If god wanted very hard to make us know that the Earth is flat, he could just approach all of us right now and tell it loudly to all of us. But he choses to remain invisible to us and without communicating to us right now (if he exists at all). And even in history we only have people who claim to talk to god (or gods or other god-like beings). Now if these people claim to have received the revelation from god that the earth is flat, do we just blindly trust them?
If we just blindly trust anyone who claims to speak with god, then what will we do if different people come with contradictory revelations? We can’t really rely on those people as evidence, because this evidence can point to anything anytime and can point to one direction today and in the opposite tomorrow.
But what about our personal revelations? What if I tried to speak with god and I feel like he told me that the earth is flat? That would be a first-hand evidence, no? Well, actually, we’re not perfect beings and we can be delusional. Based on what are we more reliable than the other people who only thought to receive something from him? Our brains have similar mechanics and what happened to other people can happen to us, even if our ego doesn’t like to admit it. Also consider that if he wanted humanity to know it, why would he just whisper it into your mind only when he can just tell it out loud to all of us right now?
There are actually better ways to study the truth. Just looking around us, we can see how most of the planet falls behind the horizon no matter where we go. There’s no place on Earth where you could see the rest. So it’s not flat.
But what do we do with religious books which say otherwise? Firstly we should check whether the book clearly says that or only vaguely points to it. Most religious books are not focused on the shape of Earth, so the few vague references can be re-interpreted. But what if we don’t want to reinterpret it (in order to keep the probably intended meaning)?
It’s not a good option to say that god is just lying. The easiest solution is to deduce that these books are just man-made texts attributed to god. And they can contain man-made errors.
Links:
- WikiIslam: Islamic Views on the Shape of the Earth