Terra Firma

The Earth Not a Planet; Proved From Scripture, Reason, and Fact

David Wardlaw Scott

• Publisher: Left of Brain Books
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781334999161
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Astronomy & Astrophysics
• Index: Social Sciences

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt." -Richard P. FeynmanDavid Wardlaw Scott had a life's mission. He believed that earth was a flat plane, not a round globe; and he wanted to help others see his truth. Terra Firma: The Earth is Not a Planet, Proved from Scripture, Reason and Fact presents the evidence as Scott saw it. Written in 1901, this text may be considered essential to those who ascribe to the flat-earth theory.Those who are not aware of flat-earth theory, or who do not themselves ascribe to it, will also find this to be a valuable text as it provides enlightenment on this particular set of theories and beliefs. Today, it is known that science cannot always be blindly trusted. It is necessary to read the points and counter-points on any topic to discern fact from fiction, and to then settle on one's personal belief system.For those interested in flat-earth theory, this book will prove especially interesting given its stance. Rather tha

CHAPTER I.

SECTION 1.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT GRAVITATION.

I remember being taught when a boy, that the Earth was a great ball, revolving at a very rapid rate around the Sun, and, when I expressed to my teacher my fears that the waters of the oceans would tumble off, I was told that they were prevented from doing so by Newton’s great law of Gravitation, which kept everything in its proper place. I presume that my countenance must have shown some signs of incredulity, for my teacher immediately added — I can show you a direct proof of this; a man can whirl around his head a pail filled with water without its being spilt, and so, in like manner, can the oceans be carried round the Sun without losing a drop. As this illustration was evidently intended to settle the matter, I then said no more upon the subject.

Had such been proposed to me afterwards as a man, I would have answered somewhat as follows — Sir, I beg to say that the illustration you have given of a man whirling a pail of water round his head, and the oceans revolving round the Sun, does not in any degree confirm your argument, because the water in the two cases is placed under entirely different circumstances, but, to be of any value, the conditions in each case must be the same, which here they are not. The pail is a hollow vessel which holds the water inside it, whereas, according to your teaching, the Earth is a ball, with a continuous curvature outside, which, in agreement with the laws of nature, could not retain any water; besides, as the Scriptures plainly tell us — 2 Pet. iii. 5, the water is not contained in the Earth, but the Earth in the water. Again, the man who whirls the pail around his head, takes very good care to hold it straight in an even circuit, for, if he did not, the water would immediately be spilt. But you teach us that the Earth goes upside down and downside up, so that the people in Australia, being on the other side of the so-called Globe, have their feet exactly opposite to ours, for which reason they are named Antipodes. We are not like flies which, by the peculiar conformation of their feet, can crawl on a ball, but we are human beings, who require a plane surface on which to walk; and how could we be fastened to the Earth whirling, according to your theory, around the Sun, at the rate of eighteen miles per second? The famed law of Gravitation will not avail, though we are told that we have fifteen pounds of atmosphere pressing on every square inch of our bodies, but this does not appear to be particularly logical, for there are many athletes who can leap nearly their own height, and run a mile race in less than five minutes, which they could not possibly do were they thus handicapped. Sir, your assertion respecting the revolution of the world round the sun, as illustrated by the pail of water, is utterly worthless, and will never convince any thinking man; it is, as the late Mr. Carpenter said of another astronomical theory, “an outrage upon human understanding and credulity.”

Sir Robert Ball, the Astronomer Royal for Ireland, says, speaking of Gravitation:

“In the case of the sun, and of the planetary system generally, the mass of the central body enormously exceeds that of any of his planets. The sun, for example, is 1047 times as heavy as Jupiter — the heaviest of the planets; while, if the luminary were subdivided into a million equal pieces, the mass of each one of them would be greater than the mass of the earth. It, therefore, follows that the centre of gravity of the sun and of the earth lies close to the sun’s centre. “

“The universal law asserts that everybody attracts every other body, and therefore there is attraction not alone between planet and sun, but also between planet and planet. Jupiter is not only attracted by the sun, and retaliates by attracting the sun, but Jupiter also attracts the earth, and is in turn attracted by the earth. In like manner there is a mutual attraction between every pair of planets, the intensity of which is measured by the product of the masses of the two planets, divided by the square of the distance apart.”¹

So with regard to celestial things, and so, we suppose, with regard to terrestrial matters also; by this wonderful law of Gravitation, the man attracts the woman, and the woman attracts the man, the elephant attracts the flea, and the flea attracts the elephant, the cat attracts the mouse, and the mouse attracts the cat, and so on ad infinitum. Calculation, by the square of the distance, might, perhaps, to some appear plausible, were there only a few particular objects concerned, but, when there are countless millions of things, both celestial and terrestrial, all struggling at the same time to attract each other, such a law, from the inextricable confusion which it would necessarily create, would not only be an absurdity but an impossibility. Sir Isaac Newton himself does not even attempt to give one proof of the truth of Gravitation; with him it is only supposition from beginning to end. Thus he says —

“But the reason of these properties of gravity I could never hitherto deduce from phenomena; and am unwilling to frame hypotheses about them; for whatever is not deduced from phenomena ought to be called a hypothesis, and no sort of hypotheses are allowable in experimental philosophy wherein propositions are deduced from phenomena, and not made general by deduction.”

The famous laws of Kepler, once considered to be so helpful in establishing the theory of Gravitation, are now found to have been only erroneous suppositions, as Professor W. B. Carpenter writes in the October, 1880, No. of the “Modern Review,” from which I quote the following extract —

“He took as his guide another assumption no less erroneous, viz., that the masses of these planets increased with their distances from the Sun. In order to make this last fit with the facts, he was drawn to assume a relation of their respective densities, which we now know to be utterly untrue for, as he himself says, ‘unless we assume this proposition of the densities, the law of the periodic time will not answer.’ Thus, says his Biographer, three out of the four suppositions made by Kepler to explain the beautiful law he had detected, are now undisputably known to be false, what he considered to be the proof of it being only a mode of false reasoning by which any required result might be deduced from any given principle.’”

Et tu, Brute! the Newtonian Caesar may now exclaim, as he falls by the dagger of his old friend Kepler.

Gravitation is a big word, derived from the Latin adjective gravis, heavy, and heavy, indeed, has been the trouble which it has caused to Modern Astronomers by its not acting in obedience to the laws made for it by their Delphic Oracle Sir Isaac Newton. It was at first introduced to the public as a mere hypothesis, but, by degrees, became to be considered as a law, though it paid as little attention to the law propounded for it by Newton, as a Red Republican does to that of his country; for the small Moon refused to circle round the great Sun, nor would even a splint of wood be attracted by an iron mountain. The truth is that Gravitation, Attraction, Cohesion are only scientific names invented to cover men’s ignorance of God’s works in nature, pretending to explain facts, when, in reality, they explain nothing at all. Far wiser would it have been to have at once confessed that it is only by the Fiat of God that the substances of things are kept together, for it is He alone that upholdeth all things by the word of His power —Heb. i. 3. “He hath made the Earth by His power, He hath established the world by His wisdom, and by His understanding hath He stretched out the Heavens” —Jer. x. 12. And that Omnipotent God, who binds things together now, will, in His own time, effect their separation, for the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the things that are therein shall be burned up” — 2 Pet. iii. 10.

Speaking of Newton’s law of Gravitation, Sir Richard Phillips said in his “A Million of Facts”,

“It is waste of time to break a butterfly on a wheel, but, as Astronomy and all science is beset with fancies about attraction and repulsion, it is necessary to eradicate them.”

Mr. Breach of Southsea remarks —

“Newton’s supposed law of Gravitation was lost in the Moon. Newton found that the Moon’s perigee ought to require 18 years to perform its revolution in the heavens, while observation showed that the revolution was performed in one-half of this period. He exhausted all his skill and power to overcome the difficulty, but died, leaving the problem unsolved. His successor Clairaut also finally abandoned the law of Gravitation as being incapable of explanation.”²

In his article “Nature and Law,” which appeared in the “Modern Review” of October, 1890, Professor W. B. Carpenter writes as follows —

“We have no proof, and, in the nature of things, can never get one, of the assumption of the attractive force exerted by the Earth, or by any other bodies of the Solar system, upon other bodies at a distance. Newton himself strongly felt that the impossibility of rationally accounting for action at a distance through an intervening vacuum, was the weak point of his system. All that we can be said to know is that which we learn from our own experience. Now, in regard to the Sun’s attraction for the Earth and Planets, we have no certain experience at all. Unless we could be transported to his surface, we have no means of experimentally comparing Solar gravity with Terrestrial gravity, and, if we could ascertain this, we should be no nearer the determination of his attraction for bodies at a distance. the doctrine or universal gravitation, then, is a pure assumption.”

If Gravitation in the vast body of our Astronomers’ Sun were a reality, why does it not attract, or even, as it might be expected to do, absorb such a light body as a Comet, when it comes so near it, instead of letting its long gossamer tail depart unscathed? Miss Giberne, in writing of Comets, remarks —

“They obey the attraction of the Sun, yet he appears to have the singular power of driving the Comet’s Tail away from himself. For however rapidly the Comet may be rushing round the Sun, and however long the tail may be, it is almost always found to stream in an opposite direction from the Sun.”³

Miss Giberne’s remarks, if not explanatory, are at least curious, for they suppose the Sun to have the singular power of first attracting and then repelling the hapless Comet, a peculiar mode of Gravitation not per mitted to our poor Earth, which, it is said, could draw down Sir Isaac’s apple from the tree, but had no power to send it back to its stalk again. The truth is no Astronomer on Earth, nor anybody else, knows one single fact respecting Gravitation, which is an unknown and an unknowable quantity, and the sooner it is committed to the grave of oblivion, the more scope will be given for the advancement of true science.

Any object which is heavier than the air, and which is unsupported, has a natural tendency to fall by its own weight. Newton’s famous apple at Woolsthorpe, or any other apple when ripe, loses hold of its stalk, and, being heavier than the air, drops as a matter of necessity, to the ground, totally irrespective of any attraction of the Earth. For, if such attraction existed, why does not the Earth attract the rising smoke which is not nearly so heavy as the apple? The answer is simple — because the smoke is lighter than the air, and, therefore, does not fall but ascends. Gravitation is only a subterfuge, employed by Newton in his attempt to prove that the Earth revolves round the Sun, and the quicker it is relegated to the tomb of all the Capulets, the better will it be for all classes of society. He draped his idol with the tawdry tinsel of false science, knowing well how to beguile the thoughtless multitude, for, with a little alteration of Byron’s famous lines, it is still true that

 

“Mortals, like moths, are often caught by glare,

And folly wins success where Seraphs might despair.”

 

Gravitation is a clever illustration of the art of hocus-pocus — heads I win, tails you lose; Newton won his fame, and the people lost their senses.

 

 

SECTION 2.

FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE OF OPINION AMONG MODERN ASTRONOMERS.

Judging from the manner in which such able champions of Zetetic truth as Rowbotham, Hampden, and Carpenter, who have passed away, have been treated, as also some strong advocates for it who are still alive, I have no great expectation that anything which I may say will have much effect on Astronomers themselves. They may rather be expected to exclaim, in a somewhat similar strain as a certain noble Lord with respect to the “old Nobility” —

“Let Scripture, Reason, Fact, and Learning die,

But spare us Newton’s grand Astronomy.”

Many books have been written on Modern Astronomy, but I am afraid that most of them are planned more as tales of sensational fiction than as handbooks of useful instruction, and require to be read not only with one but with many grains of salt. I have been informed, on good authority, that some of our Astronomers do already know the Plane truth, and surely it behooves such no longer to hide their light under a bushel, but to let it shine before men, so that others may be benefited and that God may be glorified thereby. If, however, they are still determined to conceal their knowledge, they must just be left severely alone. We may hope that some others will come to the front, who will brush away the cobwebs of theory, and build upon the granite of truth. A splendid opportunity is now before such so much-needed men, who might enrich the world with volumes of real value respecting the Heavens, and the Earth, based upon the lines of Scripture, Reason, and Fact.

The system of the Universe, as taught by Modern Astronomers, being founded entirely on theory, for the truth of which they are unable to advance one single real proof, they have entrenched themselves in a conspiracy of silence, and decline to answer any objections which may be made to their hypotheses. Such a method of defense appears to me to be neither wise nor effectual, for Truth is great, and must ultimately prevail. It rather resembles the tactics of the ostrich, which, in order to elude his pursuers, hides his head in the sand, thus leaving the greater part of his body exposed to view. Lord Beaconsfield wisely said — “A subject or system that will not bear discussion is doomed.” Both Copernicus himself, who revived the theory of the heathen philosopher Pythagoras, and his great exponent Sir Isaac Newton, confessed that their system of a revolving Earth was only a possibility, and could not be proved by facts. It is only their followers who have decorated it with the name of an “exact...

Table of contents

• PREFACE.
• CHAPTER I.
• SECTION 1.
• SECTION 2.
• SECTION 3.
• SECTION 4.
• CHAPTER II.
• SECTION 1.
• SECTION 2.
• SECTION 3.
• SECTION 4.
• SECTION 5.
• SECTION 6.
• SECTION 7.
• CHAPTER III.
• SECTION 1.
• SECTION 2.
• _Toc531089146
• SECTION 4.
• CHAPTER IV.
• SECTION 1.
• SECTION 2.
• SECTION 3.
• SECTION 4.
• SECTION 5.
• SECTION 6.
• CHAPTER V.
• SECTION 1.
• SECTION 2.
• DANGERS OF NAVIGATION IN SOUTHERN SEAS, CAUSED BY THE THEORY THAT THE WORLD IS GLOBULAR.
• THE SUPPOSED REVOLUTION OF THE EARTH AROUND THE SUN PROVED TO BE UNTRUE.
• SECTION 5.
• SECTION 6.
• THE HORIZONTALITY OF LAND AND WATER PROVED.
• SECTION 1.
• SECTION 2.
• SECTION 3
• SECTION 4.
• SECTION 5.
• CHAPTER VII.
• SECTION 1
• SECTION 2.
• SECTION 3.
• CHAPTER VIII.
• SECTION 1.
• SECTION 2.
• SECTION 3.
• SECTION 4.
• CHAPTER IX.
• SECTION 1.
• SECTION 2.
• SECTION 3.
• SECTION 4.
• SECTION 5.
• CHAPTER X.
• SECTION 1.
• SECTION 2.
• CHAPTER XI.
• SECTION 1.
• SECTION 2.
• SECTION 3.
• SECTION 4.
• SECTION 5.
• SECTION 6.
• SECTION 7.
• CHAPTER XII.
• SECTION 1.
• SECTION 2.
• THE ACCADIAN OR OLD CHALDEAN ACCOUNT OF THE DELUGE.
• SECTION 3.
• SECTION 4.
• CHAPTER XIII.
• SECTION 1.
• SECTION 2.
• SECTION 3.
• SECTION 4.
• CHAPTER XIV.
• SECTION 1.
• SECTION 2.
• SECTION 3.
• SECTION 4.
• CONCLUDING REMARKS.