Johann Goethe

“It may be boldly asked where can the man be found, possessing the extraordinary gifts of Newton, who could suffer himself to be deluded by such a hocus-pocus, if he had not in the first instance willfully deceived himself; Only those who know the strength of self-deception, and the extent to which it sometimes trenches on dishonesty, are in a condition to explain the conduct of Newton and of Newton’s school. To support his unnatural theory Newton heaps fiction upon fiction, seeking to dazzle where he cannot convince. In whatever way or manner may have occurred this business, I must still say that I curse this modern history theory of Cosmology, and hope that perchance there may appear, in due time, some young scientists of genius, who will pick up courage enough to upset this universally disseminated delirium of lunatics.”

“Someday someone will write a pathology of experimental physics and bring to light all those swindles which subvert our reason, beguile our judgement and, what is worse, stand in the way of any practical progress. The phenomena must be freed once and for all from their grim torture chamber of empiricism, mechanism, and dogmatism; they must be brought before the jury of man’s common sense. “

Johann W. v. Goethe

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When I tell them that I’m doing fine watching shadows on the wall,
Don’t you miss the big time, boy. You’re no longer on the ball
– John Lennon, Watching the Wheels

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George Orwell

It will be seen that my reasons for thinking that the earth is round are rather precarious ones. Yet this is an exceptionally elementary piece of information. On most other questions I should have to fall back on the expert much earlier, and would be less able to test his pronouncements. And much the greater part of our knowledge is at this level. It does not rest on reasoning or on experiment, but on authority. And how can it be otherwise, when the range of knowledge is so vast that the expert himself is an ignoramous as soon as he strays away from his own specialty? Most people, if asked to prove that the earth is round, would not even bother to produce the rather weak arguments I have outlined above. They would start off by saying that ‘everyone knows’ the earth to be round, and if pressed further, would become angry. … This is a credulous age, and the burden of knowledge which we now have to carry is partly responsible.  ~ George Orwell

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Against the Oval Earth man, the first card I can play is the analogy of the sun and moon. The Oval Earth man promptly answers that I don’t know, by my own observation, that those bodies are spherical. I only know that they are round, and they may perfectly well be flat discs. I have no answer to that one. Besides, he goes on, what reason have I for thinking that the earth must be the same shape as the sun and moon? I can’t answer that one either.  ~ George Orwell

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George Bernard Shaw in his opening of a play called ‘Saint Joan’

Our credulity, though enormous, is not boundless; and our stock of it is quite used up by our mediums, clairvoyants, hand readers, slate writers, Christian Scientists, psycho-analysts, electronic vibration diviners, therapeutists of all schools registered and unregistered, astrologers, astronomers who tell us that the sun is nearly a hundred million miles away and the Betelgeuse is ten times as big as the whole universe, physicists who balance Betelgeuse by describing the incredible smallness of the atom, and a host of other marvel mongers whose credulity would have dissolved the Middle Ages in a roar of sceptical merriment.

In the Middle Ages people believed that the earth was flat, for which they had at least the evidence of their senses: we believe it to be round, not because as many as one per cent of us could give the physical reasons for so quaint a belief, but because modern science has convinced us that nothing that is obvious is true, and that everything that is magical, improbable, extraordinary, gigantic, microscopic, heartless, or outrageous is scientific.

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“So this modern atheistic, Big Bang, heliocentric globe earth, chance evolution, paradigm spiritually controls humanity by removing God or any sort of intelligent design from the mind and replaces purposeful divine creation with haphazard random cosmic coincidence. And so by removing Earth from the motionless center of the universe these Masons have moved us physically and metaphysically from a place of supreme importance to one of complete nihilistic indifference. If the Earth is the center of the Universe then the ideas of God creation and a purpose for human existence are resplendent, but if the Earth is just one of billions of planets revolving around billions of stars and billions of galaxies then the ideas of God creations and a specific purpose of for Earth and human existence become highly implausible.”
Eric Dubay, The Flat Earth Conspiracy

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Charles Johnson ~ Flat Earth Society

“When the United States declares the earth is flat,” says Charles Johnson, “and we hope to be instrumental in making it do so, it will be the first nation in all recorded history to be known as a flat-earth nation.

“It’s the Church of England that’s taught that the world is a ball,” he argues. “George Washington, on the other hand, was a flat-earther. He broke with England to get away from those superstitions.”
“Moses was a flat-earther,” he reveals. “The Flat Earth Society was founded in 1492 B.C., when Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt and gave them the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai.”
Obviously water’s flat, isn’t it?” he said in a Times interview in 1992. “They’re trying to tell you this water’s bent!”
Asked why don’t people fall off if the Earth if flat, Johnson would patiently explain, “There is no edge. As far as we know, it’s endless.”
“Australians,” he once elaborated in the Flat Earth News, “do not hang by their feet underneath the world!”
“Nobody knows anything about the true shape of the world,” he contends.
“The whole point of the Copernican theory is to get rid of Jesus by saying there is no up and no down,” declares Johnson. “The spinning ball thing just makes the whole Bible a big joke.”
“Wherever you find people with a great reservoir of common sense,” he says, “they don’t believe idiotic things such as the earth spinning around the sun. Reasonable, intelligent people have always recognized that the earth is flat.”
Fond of plays on words, he consistently pronounces Nicolaus Koppernigk’s Latinized surname as “co-pernicious.”

“In the old days, people believed the earth was flat, because it’s logical, but they didn’t have a picture of the way it was, as we have today. Our concept of the world is new.

“It’s the Church of England that’s taught that the world is a ball,” he argues. “George Washington, on the other hand, was a flat-earther. He broke with England to get away from those superstitions.”
“Moses was a flat-earther,” he reveals. “The Flat Earth Society was founded in 1492 B.C., when Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt and gave them the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai.”

“Marjory and I are the avant garde. We’re way ahead of the pack.”

Obviously water’s flat, isn’t it?” he said in a Times interview in 1992. “They’re trying to tell you this water’s bent!”

Asked why don’t people fall off if the Earth if flat, Johnson would patiently explain, “There is no edge. As far as we know, it’s endless.”

“Australians,” he once elaborated in the Flat Earth News, “do not hang by their feet underneath the world!”

When the space shuttle Columbia first landed next door at Edwards in 1981, he scoffed: “This airplane landed, but it’s just a simple, stupid old airplane carried piggyback and dropped over Lancaster. . . . It hasn’t orbited the Earth–that we know.”

“Moses was a flat-Earther,” he said in several interviews. “The Flat Earth Society was founded in 1492 BC (biblical scholars date the Exodus to 1491 BC) when Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt and gave them the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai.” Presumably, had the Earth been round, they would have fallen off before reaching the biblical promised land.

Jesus believed in a flat Earth, Johnson said, because he ascended to heaven, and if the Earth were a ball, “there [would be] no up nor down.”

Christopher Columbus was a flat Earth believer too, Johnson told The Times, discussing events of 1492: “He had enough sense to know that if the world was a ball, he would have fallen off.”

“Marjory has always known that the earth is flat, too,” says Charles Johnson. “As far as she knew, everybody in Australia knew it. She was rather shocked when she arrived here and found people speaking of Australia as being ‘down under.’ It really offended her. She would get in quite heated arguments with people who seemed to accuse her of coming from down under the world.” Ultimately, Marjory Johnson swore in an affidavit that she had never hung by her feet in Australia.

If the Shuttle ever does orbit on its own, it’s supposed to return to Edwards Air Force Base. To Johnson, that’s appropriate enough.
“Do you know what they’re doing at Edwards right now?” he asks. “‘Buck Rogers in the 25th Century’ is made right where they claim they’re going to land the Shuttle. Edwards is strictly a science-fiction base now.

“In the old days, people believed the earth was flat, because it’s logical, but they didn’t have a picture of the way it was, as we have today. Our concept of the world is new.

“Marjory and I are the avant garde. We’re way ahead of the pack.”

“Buck is a much better science program, considerably more authentic. In fact, I recommend that the government get out of the space business and turn the whole thing over to ABC, CBS, and NBC. The tv networks do a far superior job. They could actually pay the government for rights, and it wouldn’t cost the taxpayers a penny.”

If it is a sphere, the surface of a large body of water must be curved. The Johnsons have checked the surfaces of Lake Tahoe and the Salton Sea (a shallow salt lake in southern California near the Mexican border) without detecting any curvature.

If the Shuttle ever does orbit on its own, it’s supposed to return to Edwards Air Force Base. To Johnson, that’s appropriate enough.

“Do you know what they’re doing at Edwards right now?” he asks. “‘Buck Rogers in the 25th Century’ is made right where they claim they’re going to land the Shuttle. Edwards is strictly a science-fiction base now.

“Buck is a much better science program, considerably more authentic. In fact, I recommend that the government get out of the space business and turn the whole thing over to ABC, CBS, and NBC. The tv networks do a far superior job. They could actually pay the government for rights, and it wouldn’t cost the taxpayers a penny.”

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“Space may be the final frontier, but it’s made in a Hollywood basement” – Red Hot Chili Peppers

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