Recently I found myself in a strange facebook group named Flat Earth. I didn't leave the group but sometimes I read the posts and I had a lot of fun on the people's folly. I found they have no scientific literacy.
Everybody thinks, that middle-age people - mainly as a result of the Church's teaching - believed the Earth was flat, and Columbus is launched towards the west to India to prove that round. Then he discovered the American continent in the way. The fact is that this myth is not true at all. Scientists didn't believe in flat earth theory since the ancient Greeks proved that is round.
The idea was raised by Pythagoras. Aristotle made to evidence based on the observations and Erastothenes calculated circumference with astonishing precision.
The medieval scientific works are all accepted theory of the Earth is round. It's a common belief that in the Dark Ages the Greek scientists were superseded by church and the flat-earth theory kept the world in faith.
And despite all this, the number of people who believe in a flat earth theory is permanently increasing!
In 1956, Samuel Shenton, who was a "civil" songwriter, founded the International Flat Earth company that is still working. However, only became known after the spread of the Internet. Many flat-earth-groups formed on the Web. They often quarrel with each other. The flat-earth companies mutually accuse each other that they are government agents and just spread bullshits, so as to discredit the idea.
Members of the Flat Earth Society claim to believe the Earth is flat. Walking around on the planet's surface, it looks and feels flat, so they deem all evidence to the contrary, such as satellite photos of Earth as a sphere, to be fabrications of a "round Earth conspiracy" orchestrated by NASA and other government agencies."
The leading flat-earther theory holds that Earth is a disc with the Arctic Circle in the center and Antarctica, a 150-foot-tall wall of ice, around the rim. NASA employees, they say, guard this ice wall to prevent people from climbing over and falling off the disc. Earth's day and night cycle is explained by positing that the sun and moon are spheres measuring 32 miles (51 kilometers) that move in circles 3,000 miles (4,828 km) above the plane of the Earth. (Stars, they say, move in a plane 3,100 miles up.) Like spotlights, these celestial spheres illuminate different portions of the planet in a 24-hour cycle. Flat-earthers believe there must also be an invisible "antimoon" that obscures the moon during lunar eclipses.
To believe or not to believe? I honestly went around the subject, and I found the evidence weak but the conspiracy theory too complicated. It's a huge pile of bullshit!
Earth as a pancake among balls. No comment :)))
Sources:
http://www.livescience.com/24310-flat-earth-belief.html
http://index.hu/tudomany/til/2014/09/01/kolumbusz_nem_hitte_hogy_a_fold_lapos/
http://mno.hu/tudomany/a-fold-marpedig-lapos-1358651