Did you post the wrong link? He says nothing about either the shape of the earth or what the authors of the Pentateuch believed about it.
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Agreed. The closest he appears to come to this topic is this:
Everyone who reads the creation accounts in the Bible today with any understanding, knows that these are very ancient stories written in a different cultural world and in a different part of the world (unless they live in the Middle East today). This is a fact that no one should deny or overlook. It is not surprising that he revealed it in ways that would be more readily recognizable and especially powerful and understandable to the first readers or hearers of the text, the ancient Israelites. The ancient Israelites were ANE people. This does not mean, however, that what we have in the Genesis 1 is basically ANE cosmology. It has some of the same basic human observational features (e.g., the three level cosmos, see above and more on this below), but does not just go along with it with only adjustments to the theology. There is more to it than that.
He then proceeds to talk at great length about the conceptual makeup (number of tiers, etc) of the Genesis versus ANE cosmology, but does not appear to discuss its physical makeup (shape, roof, etc).
This is admittedly a very long (10,000+ word) piece, so if we have missed something more directly relevant we probably need more guidance as to where in it we should be looking.
I find it interesting that many people still claim that church authorities taught (and enforced) a belief in a flat earth despite the fact that the globus cruciger (“cross-bearing globe/world” in Latin) was depicted in the hands of kings and popes since Roman times—and even held by Christ himself, both as an infant and an adult Jesus.
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You may have to click on this .png file link to see the Christ child image:
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So far I haven’t seen anyone make that claim.
I thought that was the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.
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Welcome @subrationedei! 
As first posts go, that was a doozy!
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Shouldn’t that date to the time of the art work, not the time of Christ?
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And Christ is routinely depicted as having nearly (or completely) blond hair, so I don’t put much faith in those depictions.
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If the Wikipedia article can be trusted (always a question, particularly given the lack of inline citation), the imagery predates Christian ascendancy (to Hadrian, at least). This would mean that it is conceivable that even if knowledge of the topology of the world was later lost, use of this imagery persisted, shorn of its original meaning.
I would note that the two footnotes I checked in this post did not reveal sources that asserted “that church authorities taught (and enforced) a belief in a flat earth”, but that both these sources had their claims subtly exaggerated in the retelling – both times to state that the sources were impugning “the Church” as an institution, when they had not done so.
Correct. Those were not actual live-model portraits of Jesus. And he did not have an actual halo or nimbus on his head.
I think the earliest Christian art containing the globus dates to the fourth century or so. That is why I spoke of kings and popes since Roman times.
Of course, the orb/globus was a well-recognized ancient symbol of the world and power over it. Christians did not originate the use of a sphere to represent dominion over the world. (I vaguely recall a statue of Jupiter/Zeus holding a globus.)
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This surely does not mean that its use and meaning as a symbol of power could not have continued, long after the original reason why it was given that meaning had been forgotten.
…that you know of.
From a 1550 edition of the De sphaera mundi, first written as manuscript circa 1230.
Iohannes de Sacrobosco proof that the earth is a sphere
That the earth, too, is round is shown thus. The signs and stars do not rise and set the same for all men everywhere but rise and set sooner for those in the east than for those in the west; and of this there is no other cause than the bulge of the earth…
That the earth also has a bulge from north to south and vice versa is shown thus: To those living toward the north, certain stars are always visible, namely, those near the North Pole, while others which are near the South Pole are always concealed from them…
That the water has a bulge and is approximately round is shown thus: Let a signal be set up on the seacoast and a ship leave port and sail away so far that the eye of a person standing at the foot of the mast can no longer discern the signal…
So far so good. And then this…
That the earth is held immobile in the midst of all, although it is the heaviest, seems explicable thus. Every heavy thing tends toward the center. Now the center is a point in the middle of the firmament. Therefore, the earth, since it is heaviest, naturally tends toward that point.
Sounded reasonable at the time.
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This brings to mind Venerable Bede (early 700s) and his Reckoning of Time which described how “the orb of the world” explained various phenomena such the seasons and uneven day-light hours.
I think now would be a good time to remind readers (and myself as well), that the Flat Earth issue is only a small sliver of the Conflict Thesis issue, and besides has its own thread currently on this forum.
As @TedDavis reminded us, there have been a number of conflict-related views, both historic and modern. Wikipedia sites the Conflict Thesis in a wider framework of an ‘Incompatibility’ perspective. And I cannot help but wonder if this isn’t a better general label – the viewpoint that science and religion do things differently. This need not necessitate conflict – a ‘live and let live’ might prevail. But it can also, at times, lead to a ‘my way or the highway’ attitude.
On the latter point, I am still unwilling to accede to Kemp’s ‘both sides are to blame’ framing of this. I have yet to see even the most strident atheist advocate for forcing evolution into churches, let alone write legislation attempting to make this law. I have however seen no end of (both proposed and in a few instances passed) religiously-motivated legislation that attempts to control what is taught in Public School (and thus, by the Establishment Clause, secular) science classes.
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I think that’s certainly true.
I don’t know of a catch all label for this, but several distinct specific views might fit under it. Eg this would include NOMA as one example.
I can think of no better argument against religion than that.
It is, but I think more of a prescriptive one than a descriptive (and thus explanatory) one.
And I think acceptance of its prescriptive value may be fading.
On the one side, we see a growing willingness, particularly in the US, to blatantly reject empirical data. The most obvious example is that a majority of Republicans reject the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential elections, in spite of a complete lack of evidence supporting this position.
On the other side, religious institutions are undergoing a crisis of moral authority. This can be attributable to historical moral failings of church institutions on matter such as racism and child abuse, as well as Canadian Residential Schools and Irish hostels for unwed mothers. Further, many (particularly conservative) church teachings are increasingly seen as regressive and harmful. Finally, religion is becoming increasingly politicised (not just in the US, but also in Poland, Turkey and India).
Tim,
I find it supremely ironic that in using two of the quotes I had in mind about the flat earth from Coyne and Dennett, that this to you somehow proves your points instead that the New Atheists do not rhetorically link the things I said they linked? Bold. My points on the New Atheists were passing ones about the more fundamental historical and rhetorical associations in the history of evolution, creationism/YEC, and the flat earth, in literature expounding the warfare thesis. Since you have kindly proven that this rhetorical link does indeed exist in two of the so-called New Atheists as I said, I most appreciate your efforts to hunt them down. Both of these quotes are also in my book on the warfare thesis, as it happens. And I’m happy not to have to type them out again. It does not matter at all if Dennett’s is hypothetical (and that is only one way of interpreting it). You find the quote less than credible? The quote that just proved the very point I was making? That you yourself found and cited? Ok. Well I suppose when one wants to create their own alternate realities ex nihilo, there is not much I can do about it.
Thank you for the invitation, but no, I’d prefer not to discuss this further with you. Forgive me, but you have displayed the tendency I loathe of taking minor and beside the point issues and holding them up victoriously as if they somehow have feedback on the main points at hand, points you studiously and rather frenetically avoided. No thanks, I’m not interested. For what its worth I quite admire atheist philosophers and scientists (a wonderful Ph.D. advisor and external reader of mine having been just that), just not the horsemen (back in those halcyon days when they were all the rage, I took classes with at least one of them-Peter Boghossian, and we went out to lunch several times to discuss all sorts of topics related to religion. I know them well in their works and their persons. Nice enough gents, until religion comes up and then all bets are off). We are lacking the Nietzsches of old, though at least we have a few honorable atheists writing like Ruse, Nagel, Eagleton, Gray, and several others.
Thanks again for the quotes. Most helpful.
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[My first attempt to respond to this post was blocked by moderation, so I am now rigidly self-censoring to avoid any mention of Patterson’s needling of me, or my opinion of the ethical status of his claims about prominent atheists.]
Both Dennett and Coyne may mention Flat Earth and Creationism (“rejection of Evolution” in Coyne’s words) in the same paragraph, as examples of less-than-credible views. Neither of them however links Flat Earth to religion, nor do either of them make explicit mention of Christianity in this context, nor anything even remotely similar to the implication that this, let alone more general rejection of science, is a “majority” Christian view, let alone that this is one that this majority “always” held.
Equating:
they mentioned both Creationism and Flat Earth
with
they “perpetuate the idea that Christians because of the flat earth, and now six-day creationism, have always opposed science in the majority”
is an absurd exaggeration.
Juxtaposing those two is neither unusual nor some illegitimate “rhetorical” linkage, as this widely-used NCSE chart demonstrates:
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