason didn't even get to give a single argument. I don't know if we should put Jason on the spot, though, Pastor Justin.

You have your logical fallacies that we usually go through on your wall there. Should we pick an easy one for him to we usually pick one. Yeah, let's get a really easy one. We usually have to define it and give an example.

But you do have a book out for children to teach them logic. I'm a homeschooler, so I said easy. I'll tell you what.

I've got an easy one, non-sequitur. Go ahead.

Oh, that's kind of a generic term for anything that doesn't follow. It just means it doesn't follow. So whatever your conclusion is, it doesn't follow from your premise. That's kind of a catch-all.

Could you give an example of one on the spot?

Well, the sky is blue and grass is green. Therefore, the earth is flat. That would be an example of a non-sequitur.

See, not only does he answer that, Justin, but he makes a perfect segue into the topic tonight.

And that's what I was thinking. I was like, I wonder if he's going to put it into bring it towards the discussion. No, I have to ask a serious question as we're getting started. It's one that actually has me confused.

Do people actually believe the flat earth thing, or are they just making this up? Because, I mean, I've heard this. I honestly can't imagine that somebody actually believes this. And I'm not trying to be mean, and I know that may sound mean, but I just don't understand why somebody would reason through it.

I haven't done the research to study it. I may actually do that because that is intriguing to me as to why somebody would believe that. I think you get a mix.

I think the folks who are really pushing it, I think they know better, and especially the ones that have promoted it recently. I think there's evidence that some of them were attempting to make Christianity look foolish by pointing out verses that they can misinterpret to somehow teach a flatter

I mean, there's nothing in the Bible that says the earth's flat, but there are certain verses you can pull out of context. And some of them were trying to do that to make Christianity look silly, and then some Christians, I think, bought into it and thought maybe because they don't know how to interpret the Bible either, and so they thought, well, maybe there's something to that.

Maybe it really is flat. But I think that some people are genuinely convinced that it's flat.

Well, I know some are because we had one before I left my last church to move out here, we had several actually all three of the pastors asked me if I would speak to one individual because the one individual, they said he was starting to get into it.

And I realized very quickly after talking to him, he wasn't starting to get into it. He was full on flat earth. He even bought a watch that would tell him where the sun was over the flat disk. He had an app that had all

I mean, he was putting money up for this. And I'll start by saying this. Because of Jason, we're sitting Jason, you were speaking up at Jim Osmond's church up there where Justin is at, and we were all at lunch, and you said something that I ended up using.

You said there's an easy way to test if the earth is a sphere, and all you got to do is go watch a sunrise, stand up, watch the sunrise, and then fall down to the ground as soon as it comes over the water, and you'll watch it again.

And it can only do that if it's a sphere. We were living close to the ocean there, so that's exactly what I told him to do. And I said an easy way to test. We went through some of the things I'm sure you'll go over, but that one simple thing has been helpful for people to just be like, you can test this.

And it's like go look on your app that has the sun somehow going like this because it kind of goes in and out around is how his app showed it. That wouldn't happen. You wouldn't see it twice. And as soon as you said it, it dawned on me because I remember I was in Florida, and I was trying to get a picture of the sunset, and just as I was getting it, clouds moved in, and I missed it.

And it's like, okay, I'll just drop down and get it again. The advantage of that curvature. But for folks who may this may be the first time hearing it. I know there are people that think it's like people can't really believe this.

But first, one of the first times I heard someone actually arguing for it, I actually thought it was a joke. When someone on this show, first time someone came in on a show Matt and I did, I actually was

I jokingly said, watch, it's probably some like atheist that just wants to prove Christians are gullible. And then I found out that the founder of the Flat Earth Society is an agnostic. And they actually I don't know if I ever told you.

They actually invited me to speak. Yeah, I don't know how I got the invitation, but I got an email inviting me to speak at a Flat Earth Society convention. And I said, okay, my topic would be why the Bible has to be a sphere.

And somehow I never heard back from them. They let me do it. I wasn't going to be dishonest going there and then but I remember I was on the boardwalk in Jersey. It was the first time I heard about Flat Earth.

And I'm sitting there. I was with and you know how we do things at our conferences that we used to do at Jersey. I had an older gentleman with me who I hadn't known before, never met him. But we're evangelizing.

I'm supposed to kind of teach him how to evangelize. I'm talking to this guy, and I'm like, great. Here I am. I got to talk about I want to teach this guy how to share the gospel, and we're talking Flat Earth.

And I'm going like, what? You really believe the Earth is flat? I thought he was just joking because you get strange people that make things up. I thought he was just making it up. This guy was totally he's Flat Earth.

And we're talking for like 30 minutes. And I go and I asked him. At one point I'm asking him, what do you how do you explain all the satellites we have in space and all that? And he's giving all these answers.

And after about like 30 minutes, maybe 35 minutes, the older gentleman next to me just looks at this young man and says, well, I don't believe you. And he's like, oh, really? Why not? He goes, because I've been in space.

It was like the mic drop moment.

And it was like, okay. Like why didn't you jump in about 20 minutes ago? But this is something that people laugh at. They criticize Christians of believing in a Flat Earth back many years ago when they thought the Earth was flat and not a sphere.

And they accuse Christians of believing that. And now it seems that Christians are. What is the whole phenomenon with Flat Earth? And I should actually ask before that, introduce yourself, because I should put up your website so folks can know that you you used to be with a couple of big-name organizations, Answers in Genesis.

If anyone has gone to the Creation Museum and sat in the planetarium, you put that planetarium show together, Created Cosmos. You then went over to

I was at ICR for a little while. Yeah, you went to ICR.

Now you're with the Biblical Science Institute. So explain that a little bit and then explain this whole phenomenon with Flat Earth. Okay.

Well, the Biblical Science Institute, we do a lot of the things that are done by our sister ministry, Answers in Genesis. Slightly different approach. Just we want to hit all kinds of different people.

I have a real heart for students, especially like college-level students who want to maybe go a little deeper into some of this information. And so I try to get that out there. And what we do at the Biblical Science Institute, we just defend the Christian faith, particularly in matters of origins.

But I want to branch out a little bit too. And so in other areas of science, when people come up and say, no, the Bible can't be trusted because of this scientific alleged fact, then I'll come in and say, well, let's take a look at this.

And, of course, every time, if you really understand the evidence, it confirms what the Bible teaches. And, of course, it's necessary as one aspect of that to understand what the Bible is teaching. You have to know a little bit about exegesis, hermeneutics, how to read the Bible so that you don't come away with, or when people make claims that, well, the Bible teaches a flat Earth, you can say, no, it really doesn't.

Let's take a look at some of the passages you're looking at and take a look at the assumptions you've imported. Yeah, lately, I've been dealing with the flat Earthers. I actually had a series of articles.

They're now complete. I have a series of three articles responding to some specific claims of a particular flat Earth advocate. He was very gracious. I like the guy, but his claims don't stand up to scrutiny.

And so what I did is I did a systematic reputation of those claims and showed that if you're open to it, you can test the shape of the Earth with your own senses. You can do that. And I'd written another article previously showing some experiments you can do to test the shape of the Earth, including the sunrise or sunset experiment you just mentioned.

I learned about that when I was an undergraduate physicist. We had to calculate the time difference when you're standing up to when you're lying down. And I think it's about seven seconds difference. And from that, you can actually not only know the Earth's spherical, you can calculate its size.

So that's pretty neat. But even when I was back in high school, I remember we took a family vacation to Colorado Springs, where I'm now living. That's one of the reasons I wanted to live here, is I fell in love with it at that time.

And I remember calculating about the distance where we should be able to see the tops of the Rocky Mountains based on the curvature of the Earth and being very satisfied when, indeed, they came into view at that distance.

On a flat Earth, they would be theoretically visible at all distances because it's flat. There's no curvature. So I've known about the round Earth for quite some time. This movement, the resurgence of flat Earthism, it's quite recent, actually.

Even when I was working with Answers in Genesis, it was almost unheard of at that time. So there's been a recent surging of that. I can guarantee you that people who believe that have learned about it on the Internet.

I can guarantee you that. Because it's not like you can find peer-reviewed scientific literature defending a flat Earth. You can't. It's very easy to refute. If you know anything about geometry, trigonometry, and observations, you can easily demonstrate the world's round.

Anybody can do it. If you live near an ocean or a mountain, it's really easy. And even if you don't, there are other ways to do it, using the positions of the stars and so on. This is something that educated people have known since ancient times, since at least around 500 B .C.

That's when Pythagoras thought that maybe the Earth really is round. The Bible was teaching that part earlier in Job 26, verses 7 and 10. The Bible indicates an Earth that hangs in space and has a boundary between the light and darkness of the circle that only works on a sphere.

But then the Greeks came to accept that. And by 300 B .C., educated people knew the world was round. At the time of Christ's earthly ministry, educated people knew the world was round. So we've known that for a long time.

And there's many different ways you can demonstrate it. So the flat Earth movement indicates just an extreme lack of discernment. And that's something I'm seeing, not just there, but in other aspects as well.

And it's sad to me that there are Christians who are buying into this because that really is pretty silly. It indicates that they're not reading the Scriptures right if they think the Scriptures support that idea.

And it indicates they really don't know anything about science if they're thinking that there's somehow scientific evidence for a flat Earth. Because there just isn't. There just isn't. So it's a lack of discernment.

It's conspiratorial thinking. And the fact that there's all kinds of ridiculous nonsense going on today makes it a little harder for me to defend the fact that, you know, you shouldn't jump on every conspiracy theory that's out there.

The fact that you do have some misinformation out there doesn't mean that all information is misinformation. So we really need to be more discerning. But it's a lack of discernment. And I think one thing that fuels it too is a lot of people have realized, especially Christians, we point out that not everything you're taught in school is true.

And that's right. You should be skeptical, especially if you're in a public school that's giving you a secular perspective on things. I think some people think, well, the schools lied to us about evolution.

Maybe they lied to us about other stuff. And I don't that's not a bad attitude to have. But you shouldn't just throw the baby out with the bathwater. It doesn't mean everything you learned in public school was false because certain mathematical truths, for example, the nature of the Earth, that's something that's scientifically testable today.

So I would just encourage people to be a bit more discerning in the information they hear. And in the case of the shape of the Earth, that's something you can test. So it's inexcusable to believe in a flat Earth these days.

It's something you can test.

Yeah, it's strange that you'd say like math is like an absolute because you obviously haven't watched the recent video of the high school professor or high school teacher who said that we don't need to know math.

We have to understand about Antifa and Black Lives Matter. That's real truth, and math they want to redo math. Okay, but let's look at some of the arguments they make. They will try to make biblical arguments saying, but look, the Bible refers to four corners of the Earth.

So isn't that proof that the Earth is flat because you can only have four corners on a flat surface?

You know, the interesting thing about that, I haven't heard anyone make that argument in a very long time because it's also inconsistent with their idea for the shape of the Earth because most modern flat Earth advocates take the shape of the Earth to be like a cylinder or circle, a flat disk with no corners, so they can't use that verse.

And so I think even most flat Earth advocates would say, no, that's referring to the four cardinal directions. Of course that's referring to the four cardinal directions. At the time, Revelation includes that language.

But at the time that's written, people already knew. Again, educated people knew the world was round at that time, but that was a convenient way to refer to the north, south, east, and west. So that's a nonstarter.

It's not compatible with the modern flat disk Earth view, which doesn't have corners.

Yeah, I noticed some of the other arguments that they often give. I mean, they usually have a lot of different One of the things, though, that is very convincing for many, and you'll see us on YouTube, and it looks convincing.

If you go early morning out on the water, you can actually see further than you're supposed to be able to see if the Earth is curved.

How do we explain things like that? Yeah, that's caused by a temperature inversion. In fact, in the I think it's the last article that I wrote on this topic, I went through the physics of that and showed how light bends.

We know that light bends as it goes through a medium where its speed in that medium changes, and you can see that in water. Maybe you've seen a beam of wood put in water at an angle, and it looks like the wood bends when it goes under the water because the way the light refracts, because the speed of light in water is only about 75 percent what it is in air, and so that causes the light to bend, and you can calculate that based on first physics principles.

And so I just did some back-of-the-envelope calculations. I couldn't initially find anything on how to calculate light curvature in air, and so I thought, well, I can figure this out. This is kind of basic physics, and I do have a degree in this.

I should probably put it to use. So I ended up doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations and calculated the amount by which light would curve, and it doesn't take a very strong temperature inversion to do it.

Basically, all you need to get light to curve the same way the Earth does is you need the temperature to increase with altitude instead of decrease. Normally, the temperature decreases with altitude because eventually in space, the temperature is, like, close to absolute zero.

So normally the temperature decreases, and I know that when I go to Ike's Peak, I know it's going to be 20 to 30 degrees cooler than it is down here in the town of Colorado Springs. So that's normally the way it works, but every now and then you'll get what's called a temperature inversion where for some distance the temperature will increase, and if you're in a city, a lot of times you'll see smog on that day because it prevents convection and such.

So it's an inversion layer. And I figured out just from some basic math that if you have so much as a temperature inversion where you get, like, 0 .1 degrees per, well, I forget the numbers, but it's on the article, and it doesn't take a very strong temperature inversion for light to curve about 5 inches every mile.

And now the curvature of the Earth is such that the Earth drops 8 inches per mile, so you're almost keeping up with the Earth there. And so you can actually see a bit further. What it causes is a distortion.

It looks like the Earth it makes the Earth look bigger than it would be otherwise. And you can very nearly double the distance at which you can see things. And so I actually applied that calculation to the Chicago skyline as seen from dunes that are on the other side of the lake.

And sure enough, you can get the buildings to come up higher, but only on days when there's a temperature inversion. And when the air is normal, when the temperature decreases with altitude, as it does very slightly normally, then you don't get that effect.

And, by the way, even when that effect kicks in, you still can't see forever. It just makes the Earth look seem a little bigger than it would be, but it's still round. And so you can't see an infinite distance.

So it still confirms a round Earth. It's just people don't know much about physics. They don't realize you can get light to move not quite in a straight line if the air changes temperature.

And that's one of the things, folks, if you ever hear someone bring that argument up, just know that it's only at certain times of the year in certain places that that can happen. Yes, there's an explanation for that, but the thing is that so many people will use this.

And that is, I think, in the people I've spoken to, the most convincing argument to many. And yet there's a very good rational explanation for it. And the thing I've always told people to do is, hey, how about you do that in the middle of the day?

Do the same experiment in the middle of the day, and it'll never work. You don't have that, right?

Yeah, double-check to make sure the temperature is not inverted. But, yeah, because you can get it to persist. But you're right. It's more likely in the early morning, for example. But, yeah, if you don't have the temperature inversion, it will not do that.

It will not do that. And Ron Hughes is saying here that here in Tampa, the inversion over the water is very common, and that's why they go to certain places for that.

Justin? I was going to say, Jason, have you seen the documentary Behind the Curve?

Have any of you seen that? I have not seen it.

If people are interested, it's actually quite fascinating. You can rent it or buy it on YouTube. But it's a documentary entitled Behind the Curve, and this documentary team goes and they follow around some of the more prominent flat earthers, and they go into their convention and all that.

It's a maddening yet fascinating look inside their mindset. So it's very interesting. What's comical about it, though, is that they actually end up debunking. With their own experiments, they end up debunking their own position, and they don't know what to do with it.

But it is fascinating. If you want to get into kind of like the psychology of why they think what they think, it's pretty interesting, Behind the Curve.

Do they fly in airplanes all around the world? That's kind of a question. I'm sorry.

You get one point one time. The military rings Antarctica, which rings the giant manhole cover that we all live on, and they won't let you get up to the edge.

There's answers they give. That's why it was so funny that first time I dealt with it, because the guy was saying that there are no satellites. It's all conspiracy theory. Answers in Genesis does have a lot of good resources as well.

I should have pulled it out, the book.

Danny Faulkner wrote a book called Falling Flat. We actually stock it at the Biblical Science Institute because it's a very well-written book. If you're a rational person and you want to test the shape of the earth, you can do that.

But you cannot convince someone who is not willing to be rational. I'm going to believe in a flat earth because you can always come up with a rescuing device. There's always a rescuing device. But the fact is flat earthers do not have a consistent model whereby they can explain the positions of satellite.

See, I can predict when the International Space Station is going to go overhead because I know a little bit about physics, and I understand its orbit. So I can do that. Flat earthers can't do that. Now, they can look it up on a website that was produced by a round-earth believer that has calculated that.

But in terms of calculating it based on their model, it can't be done. It can't be done because it's not consistent with observations. We're calculating sunrise and sunsets and the times of the seasons.

Yes, I've seen the little model they have with the sun that sort of is like a spotlight over the earth. That will not work because that would, in order to be consistent with seasons, that beam of light would have to cover only one-fourth the surface of the earth, in which case on a given day you should have six hours of sunlight throughout the year instead of 12.

You can test that for yourself throughout the course of the year. You have to go complete year. What is the average number of hours of sunlight? And it turns out to be 12, not six. So, I mean, you can test these things for yourself.

But most people would say, well, then there's a rescuing device to explain that away. But they can't make positive predictions. They can't land people on the moon. They can't put satellites up in space.

They can't do any of those things because they don't have a working model. They have something that looks good to the uninitiated, but it doesn't really work.

The Meaning of a Rescuing Device

Okay, so you just— I'm just going to—. Hold on. Use the term that I want you to explain. It's a term that I know you use a lot. But for folks who may be new, this is an Apologetics Live. We teach how to do apologetics.

You mentioned a rescuing device. Define what that is and please give an example.

A rescuing device is a hypothesis that is designed to protect your belief from what appears to be evidence to the contrary. So, for example, my comets can't last millions of years. Everybody knows that.

The rate at which the material is being depleted away from a comet, they evaporate in a timescale of like 100 ,000 years. So that would seem to be evidence that the solar system is much younger than the 4 .5 billion years.

And so my secular colleagues have come up with a rescuing device. They call it the Oort Cloud, which is supposedly a comet generator that makes new comets to replenish the old ones. Now, a good rescuing device, an effective one, is one that can't be disproved.

And in case of the Oort Cloud, we don't have the technology to detect objects at that distance. So there's no way to know that it's there or to disprove it. That makes it a good rescuing device because you can't prove it or disprove it.

But rational people understand we should try to minimize our rescuing devices. Everybody has them because we all have a worldview that's incomplete. We don't have all the data. We're trying to make sense of that.

But we need to try to minimize rescuing devices because they are ultimately arbitrary and therefore irrational in terms of trying to defend your worldview that way.

You know, it's funny. We have a regular person who comes in here once in a while. I don't know if he's going to come in tonight, David. He's on his way to college. But he told us he could prove that Oort Clouds exist.

He would explain that to you.

So we invited him in. And that's what I was going to ask about is the Oort Clouds on that. Because, I mean, you're dealing with an unfalsifiable claim, rescuing device. But the only problem is it's also unprovable and undetectable.

And so when you're making a claim like that, you have no evidence for it. You have no reasons for it to be in existence other than your own presupposition. Yeah. And I think for me that's a big problem.

Now, I wanted to ask a question. In the study I have done in the past five minutes, maybe 15 minutes, I've looked at some Buddhists and some Hindu works and writings talking about the earth being on a disk and having the different animals holding them up.

Is that where this idea of the flat earth comes from? Because I can't think of it any other way.

Yeah. The early Babylonians, even the early Greeks before 500 B .C. taught a flat earth. Although with the Greeks, they at least the Greeks believed it floated in space. At least one of the Greeks, I forget the name, but he thought it was a flat disk.

But nonetheless, the sun and moon went all the way around it. Not like the modern conception. So that actually works better than the modern version. But it has its flaws as well. So, yeah, the most ancient pagan cultures believed in a flat earth.

The Bible was unique in terms of Job. It written, we think, around 2000 B .C. And it talks about the circle that God inscribes on the boundary between light and darkness on the face of the waters, which we would call the terminator.

And that only works on a sphere. That's not going to work on any other surface where the terminator is permanently a circle. And then, of course, in Job 26, verse 7, he stretches out the north of the empty, over the empty place, hangs the earth on nothing.

And so that's a great indication that Job at least apparently had some divine insight into this issue, because he knew the correct configuration of the earth. The Bible is not a science textbook, but when it touches on science, it's right.

And it does mention the roundness of the earth. And in a number of places, too. I would argue the global flood doesn't really make sense without a globe. Water would either run off the sides on a flat earth, or if they want to put it in a snow globe, then the dome itself constitutes a hill that is not covered by the waters.

You can't really have a global flood without a globe. So since very ancient times, people who were believers in the living God understood something about the shape of the earth. But up until about 500 B .C., almost all pagan cultures thought the earth was flat.

Some of them thought it floated in water. Some of them thought it was in space. Some of them thought it was held up by something else, a turtle and what have you. So, yeah, so the Bible is unique in the ancient world.

And that's why you have folks who say, well, no, it can't really mean that, because, you know, the Bible is just trying to explain things. They're assuming that it's not inspired and that the Hebrews were just trying to come up with their own version of this.