From: rpjday@cuug.ab.ca (Robert P.J. Day 277-3175)
Subject: The Flat Earth Society
Organization: Calgary UNIX Users' Group
Distribution:  world
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 20:09:43 GMT

(Sorry if you've seen this twice, I'll get the hang of this mailer yet :-)

In article <1992Sep2.132528.6672@bony1.bony.com> billg@bony1.bony.com (Bill Gripp) writes:
>In article <9qhn+lf.alc@netcom.com> stassen@alc.com writes:
>
>>3. Contact the Flat Earth Society (I don't have the address handy, but
>>   I posted it a while ago).  They will provide you with materials and
>>   show you how to fight the evil humanistic belief that the earth is
>>   round with true evidence and Biblical information that shows otherwise.
>
>Funny, my Bible says "He compasseth the day from the night" indicating
>that the earth is a sphere (round).
>
  All this proves is that one can support virtually any statement imaginable
from Scripture.  Precisely the opposite viewpoint is expressed by the
reference to the "four corners of the earth," and by the parable of Jesus
being shown "all the kingdoms of the earth" from the top of a mountain --
clearly impossible for a sphere, but reasonable for a flat surface.
See how easy it is?  One can play dueling Scriptures all day, and settle
nothing.
  Anyway, if you really want to know about the Flat Earth Society, it's
run by Charles K. Johnson, Box 2533, Lancaster, CA, 93539-2533., phone
805-727-1635.  This group is not a joke, it is deadly serious and manages
to publish some of the most anti-intellectual and vicious (not to mention
illiterate) prose I've seen in a while.  
  For example, in the Sept 1988 issue, we have the tasty little excerpt,
"IN USA today, as in Russia in '20s and NAZI Germany in '40s full scale
campaign to create USA ALSO A BEAST NATION... no God... no right no wrong
no up no down 2 added to 2 is whatever scientists say it is... Adults
today either jailed or shot down... at own homes for even teaching their
own children... GOD EXISTS and Right and Wrong exists (State of Utah)...
bells have been tolling for so long... for the helpless pitiful innocent
"animals" as they are tortured to death by priests of the State Religion
"GREASE BALL SCIENCE"... now ... 1988 ... no use, too late... to send to 
see for whom the bell tolls... THE BELL TOLLS FOR THEE!"  [Sic.  Totally
sic, as in word for word, character for character.]
  The Flat Earth News, at least back then, had a regular column,
"One Hundred Proofs Earth is Not a Globe."  Number 34, in that issue,
  "If the Earth were a globe, there certainly would be -- if we could
imagine the thing, to be peopled all around-"antipodes:" "people who,"
says the dictionary, "living exactly on the opposite side of the globe
to ourselves, having their fee [sic] opposite to ours" - people who
are HANGING DOWN, HEAD DOWNWARDS while we are standing head up?  But since
the theory allows to travel to those parts of the earth where the
people are said to hand head downward, and still to fancy ourselves
to be heads upwards, and our friends whom we have left behind us to be
heads downwards, it follows that the WHOLE THING IS A MYTH - A DREAM -
A DELUSION - and a snare, and, instead of there being any evidence at all
in this direction to substantiate this popular theory, it is plain proof
that the Earth is Not A Globe."
  

R. Day
member, Alberta Skeptics... "the pit bull of skepticism"


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