Recently, a real-time experiment, called the final experiment performed in Antarctica, was organized by a pastor named Will Duffy and conducted by a group that included four flat-earthers and four globe-earthers, so everyone could see the results with their own eyes and then report what they observed. This was mainly done to demonstrate the truth regarding the earth’s shape to the flat-earth community around the globe (pun intended).
The trip was to determine whether the phenomenon called the midnight sun (a day consisting of a full 24 hours of sunlight) was real or not because flat-earthers maintained the idea was impossible according to their flat-earth models prior to the experiment.
The midnight sun occurs because of how the earth’s axis tilts as it orbits the sun. The Northern and Southern Hemispheres have opposite seasons because the earth’s axial tilt causes variation in our planet’s relationship to the sun throughout the course of a year. The result is one hemisphere being angled toward the sun while the other is angled away from it.
During the December solstice (the reason the final experiment trip was conducted in December), our South Pole is angled to point toward the sun, and the North Pole is pointing away from it. The result is 24 hours of darkness at the North Pole, while the South Pole experiences the exact opposite—24 hours of sunlight, the midnight sun.
In the flat-earth model, this phenomenon couldn’t exist. Why? Well, as a New York Post article explained,
Flat earthers have long maintained that Antarctica holds the key to proving the earth is flat. . . . In the flat earth view of the world, Antarctica is actually an ice wall that encircles the other continents and holds in the oceans. If that view were correct, the sun must rise and set each day, even in Antarctica, and could never circle the sky all 24 hours.1
I am very familiar with the fact that flat-earthers often believe Antarctica is a key point in their beliefs. As a matter of fact, in another article I wrote regarding flat-earth beliefs (covering mostly different subjects than I will here),2 I mentioned an interaction when I asked a flat-earther what they thought would happen should someone conduct a similar experiment to what Pastor Duffy just did.
In my case, I asked what they thought would occur if you sailed a boat to the edge of this “ice wall” to disprove it. Now, just to be fair here, I’m not saying this fellow’s response was a mainstream belief of all flat-earthers, but much to my surprise, he said, “That’s when the guys with machine guns would come out!”
That’s right! Such was his level of conspiracy theory surrounding his flat-earth beliefs that he was convinced there were armed defenders all along the ice wall that were lookouts ready to eliminate anyone who tried to reveal the “truth” that the earth was flat!
Well, luckily, Pastor Duffy and the rest of the final experiment participants didn’t have to encounter any guys with machine guns when they flew to Antarctica. And the results of the experiment were conclusive, of course, because the reality is we live on a globe not a flat earth.
The results of the experiment were conclusive, of course, because the reality is we live on a globe not a flat earth.
One of the (then) flat-earth-believing participants, Jeran Campanella, admitted the following after observing the truth of the midnight sun phenomena with his own eyes in the same article mentioned earlier: “All right, guys, sometimes you are wrong in life. . . . And I thought that there was no 24-hour sun, in fact I was pretty sure of it. . . . It’s a fact—the sun does circle you in the south.”3
On his quite popular YouTube channel Jeranism (where he formerly promoted many pro-flat-earth videos), he’s provided unedited video footage of his final experiment trip. In the description of that video, he posted, “The 24 hour southern sun is fact.”4
Of course, the final experiment is in no way “final” for much of the flat-earth community. Still, many of them have been so passionately committed to their worldview and entrenched in their beliefs that most of them are trying to appeal to some kind of rescue device to get around this.
We’ve seen much of this already. Responses range from the idea of incorporating the truth of the 24-hour sun into flat-earth models to throwing their fellow believers under the proverbial bus and proposing a conspiracy that the four flat-earth participants were paid off or duped into saying they observed the midnight sun when, in reality, they didn’t.
If you’ve been around some of the more extreme flat-earth promoters out there, another not-surprising response comes from a US pastor. He promotes the idea that no matter how much footage you see or eyewitness testimonies you hear, you can’t believe your eyes and ears because the devil has somehow manipulated everything—even the weather and sun—to continue to deceive the world into thinking the earth is a sphere so people won’t believe in God.5 This proposed motivation (the massive conspiracy) has always perplexed me and is the only explanation I’ve heard about why this “incredibly sophisticated” hoax is being perpetuated.
For one, there are secular and atheistic flat-earth believers, so it doesn’t seem to be helping them much. And two, I trust in God and his Word without believing in a flat earth, and so do the overwhelming majority of other believers I know, who also don’t believe in a flat earth.
What bothers me most about the flat-earth movement is that they are often directly associated with biblical creationists.6
Prior to the rise of the modern flat-earth movement (largely through proponents posting videos on the internet), the only time I really heard the term flat-earther was as a slur against biblical creationists to try to categorize them as science deniers.
On the other hand, I’ve seen many Christian flat-earthers claim that the Bible teaches a flat earth, and biblical creationists are inconsistent in only supporting some aspects of what the Bible teaches. They claim that real science supports creation—“real science” supports a flat earth.
Except, that’s not what the Bible teaches, and it’s not what operational science supports, as evidenced by the final experiment.
Biblical creationists have always advocated that the Bible should be taken as plainly written (i.e., in context). For example, I don’t believe John 10:9 describes Jesus as a literal door, with hinges, a handle, etc.: “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.”
And I don’t read Psalm 91:4 (NKJV) and think God has wings and feathers like a bird: “He shall cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge.”
The plain reading of both passages, respectively, is that (1) through accepting Jesus as your Savior and putting your faith and trust in him, you will gain entrance into God’s kingdom and (2) God will provide shelter and comfort to his people—similar to how a mother bird does for its young. This is made clear not only by the context of the text itself but from corroborating passages throughout the rest of the Bible.
This is why we believe Genesis 1 clearly teaches God created in six, literal 24-hour days because that’s what the words plainly communicate in context, not only there but in supporting texts such as Exodus 20:11 as well: “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.”
So when flat-earthers quote passages of Scripture that use phenomenological language and take them literally to support their flat-earth beliefs, although I can see where they are coming from, we reject their claim the Bible teaches a flat earth.
I remember dialoguing with a flat-earther one time who was billeting me and was trying to convince me that passages like Isaiah 40:22 (“It is he who sits above the circle of the earth”) indicate we are on a flat, circular, disclike earth. When I suggested the Hebrew word used there for circle (khug) actually connotes a spherical shape rather than a flat pancake-like object, he insisted I was wrong.
So I asked him what he’d do then with a passage like Isaiah 11:12, where it says God would “gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” If the earth were a flat circle, how could it have four corners? This seemed to stump him for a bit, and we both went off to bed.
In the morning (likely after many internet searches), he proudly presented me with a new, modified, flat-earth diagram he had found somewhere. What he showed me was a square-shaped outline surrounding a concaved, circular-shaped earth inside it. Essentially, his diagram looked like a pizza box with a circular pizza inside.
Because of his insistence on interpreting both passages in an absolute literal sense (which resulted in a solution that made no sense whatsoever), he was forced to and succeeded in modifying his worldview overnight.
As far as scientific evidence goes, biblical creationists have never said that we should deny observational science that supposedly contradicts Scripture (as there is none). What we have said is that it’s not the facts of science that contradict the plain reading of Scripture, but rather the interpretation of those facts that accommodate evolutionary storytelling that we should reject.
It’s not the facts of science that contradict the plain reading of Scripture, but rather the interpretation of those facts that accommodate evolutionary storytelling that we should reject.
For example, we can all observe dinosaur bones in sedimentary rock layers worldwide. Evolutionists interpret those fossils as being 65+ million years old, which, if true, would contradict a plain reading of Scripture and prove it incorrect.
However, instead of denying the facts (i.e., that there are permineralized remains of once-living creatures in water-borne sediments) and coming up with silly notions like, “Those bones aren’t real; Satan put them in the rocks to deceive people!,” we acknowledge that the bones are there, but we reject the non-biblical and unscientific interpretation that they were put there through slow, steady processes over millions of years.
A solid biblical and scientific response would be that Noah’s flood buried those creatures rapidly (which is what you would need to do to create a fossil), alongside all the other animals that perished in the deluge approximately 4,400 years ago. This is why we find ducks, beavers, badgers, lobsters, platypuses, etc.7 all buried in the same layers we’ve found dinosaurs in.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: There isn’t a fact that creationists and evolutionists observe that we don’t agree with. “Look, there’s a dead thing in a rock layer, do you see it? Look, this atomic force microscope shows there’s DNA in living things in a helical structure. See this row of skulls, there are similarities in some of them and differences as well.”
Why exactly would you deny what you can directly observe while performing scientific experiments? But again, behind those observations would come various proposed explanations of the facts (rocks form slowly; rocks form quickly, etc.) that would conflict with one another—sometimes even within the same “camp.”
So we are not denying the facts but rather, the interpretation of those facts. We deny the interpretation because it is historical science being applied in the case of origins research, not repeatable, observable operational science done according to the scientific method.
No one has observed evolutionary, deep-time processes such as fossils forming over thousands of years. No one can set up an experiment in a lab demonstrating apelike creatures turning into people. The fact is no one has observed evolution.
That’s why Pastor Duffy chose to do an experiment rooted in operational science which requires direct observation and chose to include flat-earth believers (several others of whom were invited and declined to participate) because there should be no arguing among reasonable people in the case of observational science.
However, that is the type of science that flat-earthers are denying when they reject the results of the final experiment.
So for the flat-earth-believing Christians out there who are frustrated with biblical creationists who are willing to stand up against the story of evolution but won’t get on board with their flat-earth views, I hope this will help them understand why.
I further hope that those believers out there who are being wooed by the flat-earth community with these pseudo-biblical and scientific ideas would pray for discernment and consider these things carefully.
There are many fantastic articles on the Answers in Genesis website that can help you work through these issues. I would especially recommend those by our good friend and associate Dr. Danny Faulkner (PhD in astronomy), including his book Falling Flat, which can help you understand both the theological and scientific arguments for confidently believing in a spherical earth.
Far from helping convince the world about the truth of God and the trustworthiness of his Word, flat-earth beliefs, which distort the plain reading of Scripture to accommodate it combined with the willingness to deny observational science to maintain it, have certainly not been overly helpful in gospel witness to a skeptical world.
Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry, dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.