Design in the Service of Anti-Science Ignorance

One of the best aspects of the internet is the occasional serendipitous encounter with an odd, fascinating, or downright hilarious item while searching for something else, and not long ago I came across a gem that was all three. It's a map published in 1893 that purported to show the correct nature of the earth—a "Square and Stationary Earth."

The publisher of the graphic gem above was Orlando Ferguson, a South Dakota real estate developer and self-styled "professor" who was obsessed with showing that the scientific notion of a spherical earth orbiting the sun in the void was false. Instead, Ferguson promoted the concept of an Earth that was based on his interpretation of Biblical scripture: "Four Hundred Passages in the Bible that Condemn the Globe Theory, or the Flying Earth, and None Sustain It. This Map is the Bible Map of the World." More information about Ferguson and his map is at: http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/1549-ingenious-flat-earth-theory-revealed-old-map.html

In technical terms, the Earth's shape depicted on Ferguson's map is an inverse toroid, but what is bizarrely curious is that it's a dead ringer for a giant roulette wheel—the Sun even looks like a roulette ball. Since Ferguson was a Biblical literalist, it's doubtful that he was making an ironically sly comment about the unpredictable, random nature of existence, but I'm curious about the anonymous, uncredited graphic artist who created and designed the map.

Accurately illustrating the toroidal shape of the Earth in a perspective view is a deceptively complicated task, and it's carried out with a fair degree of mathematical precision. The small angel figures and Ferguson's engraved portrait are also competently handled, as is the primary typography, so it's evident that the artist/designer was broadly talented and very probably had received formal training. I can't help but wonder if this artist was a fervent fellow believer in Ferguson's theories, or was this simply a project executed for payment by an artist who was privately ridiculing the notions that he was designing and illustrating?

The Creation Museum's Garden of Eden depicts dinosaurs as non-carnivorous neighbors of Adam and Eve who only began eating each other after the Expulsion. Photo by Marta Alvira-Hammond.I have the same question regarding a contemporary example of the design disciplines: the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. My daughter Marta visited the Museum in 2010, and her photos of the various displays show that the exhibit designers were competent professionals with a broad range of capabilities in typography, illustration, exhibit design, sculpture, and signage. That doesn't alter the fact that their overall purpose was to promote scientifically nonsensical views, including the assertion that Adam and Eve had dinosaurs for neighbors in the Garden of Eden 5,000 years ago. What is evident from the displays is that the entire enterprise is premised on accepting the Bible as literal truth; i.e., dinosaurs aren't millions of years old because the Bible says they aren't. Did all the various designers who worked on the Creation Museum exhibits believe in the messages that they were hired to promote, or was it just another paying project for them?