It was about the relationships and emotions that support shared identity, beliefs, practices, and motivations, which is the realm of religion. The convention wasn't about knowledge as the secular Western scientific structure would define it. Participants spoke of how much they appreciated the experience of community at the convention, and how the community and the enthusiasm evident at the convention affirmed their commitment to flat earthism, not just as a belief system, but as a movement, an identity, and a way of orienting oneself to the world. What really drove home for me the sense that what I was watching was more akin to a religious community than a scientific community, though, was the convention that is documented near the film's end. The documentary suggests that these divisions are similar to sects within a religion, and the suggestion seemed a plausible one to me, based not just on Christian comparisons, but also what I know about Islam, Buddhism, and other religions. However, these are not just differences of theory, but different communities that have formed around the theories and their leading proponents, who hurl anathemas at one another. It turns out that there are different interpretations of what is at the edge of the earth (and whether there even is an edge). This started during a section of the movie that discusses factions within the group of people who believe the earth is flat. The documentary generated some discussion at the time it came out, much of it about what the documentary and its subjects say about the state of science, especially in a culture where many disbelieve in human-caused climate change, despite overwhelming scientific consensus on this point.Īs I watched the movie, though, I was struck not by the parallels with science, but with the parallels with religion. Last year, Netflix released a documentary called "Behind the Curve" about US Americans who believe that the earth is flat. The map contains several references to biblical passages as well as various jabs at the "Globe Theory". Flat Earth map drawn by Orlando Ferguson in 1893.
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