Flat Earth?!

The most common reaction I receive from people when I tell them of this organization is one of shock and confusion. What organization is that, well The Flat Earth Society of course. The name alone really tells you most of what you need to know. There is little left to contemplate on what they might believe, but it is hard for many to grasp, or just be able to coop with what these people might be talking about.

I first came across this group at some point in 2007. I was a little shocked and dismayed by what I was reading at time. My first exposure was a personal blog of a “Flat Earther” that was ranting about how NASA needed to just come clean about the conspiracy to perpetuate the “Round Earth Theory” and fool the public. I read with fascination thinking how wonderful, wait are they joking, oh wait they are kidding, right? this cycle went through over and over in my head until the end of the article when I realized it was no joke. This lead me to do some major research into these Flat Earthers and what it is they believe and why.

After some quick searching around you can easily stumble onto the website for the Flat Earth Society, well at least the site that most agree to be the official site for the real society. It seems there are other, much smaller, groups that claim to be the real ones. There are also a few well designed sites that the Flat Earth Society claims are satirical sites making attempts to make fun of them and divert attention from the real issues they are bringing forward. Of course there is also the Wikipedia entry on this group. Unfortunately the wiki page for the FES is partial proof of where Wikipedia falls short of being a source of real information. The wiki page for this group is slanted against them, which instead of being a source of information it becomes an opinion driven piece against them not to just inform about them. Although some of the information was helpful. Let me try to give a short explanation on the group from what I have learned from the sources I can find.

The Flat Earth Society was founded officially in 1956 by Samuel Shenton, but this wasn’t the real beginning of the group. For that we need to go back to the mid 1800′s to Samuel Rowbotham. Rowbotham invented a theory called Zetetic Astronomy. This theory was based largely on literal translation of Bible passages that spoke of the earth being a disk. He wrote a book addressing his theory and grow a following of people who agreed with his ideas. When Rowbotham died his followers formed the Universal Zetetic Society. With a main purpose to get the word out and inform the masses of the “truths” put forward by their lost leader. Like many groups of its kind, the Zetetic Society went through many phases throughout the century of its existence. Up to the 1950′s there was many people who came to light as the leader or president of the group, at least two different times there were magazines and newsletters circulated by the Universal Zetetic Society or just the Zetetic Society, while at times there seems to be no mention or real record of the group at all, while some say that the Zetetic’s never died out.

In 1956 Samuel Shenton took over the Universal Zetetic Society and formed the International Flat Earth Society. Following his death in 1971 Charles K. Johnson took over as the president of the society after inheriting all of Shenton’s library and Flat Earth material. Johnson worked to build and grow the society in his time as the president eventually boasting over 3,000 members. He also worked at funding the society by charging membership fees and proved to be excellent at running the society. In 1995 a house fire destroyed Johnson’s home and most of the societies library and paperwork along with it. The fire was claimed to take not only all the research, maps, collected information and so on, but also took some important for keeping the society together including the membership database. The society saw a decline and had lost formal organization, although Johnson is said to of vowed to get it started again one day, but died in 2001 before he ever saw that happen.

After several years of inactivity the Flat Earth Society was reactivated in 2004 by Daniel Shenton.  Although they didn’t start accepting new members until 2009. The society now resides mostly online with a website complete with Daniels blog, a public forum, and much more. You can even become a member through the site. If you like what you read you can go to the join page, then after a $6 or more donation you will get a certificate and medallion, both printed with your unique member numbers on them.

So what is it exactly that they believe? What is the point in the society at all? Well that is really the simple part. They believe that the world is flat. The society is formed as a way to not only give other believers in a flat world a place to meet and a club to be a part of, but as a conduit to find others, get the word out and try to disprove what they believe is the misunderstanding that the world is a sphere. Although the people who belong and participate on the forums are seemingly all around mainstream and level-headed about most topics, they differ on two points. They believe that the earth is flat to the extent of their being a conspiracy to convincing people otherwise for unknown reasons to unknown ends, and they believe that under the Flat Earth Model that space travel is an impossibility and any space exploration, including the moon landing, was faked.

Really just rapping your head around what they believe and way is something that you only think you understand until you open another section of the sticky forum topic of “Q&A.” It would take days for someone to really weed through and read it all, but that is not what I came on to type about. My intention was only tell of the group not what they believed, that is something that you should find out for yourself.

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