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The history of flat-earthers is chock full of lunatics and screwballs!
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Direct quote:
“No one except a low down scoundrel, a person lower than the dirtiest dog, yes, lower down than a skunk would call the Earth a globe in Zion City.”
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(Illustration of Bedford Level Experiment from Rowbotham’s Book)
What Rowbotham did not consider is that the results he experienced are readily explained by the refraction of light. The atmosphere of the Earth is most dense at the surface. It tends to settle into stratified layers, of different densities and temperatures. These stratified layers of the atmosphere tend to bend light, especially horizontal light viewed near the surface of the Earth, or over a body of water. If a temperature inversion exists, such as is common above the surface of a cold canal on a warm day, or a warm canal on a cold day, this effect can be magnified, enabling people to view things which are beyond the horizon.
This experiment by Rowbotham reveals the peril of trying to draw conclusions when natural principles are not fully understood. Without having a knowledge of optics, a man can be deceived when making visual observations. Light rays are distorted through an array of variables and can make objects appear larger, smaller, closer, farther away, different colors, and even inverted.
To give an example of how such an error in conclusions can be made, suppose you are a high school student living in Denver, Colorado. You are told by your science teacher that water boils at a temperature of 100 degrees Celsius or 212 degrees Fahrenheit. You want to prove this claim, so you stick a thermometer in a pot of water and slowly raise the temperature. You discover, however, that the water boils at 95 degrees Celsius or 203 degrees Fahrenheit. You return to class and tell your instructor he is wrong. He then tells you that there is another factor you have to consider, and that is elevation. Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius at sea level, but Denver is 5,000 feet above sea level. Due to the lower atmospheric pressure at higher elevations, water boils at a lower temperature. When we don’t understand all the variables, and account for them, we can arrive at wrong conclusions.
Many flat-Earthers cite Samuel Rowbotham’s experiment, or their own experiments taken under similar circuмstances, as proof that the Earth is flat. If they checked out Mr. Rowbotham’s reputation they might be less inclined to cite him as a reference. Samuel Rowbotham published his findings in a 16 page pamphlet titled
Zetetic Astronomy under the pseudonym Parallax in 1849. He later expanded this to a 430 page book titled
Earth Not a Globe which he published in 1865. In 1861 Samuel Rowbotham at the age of 45 married for a second time to the daughter of the woman who did his laundry. The young girl was 16 years old. He used the name “Dr. Samuel Birley” (Birley being his middle name) and sold “secrets for extending human life and curing every form of illness.”
Rowbotham’s flat-Earth beliefs were taken up in the United States by the
Christian Catholic Apostolic Church of Zion, Illinois, which was founded in 1896 by John Alexander Dowie and continued by Wilbur Glenn Voliva. The church operated much like a commune. Dowie bought up a large parcel of land and built homes. Outside of the town the church erected signs such as the following:
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The sign reads, “No one except a low down scoundrel, a person lower than the dirtiest dog, yes, lower down than a skunk would call the Earth a globe in Zion City.” If the names of Dowie and Voliva sound familiar, I wrote of them two years ago in a series titled Deception. Following is an excerpt.
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Dowie taught that healing is promised in the atonement and insisted that those who sought faith healing give up all medical care. He viewed druggists and physicians as instruments of the devil. When his own daughter was severely burned after accidentally knocking over an alcohol lamp, he banished one of his followers for trying to alleviate her pain with Vaseline. He refused to allow her any medical treatment and she died in that condition. Many others who came to his faith cure homes died of their illnesses without any medical attention.
[Source:
http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/strange1.htm]
John Alexander DowieDowie purchased land in Illinois and established the town of Zion. The entire town of about 7,000 individuals was comprised of his followers. Dowie owned all the property, and he controlled the local business that church members worked in. He was accused of misappropriating funds, a charge that has a factual basis to it as Dowie built for himself a 25 room mansion while most of the church members lived off of sub-standard wages for the time.
Although Dowie’s doctrine declared that physical health was promised to all mankind through the atonement of Christ, he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1905. He never fully regained his health after that, and suffered numerous subsequent strokes. He died after having been depressed and bed-ridden in 1907.
Dowie had chosen as his lieutenant a man as avaricious and deceived as himself. When Dowie suffered a stroke in 1905 while traveling in Mexico, W.G. Voliva, his second in command, took advantage of the situation and wrested control of Zion. Upon his return to Zion, Dowie sought to regain control, but was unsuccessful, being forced to be content with an allowance provided by the church. Voliva, continued to stress the promise of divine health as a consequence of Christ’s atonement, yet he also died after being stricken with cancer. In the year 1942, at the age of 72, Dowie’s successor confessed that he too had misappropriated church funds for his own personal use, and had committed “other serious sins.” There were numerous charges of sɛҳuąƖ misconduct relating to Dowie and to Voliva, and it seems likely that it was to this that Voliva was referring. Voliva had previously proclaimed that he would live to be 120 years old, based upon the promise of God in Genesis 6:3. Nevertheless, he fell 48 years short of that goal.
Aside from Dowie suffering the horrific tragedy of his 21 year old daughter Esther being horribly burned by an overturned lamp that was fueled by alcohol, and Esther subsequently dying, Dowie lost his young daughter Jeanie to sickness 17 years earlier when he was in the midst of his healing ministry and claiming great success at healing others.
http://parablesblog.blogspot.com/2016/03/addendum-flat-earth-theory.html
Topic: What Church teaching means by "literal sense of Scripture" (Read 4007 times)