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When he heard about the idea of a flat Earth, Robbie Davidson thought that the idea that the world was not a sphere was crazy.
"I thought the idea of a flat Earth was ridiculous," said Robbie Davidson, a thin, hyper-sportsy Canadian wearing a ginger goatee and a loose-fitting jumpsuit sitting in the lobby of a hotel. from Denver.
But not anymore. The hotel hosts the second annual International Flat Earth Conference – an event that Davidson himself founded and organized.
"I first heard that in the Bible and thought," It can not be true, "he said, speaking with swift enthusiasm. "I mean, I believed in everything, that the Earth had been created in six literal days, but what about all these other [about a flat Earth]? To be consistent as a biblical literalist, I can not choose. "
The conversion of David into a flat land dates back to a few years ago. Yet, like many celebrities around the world, he had subscribed to the idea that the Earth was shaped like a pancake.
Theories burst forth from there, with divergent ideas about who spread misinformation about the shape of the Earth and why, but there are a number of unifying cornerstones: Nasa, Freemasons, "simulated" lunar landing, the globalists, Elon Musk.
But perhaps the guiding thread is the Bible and the conviction of its fundamental truth. This makes evangelical Christians one of the most enthusiastic and enthusiastic groups who adhere to the theory, but they are also one of the least reported and a subject that causes immense controversy in their own community.
Yet in the hallways of the conference – where 650 people from around the world have paid up to $ 350 to attend lectures on their horizontal idea of the planet – it's not uncommon to see people praying for each other, discuss apocalyptic theories about the "end times," or by exchanging Bible verses describing the Earth in a non-spherical way.
"I found more than 200 scripts that corroborate the idea that we live on a flat, motionless Earth," said Nathan Roberts, one of the many "cosmological evangelists" who spoke at the event.
He is a handsome and young entrepreneur who travels the country with his wife and children, talks about Jesus and sells books about creationism – the perfect model of an American evangelist. And yet most evangelicals, like most scientists, despise the work they do on a flat Earth.
"The biggest persecution I've faced has been in the church," Roberts said.
At a time when evangelicals are facing a crisis of public relations – retaliation for their LGBT stance, their doctrines of prosperity and the unconditional support of the Trump 2016 campaign, observers say it would make sense that they resist any association with the movement of the flat Earth.
In the last century, evangelicals have maintained a love-hate relationship with fundamentalist Christians, who constitute an evangelical subculture and who view the Bible as a historical and scientifically factual account of world events.
Traditional evangelical groups tend to use so-called "research-sensitive" tactics: neutral politics, live rock music, and charming, trendy pastors, attracting celebrities such as Chris Pratt, Justin Bieber, and Kim Kardashian. While fundamentalist Christians are generally less frivolous and more idealistic, they often lead to home schooling, survival lifestyles and a focus on the Book of Revelation.
Earth Earth (or "Bible Land", as some of them stand out at this conference) is a new subculture of American fundamentalist Christianity. It is a marriage of theories of anti-government conspiracy (NASA's space program is a complete lie) and biblical literalism (the Earth is the center, the center of the universe, the paradise above the sky and hell below the ground).
The movement claims some celebrities. In 2007, Christian Sherri Shepherd, co-host and evangelist for The View, sparked a collective surge in the world of early social media when she publicly asked if the Earth was flat. The former MTV diva, Tila Tequila, rapper B.o.B. and Kyrie Irving's Boston Celtics have all been publicly identified as Earth Earthers.
At Thursday's conference, Davidson was stunned to announce the unexpected arrival of YouTube's personality, Logan Paul (whose channel has over 18 million subscribers). Paul made a brief appearance on stage, where he announced that he was "coming out of Earth's closet" under a thunderous applause from the crowd.
Their increased relevance is mainly due to social media and an ever-curious media. The Washington Post, for example, has published six separate articles about an amateur rocket trying to kiss the sky and a video recording showing the world is flat.
But most of the time, Flat Terrans are one of the most ridiculous subcultures of our time.
They inspired the story of Neil deGrasse Tyson, Modern Family and an evangelical scholar whose works they cited as proof of their theory.
"They took my writings on the ancient Israelite cosmology and interpreted them that way, literally, and used them to support this idea of a flat Earth," said Michael Heiser, biblical scholar of the Bible. Liberty University and host of The Naked Bible podcast. , who expressed frustration at the misinterpretation of his work by earthlings.
Like most debates between scholars and fundamentalists, his grievances against besieged landlords are all about whether the Bible should be considered an allegorical or literal text.
"In Genesis, you have a round but flat Earth, covered with a solid dome," says Heiser. "In Proverbs, reference is made to the seas held where the light meets darkness, which is the horizon, where the dome covers and seals the Earth. You have references to Earth based on a foundation, known as the pillars of the Earth. You have waters under the Earth, which is the realm of the dead.
"All of this is a standard vocabulary for understanding how people of this time and place see the world. They did not know Antarctica or New Zealand. The Bible is an ancient document centered on the Mediterranean, written by people who describe their world through their experiences. The mountains are described as holding the sky dome up, but there was no REI store nearby where they could buy climbing gear and climb those tops to see what was going on.
Heiser himself is a Christian, although he prefers to look at the Bible in its historical context.
Many conference attendees, including Davidson, say that they were expelled from churches, that they lost their jobs or that they had broken relationships with members of the community. their family because they made public their belief of a flat land.
They see the Denver conference as a rare opportunity to share a physical space with believers.
"It's very cathartic to be around others [flat Earthers]Davidson said, "It's so important, because we've been isolated and abused, and now we can breathe, communicate and connect with like-minded people … I would say that only 20% of Earth "Terres-plates are in fact irrelevant, what you see now is only the first wave, there is a bigger wave ahead and the world will be caught off guard."
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