I'll cite one source for this psy-op in the wiki:
Eugenie Scott called the group an example of "extreme Biblical-literalist theology: The earth is flat because the Bible says it is flat, regardless of what science tells us."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_flat_Earth_beliefs
Now, it is true that Samuel Shenton and Charles K. Johnson were both Bible believers.
However, some other Flat Earthers aren't. Vedic Astronomy seems to have some adherents, it's Flat Earth and as it's Vedic, it isn't Biblical.
And it's also true that if all I knew of Flat Earthers were what Eugenie Scott said, if I had no previous reasons to believe the Earth a sphere, or to believe the Bible passages allow another, very strictly literal meaning, without any woo woo about "it's metaphoric" and "mature to symbolism" ... Eugenie Scott would just have persuaded me to actually consider Flat Earth.
Now, it very clearly isn't.
I looked up a BBC piece stating that youtube helped to spread Flat Earth, and the first thing I meet is an Englishman who says water is flat in a cup of tea, flat in a bathtub, so why would he expect it to be rounded in the ocean? I don't need to expect anything. Having often travelled between Malmö and Dragør on ferry, and walked a sea shore walk too narrow to accomodate bathers, I once or more than once sat down there, with binoculars. The ferry clearly appears top and chimney before hull, and disappears hull before top and chimney. The water is curved, I have seen it.
Again, there is not one single Bible passage where a strictly literal reading (unless you strictly limit yourself to an English or other Germanic translation) forces a Flat Earth interpretation.
So, what about this one?
After these things, I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that they should not blow upon the earth, nor upon the sea, nor on any tree
[Apocalypse (Revelation) 7:1]
Yes, ban English translations of the Bible! Arundel versus Wycliff for the win! No, seriously, I'm joking, since even in English there is a giveaway, that we deal with a somewhat inaccurate (to idiomatic English) translation. And all Germanic languages have the same issue, and at least modern versions of Slavonic languages too.
But Latin, French, Spanish as well as Hebrew haven't. Eretz = terra = earth. Eretz = terra = land. (Terra is pronounced "terre" in French and "tierra" in Castilian).
And Land as it so happens has four major corners against the Pacific.
Another thing in Eugenie Scott, she contrasts the Bible with "science" ... I would say that whether you classify my views with the binocular as science or not, it certainly is also everyday experience. It's certainly not just science, like a lab doing particle colliders. There are other types of everyday experience that also support Earth as meaning whatever lies beneath both land and sea is a globe. For instance, the impossibility to draw a Flat Earth map to scale. To be fair, any flat projection will refuse to be fully to scale as well, either angles or areas will be twisted. That's part of why I have a hard time to find out if Ellesmere Island is kind of partially a "fifth corner" of land, but even if it were, it would be a flatter angle than the four corners. And Ellesmere Island isn't very inhabited either, so it's definitely not a fifth corner of the oikoumene, which is one Biblical meaning of Earth. But still, if you accept a flat circle with the North Pole in the middle, you are at extreme odds against getting anything to scale.
You are also up against the Bible, because the outer corners of the land in that perspective would include two of the actual corners (Cape Horn and Tasmania), then add a non-corner (Cape of Good Hope, nope, it's not protruding South of the globe line between Cape Horn and Tasmania) and either lack a fourth corner or need to accept Australia as having a second corner, in the vicinity of Perth. Which is pretty absurd. And the Bible, as quoted, says "four" corners, not "three" ...
Again, travel times and travel routes (for instance between Santiago de Chile and Sydney) and travel around the world in "Latitude zero" by Mike Horn are anecdotal, and therefore unscientific, but precisely therefore far trustworthier than "science" arguments for Earth being an actual globe.
Now, probably Shenton was a not so well travelled man, and his Flat-Earthism was not a Psy-Op. I'd like to also give Rob Skiba II at least the benefit of the doubt. But youtube started in 2005.*
This was four years after I became a Geocentric. In 2001, St. Bartholomew's Feast, I became Geocentric. OK, 3 and 1/2 years, since I became so in the second half of 2001 and youtube was founded in very early 2005.
Robert Sungenis** is better known than I:
According to Sungenis, he became interested in geocentrism around 2002 after he read the book, Geocentricity by Gerardus D. Bouw. Sungenis became an advocate for the idea by 2006.
Perhaps my early encounters with other Geocentrics, apart from Pope Michael I, were about Geocentricity. I just found at least one of the editions, perhaps the first, was 1992. THAT very certainly WAS before youtube even existed, let alone gave Flat Earthers a boost.
So, the first question in the title here, when you spell it out, is, is Flat Earth artificially boosted to both take attention away from and to many detract from the credibility of Bouw, Pope Michael I, me or Robert Sungenis? Because to a person like Eugenie Scott, Flat Earth is kind of a boon when it comes to ridiculing the act of "believing X because the Bible says so, despite all science to the contrary" ...
I can't agree with Bouw's King James onlyism, that translation mistreats "battologein" in Matthew 6:7, and as to his Baptist Successionism, it's theologically possible on the one item of Matthew 28:20, but historically impossible. The things that are both theologically and historically possible are Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Copts, Armenians and Assyrians. The Baptist Successionist claim violates history (or Matthew 5:14—15), the Lutheran / Calvinist and the Mormon / JW / 7DA types of claims violate Matthew 28:20. But that's no reason to disparage Bouw's contribution to Geocentrism.
However, on one point, Bouw*** and Sungenis after him have taken the wrong turn:
Bouw believed that the theory of heliocentrism is what eventually led into many of the "immoralities" seen today. Due to this, he ended up modifying the cosmology of the 16th century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who offered a modified model of geocentrism that put the planets centered on the motion of the Sun rather than the Earth, while the Sun orbited a stationary Earth. Bouw modified this model further by adjusting the stars also to be centered on the Sun rather than the Earth to explain the aberration of starlight. This way, he believed that his modified geocentric model would be observationally equivalent to heliocentrism, thus leading to argue that the correct view can be only established outside scientific observation with theological reasoning.
I reject that last modification, and say that "aberration" and "parallax" are two mathematical analyses of fix stars being moved by their angelic movers. But he is right in the first aspect. Heliocentrism led away from the Bible, from God, from Christian dogma, from Christian ethics. Geocentrism is, Flat Earth isn't, how one retraces, for as many as possible, the way back. For as many as possibly can, and if more could, were less indoctrinated by Eugenie Scott, more would be saved. And if you accept angelic movers, as well as Geocentrism, you get rid of "parallax" supposedly giving a trigonometric proof for 4 light years to α Centauri. The 2 AU distance is between two positions of the Sun against the Zodiac and need not be matched by a 2 AU distance between the two positions of α Centauri. Which makes the triangle an angles only one, without distance, and so useless to calculate distance. WHICH IS where I came into this idea, since the Distant Starlight Problem° depends on Heliocentrism and Cosmic distances with and beyond those "measured by parallax" ....
Yes, I am a Geocentric. No, I'm not a Flat Earther. And no, if you buy into the hysteria of Eugenie Scott, that Geocentrics or Young Earth Creationists are "no better than Flat Earthers" you are actually worse than one.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Moses, Prophet
4.IX.2026
In monte Nebo, terrae Moab, sancti Moysis, legislatoris et Prophetae.
PS, I went to the comments' section under Metatron's video about Flat Earthers, and guess what? The comments of one Globe Earther and Geocentric had been taken down. That's like he actively is trying to discredit and silence this Geocentric by "reductio in platismum" a bit like some would try to discredit Schuschnigg, DeValera, Franz Joseph Strauss by a "reductio in Hitlerum" .../HGL
Notes:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sungenis
*** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerardus_D._Bouw
° So, I think my solution is better than that or most of them in a book by Humphreys, D. Russell (1994). Starlight and Time: Solving The Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe. Foreword by Ken Ham. Green Forest, AR: Master Books. The preview doesn't allow seeing whether Mr. Humprhey's even briefly considered Geocentrism.
