Exposing the Flat Earth Myth with Robert Carter

The Flat Earth Conspiracy and the Article That Sparked the Backlash

Welcome back to another episode of Apologia TV and the studio's coming at you from Phoenix, Arizona. I'm Jeff Tacoma, the Ninja. That's Luke the Bear right there. What is up? Wearing one of the old school Apologia Church t-shirts, Silly Atheist Logic is for Christians.

That even says Christian Ministries on it. That's right. Apologize to Christian Ministries. That's back in the day. Everybody always asks,.

Where do you get those shirts? I said there was only two made. Only two shirts made. Yep. That's right. Try and never make them again. Although that would look good in a black maybe with some different color changes.

That would look nice. We did that because we only made limited because it's a dangerous weapon. That's right. Because of your quote on the back.

That's right. Yeah, that's right. You need to know how to explain that. Yeah, exactly. And that's Joy, the girl right there. Hello. And she is super, super excited today because we have one of her favorites on.

I don't think one of like the favorite. Would you say so? Yeah.

One of your favorite people to listen to? Yes. Like, okay. We have somebody, we actually have had him on before a number of times now. We've had him on Apologia Radio, perhaps Redemption Radio. And now maybe Apologia TV.

We've had him on before talking about dinosaurs. Actually very interesting things. Recently come up with dinosaur situation again. More viable blood cells and tissues. Those sorts of things. Dinosaur situation.

Yeah, dinosaurs kind of situation. There's always stuff happening. Dino sitch. The dino sitch. So he is from Creation Ministries International. You can get their very easy website to remember. It is creation .com.

And if you can't remember that, we can't help you. That's right. Creation .com, Creation Ministries International, actually my favorite websites and resource for creation info and amazing resources, articles, fantastic stuff.

Go to their store, get some stuff from them, creation .com. He is Dr. Robert Carter. He is just a huge blessing to us and knows a lot of really helpful stuff. And so we're welcoming back again for I don't know how many times, Dr. Robert Carter, welcome to the show, brother.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Thank you, sir, for taking time out of your day to come and spend some time with us. So Joy, do you wanna bring us into this discussion? Yeah, I can.

I know Luke is excited about it too. He actually suggested this topic.

Oh, it was your thing. It was actually suggested to me, but I'll go ahead. And so we're gonna be talking about the flat earth conspiracies. I think really we've been wanting to do this for a while just because it seems like it's really big right now.

Right, it's all over the place. You would think that. And it's growing for some strange reason.

Even within like Christianity. Right, no, most of them are. That's what's most alarming, yeah. Yes, yeah, it's actually kind of scary. And you'd think, when you think of a flat earth or you think of someone from a long time ago, right?

But that's not true anymore. Now there's people propagating all this flat earth stuff all over YouTube. You can go watch like hour long talks that people have done. Right, or yeah, you can watch some.

Some of their airtight explanations are just like, oh, is it really that simple, huh? Yeah. Anyway, yeah, so flat earth.

You know who's watching a lot of flat earth videos is Marcus Pittman. He spent hours and hours and hours.

Watching flat earth videos. Oh, I know. The other day he came out here. Not because he believes it. He came out here and sat at the desk and he was like, can you believe someone on the internet called me a conspiracy theorist?

And I was like, yes. I absolutely couldn't believe that. He loves her.

You wrote an article recently on the flat earth controversy. Can you tell us about that article and some of the fallout that's happened from that article?

Yeah, well, just a little bit of a lead up first. This is an issue that was basically a non-issue. Until the last year. And all of a sudden, speakers that work for Creation Ministries International all over the world are saying, hey, I had this guy who believes in flat earth that cost me on one of my talks.

And it's happening all over the place. And we said, all right, let's address this. My colleague and I, Dr. Jonathan Sarfati, we wrote an article about it. And then I wrote a followup article a couple months later.

And I tell you what, I've gotten more hate mail on that topic than any other thing I've ever done in my life. Really?

Yeah. Just absolutely mind boggling. What kind of hate mail? Give us an example of what would people be saying to you?

Well, basically, I'm not a believer. I don't believe the Bible. I don't understand the Bible. I'm corrupted. I'm tainted by the government bureaucracy and their mind system that's messing with me. I don't know how to think.

Stuff like that. Amazing. And so obviously, from the way that you explained it, you're getting this kind of mail from people who are professing Christians telling you that you're not really following the Bible.

Yeah, and that's the most amazing part. Right. Because Jonathan has written several articles on creation .com about the flat earth myth and where it came from. And he has demonstrated very clearly, there is zero evidence, sorry, zero evidence for any theologian believing that the earth is flat throughout the entire Christian tradition.

Powerful. That's powerful. All the way back to Bede. He was an Anglo-Saxon theologian, historian. I think he lived in the six or 700s. I forget exactly which century, but everybody read Bede for the next thousand years.

And he said, the earth is round, not like a shield, like a ball. What else do you need? Right. There's no evidence for it at all.

Why Flat Earth Fails Geometrically and Physically

Okay, so this seems like tinfoil hat, people wearing pyramids on their head, kind of crazy nuttiness. And, but, you know, see there's blessings and cursings to the internet. The blessing is it's an amazing resource.

You can propagate the gospel in the biblical worldview at the click of a button. It's on 24 hour repeat all over the planet, all over the globe, by the way. The curse of social media and the internet is it gives everybody a platform.

And so I have seen in the last year or two, so many articles and videos and things popping up all over YouTube and all over the place about the flat earth. And so it's something that is becoming more and more widely accepted by people.

And I think you're, I mean, you're right. That the disheartening thing is that it's being accepted by people who are professing Christians. So Dr. Carter, we have about a minute and a half left in this segment.

Can you just at least explain to our audience who probably thinks this is nutty, what is the flat earth myth?

All right. The flat earth myth is a very modern idea that the earth actually is flat. It's not a globe. There are a few bits of evidence they try to bring forth that supposedly support it. They try to use the Bible to support it.

And they generally just fall flat on their face. Nothing that they say that actually makes sense when you analyze it deeply. But the problem is that when they say a bunch of stuff, tons lists of this and this and this and this and this, it sounds, some of it sounds really good.

Until you actually dig, as soon as you dig, the whole article falls apart. And the problem is people don't think. In this world of internet and sound bites, people can pretty much handle about 30 seconds of conversation and they turn off.

Well, you know, that's a good point. I mean, we went from YouTube, people putting up videos on YouTube, long videos, interaction, those sorts of things. And after a period of time with YouTube and Facebook, where you could post long posts and everything else, we went from Facebook and YouTube to Twitter and Vines.

Smaller, smaller, smaller, right? So longer posts, longer videos to shortened posts and quick 30 second videos. We'll be right back, actually like seven second videos. We'll be right back guys with Joy the Girl, Luke the Bear, Dr. Robert Carter, Creation Ministries, internationalcreation .com.

The Earth as a Globe, the Horizon, and the Limits of Human Perspective

The goal for New St. Andrews College as it trains its students is not to make people who will be able to go out and just get jobs, people who will just be bricks in the wall of our society. The goal for New St. Andrews College is to make students into men and women who will really impact culture.

Hi, this is Warner with Apology Radio. I wanna ask for y 'all good friends of ours to go on and click that button there and become my friends on the book face. Facebook backslash Apology Radio. Become my friend on YouTube, that there twerker.

The twerker, I wanna talk to you on the twerking. And send me out a twerk, what? Wait, what? Twitter, Apology Radio on Twitter. I also wanna tell you we talk about apologetics and theology and we do a lot of swing dancing and we make a delicious chicken gravy.

ApologyRadio .com. Welcome back to Apology TV guys in the studio today, talking about the flat earth myth. Yes, there are actually people in this world who believe and propagate the idea that the earth is actually flat.

Believe this, seriously, and they publish videos.

Oh yes, lots of videos. People that have knowledge to all access in Christ too. That's right, that's right.

All right, Dr. Carter, so you're explaining, it's simple enough, people believe the earth is actually flat. Can I ask you just a quick question? The earth is flat. Where do they believe that it is? What's happening with this flat earth?

Where is it suspended?

Is it suspended? Where is it? Well, the source of gravity is an interesting question and they argue amongst themselves. Because if the earth is flat, why do we stick to the earth? Yeah. Well, we have to be accelerating.

So either all things in the universe just happen to fall this way at 9 .8 meters per second squared, or the earth is accelerating through space this way at 9 .8 meters per second squared, which means that every year it travels one, let's see, before Adam and Eve were one year old, they were moving faster than the speed of light.

That's how, that's the acceleration required to keep us stuck here and not just drift off. But then of course, that doesn't explain the sun and the moon and all that kind of thing also,.

Because they also have to be moving with us. Right, why don't you explain, just to make it a little more cohesive, what is their, like, what is the geography of the sun and the moon and other planets?

What do they think about that?

Let me start with the basic, the earth part. The flat earth proponents suggest that the earth is a flat disk. The center of the disk is the North Pole, what we would call the North Pole. And all land just kind of spreads out from there.

But then, around Antarctica, there's a 100 foot ice wall that keeps the oceans from falling off the earth. And the UN is patrolling that ice wall to keep people from going over the ice wall and seeing the edge.

And that's why nobody's allowed on Antarctica, right?

That's right, yeah. That's why no one's ever been actually to Antarctica. Right. It's not true, it's a government conspiracy. So what happened before UN? That's what I want to know. Well, we didn't have people that had the ability to get there.

Ah. Shoot that down. Of course. The Shackleton expedition and stuff, you know, that's just not, can't be true. Now Shackleton's a bad example,.

They didn't get there, they crashed. Okay, let's go. Right, right. All right, so Joy, I'll let you.

So where's the, so explain the sun and the moon, because I think that's all very interesting. So there's a wall keeping the oceans from spilling out. And then how do, how come the sun rises and falls and how do they explain all that?

Excellent. All right, so take a dinner plate, flip it on its side. This is their model of the earth. Now, the sun doesn't go over the earth and then get hauled under the earth and pop up again. That's not this modern flat earth idea.

The idea is that if the earth is flat, the sun is here and it does this. Right around the equator. Right. Okay, but that means the sunlight has to be a spotlight. Almost like a laser. Because you can't, if you're over in, over here.

If you're over here and the sun is over here, you can't be able to see the sun. You can only see the sun, the part that's lighting up. So they have to ignore the fact that light will scatter in the atmosphere, like it does, which is why the sky is blue.

They have to ignore all sorts of things about geometry and physics. I mean, it's like math and physics doesn't exist in this world. It's all magic. And that's the problem. My main argument, in fact, my older article about geocentrism, arguing that the earth is not the center of the universe, and the flat earth articles, both of my main contentions is that in order to believe this, you have to ignore all physics, all the way back to Newton.

Forget Einstein. Newton cannot be true. F does not equal MA. You can't do any physical modeling of anything because nothing can be true as soon as you're a foot above the surface of the earth.

I'll ask the question about the horizon. Right, yeah. And so flat earth, people who believe in the flat earth myth, there's even videos that show a commercial pilot exposes the globe earth myth or whatever, and it's a commercial pilot who, by the way, should be paying attention to what he's doing up there, using his cell phone to record footage to show that the horizon is actually flat from that high up, and it's not actually bent.

So can you talk about that? We have two commercial pilots on a board of directors of Creation Ministries International. They must be liars if the earth really is flat. They have circumnavigated the globe, not on one trip, but on multiple trips.

They, I mean, both of them flew for the military. They are pilots, and they know how long it takes to get from point A to point B and what track you have to take and all that. The earth cannot be flat if they're telling the truth.

If you think about it, if you flatten the earth out, the points at the South Pole get really far away from each other. So you could not physically fly from South America to Australia or from Africa to Australia.

You'd have to fly over the North Pole to get there. You wouldn't fly all the way around, and yet there are commercial flights. They go from Johannesburg to Sydney. They're right there. They don't fly over the Himalayas.

They fly right off the edge of Antarctica, and actually, multiple people in CMI's offices, because we have offices in different countries. We have an office in South Africa and an office in Australia.

Multiple of our speakers have made that flight. They have to be lying also, as well as everyone in the airline industry. As well as Isaac Newton. It's not, a conspiracy by definition is restricted to a few number of people.

This is not a conspiracy, because you're talking about millions of people involved, which is an impossibility.

Satellites, Space Photos, and the Problem of Conspiracy Thinking

And people, of course, will ask the next question, Dr. Carter, they'll ask the question about, what about the things we have in space, the satellites that send pictures back to us of what it looks like from the satellite to the Earth, and you get all these photos of a sphere and a globe.

What about those pictures? Is there some conspiracy suggested in regard to those satellites? Okay, so there's an entire.

They claim there are no satellites. There are only high altitude balloons. The problem with this idea is, again, geometry. The highest balloon ever recorded, I just looked this up a couple weeks ago, I don't know, let's say 30 ,000 feet, it's more than that.

I don't remember the exact number. But what I did is I calculated at that height what you can see on a globe Earth versus what you should be able to see on a flat Earth. And from that height, you should be able to see all the way to the edges, but you can't.

It's not possible because the Earth is a globe. In fact, as you, if this is the Earth, the higher you get above the surface of the Earth, the more of this you can see. And the limit, as you get further and further away, all of a sudden you can see exactly half of a globe.

Never more. You don't ever see Antarctica if you're above the North Pole. It's not possible. You always see half of a globe, which is exactly what the NASA astronauts saw when they were out in space or what the International Space Station astronauts see today.

It's exactly what we would think they should see if the Earth was round.

So in your recent article that you did with Dr. Sarfati, you have in the table of contents, the introduction, obviously, the case for a spherical Earth. You have, you talk about the Earth and the moon, things disappearing over the horizon, parallax problems, time zones, different stars, the missing South Pole, circumnavigation of the globe, astronauts in space, prove it to yourself, why does the Earth superficially look flat?

Well, let me ask you that one. Why does the Earth superficially look flat?

Because it's a really, really, really big globe. And when you're standing on the edge of something so big, you don't necessarily see the curvature right away. Right. Because it's so huge. If the Earth was as big as a marble and you tried to stand on it, you would notice it was round.

If it was as big as a house and you tried to stand on it, you'd say, yeah, it's round, but it's thousands of miles in diameter, therefore, the horizon gets really flat and we can treat the Earth as flat in the local environment.

But long distance hunters and snipers, they can't treat the Earth as flat. Surveyors, they can't treat the Earth as flat. That's right. So even when you're doing something on it, if you're surveying a football stadium, you have to account for the fact that this end and this end aren't gonna be pointing straight up because you're far enough away there's a little bit of difference.

And anything bigger than that, you have to account for the curvature of the Earth or you can mess something up.

That's actually an excellent point, right? The land surveyors and things like that have to deal with the curvature.

Well, and people who get lost, like hikers that get lost out in the woods, they think they're traveling a straight path, but many times it's found that they've been essentially just circling.

Yeah, and I don't think that's the curvature of the Earth so much as that they don't know how to follow a straight line. Right, yeah.

That would be me, by the way, getting lost in the woods. All right, so Dr. Carter, be right back. A short commercial break. More with Dr. Carter, gonna ask some more questions. Important subject, actually.

Believe it or not, you should know the information on how to respond. ApologiaRadio .com is where you go to get us.

Phenomenological Language, Scripture, and the Limits of Flat Earth Proofs

I want their faith to not just be something that stands, but something around which culture can be built.

We want students who can think critically about arguments, but also about the culture around them, that can then speak clearly to it, and that also have the ability to influence and shape because of the power of their message because that's really what the gospel does.

The gospel throws down all the arguments against it. It speaks to the hearts of people. It influences, and it changes.

All right, everyone, back with Dr. Robert Carter, Creation Ministries International. Creation .com is where you get him. He's a gift to the church, a huge blessing. We've done some fantastic shows with Dr. Carter, so if you haven't heard him yet, go to ApologiaRadio .com.

Check out the past episodes we've done. We've done stuff on Mitochondrial Eve, Daughters in Law of Noah. We've done some shows on the dinosaurs, and I forget what else, but they're all in there and they're fantastic.

So get the rest of his stuff at creation .com. Get some of his videos he's done, his talks on all of these different subjects. They're really, really a gift. Dr. Carter, I think one of the things that people, Christians in particular, are gonna have a hard time confronting, maybe because they just haven't thought through how to explain it, is the use of phenomenological language in the Bible, where the authors of scripture will record things from their own perspective and from how they view it.

So you'll have statements made like the four corners of the earth. And so it seems to me that flat earthers are actually seizing upon these statements in scripture, and they're utilizing them to prove the flat earth myth.

And so can you talk about that, the phenomenological language in scripture and how we address those arguments?

Sure, and this is a little uncomfortable, but it gets to the root of how we use words. We all use words poetically and metaphorically, and we do it constantly. We talk about sunrise, even though we don't believe the sun is rising, but the earth is turning underneath the sun.

It's just too hard to say it that way. I mean, it's just common use of language, and we do it all the time. Hebrew, right? They talk about sunrise. Well, you know what the root word for that word means?

To rise up. Not to become light and not to appear, not to come around the curve of the earth and suddenly get shined upon. It actually means to rise up. So that's not even phenomenological, such as it's descriptive.

Yes. It's not poetic or metaphoric. It's look, this thing is popping up over the horizon, and I'm looking at it, rise from where I am right now. And it's perfectly acceptable. We have to do this in order to have conversation.

It's just the way it is. Right. So those who believe in the flat earth myth will draw from what kinds of passages in scripture? What would they actually point people to to provide a Well, actually, they're gonna ignore.

The four corners of the earth quote, because I like using that, because their earth has no corners. It's a flat disk. Right. Yeah, okay. Sorry, you're actually breaking scripture there, and then get mad at you.

Okay. Well, there's so many, it's hard to even know where to start and they don't usually major on the biblical statements. They start off with the pseudo-scientific things, and then they throw in a couple little scriptural references in the middle of it.

Right.

And that's what makes it so difficult. If you had a chance to talk to, last question, Joy, then I'll hand it to you. If you had a question, if you had an opportunity to talk to someone who believes in the flat earth myth, and you have about a minute to talk to them, Dr. Carter, what would you say to them?

Wow, I would say, brother, come on over to the light side. Okay. You have jettisoned 2000 years of Christian scholarship. Nobody in Christianity believed what you're saying now, ever. Why is that? I think that might be a good strategy.

Good, okay. I like it. Joy? Because you can't just argue with all the facts, and they've got these facts up in their head. And in fact, it's funny, because they'll say facts, and I know I read that on someone else's website.

And like one guy tried to tell me once, oh, I tried to book that flight from Johannesburg to Sydney. I said, no, you didn't. You never, have you ever been to Johannesburg? Did you actually try to book that flight?

You did not. And they do that all the time.

Okay. It's really funny. Well, so even just as you mentioned that little story, I want to ask you to talk about how does serious science approach the conspiracy theory?

Conspiracy theory is at the root of all of this. Geocentrism, and especially Flat Earth. It's like geocentrism on steroids. And there's a great distrust of information in today's world. There's a great distrust of the government.

But you know what? And the conspiracy theorists, especially the Christians, definitely the Christians, they've got this idea that Satan's in control of the world. But that's not true biblically. Satan is not in control of anything.

God is. Now, Satan is on a long leash, maybe. You know, that story of God and Satan talking about Job and God said, yeah, go ahead and test him. But that's not Satan in control. Satan didn't make this universe.

God made this universe. In fact, God made the universe according to God's own character and nature, which is to be understandable and to be complicated. And the reason that the universe is knowable is because God is noble.

And the reason the universe is not fickle is because God is not fickle. And God built us with the ability to reason and to relate to the creator. And we do that by studying the creation. And it is, honestly, I think it's putting shackles on the spirit to say that Satan has so blinded people that they can't even see the universe the way it really is.

And this flat-earthing, I'm sorry, there's nothing to support it. It cannot possibly be true if the universe makes sense and if the world makes sense. And if everything is magic, okay, it can be flat, but everything is not magic.

Everything is sensible. Right, why don't you Because it's sensible, we can make sense of it. Right.

So earlier you talked about the sky being blue. We would have to give that up. So what are a few other things that we would just have to give up the science for? Like what other things would have to just be magic to work?

You couldn't explain how the sun and moon stay up in the air. You couldn't explain how the moon appears to be closer than the sun. You couldn't explain the fact that two people at two different places can actually measure the distance to the moon and it's a lot farther away than they need it to be.

Well, do they believe that the moon is its own light source? It's like a separate It depends on who you ask. Okay, because I know there is some differences between, you'll find different sects of flat

Yeah, and the moon is like a secondary issue that they argue, just like gravity is a secondary issue, they argue which way it's going. Okay. But the flatness of it is really not. Hey, you know something cool I heard today?

Huh? On some Google search results, our article's number one. Yeah? Oh, nice. Awesome.

I got a number one article on Google. I think it's like a computing flat earth. Boom, right there. Yes, there you go. Well, no, that's really good. That is so exciting. I can't believe it actually happened.

It took a lot of work to do that. And running up on the show now, it's creation .com slash refuting dash flat dash earth. That's where you get the article. Make sure you guys check it out. Dr. Robert Carter, creation .com.

Dr. Carter, thank you for joining us on the show today, brother. You're welcome. Wonderful, wonderful time as always. Luke the Bear, thank you, sir. Thank you. Enjoy the girl. Thank you. Thank you to the crew for filming Apologia TV today.

If you guys aren't part of our all access, make sure you sign up at apologiaradio .com. It's A-P-O-L-O-G-I-A radio .com. That's where you get all of our past radio episodes, including all of our TV shows, after shows and Apologia Academy.

I'm Jeff the Ninja, and we will catch you guys next time right here on Apologia TV. The conversation is going to continue at apologiaradio .com. That's where we're gonna have our after show. We're gonna have more content, more conversations, some really great stuff.

You go over there to get it at apologiaradio .com by becoming all access. Go check it out.