If you do not believe in evolution by natural selection and common ancestry because a book says so (making you feel special),

why do you not also believe the Earth is flat; after all, that same book says so (and, consequentially, make you feel even more special)?

After all, if you are being intellectually honest, and you believe that humans and animals were created, because a book says so,

then you should also accept that the Earth is flat, because that same book says so.

Most reasonable people, upon examining the evidence, understand that the best explanation for our local physical reality is that the Earth is a sphere, that orbits a spherical Sun, and that large celestial bodies are spherical specifically due the effects of gravity. They will also understand that common ancestry and evolution by natural selection are the best explanations for the diversity of life on this planet. Others, who believe that a collection of sixty-six books written over approximately one thousand years by various authors from various cultures somehow managed to embody in their writings many, if not all, eternal truths, and no evidence to the contrary can shake the foundation of this belief. After all, in the very first book of that collection, it says that

the watery Earth was created first,
followed by a splitting of those waters,
followed by day and night,
followed by dry land,
followed by the plants,
then the Sun and the Moon, and
then, after fish and birds came the terrestrial animals, after which the first male human was created.

While apparently creating male and females of most fish, birds and terrestrial animals, that all-knowing creator didn't create a female human until after he (an all-knowing being) "realized" this man needed a companion, and then did so by extracting a rib from that first male human. This narrative emphasizes not only that humans are distinct from all other animals (we, unlike all other creatures, were created in the "image" of this Yahweh, who, so it seems, has male genitalia), that women are subordinate to men (having been created solely for companionship), but also, apparently, a geocentric universe. What is interesting is that so few of these, even the hard-core fundamentalists, believe that the Earth is flat, or the Earth is in the center of the universe; however, many of those same believers claim that we cannot be descendant from a common ancestor with Chimpanzees, and, further back, from a common ancestor of plants and amoebas.

The Earth is a sphere, and there is so much evidence for this that it should seem irrefutable, and yet, there are still a non-trivial number of people today who believe the Earth is flat. When, ten thousand years ago, there was no evidence to suggest the Earth is anything other than flat, it would be reasonable to believe the Earth is flat, as that is the local linear approximation of the slight curvature of the Earth's surface; however, over the centuries, the evidence became so overwhelming that even the Catholic Church understood and taught that the Earth was a sphere. The evidence that the Earth was a sphere was discovered centuries before Jesus was born; for example,

Aristotle, living in the fourth century before Jesus, observed or became aware that the constellations that were visible differed depending on where the observer was, and based on this observation, the best model he and his peers could come up with that could explain these differences was that the Earth was a sphere. The observation inspired the model that appeared to fit the evidence.
Another observation made by Aristotle et al. was the shadows that appear on the Moon during a total or partial lunar eclipse could best be explained by a spherical Earth. Thus, we have two lines of evidence that support this model.
In the third century before the common era Eratosthenes 0bserved that that in Scene, the Sun shown directly down a well shaft on the day of the Summer Solstice. This is because Syene was located very close to the Tropic of Cancer. Further north, in Alexandria, the Sun never shone directly down any well, and only ever lit the northern wall of a well even on the Summer Solstice. The steepest angle achieved by the sun was slightly more than seven degrees (7° 6½') from the vertical, and thus, with knowledge of the distance between the two cities, one can even approximate the circumference 0f the Earth under the assumption the Earth was a sphere. The north-south distance between the two cities is approximately 490 miles or 789 km. This was further evidence that supported the spherical Earth model.
Another line of evidence, the origins of which seem to be lost in time, is that when a sailing ship left port, the body of the ship would disappear below the horizon, while the masts would still be visible. Additionally, an observer who is standing on the beach would lose sight of the sailing ship while the same ship would continue to be visible to an observer on a nearby hill or cliff. Such observations can be explained by, and even predicted by, a spherical model of the Earth.

The beautiful consequence of an actual model is that not only can new observations be confirmed against a model (how often have we heard that Einstein's theory of general relative has once again been shown to be correct--or, more correctly, not shown to be wrong--when new observations are made) but even better, we can look at the model and come up with tests that should either confirm the model, or prove the model is insufficient (here is an example of a recent rigorous test of Einstein's theory of general relativity). At this point, the number of observations and tests made to confirm the spherical Earth model have been so overwhelming that the vast majority of humans just take it as given: globes are everywhere, much to the chagrin of true-believing flat-Earthers. The small minority of humans who cling on to the claim of a flat Earth, however, do not even have a model that supports any of the observations we have made: there is no flat Earth model that

successfully predicts which constellations will be visible where,
explains the shadows on the Moon during a lunar eclipse,
explains what the angle of sunlight should be at any location on Earth on the summer Solstice,
explains why ships disappear under the horizon when they should still be visible, and
explains what so many astronauts and cosmonauts have seen with their own eyes in the last half century.

The few remaining refuges of such true believers include

simple repetition of the claim that the Earth is flat,
misinterpretations and misrepresentations of actual observations and science,
bogus experiments and keeping data secret,
outright lies and denialism,
claims of world-wide conspiracies, and
claims of Biblical inerrancy.

Given the apparent fierce competition between the "godless" Soviet Union and the "god-fearing" United States, each allegedly wanting to win the race to the Moon, this must have all been a massive façade, for both sent cosmonauts and astronauts, respectively, into outer space, and neither side ever claimed that the other side was "making it all up." The only possible explanation if the Earth was actually flat, is that the leaders of both sides were under the control of Satan, or some other nefarious demon. Also, if only one flat Earther created an actual model of a flat Earth that could

compart with all known observations of the Earth, and
make a prediction that quantitatively differs from the spherical Earth model that can then be tested,

then if that prediction is tested and shown to favor the flat Earth model, then all who see that evidence would have to agree that the Earth is flat. However, until then, the spherical Earth casting shadows on a spherical Moon during a lunar eclipse is the best explanation for the shadows we see, and no flat-Earther has ever presented even one model that successfully describes this observation.

Most early Christians, including Augustine of Hippo, stated clearly that it was "scientifically demonstrated that the world is of a round and spherical form." There are a few hold outs, but the general consensus was that the Earth was a sphere. One who opposed the concept of a spherical Earth was Lactantius who lived around 300 CE, who ridiculed the idea that the Earth was a sphere, and throughout history there have been others, as well, but they were few and isolated. The understanding that the Earth was a sphere was only supported with the voyage of Christopher Columbus, and there was no general belief that at some point his ships would fall off the ends of the Earth: they were expecting to reach "India", and when Columbus reached the islands of the Caribbean , he named them the "West Indies" specifically because he believed he had reached India via a western route.

For a long time, however, the general consensus within Christianity was that the Earth was at the center of the universe: stars were but points of light in the sky, and not other suns. The need for the Earth to be at the center of the universe likely comes from Genesis, which states that the Earth was formed first, and that only later did the Sun, the Moon and the stars (and planets) appear. It would be awkward if the Earth was created first, but then subsequently was found to be revolving around the Sun:

At first, Copernicus observed the weaknesses of the geocentric models of the universe and developed a model where the planets, including the Earth, circled the Sun, and he described these elliptical orbits mathematically. This heliocentric model led to significantly better predictions than did the next-best geocentric models using epicycles.
Later, based especially on observations made with the invention of the telescope, Galileo Galilei found further evidence to support the heliocentric model of the universe: the Earth revolved around the Sun, and yet, egocentricity and absence of evidence to the contrary obligated him to place the Sun at the center of the universe.

Copernicus kept his writings secret, and Galileo was found guilty of heresy. Imagine what would have happened had Galileo even suggested or, perhaps worse, found evidence that the Sun itself was not at the center of the universe? Interestingly, Galileo's telescopes presented further evidence that the Earth was a sphere, for all of the planets he was able to observe, first appearing as points of light, were now seen to also be spheres.

However, in parallel with the growing acceptance of the theory of evolution by natural selection by the scientific and liberally-minded enlightened, the mid and late 1800s saw the introduction of the ideas of biblical literalism and inerrancy. These were aspects of the beliefs of fundamentalists who opposed the more broad-minded beliefs of more knowledgeable scholars of the time. Together with fundamentalism grew another belief, popularized by individuals such as Samuel Rowbotham who wrote Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe. The issue today is that not that a significant proportion of people who believe the Earth is flat are Christians, but rather that many who would reject common descent and evolution by natural selection as these do not comport with scripture, never-the-less reject the Biblically supported concept of a flat Earth. There are motivating factors for both who reject a spherical Earth and creation of animals and humans, especially around ego and belief, but most importantly, they find their beliefs are supported by religious scripture. With respect to the ego, under our current understanding, if the Earth was the size of a poppy seed (a 1 mm diameter sphere), the Milky Way Galaxy would comfortably fit inside the orbit of Venus. If the Milky Way Galaxy was the size of a flattened poppy seed (a 1 mm diameter disk), the visible universe would be a sphere approximately one kilometer in diameter. We are very insignificant, indeed. Alternatively, there are--of course--emotional reasons for wanting to believe the Earth is flat:

The Earth appears flat locally. This is because the curvature is so small that one can hardly detect the curvature.
Making the Earth flat makes us special again: we are the center of the universe. We are once again significant.

While many ancient Greek philosophers and early Christian leaders believed the Earth was a sphere, this does not mean that the source of this knowledge was scripture. This belief was adopted by early Christians because of the preponderance of evidence supporting such models. We have previously described how observations and models proposed by Greek philosophers led to this conclusion, and all evidence subsequently found continue to support this model. We will consider a few models of the universe, and then determine which model is best described by those few verses that could be used to describe the Earth.

We will refer to four models that do not accept that the Earth is just one small dot in the universe:

the flat-Earth model,
the central-fire model where an unseen central fire is at the center of the universe,
the geocentric model where the Earth is a sphere at the center of the universe, and
the heliocentric model where the Sun is at the center of the universe.

In the second, third and fourth models, the Sun, planets and moons are generally assumed to be embedded in spheres.

Now, some claim that there are statements in the Judean or Christian scriptures that support that the Earth is a sphere, and to be fair, there are no scriptures that explicitly state that the Earth is flat. However, we will walk through many passages both in the Judean and Christian scriptures that can really only be reasonably interpreted as describing the model of the universe described in Genesis 1: a flat Earth. There was no need to explicitly state the Earth was flat, as that was the default assumption, and above that flat Earth was a dome, and above that dome were the "waters above." Only by special pleading is it possible to interpret very specific verses as describing a spherical Earth, but one point is certain: no scripture describes an explicit spherical Earth, and the Yahweh who was inspiring those authors at the time knew at that time that we would be scrutinizing the text he is inspiring, and yet, he chose explicitly to never inspire even one author to use a word like sphere or ball to describe the Earth.

We will proceed to look at many passages that describe:

the Earth,
the Sun, Moon and stars, and
the four winds.

In each case, we will see that the descriptions are in closer alignment with a flat Earth than they are with a spherical Earth, and more specifically, if the observations and descriptions align with the description of the Earth that is created in Genesis 1.

The Earth

Genesis 1:1-2 When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

This supports a geocentric model: the Earth is the first object to be created, and thus we may infer that the Earth is at the center of the universe. There is no suggestion that the Earth is flat, for at this point, there is only water; the primordial state in both Judean and Babylonian myths.

Genesis 1:3-5 Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

This harkens back to the central-fire model, but now the source of light and heat is not at the center of the universe, but rather it is something that causes day and night. You will note that there is as of yet no Sun or Moon; indeed, there is day and night before there is even an atmosphere.

Genesis 1:6-8 And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

Thus, we now have waters below and waters above. Perhaps this is where the authors believed rain came from: not from the water cycle of evaporation, condensation and precipitation, but rather water that falls from a dome above. In this case, rain is the result not of weather, but rather, the deliberate choice of that which controls the release of the "waters above" through this dome.

This parallels the Babylonian creation myth where Tiamat, the goddess of the sea, is split in half by Marduk who would become the patron saint of Babylon (the Gate of the Gods). Marduk fashioned the ribs of Tiamat to create a vault of Heaven and Earth. Similarly, Genesis 1 describes a splitting of waters and the creation of a dome that is called the sky. Based on the text and on its relationship to the Babylonian myth, this supports a flat Earth model. The alternative would be to have a sphere of water below and a sphere above the atmosphere above which is also nothing more than water. Nothing close to this is described in the text.

Sadly, some Christian apologists even posit that there was, prior to the flood, a ceiling of ice over the Earth. This is necessary to allow one to simultaneously accept that the Earth is a sphere while still having a "firmament" above the Earth.

Genesis 1:9-10 And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

This doesn't make much sense if the Earth is a sphere: you would need a sphere of water, and then above that sphere would be the atmosphere, and above that would be another spherical dome, and above that you would need more water, none of which comports with reality. However, if the author envisioned a flat body of water, with a dome above it, then having land appear seems a little more reasonable. While this is not entirely incompatible with a spherical Earth, we know today that the Earth was initially a body so hot that no water could even collect: it was land first, and only later did the oceans form.

Genesis 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.

The flood narrative describes "fountains of the great deep" which would exist if there were "waters under the dome" and "windows of the heavens" which would make sense if there was a dome holding up the "waters that were above the deme." Otherwise, the flood narrative makes no sense: there is not enough readily available water to cause the flooding that is described, not even if you consider all the water in glaciers and in the atmosphere.

Genesis 8:1-3 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided; the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters gradually receded from the earth.

That was nice of Yahweh, in his anger and rage to kill all that breathed (including all those animals, which probably did nothing wrong), to finally remember Noah et al. In a flat Earth model, winds blowing across the flood waters could blow them "elsewhere", but if a spherical globe is flooded to the extent described, winds would do nothing but move water around. However, once again, we continue to have references to "the waters that were under the dome" and "the waters that were above the dome," with the fountains and windows being closed.

Genesis 28:13-14 And the Lord stood beside him and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring, and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring.”

With a spherical Earth, Yahweh could have just said “...and you shall spread abroad its entire face.” Here, however, Yahweh puts limits: “to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south.” We have limits in both the north and south in the form of the two poles, but there is no such boundary in either the west or the east. The verse makes much more sense in the context of a flat Earth.

Deuteronomy 10:22 Your ancestors went down to Egypt seventy persons, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in heaven.

Once again, this describes the absolute lack of awareness of the author as to the extent of the universe. The author believed that the stars that did exist were those that were visible, and thus, relating the number of visible stars to the Judean people is reasonable, but in reality there are 200 billion trillion stars. Here was another opportunity for Yahweh to inspire the author to at least hint that there are stars beyond those which can be seen by the human eye, as opposed to text that supports the idea that there exists a dome into which the stars are embedded.

Deuteronomy 13:6-8

“If anyone secretly entices you...saying, ‘Let us go serve other gods,’ whom neither you nor your ancestors have known, any of the gods of the peoples who are around you, whether near you or far away from you, from one end of the earth to the other, you must not yield to or heed any such persons...”

Again, Yahweh inspired the author to write "from one end of the earth to the other," an description that perfectly matches a flat Earth described in Genesis 1. Never-the-less, Yahweh knew at that time, too, that I would be judging him for such a poor choice of words. Yes, it is an expression, but why are all expressions always in concordance with the flat Earth described elsewhere in the scriptures? Could Yahweh not once have an author make a clear and unambiguous statement that the Earth is a sphere?

Deuteronomy 28:49-50

The Lord will bring a nation from far away, from the end of the earth, to swoop down on you like an eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand, a grim-faced nation showing no respect to the old or favor to the young.

From the end of the earth? The Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Macedonians and Romans were relatively local. Again, it is only an expression, but this person was being divinely inspired, and Yahweh knew at that time that I would critique exactly what he is inspiring his author to write. This prophesy does not even include a general direction: North (Hittites), East (Babylonians or Assyrians), South (Egyptians) or East (Macedonians or Romans). But none of these nations are near to the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. However, this chapter contineus:

Deuteronomy 28:63-64

And just as the Lord took delight in making you prosperous and numerous, so the Lord will take delight in bringing you to ruin and destruction; you shall be plucked off the land that you are entering to possess. The Lord will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods, of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known.

This is Jesus in a nutshell: just as Jesus took delight in making the Judean people prosperous and numerous, so does Jesus take delight in bringing the Judean people to ruin and destruction. Once again, we see the expression "from one end of the earth to the other", and yet, in a spherical world, this makes no sense, but in the world described in Genesis 1, this is reasonable. Why did Yahweh just not inspire the author to write "The Lord will scatter you among all people throughout the world, ..."

The order of creation is once again repeated in the Psalms 136:4-9:

who alone does great wonders,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
who by understanding made the heavens,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
who spread out the earth on the waters,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
who made the great lights,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
the sun to rule over the day,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
the moon and stars to rule over the night,
for his steadfast love endures forever;

In parallel with Genesis 1, the waters were first, then land is "spread on the waters" and only then are the Sun, the Moon and the stars made. Also, the Moon does not "rule" over the night; exactly half of the time the Moon is visible, it is visible during the day. Similarly, stars are far too distant to "rule" over anything. They're just more distant suns.

The splitting of the waters is also repeated in the Psalms 148:1-4:

Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord from the heavens;
praise him in the heights!
Praise him, all his angels;
praise him, all his host!

Praise him, sun and moon;
praise him, all you shining stars!
Praise him, you highest heavens
and you waters above the heavens!

Again, we emphasis the "waters above the heavens," something we know does not exist, but if the Earth is flat and there is a dome separating the waters above from the waters below, this psalm makes sense. However, how are balls of hydrogen and rock to "praise" anything?

Job 9:5-6 He removes mountains, and they do not know it when he overturns them in his anger;
he shakes the earth out of its place, and its pillars tremble;

Here are references to the pillars of the Earth, pillars holding up a spherical Earth held together by gravity makes no sense, but holding up a flat Earth that grew out of the "waters below" is a reasonable interpretation of such imagery.

Job 9:8 he alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the Sea...

Another reference to stretching out the heavens, which is more reasonable if the Earth is flat and not a sphere. In the Psalms and Isaiah, it will emphasize that this is akin to stretching a tent, something you do on a flat surface, not a sphere. Also, in other versions, Yahweh tramples the back of the sea dragon, perhaps a passing reference to Tiamat, the story from which Genesis 1 was likely plagiarized?

Job 26:10 He has described a circle on the face of the waters, at the boundary between light and darkness.

This could describe the solar terminator, which is indeed a great circle that at all times divides the Earth into two, into that half experiencing day, and the other experiencing night. However, this passage in Job describes a circle (חָ֖ג) on the face of the waters, does not suggest that this circle ever crosses land, and therefore is a much better description of a circle on a flat Earth that describes the limits of the Earth that is lit by light. The Jewish translation is "He encircled a boundary on the face of the water, until the ending of light with darkness."

Job 37:1-4

“At this also my heart trembles
and leaps out of its place.
Listen, listen to the thunder of his voice
and the rumbling that comes from his mouth.
Under the whole heaven he lets it loose,
and his lightning to the corners of the earth.
After it his voice roars;
he thunders with his majestic voice,
and he does not restrain the lightnings when his voice is heard.”

If one interprets rain as a gift from Yahweh, but storms and their potentially damaging winds as punishments from Yahweh, then equating thunder as the voice of Yahweh is quite reasonable. Note that the speed of sound is not taken into account, but rather "he lets...his lightening to the corners of the earth, after it his voice roars." Here, thunder is not the subsequent sound caused by lightning, but rather the voice of Yahweh that screams out after he has sent lightning "to the corners of the earth." Again, another indicating that this author believes that the Earth has an edge, and thus, the model that best fits this author's understanding of the world is a flat-Earth model. Of course, the understanding of the relationship between thunder and lightning is wrong, and today, no follower of Jesus claims that Yahweh speaks through thunder.

1 Samuel 2:8

He raises up the poor from the dust;
he lifts the needy from the ash heap
to make them sit with princes
and inherit a seat of honor.
For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s,
and on them he has set the world.

You set a flat Earth on pillars, not a spherical one that is held in orbit around a Sun by gravitation.

Psalms 75:3 When the earth totters, with all its inhabitants, it is I who keep its pillars steady. Selah

Likely a reference to earthquakes, but once again, another reference to pillars that are holding up this Earth and that require Yahweh to steady them.

Psalms 104:2 ...You stretch out the heavens like a tent;

A reference to stretching out the heavens like a tent, and you stretch a tent over a flat surface, not a sphere. This will be reiterated in Isaiah.

Psalms 103:11-12

For as the heavens are high above the earth,

so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;

as far as the east is from the west,

so far he removes our transgressions from us.

On a flat Earth, no doubt there is a distance between east and west, just like there is a distance from the Earth to the dome above the Earth. Unfortunately, there is no distance from East to West on a spherical Earth.

Psalms 104:5 You set the earth on its foundations, so that it shall never be shaken.

If you are visualizing the Earth as being flat, then yes, you may envision the Earth being set upon a foundation of some sorts. In reality, the crust of this spherical Earth is sitting atop a mantle of molten rock, and the convection of the mantle results in plate tectonics that result in subduction zones that liquify the crust, and in divergent boundaries where molten rock hardens and adding to the crust. We also know that at some point, the Earth will be engulfed by the expanding Sun, likely once again liquifying the entire surface, just as the Earth first started five billion years ago.

Proverbs 8 is beautiful poetry that describes a personification of wisdom, and as there is the Angel of Yahweh, the Son of Yahweh, the Spirit of Yahweh and the Word of Yahweh, there is also the Wisdom of Yahweh, a possible divine being created by Yahweh to embody the character described. The very first use of the word "trinity" in early Christian writings has not the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, but rather it was articulated by Theophilus as Yahweh, the Word of Yahweh (a description found in the first chapter of the gospel of John but also mentioned in Psalms 33) and the Wisdom of Yahweh. In Proverbs 8, however, we have a description of the feminine Wisdom of Yahweh, and then we have a description of the Wisdom of Yahweh's participation in creation:

Proverbs 8:22-

“The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.
Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth,
when he had not yet made earth and fields
or the world’s first bits of soil.
When he established the heavens, I was there;
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth, ...”

This, again, parallels the description in Genesis, where the waters (the depths) were split into two: the waters above, and the waters below. This poetry describes a time before springs, mountains, hills, fields and soil. Heaven is established, and a "circle" (the word ח֜֗וּג) is drawn on the waters: it uses the Hebrew word for circle, and not a word for a sphere or a ball. The author continues to describe the creation of a dome that "made firm the skies above" as well as establishing fountains of the deep: the water cycle was not yet understood, and it was assumed springs came not from water pressure, but from a source of water below the Earth. While one could envision a spherical Earth where there are waters below, the Earth is not a circle, and thus, this best describes the flat-Earth model.

Isaiah 11:11-12 On that day the Lord will again raise his hand to recover the remnant that is left of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea.

He will raise a signal for the nations
and will assemble the outcasts of Israel
and gather the dispersed of Judah
from the four corners of the earth.

Once again, a reference to the "four corners of the earth," a description that best fits a flat-Earth model. A divinely inspired author could just as easily have written "...from the furthest ends to which they were scattered." However, simultaneously, this could just be a colloquialism for an arbitrary distant point on the Earth. It does not necessarily support a flat-Earth model, but it most certainly does not support a spherical Earth model.

Isaiah 34:4 All the host of heaven shall rot away, and the skies roll up like a scroll. All their host shall wither like a leaf withering on a vine or fruit withering on a fig tree.

If the skies are rolled up like a scroll, when you unroll a scroll, it is a sphere, correct? This is as painfully obvious as any that a flat-Earth model is used by the authors of these scriptures. Interestingly, this verse seems to be ignored by apologists attempting to refute the idea that the scriptures use a flat-Earth model.

Isaiah 40:22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to live in...

Here was an excellent opportunity for Yahweh to divinely inspire the author to use the Hebrew word for sphere, but the author used the word for a circle (ח֣וּג). In Proverbs 8, the same word is used, and there Yahweh draws a "circle"; you cannot draw a sphere. If the Earth is flat with circular boundaries, then you can sit above the center of the circle and look down, but if you sit above a sphere, you can see at most half of the sphere, assuming that Yahweh is looking down at the entire Earth from wherever he is seated: if you are "above" Europe, you are technically "below" New Zealand. The imagery makes little sense in the context of a spherical Earth.

What is more revealing, however, is the description of the Heavens: Yahweh stretches out the heavens like a curtain" and then "spreads the like a tent to live in." A tent is a structure that sits on a relatively flat piece of Earth: the Heavens are described as being a tent, and not an envelope above a sphere. This should make it clear that this is a tent above what is understood to be a circular and flat Earth. This is most analogous to the dome described in Genesis 1, and not the envelope of atmosphere that we know today hugs the spherical Earth.

Incidentally, in Isaiah 22:18, the word כדור mis used to describe the shape of a ball when he wrote "He will seize firm hold on you, whirl you round and round, and throw you like a ball into a wide land..." The same word could have been used in Isaiah 40.

One apology attempted to reinterpret this verse as describing the ever expanding universe we understand today. A tent, however, is a fixed structure: it is spread across the ground, and when it reaches its limits, it becomes taught and a structure that allows humans to securely live within its confines, protected from the outside elements. When curtains are stretched, they cover a window, and you do not continue to stretch curtains once the window is covered.

Isaiah 42:5

Thus says God, the Lord,
who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people upon it
and spirit to those who walk in it

Once again, the author of Isaiah 42 describes the world in terms of what is described in Genesis 1, and note the past tense. This is not suggesting a universe that is continually expanding, and especially not one that is accelerating in that expansion. Yahweh created the heavens and stretched it out over the waters below, and then, and only then did he spread out the Earth.

Jeremiah 10:12-13

It is he who made the earth by his power,
who established the world by his wisdom
and by his understanding stretched out the heavens.
When he utters his voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens,
and he makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth.
He makes lightning for the rain
and brings out the wind from his storehouses.

Here, Yahweh is described first creating the Earth, and then described as having "stretched out the heavens." Note the past tense, for any who would try to use this to suggest that such passages describe the ever expanding universe we understand today. Not also the concept of winds coming from "storehouses." If the Earth was flat and winds came from outside, then this is a reasonable statement. If the world is a sphere and where air in high pressure regions moves to lower pressure regions, calling a high pressure region a "storehouse" is, at best, a stretch.

Jeremiah 25:33 Those slain by the Lord on that day shall extend from one end of the earth to the other. They shall not be lamented or gathered or buried; they shall become dung on the surface of the ground.

Once again, a reference that aligns with an understanding of the world as described in Genesis 1: from one end of the earth to the other.

Jeremiah 51:16

When he utters his voice there is a tumult of waters in the heavens,
and he makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth.
He makes lightnings for the rain,
and he brings out the wind from his storehouses.

Once again, the author of Jeremiah refers to wind being brought forth from Yahweh's "storehouses."

Daniel 4:11-12 Upon my bed this is what I saw: there was a tree at the center of the earth, and its height was great. The tree grew great and strong, its top reached to heaven, and it was visible to the ends of the whole earth.

While this is a dream that is described by Nebuchadnezzar, it is never-the-less a dream about the world, and Yahweh could have easily given the king a dream that correctly depicted the world. Instead, however, this tree is at the "center" of the Earth, and while a circle or square has a center, a sphere does not. That tree was visible to the "ends of the whole earth", and in the same way, the very first instance in the Christian scriptures, we will see how once again, it is possible to see the entire Earth from a single mountain.

Remember, Yahweh knew at the time he was inspiring the author who was writing in the name of Daniel that we today would be joking about this yet-another-example of how the scriptures assumed a flat-Earth model, and knowing this, he could have easily chosen to describe the Earth faithfully.

Matthew 4:8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, ...

Luke 4:5 Then [the devil] led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world.

Under a flat-Earth model, it should be possible with good eye sight, and as Jesus is apparently Yahweh and as Satan is an angel, this may actually be possible. However, under a spherical model, there is no point at which you can see the entire Earth, and if you were at an infinite distance away, you could see at most half the Earth. At this time, there were kingdoms throughout the world, and even in North America, Tepoztlán has been inhabited since 1500 BCE. There is a point significantly above the surface of the Earth where you could potentially see the Chinese and Roman empires, but this point is significantly higher than Mount Everest: using trigonometry, one can deduce that the horizon you can see would be R acos( R/(R + h) ) where R is the radius of the Earth and h is the height of Mount Everest, and acos is the inverse cosine function. Consequently, you could possibly see out to a distance of just under 336 km. Of course, if you had two Mount Everests 672 km apart, you could potentially see one peak from the other; however, there is only one Mount Everest.

One could make the claim that because Jesus was Yahweh and Satan was an angel, that they could see through the Earth, but in this case, there would be no need to go up to the top of a mountain. These verses could have just as easily said:

Again, the devil ... showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, ...

Then [the devil] ... showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world.

That Satan is explicitly bringing Jesus to a mountain is significant: they are seeing all the kingdoms of the world from that mountain. If this exposition is one of magic, there is absolutely no need to go up to a mountain. Remember, also, that the authors of Matthew and Luke could not have been present at this event, and thus must have been divinely inspired to record such events, or at the very least, received this from some common source who was sufficiently divinely inspired.

2 Peter 3 5-6: They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of God heavens existed long ago and an earth was formed out of water and by means of water, through which the world of that time was deluged with water and perished.

While not referring to a flat Earth, it refers again to the creation of the Earth as described in Genesis: the Earth was formed out of water and by means of water, and once again, it refers to the subsequent flood. It is from these waters that Yahweh "separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome." The forger of this letter allegedly written in the name of Peter continues to support the model described in Genesis: a flat Earth.

Revelation 7:1 After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree.

If the author envisioned a flat Earth, then one could possibly believe that "wind" is something that comes from "outside" the world, in which case, such a wind could be stopped. If the Earth was spherical, there are no four corners, and wind would instead be envisioned as invisible travelers or messengers throughout the surface of the sphere, taking with it the clouds and the rain, but to stop these invisible travelers or massagers, one would not require four angles at four corners. The alleged claim does not support a spherical Earth model.

In reality, of course, wind is the result of air moving from regions of high air pressure to low air pressure, and these result from differential heating. To stop wind would require air pressure throughout the world to suddenly equalize. This would also require the elimination of the heating of the Earth from the Sun, for as soon as air is heated, it will expand, causing higher pressure, which in turn will immediately result in air moving away from that region; that is, wind.

Revelation 7:2 I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun...

Despite the winds being stopped in the previous verse, it seems that the Sun is still shining, so differential heating is still occurring, and consequently, there will be wind. The description does not support the current reality, yet it does support a flat-Earth model.

Revelation 20:7-8 When the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, in order to gather them for battle; they are as numerous as the sands of the sea.

Another reference to the "four corners" of the Earth. While this colloquialism may refer to a distant location, to most certainly does not support the model of a spherical Earth, and best describes a flat Earth.

Revelation 21:15-16 The angel who talked to me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls. The city has four equal sides, its length the same as its width, and he measured the city with his rod, twelve thousand stadia; its length and width and height are equal.

Unfortunately, there is no common standard for the length of one stadia; however, it is equal to 600 "feet". Unfortunately, there was no standard for one "foot", and thus, one stadion could be anywhere between 170 and 230 yards, meaning that this Kingdom of Yahweh is a cube with dimensions between 1160 miles and 1570 miles. In either case, however, such a cube could not "sit" on a spherical Earth, which has a diameter of just under 8000 miles. There could be a foundation below this Kingdom of Yahweh, a casemate wall could be used to build a mount, but even then, for the walls to form a cube, locally, the walls would need to be going "up" at an angle of approximately 10 degrees from the vertical. Fortunately, however, the old Earth and the old heavens are destroyed, and replaced by a new Earth, so perhaps this new Earth is indeed flat.

The Sun, Moon and stars

Genesis 15:12 As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him.

Genesis 15:17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.

Genesis 19:23 The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar.

Genesis 28:11-12 He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set.

Genesis 32:31 The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.

Exodus 17:12 But Moses’s hands grew heavy, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on either side, so his hands were steady until the sun set.

Exodus 22:26 If you take your neighbor’s cloak as guarantee, you shall restore it before the sun goes down, ...

Leviticus 22:7 When the sun sets he shall be clean, and afterward he may eat of the sacred donations, for they are his food.

This is pedestrian, but the allusion is that the Sun is moving, and not that the Earth is rotating. This allusion gives no credit to any model, but it is interesting that never once does any verse in any scripture refer to a rotating or moving Earth. In each case, it could instead use phrases such as "As the day ended, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, ..."

Genesis 28:12 And he dreamed that there was a stairway set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.

While it was only a dream, we have been to outer space, and there isn't anywhere where angels are living up there. However, if you have some sort of dome, with heaven either immediately below or perhaps above this dome, this dream makes sense.

Genesis 37:9 He had another dream and told it to his brothers, saying, “Look, I have had another dream: the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.”

Again, another dream, but how do balls of hydrogen and rock "bow down"?

Numbers 34:15 the two tribes and the half-tribe have taken their inheritance beyond the Jordan at Jericho eastward, toward the sunrise.”

The last statement is the peculiar one: going to the East does not bring you closer to the sunrise, only the day starts relatively earlier.

Deuteronomy 10:22 Your ancestors went down to Egypt seventy persons, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in heaven.

Joshua 10:12-14 On the day when the Lord gave the Amorites over to the Israelites, Joshua spoke to the Lord, and he said in the sight of Israel,

“Sun, stand still at Gibeon,
and Moon, in the valley of Aijalon.”
And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped
until the nation took vengeance on their enemies.

Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? The sun stopped in midheaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day. There has been no day like it before or since, when the Lord heeded a human voice, for the Lord fought for Israel.

In any model with a flat Earth, with the Sun and Moon being smaller objects in the heavens, this is reasonable. If the Earth is spinning at one revolution per day, then everything on the surface of the Earth near the Equator is moving at 1670 km/h. To stop the planet spinning require significant energy, and everything would need to be decelerated with the Earth, otherwise, everyone would be flying. The most serious issue with this, however, is that if it did occur, then half the Earth would have been in darkness for approximately 24 hours.

Note also the terminology "the sun...did not hurry to set." Later, in Job, we will see that it is Yahweh that "commanded" the Sun not to set.

Lying for Jesus: Since 1936, followers of Jesus have been repeating the lie first told by Harry Rimmer that science had "discovered" the missing day. Since then, the story has become embellished with NASA and satellites, but in the end, it is lying for Jesus, something some followers are more than happy to do.

Judges 5:20 The stars fought from heaven; from their courses they fought against Sisera.

Sisera was recorded as being a general who fought against the settled kin of the Judeans living in the Samarian highlands. This verse describes a geocentric understanding of the universe, with stars moving in courses above the Earth, and the stars themselves being entities that could intervene with the affairs of humans, thus supporting the concept of stars being embedded in a dome above the Earth. Remember that Yahweh knew at that time when he inspired the author of this text that we today would be reading and critiquing this text, so he could easily at that time have given the author sufficient divine inspiration to either exclude this passage or at least say something that is closer to the universe that actually exists.

Job 9:7-9

he commands the sun, and it does not rise;
he seals up the stars;
he alone stretched out the heavens
and trampled the waves of the Sea;
he made the Bear and Orion,
the Pleiades and the chambers of the south;

Notice that it is the Sun that is being commanded to not rise, and not that the Earth is commanded to stop spinning. This idea supports a geocentric model of the universe. Note that the next term is in the past tense: the heavens were "stretched", and are not continuing to stretch, so no, this phrase does not suggest the cosmic expansion we have since discovered. If you think of the constellations as stars being placed onto a dome, the idea of making various constellations is understandable, but we now know that stars are formed over many years, and the appearance of the constellations is really only visible from Earth.

One interesting point: a different reading of "the waves of the Sea" is "the back of the sea dragon." Did this author know of the Babylonian creation myth? The second and third verses parallel the creation myth in Genesis 1.

Job 22:12-14

Is not God high in the heavens? See the highest stars, how lofty they are!
Therefore you say, ‘What does God know? Can he judge through the deep darkness?
Thick clouds enwrap him, so that he does not see, and he walks on the dome of heaven.’

Visible stars can be thousands of light years away, and yet, "thick clouds enwrap him" (remember that Yahweh speaks after each lightning bolt), so he cannot be outside the troposphere, and yet he is walking on the "dome" of heaven.

Job 31:26 ...if I have looked at the sun when it shone or the moon moving in splendor, ...

In the translation, it uses the word "sun", but the original Hebrew is "the light," that is, that nebulous "light" that causes the day and night; that light that was there before the Sun and Moon were created two days hence.

Psalms 104:19 You have made the moon to mark the seasons; the sun knows its time for setting.

The moon does not mark the seasons: a lunar month is approximately 29.5 days (though much closer to 29 and 26/49 days), so twelve lunar months is approximately, but not exactly equal to one year. If a lunar month was 28 days, there would be very close to thirteen months per year, and if a lunar month was 30.5 days, there would be twelve months per year, but 29.5 is awkwardly between these two, so each twelve months, we lose 11¼ days. The Moon has a period that is smaller because the Moon is closer to the Earth, that's it, so a multiple of lunar months is a reasonable estimator of a solar year. There is nothing about the Moon that affects the seasons, which are a consequence of a tilt of the Earth. The Judean calendar explicitly had to add a thirteen month every three years to once again line up the lunar calendar with the year.

Psalms 121:6 The sun shall not strike you by day nor the moon by night.

This is not unreasonable, as the Earth is in orbit around the Sun, and the Moon is in orbit about the Earth. Under any model where the Sun and Moon are reasonably large, they're not going to come down and strike anyone on Earth. However, if the Sun and Moon are just small bodies in the heavens, then nothing says that they could not also do what comets or meteors do.

Psalms 148:3-6

Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars!
Praise him, you highest heavens and you waters above the heavens!

Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded and they were created.
He established them forever and ever; he fixed their bounds, which cannot be passed.

Once again, we have the symbolism of balls of hydrogen and of rock praising Yahweh, and once again, we have a reference to waters that are above the dome of heaven; a reference that only makes sense in the flat Earth model proposed in Genesis.

Ecclesiastes 12:2 before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return with the rain;

Once again, the author refers to a "light" other than the Sun, the "light" that shown on the first day of creation, while the Sun and the Moon were only created much later: after waters were split into those above and those below, and after the Earth was formed, and after plants grew on that earth.

Isaiah 13:10 The stars of heaven and their constellations will not show their light. The rising sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light.

The Moon has no light not to give; if the Sun is darkened, the Moon would be, too. This may be a metaphor for the darkening of the skies, however.

Isaiah 24:23 The moon will be dismayed, the sun ashamed; for the Lord Almighty will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and before its elders—with great glory.

Once again, how is a balls of hydrogen or rock supposed to be dismayed or ashamed, respectively?

Isaiah 30:26 The moon will shine like the sun, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven full days, when the Lord binds up the bruises of his people and heals the wounds he inflicted.

Again, we understand the physics of the Sun: the luminosity of the Sun is a function of its mass and its age, and the Sun will not increase in luminosity by a factor of seven in any upcoming time. Yes, as the Sun ages, it will become a red giant, and subsequently, it will increase in brightness, but that will not be for another billion years; is this supposed to be the time of the second coming of Jesus? Of course, if the Sun is brighter, then so will be the Moon.

Jeremiah 31:35 This is what the Lord says, he who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, ...

Once again, the Sun and the stars shine, for they are all suns, but the Moon does not shine. It reflects whatever light is shone upon it, and not always at night.

Ezekiel 32:7-8 When I snuff you out, I will cover the heavens and darken their stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon will not give its light. All the shining lights in the heavens I will darken over you; I will bring darkness over your land, declares the Sovereign Lord.

The skies may be covered with a cloud blocking the light of the Sun, but this does not keep its light from reflecting off of the Moon. No cloud will pass between the Sun and the Moon: it is a vacuum out there. However, this makes perfect sense in the Genesis 1 model, where there is the Earth on its pillars and its associated waters below, and a dome above into which the Sun and Moon are somehow embedded.

Daniel 12:2-3 Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead the many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.

The word translated here as "sky" once again actually refers to the "dome." Additionally, stars do not last for ever and ever: we know that they have a finite life, even if that finite life is perhaps billions of years.

Joel 2:10 Before them the earth shakes, the heavens tremble, the sun and moon are darkened, and the stars no longer shine.

This end-times vengeance porn is repeated over and over again, but the Sun cannot be darkened, nor can the stars be kept from shining. Imagine the energy required to darken Sirius, a star, while having only twice the mass of our Sun, has more than 25.4 times the luminosity.

Joel 2:31 The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

The Moon turns blood red during a lunar eclipse, but if the Sun is "darkened," so, too, will be the Moon. You cannot simultaneously have a solar eclipse that darkens the sun, while also having a lunar eclipse that darkens the moon. During a lunar eclipse, the atmosphere refracts longer wavelengths of light like red inward, while refracting shorter wavelengths of light out, making the Moon appear to be bathed in red light. But during a lunar eclipse, the Earth is between the Moon and the Sun, so you cannot simultaneously have a solar eclipse. Of course, if the Sun and Moon are just bodies of light in the Genesis 1 model, I guess they could do anything; they're all relatively quite small.

Joel 3:15 The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining.

Further text that cannot happen, appearing in a longer passage resembling vengeance porn.

Habakkuk 3:10-11

The mountains saw you and writhed;
a torrent of water swept by;
the deep gave forth its voice.
The sun raised high its hands;
the moon stood still in its exalted place,
at the light of your arrows speeding by,
at the gleam of your flashing spear.

For the Moon to stand still, once again, the Earth must stop spinning, if you accept any spherical Earth model that also has a spinning Earth. However, if the Moon is must a small body in the sky below a dome, it is more reasonable that such an object could be stopped.

Matthew 24:29-31

“Immediately after the suffering of those days

the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from heaven,
and the powers of heaven will be shaken.

“Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see ‘the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven’ with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

The Sun will be darkened, but it explicitly says that the Moon will not give its light, even if the Moon never had any light of its own. Even better, however, we have the stars falling from the sky; symbolism that is much more aligned with a model where there is a dome above the Earth and the stars are in that dome. Unless stars are to be moving faster than the speed of light, the stars must already now be on their way crashing towards the Earth.

Mark 13:24-25

“But in those days, after that suffering,

the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

Even one star falling towards the Earth would easily destroy the Earth; but if stars are just points of light somehow embedded in a dome above the Earth, then it is reasonable that such small points of light could fall to the Earth.

Acts 2:20 The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.

This is just a reiteration of what appears in the Judean scriptures, and once again, the author has not yet figured out that you cannot have both a solar and a lunar eclipse. If Yahweh intends to exert that much energy as to actually darken the Sun, could he not use a small infinitesimally fraction of that energy to, say, cure world hunger? Energy consumption on Earth is 2 TW, while the Sun produces 2 x 10^17 more power, so one second of energy from the sun could be more than enough for all the energy that all humans ever needed for all time since we first picked up a stone and created a flint.

1 Corinthians 15:40-41 There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars; indeed, star differs from star in glory.

We know that stars are composed of the same elements as the Earth, and the Sun is just one more star like all the rest. Of course, in the previous passage, Paul suggests that the "flesh" of humans, birds, animals and fish are all different; however, they are all mostly comprised of water and proteins with DNA and RNA.

Revelation 1:16 In his right hand he held seven stars, and from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining with full force.

He must be very large indeed to hold seven stars. Of course, this makes perfect sense if stars are just small points of light embedded in a doom above a flat Earth, but makes no sense when even the smallest stars have huge gravitational pull, and to visualize such a being, one would have to be millions of kilometers away.

Revelation 1:20 As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and the seven golden lampstands: the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

We now see the equating of stars with angels, so perhaps if there is a dome and there are angels embedded in that dome, that makes sense; however, what sense does it make for an angel to be in any way near Sirius, a star many light years away?

Revelation 2:28 ...To the one who conquers I will also give the morning star.

That is a nice gift, the planet Venus; a planet that is almost the size of the Earth, and this is only at the very start of the Revelation of John. Oddly, this absolutely massive planet gifted to this one who conquers is not mentioned later in the Revelation of John, despite its massive size.

Revelation 6:12-14

When he broke the sixth seal, I looked, and there was a great earthquake; the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree drops its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. The sky vanished like a scroll rolling itself up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.

Revelation 8:12

The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light was darkened; a third of the day was kept from shining and likewise the night.

One third of a ball of hydrogen orders of magnitude larger than the Earth is meant to be struck, as is one third the Moon? Not only that, but one third of the stars? This is much easier if Earth is flat and there is a dome containing the stars and a Sun and a Moon traversing the skies; but more critically, recall that the light of day was made before the Sun was made, and this author reiterates: a third of the day was kept from shining. It was not understood when the creation myth was authored that the Sun is the source of the light of day, not just a light to shine during the day, and this author, John of Patmos, appears to have the same understanding of the universe.

Revelation 12:1 A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.

I would like to see this under our current understanding of stars, the Sun and the Moon, but it is a much more reasonable situation if one believes that stars genuinely are nothing more than points in the sky. In the former case, hopefully the twelve stars are red dwarfs like Proxima Centauri and not white giants like Sirius.

Revelation 12:4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth...

As in many other verses, this supports the idea that the stars exist in a dome above the Earth, and thus necessitates a universe where the stars are simply points of light in a dome above the Earth.

Four winds

Jeremiah 49:35-39

This is what the Lord Almighty says:

“See, I will break the bow of Elam,
the mainstay of their might.
I will bring against Elam the four winds
from the four quarters of heaven;
I will scatter them to the four winds,
and there will not be a nation
where Elam’s exiles do not go.
I will shatter Elam before their foes,
before those who want to kill them;
I will bring disaster on them,
even my fierce anger,”
declares the Lord.
“I will pursue them with the sword
until I have made an end of them.
I will set my throne in Elam
and destroy her king and officials,”
declares the Lord.

“Yet I will restore the fortunes of Elam
in days to come,”
declares the Lord.

The four winds were brought forth from the four quarters of Heaven. Statement that could be metaphorical, but it is never-the-less wrong. What is odd, though is this idea that Elam is in any way a threat to Judea: it was a serious threat to Babylon at the time of the Exile, but was absorbed into the Persian empire and while it continued as a vassal kingdom up to the third century of the common era, the last statement has never occured.

Daniel 7:2-3 Daniel said: “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me were the four winds of heaven churning up the great sea. Four great beasts, each different from the others, came up out of the sea.

Once again, we have four winds of heaven, not a great storm, or whatever else.

Daniel 8:8-10 The goat became very great, but at the height of its power the large horn was broken off, and in its place four prominent horns grew up toward the four winds of heaven. Out of one of them came another horn, which started small but grew in power to the south and to the east and toward the Beautiful Land. It grew until it reached the host of the heavens, and it threw some of the starry host down to the earth and trampled on them.

A horn growing out of one of four horns that are growing towards the four winds, and throwing down stars from Heaven? Quite the achievement under the current model of the universe, but quite easy if the stars are in a dome above the heavens.

Matthew 24:29-31

“Immediately after the distress of those days

“‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’

“Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

We refer to the four winds, and from "one end of the heavens to the other." Again, reasonable if you have a flat Earth with the heavens extending below a dome with stars. The author understood this to be the case.

Evidence and models

With nothing more than reports that the visible constellations differed depending on what we would know know as latitude and observations of the shadow of the Earth on the Moon during a lunar eclipse, Aristotle et al. were able to deduce that a flat Earth was not a reasonable model, and even then, with such little information, they were able to deduce that a spherical Earth was a better model that matched observations. Later, Eratosthenes used the angle of sunlight down wells to estimate the circumference of the Earth. Slowly but surely further evidence was discovered, and yet, without even a mechanism, the model was adopted almost universally (after all, the gods could still be in control of these movements). Copernicus and Galileo made the next leap proposing that the Earth moved around the Sun. It was not until Newton's theory of gravity was proposed that there was justification for a spherical Earth, and this theory would also support the Earth orbiting the Sun, and the Sun orbiting the center of the Milky Way. Weaknesses in Newton's theory of gravity led to Einstein proposing a non-linear theory of general relativity, a better model of gravity, but one that continues to make predictions and provides a working model; however, today, more importantly, it is possible to watch a live stream of the International Space Station looking down on the Earth. Yet, if you were to read the scripture literally and consider it to be inerrant, then you must accept that the Earth, in the minds of every author who said anything related to this Earth, were assuming a flat Earth model.

Imagine the incredulity of someone today who believes in a flat Earth: that individual must believe that tens of thousands of employees of NASA and of many other international space agencies are all collaboratively working together to simulate a spherical Earth. Politicians the world around are either being kept ignorant or are actively collaborating with and benefiting from these fraudulent activities. The Global Positioning System (GPS) seems to depend on a spherical Earth for the position of its satellites, and so does Starlink, satellite television, the Moon landings, the Space Shuttle, at least in the way that they are explained. And in all this time, not one person or scientific organization or government has come forth with real evidence to reveal all of this to be a fraud (but we are fortunate: there are clever anomaly hunters, ready to identify any mistake made by these conspirators, who then quickly "fix" the situation). Billions must be spent creating Space Shuttles and launching them, and then billions more must be spent to correctly simulate what one would see from the Space Shuttle, and to simulate correctly any satellite put into orbit. If one believes that Earth is controlled by Satan, it is not hard to believe that every scientist, researcher, engineer, technician and politician is under the control of Satan, and all of this is to keep humanity from understanding that Yahweh is real, and that humans are indeed the center of the universe on this flat Earth. This, of course, incredibly inflates the ego of the true believer in the flat Earth: such people know that they are right, and that billions of humans are ignorant of reality, controlled by the few who themselves worship Satan. This idiocy of such individuals is beyond most person's belief, but opposition to their belief only strengthens the belief of the true believer; for the true believer is not interested in the truth, but only in the belief, and having a persecution complex seriously inflates the ego.

Thus, if you are a reasonable person, who rejects the literal interpretation of Genesis 1:1-19 which has the watery Earth created first, then day and night, and then land, and only then the Sun and Moon and stars, and it is equally reasonable to reject Genesis 1:20-25, on the basis we know fish evolved first, then land animals, and only much later birds. Most critically, however, you can reasonably reject the balance of Genesis 1, on the basis that we know we evolved from a common ancestor with chimpanzees and bonobos. The evidence is either overwhelming, or the greatest fraud in the history of humanity. There are more scientific papers (not necessarily all correct) written about evolution or based on evolution than there are verses in the totality of Genesis. Each paper describes some interesting aspect of the science of life, and slowly but surely, we are also going further back to try to understand how all of this came around in the first place.

However, if you reject evolution, then should you not be obligated to accept the reality described in Genesis 1:1-19? We are on a flat Earth, and the only reason no one explicitly said that was because it was assumed obvious, but the first nineteen verses are very clear, and all other verses support this model of a watery world split into two with a dome above holding those waters back, while in the waters below, land was brought up and is held in place on pillars, all while there is day which causes the sky to be blue, and then the Sun was placed there to rule over the day--a Sun that can be commanded to stop, and it did for almost twenty-four hours.

Just like every person knew that the Earth was flat until evidence contradicting this model was presented, the same happened to Charles Darwin: it was not his intention to "prove" evolution. Instead, he happened to be aboard the Beagle as it visited a remote collection of islands a thousand kilometers off the coast of South America. Many of the islands themselves are on the order of fifty kilometers apart. These distances make the migration of animals and smaller birds and other animals from one island to another a rare occurrence, but also makes a migration of animals and smaller birds from South America even more significantly rare. The different characteristics of each of the islands imposed different conditions on the species that established themselves on the islands, and over time, mutations that were beneficial for those species survived, crowding out those not having these mutations. Of course, many mutations were detrimental, but on occasion, a small mutation may actually improve the survivability of individual of the species, and that individual would pass that mutation onto its children, and so on. Charles Darwin was not not aware of DNA and genetics, he was only making observations just like Aristotle, and like Aristotle proposing a spherical Earth to explain the apparent observations, so too did Charles Darwin propose that the mechanism for speciation was, as he called it, natural selection. Darwin did not just announce his findings, but spent twenty years thinking about what he did observe in the Galapagos and what he continued to see as he continued his research. Not everything Aristotle said was correct, and some things he said were absurd: men have more teeth than women, or heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects; however, his model of a spherical Earth has survived to the present. Similarly, not everything Charles Darwin proposed was correct. However, in the years since, evidence continues to support and refine the central theory of evolution by natural selection. Some hypotheses are discarded, while others are reinforced. Other causes of evolution are also proposed, such as sexual selection, but natural selection remains the principle driving force behind speciation. Evidence of a single common ancestor, one cell whose characteristics ultimately made it the ancestor of all living cells today, while all other descendants of all other cells that coexisted with this single common ancestor have since died away.

For the true believer who knows that humans were created, it is much easier to deny common descent and natural selection that it is for a flat-Earther denying that the Earth is a sphere and a small speck in the universe, after all, common descendant natural selection are much younger explanations and evidence for the latter is much easier to see that is biology and the mechanisms of genetics

Like flat-Earthers, evolution-deniers fall back on the same refuges:

simple repeating that we were all created, and this points to the majesty and wisdom of that creator,
misinterpreting and misrepresenting actual observations and science,
concocting bogus experiments and claiming that the data must be kept secret,
repeating outright lies and denialism,
claiming that there are world-wide conspiracies, and
claiming that the Bible is inerrant.

If one who denies common descent and evolution by natural selection honestly believes, I can only see a few possibilities:

That person believes that all evidence supporting these, and related sciences, is completely made up. There are world-wide committees of people working on creating narratives and stories that are only claimed by all scientists in the field to be true. All of these at the core who make up these stories are controlled by Satan, and none have ever come out with evidence that such organizations exist. All medicines and other products that are allegedly the direct product of this research are actually the product of more elementary research, but all these organizations keep up the façade to ensure that they get significant government grants. No honest scientists can publish this more basic science that gives us all these products because this entire community conspires against them to ensure that it appears that these advances are the product of expensive research.
We were all created, and 6000 years ago Satan--the ruler of this Earth--seeded the mantel with radioactive isotopes, fossils, various types of rock, minerals, etc., all to give the appearance of a 5-billion-year-old planet with all the right steps of evolution to be found everywhere, so scientists who discover these signs are simply being deceived by Satan. Yahweh, on the other hand, designed all fish, birds, animals, and then humans, and he, too, made it appear within their DNA and the physiology and homologous structures that we are all related in a manner, and Satan used the similarities as a basis for his mischievous seedings. Yahweh was, of course, a horrible designer, giving humans
1. just a modification of the spine of four-legged animals, where the spine is supported at both ends, and instead, gives us only support below, leading to no end of back problems,
2. multiple antigens that may or may not be present on red blood cells do very little to help or hinder the life of any one individual, the only apparent reasons are to prevent the donation of blood from one human to another until these blood types were finally identified and to potentially cause severe harm to fetuses and women when the blood types are incompatible (why not avoid these antigens altogether and save millions of lives and fetuses?),
3. eyes that require light to pass through the nerves that attach to the photoreceptors, thereby blocking many of the photons that could be reaching those photoreceptors in contrast with octopuses that have the nerves pass behind the photoreceptors,
4. the inability to produce vitamin C, a consequence of what appears to be a mutation in a gene that could produce an enzymatic protein that would produce vitamin C, but are now broken, a mutation shared by many many simians (including tarsiers, old and new world monkeys, apes and humans) but not all (for example, lemurs) and yet most mammals have this same unmutated gene that allows them to produce all the required vitamin C, thereby allowing dogs to survive without eating fruit but leading to the incredibly agonizing death of millions of sailors and others by scurvy,
5. a small apparently vestigial but useless nictitating membrane in the corner of the eyes,
6. a coccyx, a structure reminiscent of a tail, having no use or benefit to humans, but can be damaged causing unnecessary pain and complications,
7. unnecessary wisdom teeth that are not necessary given our diet (even more so now that our diet is based on agricultural produce) but can become infected,
8. an unnecessarily long--but harmless--path for the vas Deferens that follows the same anatomical path as all other animals (including fish), but could trivially be significantly shorter, and
9. an unnecessarily long--but harmless--path for the recurrent laryngeal nerve that follows the same anatomical path as all other animals (including fish) but could, again, be trivially be significantly shorter (and not looping around the heart) just like the superior laryngeal nerve.
More humorously, all fossils are from animals that co-existed with humans prior to the great flood, but were subsequently buried and fossilized in record time. Of course, there is no evidence for such a world-wide flood, but we can repeat the above apologies

However, today, more and more evidence supports speciation and common ancestry: please read "The Greatest Show on Earth" by Richard Dawkins, but my favorite is evolutionary history describing when fish should have made the transition to amphibians, geology and plate techtonics describing what the Earth looked like at that time and where there would have been shallows closer to the Equator that would have motivated the transition from fish to amphibian, and plate tectonics and geology then describing where those shallows have moved (Ellesmere Island, Canada), and then, despite millions of years of sedimentation, finding a location where erosion would have cut back down to that period in the layers, going there and finding a fossil of such a transitional species, Tiktaalik. But, as we know, every transitional fossil creates two gaps that must now be filled, so please, if you insist that these gaps be filled, please also explain what the shape of the Earth really is.

Summary

If there are any other verses in scripture related to the relative shape of the Earth or the relative position of the Earth with respect to the universe, please let me know. So far, however, the scriptures:

describe a geocentric model with the Earth being formed even before the Sun,
describe a splitting of water into those below and those above,
continually refers to a dome above, compared with a tent, into which the stars are embedded, and above which are the waters above,
describes the skies as something that can be rolled up as a scroll,
describes stars and planets (the "morning star" Venus) as points of light and treating them as such so as to have them turn off like torches and falling from the sky,
reference circles and not spheres, which better describes a flat Earth and not a spherical Earth,
continually refer to the "ends of the earth," which aligns to the flat Earth model, when other phrases in greater concordance with reality could have been used,
reference "corners of the earth" and "four corners of the earth", both of which better describe a flat Earth than a spherical Earth,
describe four winds with suggestions these winds are kept in storehouses (outside the boundaries of the Earth), and
finally, have Jesus and Satan on top of a mountain from which they could see all the kingdoms on Earth.

Given that Yahweh is all-knowing, one would think that he would not want his followers to look the fools they are. Simultaneously, it would have been so easy to clearly state hundreds of years before the earliest Greek philosophers understood that the Earth was a sphere to explicitly state that the Earth was created a sphere. But Yahweh choose to not do so. The last, which appears in two of the gospels is, however, the clearest evidence that the author thought the Earth is flat. It is unfortunate Yahweh, who so divinely inspired these two authors to be aware of the words Mary and the angel spoke and the dreams appearing to Joseph and the secret words between Pilate and his wife was unable to convince these authors to make such an impossible situation.

Most fundamentalist Christians, however, do accept that the Earth is a sphere and even accept that we are one small dot in an incredible universe, despite all that is said in their scriptures. These same fundamentalists, who ignore Genesis 1:1-19 or reinterpret those verses to somehow support a spherical Earth or consider these verses as being metaphorical, however, accept that the "truth" begins with the very next verse: fish and birds were created first, then animals and only in the end humans, and that Adam was made in the image of Yahweh. If you look at every verse that somehow describes some aspect of the Earth or the heavens, they all point to the model in those first few verses: the waters were split into those below and those above, a dome was created to hold back the waters above, land was created (and it is apparently on pillars), and only later were the Sun, Moon and stars created. These same fundamentalists, however, will reject the overwhelming evidence for common descent and natural selection as the best explanation for the diversity of life today.

Apologetics

Most apologetics on this attempt to emphasize that some of these descriptions are metaphorical; however, what is painfully clear is that no ancient scholar ever suggested that the Earth was a sphere based on what is written in the scriptures, there are many however who do teach that the Earth is flat based on what is written in the scriptures, and not once did an all-knowing, all-powerful Yahweh decide to sufficiently inspire even one author to include even one verse that unambiguously stated that the Earth is a sphere. Additionally, through such reinterpretations, it is possible to claim that the scriptures never explicitly state that the Earth is flat; however, every time there is an opportunity to describe a situation where the Earth is either flat or a sphere, the most reasonable interpretation is that the author understood the Earth to be flat. Never once did any author make any statement that could even reasonably be interpreted as being associated with a spherical Earth. It is interesting that most apologetic narratives ignore the clearest example that the followers of Jesus believed the Earth was flat: it was from a single mountain that Satan showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the Earth.

One apologetic excuse:

First of all, the idea that the Bible promotes a flat-earth doctrine presupposes that people living 2–3 thousand years ago lacked the capacity to determine the true shape of Earth.

This is of course absurd: we are aware that many Greek philosophers understood that the Earth was a sphere, and they stated this clearly and they provided evidence and the consequent reasoning to support this claim. No Judean or Christian scripture contains even one clear statement that the Earth is a sphere, even when it would have been trivial to include such a statement, when the actual statement is in greater concordance with the flat-Earth model.

The biblical texts most often cited in the claim that the Bible teaches a flat Earth are Job 38:5, 12-14, Isaiah 11:12, 40:22, and Revelation 7:1, 20:7.

Perhaps, but the most clear is in the gospels: the fact that from a single mountain, and not even outer space, one could see all the kingdoms on the Earth. Such a mountain may exist on a flat Earth, but it does not exist on the spherical Earth we understand today. For the verses he does mention, his arguments are as follows:

Job 38:5, 12-14. The first refers to measuring the Earth with a stick; this is not even referred to above, as can measure a sphere as well as a flat Earth. The second is equally obscure but then the author attempts to make it claim it supports a spherical Earth: "What is interesting here is that for a spherical Earth the arrival of dawn first shows up at the most distant horizon, end, or edge of the point of view of a human at a fixed point upon Earth’s surface." This is not what this refers to.
Isaiah 11:12. This refers to the corners of the Earth, however, once again, a divinely inspired author could have easily used language that did not require re-interpretation.
Isaiah 40:22. This refers to Yahweh sitting above the "circle of the Earth." The author is correct, sitting anywhere above a sphere and looking down will make the sphere appear to be a circle; however, the apologist completely ignores the balance of the same verse: "It is he...who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to live in..." In a spherical Earth, the "Heavens" are not spread like a tent. The analogy of a "tent" presupposes a flat Earth.
Revelation 7:1. This not only refers to angels standing at the corners of the Earth, but also refers to them ceasing the winds. In a flat Earth model, the winds may indeed be modeled as coming from outside the circle of the Earth, but as described above, wind is nothing more than air moving from higher pressure regions to lower regions. Angels standing at various points throughout the Earth, even if at the points of a tetrahedral, cannot "stop" the winds.
Revelation 20:7. This refers again to the corners of the Earth.

The apologist then concludes with:

The irony of choosing Job 38:5, 12-14, Isaiah 11:12, 40:22, and Revelation 7:1, 20:7 to sustain the claim that the Bible is a flat-earth book is that these biblical texts better fit a spherical Earth than they do a flat Earth.

They do not. Referring to corners of the Earth does not "better fit" a spherical Earth. A tent stretched out over the Earth does not "better fit" a spherical Earth. The first reference to Job which refers to measuring the Earth does not any better or worse "fit" a spherical Earth. The claim is absurd to the extreme, but this is what the true believer wants to hear.

While it would be an overinterpretation to conclude that these texts explicitly teach that Earth is a sphere, nowhere in the Bible do we find any text saying that Earth is flat.

Absolutely correct: nowhere in the scriptures does it teach that the Earth is a sphere, at yet, the Greeks were able to clearly state that the Earth was a sphere, and provided evidence and reasoning to come up with this conclusion. There are many places in the scriptures where a divinely inspired author could easily have inserted words that clearly indicated a spherical Earth, but we are left with Jesus and Satan looking down from a single mountain and seeing all the kingdoms of Earth.

The Bible remains the only holy book for which we can say that it contains no provable errors or contradictions.

The Christian scriptures contain no contradictions, so did Satan take Jesus first to the Temple and then to the mountain, or first to the mountain and then to the Temple, and if these journeys are associated with the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness immediately after his baptism, why does the gospel of John have Jesus immediately after his baptism speak to Andrew and Simon Peter the next day, Philip and Nathanael the day thereafter, travel to Galilee the day after this with his four new disciples, and then go with his family thereafter to Capernaum, with no reference what-so-ever to an intermediate forty days in the wilderness?

Another apologist makes the following statements:

Unfortunately, many Christians have fallen prey to this, misled into believing that the Bible teaches the earth is flat and that, until five centuries ago, the church likewise taught that the earth is flat.

It is interesting that it is Christians who are trusting an interpretation of their scriptures that obligates them to believe the Earth is flat. It is sad that those same Christians are not aware that the objection of the Earth to the heliocentric model was not about the Earth being flat, but rather about the relative significance of Earth and the Sun.

In summary, many apologetics fall into the same categories: this verse is an analogy, or that verse is a colloquialism, or these verses are metaphors, or those verses are common expressions. In some cases, the verses just require interesting interpretations. The issue is, why is it that all the verses above actually do comport with the narrative in Genesis 1 without the need for interpretation, while none of the verses in the scriptures describe reality as we actually understand it today. Some suggest that nomadic Canaanite pastoral herders were just not ready for reality; however, if that is actually the case, is there not something wrong with that reality? Could Yahweh not have started truthfully?

In the beginning, after the universal fires burnt out, there was void, and in this void I created the stars.

And these stars extended beyond the imagination of any of my creations.

And yet, these stars are there, so that one day,

my creation may see things you would not believe:

chariots on fire off the shoulder of Orion,

light glittering in the dark near the gates of poetry,

and yet all those moments will, like yours, be lost in time,

like tears in rain. And for each there will be a time to die.

Then I chose one small star, and around this star I gifted one world life.

That life grew slowly at first, but grew ever more clever, and soon this world was ready for my creation of humans.

A small tribe at first, these people spread north to Egypt and then throughout the world.

What we have, however, is a creation myth borrowed from the Babylonians, and it is one that can only posit a flat Earth at the center of the universe, for the Earth was created first, and and last of all was created humans. A myth with no bearing on reality, and no concordance with the best models and theories that describe the universe we live in.