But those who decided that the world was flat based their idea on the obvious observation that it is flat.
There was an authority which also influenced the mindset of the flat earth idea. It created fear and superstition around what would happen if you were to sail to the edge of the earth.
Based on the limits of the outward physical senses and what one takes for granted as reality by observation we have learned there are things that exceed the limits of those physical senses. We couldn't see germs but then once we imagined they were there...
The germ theory was proposed in the mid-16th century and gained widespread credence when substantiated by scientific discoveries of the 17th through the late 19th century. It supplanted earlier explanations for disease. Like the discovery of the wheel all potential discoveries exist in time and space waiting for someone to lift their awareness beyond the current constraints of belief to realize the reality of what exists in potential but hasn't revealed itself to the physical senses.
Belief has a lot to do with holding awareness to constants in relative systems of comprehension and the manifestation of those thoughts.
Without understanding, what isn't understood or that which exceeds belief, becomes fair target for the fear and superstition that becomes destructive, since it (the unknown) threatens the peace of mind of the complacent individual.
How many times have you heard, "I'm old and set in my ways." or "I'm too old to walk the path of patience and introspection that was the path of my youth."?
It wasn't that long ago that people were burning people at the stake for being witches, or being black and progressive enough to have an opinion which clashed with the authority.
Nowadays it's all done thru the media. People use the internet as well as the broadcasting system of cable and satellite t.v. to push judgment and criticism as a necessity for survival, and preach fear as a natural part of experiencing life. Then the push for the authority is made to be the savior of man from fear. What the Church took charge of in the direction of life and the dictates of life's meaning, has now been given to government and the media.
People, for generations either become sheeple or they become self aware. Aware of something bigger than belief and its boundaries of limitation, fear, and shortsighted judgment, and bigger than the ego and its ideas of self that are based on a collection of personal experiences isolated from a much broader experience base, than the limited personal experience of what is simply seen heard or touched by the limited outward oriented senses.
Todays man bases their reality on what they see, hear and understand. Man is taught to accept what he/she is told by the authority, rather than to explore infinite possibilities and to gain the personal experience of those things yet unexplained or taken for granted as impossible.
There are those who can achieve the same NDE's of those claimed to be clinically dead simply by directing the senses inward thru meditation.
Those few who open the mind to more than relative absolutes are generally the ones making the discoveries which are first laughed at but then become mainstream.
