So much for our modern smug superiority over the supposedly ignorant people of the past. Rarely could any of my students give a good reason why the earth is spherical. The question of the earth’s true shape had been settled two millennia before Columbus. Most of my students were surprised to learn that the facts of history are very different. Supposedly, with our sophistication and intelligence today, we know better than the ignorant people of the past. By raising the question, I challenged our cultural mythology that, until the time of Christopher Columbus five centuries ago, nearly everyone thought the earth was flat. In my years at the university, I always asked the same sort of question in my introductory astronomy classes to motivate my students into thinking more deeply. Rather, he finds the topic interesting and the discussion of it stimulating. Mind you, this young man does not actually believe that the earth is flat. Recently I had a conversation with some people about a Christian young man they know who frequently argues that the earth is flat. You see, the earth could be both round and flat, if it were disk shaped. Or, more specifically, an earth that is spherical.
Many people will probably wonder why it is necessary to write an article defending a round earth.
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