Patrick Reany
24 April 2023
What follows is my personal view of why the earth was created a sphere like the other
planets and the moons were.
If we suppose that the God of the Bible prefers not to force His existence on the people of earth,
then God must have so formed the earth so as to allow for some naturalistic theory of its formation,
along with the Bible's supernatural presentation of its formation.
If this is so, then God would not make the planets and their moons as spheres, but make the earth
flat, for to do so would be to eliminate any reasonable 'naturalistic' theory of how the earth was
formed, and would, therefore, be coercive on the part of God towards the people of earth. Let's
formalize the assumptions so far:
Hypothesis 1: God wants people to serve Him by choice, not by coercion.
Hypothesis 2: God has made the world in such a way that it can be reasonably interpreted as being
setup either by a supernatural act or by purely natural means.
My point is that if God had made the earth flat, leaving all other aspects of the universe the same,
then God would be forcing His existence on people, which He has proven not to want to do. When
the religious leaders demanded of Jesus to prove by a miracle that He was the Son of God, He
refused to do so [Mark 8:11-12].
Those who come to Jesus will have to do so for some other -- more virtuous -- reason.
The point here is not that God is forcing people to believe in a flat earth in contradiction
to the evidence, but, rather, I'm supposing: What if the earth really were flat? In other
words, would they, in that case, still be able to come up with a naturalistic model of
the formation of the Solar System? I don't think so. So, God has allowed nonbelievers
to invent their own naturalistic creation theories as alternatives to Bible doctrines.
But if the earth were flat, that would be a deal breaker. Whether or not these
naturalistic models fall apart in time, only time will tell.
So, my point to the flat-earthers is this: In my opinion, the God of the Bible would not
have made the earth flat for the reasons I gave above.