When he first stumbled upon it, "I thought the idea of a flat Earth was ridiculous," Robbie Davidson, founder of the FEIC organization, told the Guardian last week.
"I'd first heard it in the Bible and thought ‘this can't be true. I mean, I believed everything else, that the Earth was created in six literal days, but what about all this other stuff [about a flat Earth]? To be consistent as a biblical literalist, I can't pick and choose," he avowed.
Davison claims that he converted himself to be a "flat Earther" in 2015, subscribing to the notion that the Earth is flat after stumbling across a video making fun of the Flat Earth movement.
"I take a biblical mindset to the fact that the firmament divided the waters from the waters, so that the sun, moon, and stars are inside the firmament — so it placed the sun, moon, and stars in the firmament on day four, after the Earth — so how do you have the Earth created first and then the sun, moon and stars?" Davidson queried, cited by 9News.com.
"I've found over 200 scriptures that corroborate the idea that we are living on a stationary, flat Earth," Nathan Roberts, one of the self-described ‘cosmological evangelists' speaking at the conference, recently told the Guardian.
Dr. Robert Sungenis, author of Flat Earth Flat Wrong, recently told 9News that flat-earthers are simply misunderstanding existing scientific data.
"So the movement of the flat-earthers is more or less spawned by this, ‘Let's fill in the gaps about what we don't know based on what they see.' And we see that the Earth is flat and we can do experiments show you that the Earth is flat," Sungenis said.
"When it comes to satellites, they would say we don't believe that satellites exist. We don't believe that you can send a rocket beyond the dome of the Earth," he noted.
In his book, Sungenis tackles the biblical reasoning behind the belief of a flat earth.
"There are a few different verses in the Bible, maybe a dozen or so, that are not very clear about what the shape of the Earth is, it's more or less ambiguous," he told 9News.
"You really have to get deep into the original languages of the Bible, and I know both Hebrew and Greek because I'm a graduate of the seminary many years ago. Many of these people here are not well-versed in biblical languages or biblical exegesis, so they'll read a passage in the Bible that says there is four corners of the Earth and they'll automatically believe the Earth is square with four corners and that's the depth that they'll go into it."
Sungenis attended the 2018 Flat Earth International Conference in Denver on Thursday, where he engaged in debate against Rob Skiba, a self-described documentary filmmaker and author who takes the position that the earth is flat.
"So he thinks I'm totally wrong, I think he's totally wrong about the Bible," Sungenis said, also adding that they are friends.
"To think, to not just absorb what somebody is so enthusiastic about, even though he may sound scientific, even though he may sound biblical, there is another side to the story," Sungenis said when asked what he hoped people at the conference could gain.
"Even if they are not convinced at my argument at least they now know the other side of the story — they can think for themselves and walk out of here seeing the world in a different way," he observed.
"The one thing I will say is don't believe anything we say bl indly; go out and do your own research that's what I would like you to take away," FEIC organizer Davidson noted. "Even with my own children, I want them to understand both models and believe it for their investigation, I don't want them to believe it because dad believes it."
Davidson highlighted that his group of flat-earthers at the conference are not to be confused with members of the British-based Flat Earth Society, who apparently claim that the Earth is shaped like a pancake, but with an edge, too.
"We think it's ridiculous, too. The two things we all agree on is the Earth isn't moving at all; it's stationary, everything in the sky moves, and also that we are not a spinning ball flying through space," Davidson noted. "That's one thing we all unify under."