Flat Earth | Flat Wrong: An Historical, Biblical & Scientific Analysis

Description

Flat Earth | Flat Wrong: An Historical, Biblical and Scientific Analysis is the latest of Robert Sungenis’ intriguing works. Sparked by the recent and ongoing controversy in social media on whether the Earth is flat and covered by a dome, or is a spherical body surrounded by the vastness of space, Robert was commissioned by the Kolbe Center to write this book and show why, historically, biblically and scientifically, the globe Earth is the true reality. It is by far the most detailed and comprehensive exposé on the flat Earth theory ever written from the critical side of the debate.

Its 736 pages are divided into three sections.

The “Historical,” about 100 pages long, deals with the major personalities involved in the flat Earth movement, beginning from Rowbotham in the late 1880s to the leaders of the modern movement today – their motivations, their science, their funding, their worldview. It also reviews how modern science and modern theology have viewed Genesis 1 and how both have stumbled just as much as the flat-earthers in trying to understand both the creation story; the shape of the Earth, and the meaning of the Firmament. Included are the cultural and psychological causes and effects of both the flat Earth movement and the Big Bang cosmology of modern science.

The Biblical section, which is about 200 pages long, goes into a deep and comprehensive exegesis of every passage that is relevant to the subject of a flat Earth v. globe Earth, including the popular passages such as Isaiah 40:22 (“the circle of the Earth”) and the passages dealing with the “four corners of the Earth.” The original Hebrew and Greek of each passage is thoroughly examined. Special attention is paid to both the Church Fathers’ views on a spherical Earth, which covers 80 pages of analysis; as well as a thorough exegesis and applicability of the Firmament. It also presents, for the first time in current literature, the case for the dubious origin of the “dome” concept, which takes about 70 pages of analysis.

Finally, the Scientific section, in 400 pages of detailed analysis, covers most of the arguments flat-earthers use to defend their model, including NASA and photos of the Earth, the Chicago skyline as seen from Lake Michigan, Antarctica and the ice wall, gravity and the vacuum of space, and 40 other topics. It is divided into astronomical-based evidence and Earth-based evidence.

Sungenis does not seem to ever consider the metaphysical basis of Genesis 1 and the semiotic layers of its narrative [here removing “to specifically describe”], which is not reducible to some version of modern physics (with “firmament” being about “space”), but rather bears on the revealed foundational structure of created reality, which, I believe, features a dynamic metaphysics predicated upon differentiation and quaternary logic (similar to what the structure of the Temple illustrates, as I succinctly explained in Prophetic Figures of the Incarnate Word), as quaternary differentiation lies at the heart of the metaphysics of Creation:…

I also wanted to further clarify my previous remark about the foundational role of the use of the operation of negation:

It is about an act of differentiation (involving a divine use of logical negation, implied by the use of א , predicated on: “And so it was,” and not something else).

Our ability to speak at all and express rational judgments comes into play through the implicit use the operation of negation (“ x is not y ”). For to affirm that a given species of tree belongs to the class “tree” is concurrently to exclude it from all the other classes of things. Thus, the use of the operation of negation lies at the foundation of logic and of any properly rational speech. We use it necessarily not only to articulate any meaningful statement whatsoever, but, even more fundamentally, with every single unit word we meaningfully elect to utter. And so it is, first and foremost, in the divine discourse of Creation: “And God said… and so it was [“it” (= some x), and not something else (= some y)].”

In Gen 1:1, nothing is explicitly said of the Heavens (E 3). But a careful reader quickly realizes, by Gen 1:8 (“And God called the firmament Heavens”), that their name (akin to a sign) is extended to another reality, called “firmament,” which is fashioned on the Second Day. On the Fourth Day, the same name /sign is yet again assigned, this time in reference to the place set for the “great lights /…/ and the stars.” (Gen 1:17) The text is necessarily intelligent and irreducible to a literal account about things directly pertaining to astrophysics and the shape of the “cosmos.”

“In the beginning [= בראשית/in the principle or head of six] God created...” This text is a revelation about a specific divine operation (a revelation totally unique to Scripture). It is addressed to man’s intelligence by way of a language both meaningful yet new to him. Such is the distinctive mark of the Word of God Incarnate. And thus it is, eminently so with the revelation conveyed in Genesis 1. The revealed text with which Scripture begins speaks of a reality no man can naturally grasp (though he can know, on account of his reason alone, that the world cannot but be created, as dogmatically defined in Vatican I’s Dei Filius); but does so through the medium of words man already knows; yet imparts to them, by way of n -ary logics and sound analogy, a meaning they did not previously have. This meaning, however, must be unfolded from the revealed text by reason of an equally inspired work of contemplative deduction (the Church giving Scripture, not the other way around). In other words, and this is key and very foreign to what most of us assume, the meaning of a text as fundamental yet essentially unknown as Genesis 1 cannot be so derived on the basis of the experience from which the immediate meaning of the words comprising its narrative is taken and commonly known. If most people realized this (including many religious people), they would not mistaken Genesis 1 for a children’s story.

For example, on an immediate level, the “Heavens” universally refers to what stands far above man (which everybody can understand), prompting his vertical consideration (animals don’t look at the sky pondering its order and mysteries). However, divine revelation does not intend to direct man’s intellect to the natural display of the sky and its many stars. Understanding Genesis 1 requires the crucial operation of analogy, which particularly befits man’s intellect—the latter being ordered to the contemplation and knowledge of invisible realities (ultimately to God’s own very essence). Furthermore, the revealed text lays out a logic that does not conform to the abstraction of immediate experience, and therefore does not conform to classical logic (though it may and does in fact include it), which is the logic immediately fitting our everyday experience in this world (common experience and logic carried out apart from the revelation of Genesis 1). The complex analogical system of signs and the bottom-line extended logic of Genesis 1 exceed our common experience of describing the world, typically in terms of pairs of opposites. An ingrained binary reading will for example conceive of a sort of primordial antagonism between the Heavens and the Earth, unconsciously applying the principle of the excluded middle. By such a reading, all things resulting from the primordial act of Creation must ultimately come down to 0 and 1 bits (which caused no lesser than Leibniz himself, seized by the “creative” power of base-two arithmetic, to say: “Omnibus ex nihilo ducendis sufficit unum”). However, the revealed text highlights the key fact that the divine act of Creation brings about four concomitantly distinct terms (Gen 1:1-2): the Heavens (שמים), the Earth (ארץ), the Abyss (תהום), and the Waters (מים). Therefore, we cannot oppose the Heavens to the Earth as two terms describing some physical system made of ethereal space and of planet earth. That is assuredly not what divinely revealed B ēr ēshit* (בראשית) is about, which the underlying metaphysics and built-in semiotic structure of the text undoubtedly confirm.

Sungenis (based on what he says in that presentation), like the flat earthers and other “Bible believing” Protestants, tends to assimilate Genesis 1 with a “revealed” physics, assuming the biblical text to be treating of a sort of astrophysical representation directly derivable from “experience” (at least from the known observations and properly interpreted data through which modern science is able to assess them via the construction of models/conceptual instruments). In other words, he and many of his counterparts read Genesis 1 without bothering with its built-in ana-logicity (the inevitability of which is strongly implied by the complex linguistic semiotics inherent to the original text). They seem to assume that the revealed text ultimately agrees with the naturalist proposition that “there is nothing in the human mind that does not first come in from the external world through the senses.” If this were the case, however, the revealed text would in fact “reveal” nothing besides what’s already there to know by correctly observing and interpreting it. But the objective fact of in-spiration , which eminently applies to Scripture as a whole, guarantees that the interaction of the human body with its environment is not the only source of true information about reality available to fallen man (thank God, for we could otherwise never escape the interpretive distortion original sin forces upon our darkened intellects). Even less so when the information man is especially made the recipient of is purposely intended as a supernatural revelation regarding the divine operation of Creation itself—an operation which, in and of itself, remains strictly inconceivable for us, and consequently indescribable (hence, precisely, the necessity of a revelation).

About the Flat Earth movement, I disagree with Sungenis that debunking its claims requires extensive research and justifies such a large book (700 + pp. is, I suspect, more of a Sungenis trademark). I grant him that activist flat earthers are passionate distorters of facts and resourceful enough to efficiently sustain their wacky pursuit. Hardcore proponents take it dead seriously and travel about the world to “evangelize” as many misguided believers as they can find. But, observationally and mathematically, their model is easily shown to conclusively fail. There is no real debate here, provided verifiable facts and sound applications of basic trigonometry are allowed to speak and measure against flat earther “evidences” and “calculations.”

S. Irenaei episcopi et martyri, ora pro nobis.

• The dynamics of which yields six relations.