Bible Belt Blogger: In a split decision, round earth beats flat earth

Frank Lockwood

Forget about William Jennings Bryan v. Clarence Darrow or Lincoln v. Douglas. According to "Knox County Kentucky History", by Elmer Decker, the debate of the century took place in the hills of eastern Kentucky. The issue:

Resolved, that the earth is flat and stationary, and that the sun moves around it once in twenty-four hours."

One Kentucky autumn in the late 1890s, two teachers and two preachers debated this topic for two evenings. It was a spirited contest and the audience was split. One of the teachers, who argued for a round earth, says he wasn't sure who would win:

The hour grew late. The discussion ended and the judges went out in the dark to decide. The vote stood two to one in our favor. The constable cast the deciding vote. But he admitted to me that he was not fully satisfied.

To read more of the tale, click below. Thanks to Caleb Powers for forwarding this story.

THE TOP SIDE OF THE EARTH, by Elmer Decker

"What have you learned in the long years of your ministry which would modify your methods if you were to begin life again?"

This question I propounded to Reverend Doctor Leete of Hanover, New Hampshire, on a Sunday in the late "nineties when I was on the board of preachers at Dartmouth College

I have often meditated on his answer:

"This, that there is more to be said on the other side of almost my question than I once supposed."



I had always been taught that the earth was round. I had learned in school the common and accepted reasons in support of this thesis. I had never lived among intelligent people who had any other opinion. One of my most interesting experiences in the first year of my teaching on Richland Creek revealed how much might be said on the other side of this question.

Leander Clouse was a son of a local Baptist preacher, and for a time attended my school. Reverend John Clouse was not a quarrelsome man and he was glad to have Leander in my school, but he took the boy out to prevent his becoming an infidel. He said so frankly and not unkindly. He told my friends, and later told me, that he thought well of me and had no disposition to make trouble. It was a matter of conscience with him. He would like to have Leander taught to read and write and spell and cypher, but he thought that was as far as the teacher had any business to go. He wanted his boy to be able to read the Bible, and for that purpose would be glad to have him in school. But he could not in good conscience permit his son to be taught that the earth was round.

This incident does not appear to me a small or unimportant one even as viewed at a distance of more than forty-five years and at the time it was of very great significance. It has been to me through the course of my life since that event a reminder that some things that appear to me so true that they can need no proof might be very difficult to prove if I were called upon to establish their truth by argument. Further, I have been led to ponder some things I learned from John Stuart Mill on Liberty, that truth that has ceased to be questioned and defended is in some danger of becoming a lie.

I learned that I must either stop teaching that the earth was round, or prepare to prove it.

Moreover, this experience gave me a new idea about Lincoln. Reverend John Clouse, fairly intelligent and wholly honest, preached just as the Baptist preachers did whom Abraham Lincoln heard in his boyhood. In his first twenty-one years probably never head a preacher who believed the earth to be round. If in the years when he was reading and thinking, he rebelled against the narrowness of their instruction and was some times thought to have been an infidel and it not take much trouble to deny it, I was in position to know by what yardstick orthodoxy and infidelity were measured in the communities where Lincoln lived in his boyhood, both in Kentucky, and in that transplanted section of Kentucky, which he knew in southern Indiana and Central Illinois. It is affirmed that he was sometimes considered an infidel. I was in better position than any biographer of Lincoln had ever been to understand what that term probably signified in that day. For I, also, was deemed an infidel, for believing the earth to be round. I am afraid I was not as tactful as I ought to have been. As I remember it, it seems to me a pity that I was unable to conciliate the father, or to assure him that his son was not in danger from my teachings. But he kept the boy out of school saying that while his progress was satisfactory in other things, he could not have him taught infidelity.

The event made no small stir in the community. Some people agreed with the preacher and some with the teacher. Dr. John D. Jarvis proposed a public discussion on the question.

It was at a "stir-off" that we arranged for the debate. Mr. Clouse owned a canemill, and took it from farm to farm in the season, grinding out the cane juice and boiling the sap into molasses. The sap which had boiled several hours was ready to be dropped into kegs at night and a merry throng surrounded the fire and waited for the sap to come off. When they lifted it off the molasses began to cool a score of newly whittled paddles came into requisition. All hands scraped the edges of the pan where "them molasses" was thickest licked the paddle clean and came again. Fresh sorgham molasses in that region should be spoken of and used in the plural.

I had had molasses enough, and was watching the crowd around the pan, when Mr. Clouse came to me with a challenge to a public debate. I accepted and we quickly arranged the details amid a hum of merry voices and occasional laughter about the pan.

It was agreed that Mr. Clouse should call as his colleague another preacher from Laurel County; that I find another school teacher to assist me; that the debate would occupy two evenings; that on each night the four speakers should consume three-quarters of an hour a piece in opening, and the leaders as half hour each in closing. The plan was the same for both evenings, except that the two sides were to alternate in opening and closing; the teachers had to open the first night, and were allowed to close; the preachers began and ended the discussion on the second night. Each side was to choose a judge, and the two were to choose a third, who were to render a decision at the close of the second evening.

My colleague was Frank Dizney, a true and lifelong friend.

Mr. Clouse had chosen as his colleague another Baptist preacher, Francis Marion Gillum, whose brother or cousin was a general in the Confederate army. Gillum was one of the most powerful men I have ever met, tall, muscular, all bone and sinew.

The discussion took place in the log schoolhouse. There was a fire in the huge fireplace, and there were candles and little smoking chimneyless brass lamps that had been brought by different families, and these cast their flickering and uncertain light. The program as scheduled was four hours in length, but the debate began early, and the October evenings were long and the mountains of Kentucky do not demand short sermons or speeches.

I opened the discussion by stating the arguments given in the geographies. I told of the masts of the ships, which appear before the hull, argument and declared that it might be true and yet prove nothing. Moreover, it was evident that to people living among the hills an argument based on unobstructed vision was ineffective; they had no experience which helped them to interpret it. As to eclipse, the preacher declared that eclipses varied. He had seen an eclipse of the sun, and the shadow came off on the same side it went on; how could that be if my revolution theory was correct? Eclipses were freaky things, and nobody knew how they could act. As to the story of men's sailing around the world, who did not know that men who traveled were notorious liars? They came back knowing that it was impossible to disprove their large stories, and people expected them to lie, and they did lie. Or, if the man who told this story did not lie, he might have been mistaken.

"Like as not he sailed round pretty nigh the aidge of it, and so cam-- back all right, but he kept on the top side all the time," said the minister. He added with gestures that "the world may be round this-a-way" (i.e., round on top)," or even round this-a-way (i.e., cylindrical), "but hit ain't round this-a-way" (i.e., spherical).

Then came the positive part of his argument. He appealed to reason and observation; he had sat up one night to see whether the mill pond ceased at any time to run over the dam as with the slightest inclination of the earth this one level stretch of water should have done. He had been something of a traveler himself and had been twice to Virginia and once well, gone into Tennessee, nor had he found any place where the earth appeared to curve. He ridiculed the theory which would compel us to hold on to the trees at night to keep from falling off, and squarely denied that there could be any people on the other side of the earth walking with heads down, and foolish enough to think their heads were up.

Then came my colleague who reminded them of the fly on the apple, and illustrated by shadows on the wall the theory of eclipse and the procession of the seasons.

Then came the other preacher, Francis Marion Gillum.

He had come far -- "cl'ar over the aidge of the yarth in Laurel," as he ironically told us in his introduction. He was not bound by any false notion of courtesy; he'id not live here, he said, and he proposed to hew to the line and let the chips fly where they would. This was an age of new ideas, and most of them false ones; it was a time when people were likely to believe a lie and be damned; it was a time for the friends of the truth to stand by the truth, and not let any false ideas of friendship or hospitality keep them from opposing error and branding it as such.

Having so spoken he moved around to where he could confront me and began his argument. I was more than ever impressed by his gigantic stature. And he looked taller in his jeans coat, which he wore without a vest over his hickory shirt, and his gray jeans trousers. Certainly he showed no fear that night as he faced this new and dangerous error.

He began with the declaration that the Bible affirms that God laid the corner stones of earth and stretched the line upon it. He asked how a straight line could conform to a curved surface, or a round earth have a corner-stone. He went on to affirm that the course of the sun according to the Bible was from one end of the heavens to the other, and that if the sun was stationery the Bible statement must be false. He showed that the Bible says there is nothing hid from the that thereof, whereas I had told of the poles long in darkness and in winter. He went through the Bible and sought out a long array of quotations. He went as far as Joshua, and spent the rest of the time upon him, and promised to resume next night. The closing addresses summed up matters, but did not materially change the status of the argument-

My friend Dizney and I took counsel together. It was plain that the audience was divided in its sympathies. A small majority, we judged, was against us. Mr. Jarvis, our judge was an old school teacher; had been county commissioner of schools, and we were sure of his vote. Our opponents had chosen one of the local officers - a constable - Leonard Hutton, and until that year a school trustee. Personally he believed the earth flat, but he had a warm regard for me and his children were in school. How he would vote was uncertain. But apart from this we wanted to convince the community. So we prepared some simple apparatus to illustrate the motions of the heavenly bodies, and the next night began again the discussion of the questions: Resolved, that the earth is flat and stationary, and that the sun moves around it once in twenty-four hours."

The discussion of the second evening developed no great or new ideas on either side, but the arguments grew more earnest, and on the side of our opponents more personal. Mr. Gillum was in dead earnest, and was dramatic as well. He chose a position beside my chair, and made occasional hammering gestures descending toward my head. I thought of the trip-hammer so finely adjusted that it would touch a watch on the anvil and not break the crystal, and hoped his mightly poundings would continue to stop above my head. At the close of each heated period he cleared his throat with a threatening gargle, looking down at me the while. At times he indulged in sarcasm.

He's a college student - ah! And he's come out here to instruct us - ah! Yes and to larn us about the shape of yarth - ah! And he knows more'n what Joshua did - ah! Brethering, do ye reckon Joshua didn't know what to pray furl Did he say 'Yarth, stand thou still in thine axoltree? No! He says, sezee, "Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon - ah! And thou man in the valley of Ajalon - ah! But he knows moren's Joshua I Yes, I shouldn't wonder ef he allows he knows wren's God A'mighty that writ this book - ah! I tell ye, brethering, hit's the doctrine of infidelity - ah! And any man that'll teach it ought to be drummed out of the country - ah! B-r-rc-k!"

Truly, there was more to be said on this side of the question than I had thought. And as evident that the audience was by not me as a unit in our favor. The hour grew late. The discussion ended and the judges went out in the dark to decide.

The vote stood two to one in our favor. The constable cast the deciding vote. But he admitted to me that he was not fully satisfied. The decision lay somewhat heavily upon his conscience. He sought an interview with me soon, explaining that his vote was on the merits of the argument, as he understood it,

and not an endorsement of my position on the question. He asked me to come home with the children and spend a night and answer some other questions a few nights later I stayed at his home.

After supper I set a candle an the table, and taking a ball of yarn, stuck a knitting needle through it, and walked around and round the candle, holding the ball high an one side and low on the other, and turning the ball the while. The explanation lasted long, but at last it was counted satisfactory. My friend, Mr. Hutton declared himself converted. So we went to bed, and the earth rolled out into the sunlight again.

After all, we are not so far removed from the same opinion. When Cotton Mather preached in Boston that the sun was the center of the solar system and so learned and intelligent a man as Chief Justice Samuel Sewall went home and recorded in his diary his protest. Let us not hasten to call people ignorant who went into isolation in Sewall's time and have kept pretty well the ideas of his age on some matters.

But I must tell about two of my converts. One of them came to me when I returned the next year. He had been to London, the county seat of Laurel County. The railroad has just been finished to that point, and he had seen it. The rails, he said, were as far apart as he could reach, but as they stretched away in the distance they almost came together.

"Don't that show," he asked with the zeal of a new convert, "that everything works toward the center of gravitation?"

The other was my friend Mr. Hutton, the constable. The subject came up in our last rather than first meeting. I brought it up, and he fought shy of it. So I pressed the matter, for I suspected that he had fallen from grace. At length, he said:

Well, I reckon I might as well own up. They say an honest confession is good for the soul, You made that seem mighty plain, and I thought I believed it. But I wasn't comfortable peared like every time the old thing flopped over she was goin to spill us off, and I couldn't get Joshua and the corners and foundations of the earth. And I said, Let God be true and every man a liar! "And I don't want to believe it, and ain't a-goin to! "

I took the hand of my good friend and said: 'If I were in your place I don't believe I would!'

So I have no doubt there yet remains opportunity for some ambitious reader of this story to try whether his own success may be more enduring.

Archived Comments

This is a perfect example of how skepticism toward Scripture was fostered by well-meaning folks. They treated poetry as if it was science language.

But it isn't simply that the Bible uses poetic language. All of it was written in colloquial language, which is quite different from technical or scientific writing. Everyone uses colloquial language. What professional scientist hasn't commented at least one time in her life on a beautiful "sunrise" or "sunset", knowing perfectly well that the sun neither rises nor sets? Yet we don't accuse the scientist of "error", because we all know the semantical and stylistic differences between colloquial speech, slang, puns, coined words, and metaphors vs. the rigid, descriptive language of scientific journals.

Genesis says that God created energy first, which is necessary for any other processes to occur, and Moses used the word "light." The Old Testament used one word (translated in the KJV as "leprosy") as a catch-all word to describe a plethora of skin diseases, even though the diseases described were not what is more exactly called leprosy today.

Posted by: Jack Brooks | November 22, 2006 at 02:17 PM