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Full disclosure (computer security)

In the field of computer security, independent researchers often discover flaws in software that can be abused to cause unintended behaviour; these flaws are called vulnerabilities. The process by which the analysis of these vulnerabilities is shared with third parties is the subject of much debate, and is referred to as the researcher's disclosure policy. Full disclosure is the practice of publishing analysis of software vulnerabilities as early as possible, making the data accessible to everyone without restriction. The primary purpose of widely disseminating information about vulnerabilities is so that potential victims are as knowledgeable as those who attack them.

In his 2007 essay on the topic, Bruce Schneier stated "Full disclosure – the practice of making the details of security vulnerabilities public – is a damned good idea. Public scrutiny is the only reliable way to improve security, while secrecy only makes us less secure." Leonard Rose, co-creator of an electronic mailing list that has superseded bugtraq to become the de facto forum for disseminating advisories, explains "We don't believe in security by obscurity, and as far as we know, full disclosure is the only way to ensure that everyone, not just the insiders, have access to the information we need."

The vulnerability disclosure debate
The controversy around the public disclosure of sensitive information is not new. The issue of full disclosure was first raised in the context of locksmithing, in a 19th-century controversy regarding whether weaknesses in lock systems should be kept secret in the locksmithing community, or revealed to the public. Today, there are three major disclosure policies under which most others can be categorized: Non Disclosure, Coordinated Disclosure, and Full Disclosure.

The major stakeholders in vulnerability research have their disclosure policies shaped by various motivations, it is not uncommon to observe campaigning, marketing or lobbying for their preferred policy to be adopted and chastising those who dissent. Many prominent security researchers favor full disclosure, whereas most vendors prefer coordinated disclosure. Non disclosure is generally favored by commercial exploit vendors and blackhat hackers.

Coordinated vulnerability disclosure
Coordinated vulnerability disclosure is a policy under which researchers agree to report vulnerabilities to a coordinating authority, which then reports it to the vendor, tracks fixes and mitigations, and coordinates the disclosure of information with stakeholders including the public. In some cases the coordinating authority is the vendor. The premise of coordinated disclosure is typically that nobody should be informed about a vulnerability until the software vendor says it is time. While there are often exceptions or variations of this policy, distribution must initially be limited and vendors are given privileged access to nonpublic research.

The original name for this approach was "responsible disclosure", based on the essay by Microsoft Security Manager Scott Culp “It's Time to End Information Anarchy” (referring to full disclosure). Microsoft later called for the term to be phased out in favor of “Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure” (CVD).

Although the reasoning varies, many practitioners argue that end-users cannot benefit from access to vulnerability information without guidance or patches from the vendor, so the risks of sharing research with malicious actors is too great for too little benefit. As Microsoft explain, "[Coordinated disclosure] serves everyone's best interests by ensuring that customers receive comprehensive, high-quality updates for security vulnerabilities but are not exposed to malicious attacks while the update is being developed."

To prevent vendors to indefinitely delaying the disclosure, a common practice in the security industry, pioneered by Google, is to publish all the details of vulnerabilities after a deadline, usually 90 or 120 days reduced to 7 days if the vulnerability is under active exploitation.

Full disclosure
Full disclosure is the policy of publishing information on vulnerabilities without restriction as early as possible, making the information accessible to the general public without restriction. In general, proponents of full disclosure believe that the benefits of freely available vulnerability research outweigh the risks, whereas opponents prefer to limit the distribution.

The free availability of vulnerability information allows users and administrators to understand and react to vulnerabilities in their systems, and allows customers to pressure vendors to fix vulnerabilities that vendors may otherwise feel no incentive to solve. There are some fundamental problems with coordinated disclosure that full disclosure can resolve.

 * If customers do not know about vulnerabilities, they cannot request patches, and vendors experience no economic incentive to correct vulnerabilities.
 * Administrators cannot make informed decisions about the risks to their systems, as information on vulnerabilities is restricted.
 * Malicious researchers who also know about the flaw have a long period of time to continue exploiting the flaw.

Discovery of a specific flaw or vulnerability is not a mutually exclusive event, multiple researchers with differing motivations can and do discover the same flaws independently.

There is no standard way to make vulnerability information available to the public, researchers often use mailing lists dedicated to the topic, academic papers or industry conferences.

Non disclosure
Non disclosure is the policy that vulnerability information should not be shared, or should only be shared under non-disclosure agreement (either contractually or informally).

Common proponents of non-disclosure include commercial exploit vendors, researchers who intend to exploit the flaws they find, and proponents of security through obscurity.

Debate
In 2009, Charlie Miller, Dino Dai Zovi and Alexander Sotirov announced at the CanSecWest conference the "No More Free Bugs" campaign, arguing that companies are profiting and taking advantage of security researchers by not paying them for disclosing bugs. This announcement made it to the news and opened a broader debate about the problem and its associated incentives.

Arguments against coordinated disclosure
Researchers in favor of coordinated disclosure believe that users cannot make use of advanced knowledge of vulnerabilities without guidance from the vendor, and that the majority is best served by limiting distribution of vulnerability information. Advocates argue that low-skilled attackers can use this information to perform sophisticated attacks that would otherwise be beyond their ability, and the potential benefit does not outweigh the potential harm caused by malevolent actors. Only when the vendor has prepared guidance that even the most unsophisticated users can digest should the information be made public.

This argument presupposes that vulnerability discovery is a mutually exclusive event, that only one person can discover a vulnerability. There are many examples of vulnerabilities being discovered simultaneously, often being exploited in secrecy before discovery by other researchers. While there may exist users who cannot benefit from vulnerability information, full disclosure advocates believe this demonstrates a contempt for the intelligence of end users. While it's true that some users cannot benefit from vulnerability information, if they're concerned with the security of their networks they are in a position to hire an expert to assist them as you would hire a mechanic to help with a car.

Arguments against non disclosure
Non disclosure is typically used when a researcher intends to use knowledge of a vulnerability to attack computer systems operated by their enemies, or to trade knowledge of a vulnerability to a third party for profit, who will typically use it to attack their enemies.

Researchers practicing non disclosure are generally not concerned with improving security or protecting networks. However, some proponents argue that they simply do not want to assist vendors, and claim no intent to harm others.

While full and coordinated disclosure advocates declare similar goals and motivations, simply disagreeing on how best to achieve them, non disclosure is entirely incompatible.

title: Full disclosure (computer security)


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Feminist theology

Feminist theology is a movement found in several religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Neopaganism, Baháʼí Faith, Judaism, Islam, Christianity and New Thought, to reconsider the traditions, practices, scriptures, and theologies of those religions from a feminist perspective. Some of the goals of feminist theology include increasing the role of women among clergy and religious authorities, reinterpreting patriarchal (male-dominated) imagery and language about God, determining women's place in relation to career and motherhood, studying images of women in the religions' sacred texts, and matriarchal religion.

Development of feminist theology
While there is no specific date to pinpoint the beginning of this movement, its origins can be traced back to the 1960s article, "The Human Situation: A Feminine View", written by Valerie Saiving (Goldstein). Her piece of work questioned theologies written by men for men in a modern perspective to then dismantle what it had created over the years, patriarchal systems that oppress women. After Saiving's work was published, many scholars took up her ideas and elaborated upon them, which built the feminist theology movement further. Grenz and Olson view the steps of feminist theology in threes: first, feminist theologians critique the treatment of women in the past, second, they determine alternative biblical/religious texts that support feminist ideologies, and third, they claim the theology that adheres to such standards, through reclamation, abolishment, and/or revision. Grenz and Olson also mention that while all feminists agree there is a flaw in the system, there is disagreement over how far outside of the Bible and the Christian tradition women are willing to go to seek support for their ideals. This concept is also important when feminist theology is relating to other religions or spiritual connections outside of Christianity.

Prehistoric religion and archaeology
The primacy of a monotheistic or near-monotheistic "Great Goddess" is advocated by some modern matriarchists as a female version of, preceding, or analogue to, the Abrahamic God associated with the historical rise of monotheism in the Mediterranean Axis Age.

Mother Nature (sometimes known as Mother Earth) is a common representation of nature that focuses on the life-giving and nurturing features of nature by embodying it in the form of the mother. Images of women representing mother earth, and mother nature, are timeless. In prehistoric times, goddesses were worshipped for their association with fertility, fecundity, and agricultural bounty. Priestesses held dominion over aspects of Incan, Assyrian, Babylonian, Slavonic, Roman, Greek, Indian, and Iroquoian religions in the millennia prior to the inception of Patriarchal religion.

Gender and God
Others who practice feminist spirituality may instead adhere to a feminist re-interpretation of Western monotheistic traditions. In those cases, the notion of God as having a male gender is rejected, and God is not referred to using male pronouns. Feminist spirituality may also object to images of God that they perceive as authoritarian, parental, or disciplinarian, instead emphasizing "maternal" attributes such as nurturing, acceptance, and creativity.

Carol P. Christ is the author of the widely reprinted essay "Why Women Need the Goddess", which argues in favor of the concept of there having been an ancient religion of a supreme goddess. This essay was presented as the keynote address to an audience of over 500 at the "Great Goddess Re-emerging" conference at the University of California at Santa Cruz in the spring of 1978, and was first published in Heresies: The Great Goddess Issue (1978), pgs. 8–13. Carol P. Christ also co-edited the classic feminist religion anthologies Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality (1989) and Womanspirit Rising (1979/1989); the latter included her essay Why Women Need the Goddess.

The Latter-Day Saint movement is unique among Christian denominations in that it affirms the existence of a Divine Feminine as a part of its core doctrine. The Latter-Day Saint Divine Feminine is called "Heavenly Mother". While Latter-day Saints do not pray to Heavenly Mother, she is considered to be the wife of Heavenly Father and therefore His equal in heaven, according to "The Family: A Proclamation to the World"'s description of husbands and wives as equal partners.

New Thought movement
New Thought as a movement had no single origin, but was rather propelled along by a number of spiritual thinkers and philosophers and emerged through a variety of religious denominations and churches, particularly the Unity Church, Religious Science, and Church of Divine Science. It was a feminist movement in that most of its teachers and students were women; notable among the founders of the movement were Emma Curtis Hopkins, known as the "teacher of teachers" Myrtle Fillmore, Malinda Cramer, and Nona L. Brooks; with its churches and community centers mostly led by women, from the 1880s to today.

Judaism
Jewish feminism is a movement that seeks to make the religious, political, and social status of Jewish women equal to that of Jewish men. Feminist movements, with varying approaches and successes, have opened up within all major denominations of Judaism.

There are different approaches and versions of feminist theology that exist within the Jewish community.

Some of these theologies promote the idea that it is important to have a feminine characterization of God within the siddur (Jewish prayerbook) and service. They challenge the male rabbi teachings that only emphasize God as a man with masculine traits only.

In 1976, Rita Gross published the article "Female God Language in a Jewish Context" (Davka Magazine 17), which Jewish scholar and feminist Judith Plaskow considers "probably the first article to deal theoretically with the issue of female God-language in a Jewish context". Gross was Jewish herself at this time.

Reconstructionist Rabbi Rebecca Alpert (Reform Judaism, Winter 1991) comments: "The experience of praying with Siddur Nashim [the first Jewish prayer book to refer to God using female pronouns and imagery, written by Margaret Wenig and Naomi Janowitz in 1976 ] ... transformed my relationship with God. For the first time, I understood what it meant to be made in God's image. To think of God as a woman like myself, to see Her as both powerful and nurturing, to see Her imaged with a woman's body, with womb, with breasts – this was an experience of ultimate significance. Was this the relationship that men have had with God for all these millennia? How wonderful to gain access to those feelings and perceptions."

In 1990 Rabbi Margaret Wenig wrote the sermon, "God Is a Woman and She Is Growing Older", which as of 2011 has been published ten times (three times in German) and preached by rabbis from Australia to California.

Rabbi Paula Reimers ("Feminism, Judaism, and God the Mother", Conservative Judaism 46 (1993)) comments: "Those who want to use God/She language want to affirm womanhood and the feminine aspect of the deity. They do this by emphasizing that which most clearly distinguishes the female experience from the male. A male or female deity can create through speech or through action, but the metaphor for creation which is uniquely feminine is birth. Once God is called female, then, the metaphor of birth and the identification of the deity with nature and its processes become inevitable"

Ahuva Zache affirms that using both masculine and feminine language for God can be a positive thing, but reminds her Reform Jewish readership that God is beyond gender (Is God male, female, both or neither? How should we phrase our prayers in response to God's gender?, in the Union for Reform Judaism's iTorah, ):

"Feminine imagery of God does not in any way threaten Judaism. On the contrary, it enhances the Jewish understanding of God, which should not be limited to masculine metaphors. All language that humans use to describe God is only a metaphor. Using masculine and feminine metaphors for God is one way to remind ourselves that gendered descriptions of God are just metaphors. God is beyond gender."

These views are highly controversial even within liberal Jewish movements. Orthodox Jews and many Conservative Jews hold that it is wrong to use English female pronouns for God, viewing such usage as an intrusion of modern, western feminist ideology into Jewish tradition. Liberal prayer books tend increasingly to also avoid male-specific words and pronouns, seeking that all references to God in translations be made in gender-neutral language. For example, the UK Liberal movement's Siddur Lev Chadash (1995) does so, as does the UK Reform Movement's Forms of Prayer (2008). In Mishkan T'filah, the American Reform Jewish prayer book released in 2007, references to God as "He" have been removed, and whenever Jewish patriarchs are named (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), so also are the matriarchs (Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah.) In 2015 the Reform Jewish High Holy Days prayer book Mishkan HaNefesh was released; it is intended as a companion to Mishkan T'filah. It includes a version of the High Holy Days prayer Avinu Malkeinu that refers to God as both "Loving Father" and "Compassionate Mother". Other notable changes are replacing a line from the Reform movement's earlier prayerbook, "Gates of Repentance", that mentioned the joy of a bride and groom specifically, with the line "rejoicing with couples under the chuppah [wedding canopy]", and adding a third, non-gendered option to the way worshippers are called to the Torah, offering "mibeit", Hebrew for "from the house of", in addition to the traditional "son of" or "daughter of".

In 2003 The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust, the first full-length feminist theology of the Holocaust, written by Melissa Raphael, was published. Judith Plaskow's Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (1991), and Rachel Adler's Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics (1999) are the only two full-length Jewish feminist works to focus entirely on theology in general (rather than specific aspects such as Holocaust theology.) This work of feminist theology in regards to Judaism, also contextualizes the other goals of this movement, to re frame historical texts and how they are being taught. It is in addition to how God is being viewed but also the role of women historically and how they are being treated today in a new feminist light. While there is some opposition faced, Jewish communities believing feminism is too Western and does not validate Judaism, there is also the approval of an insider feminist perspective that takes into consideration traditions and modern thought.

Christianity
Christian feminism is an aspect of feminist theology which seeks to advance and understand the equality of men and women morally, socially, spiritually, and in leadership from a Christian perspective. This is through reformation to be along the lines of feminist thought in regards to their religion. Christian feminists argue that contributions by women in that direction are necessary for a complete understanding of Christianity.

These theologians believe that God does not discriminate on the basis of biologically determined characteristics, such as sex and race. Their major issues include the ordination of women, male dominance in Christian marriage, recognition of equal spiritual and moral abilities, reproductive rights, and the search for a feminine or gender-transcendent divine. Christian feminists often draw on the teachings of more historical texts that reinforce that feminism does not go against Christianity but has always been in its texts.

Mary Daly grew up an Irish Catholic and all of her education was received through Catholic schools. She has three doctorate degrees, one from St. Mary's College in sacred theology then two from University of Fribourg, Switzerland in theology and philosophy. While in her early works Daly expressed a desire to reform Christianity from the inside, she would later come to the conclusion that Christianity is not able to enact the necessary changes as it is. According to Ford's The Modern Theologians, "Mary Daly has done more than anyone to clarify the problems women have concerning the central core symbolism of Christianity, and its effects on their self-understanding and their relationship to God." Daly is a prime example of how some feminist theologians come to the conclusion that reclamation and reform are no longer a viable option, that condemnation is the only way out.

Rosemary Radford Ruether writes about crucial additional interpretations of how Christian feminist theology is impacted by the world. Ruether grew up Roman Catholic and attended Catholic schools through her sophomore year of high school. She was a classics major at Scripps College, worked for the Delta Ministry in 1965 and taught at Howard University School of Religion from 1966 to 1976. "Rosemary Ruether has written on the question of Christian credibility, with particular attention to ecclesiology and its engagement with church-world conflicts; Jewish-Christian relations...; politics and religion in America; and Feminism". Ruether is said to be one of the major Christian feminist theologians of our time. Her book Sexism and God-Talk is the earliest feminist theological assessment of Christian theology.

In the 1970s Phyllis Trible pioneered a Christian feminist approach to biblical scholarship, using the approach of rhetorical criticism developed by her dissertation advisor, James Muilenburg.

Christian feminist theology has consistently been critiqued as being focused on primarily white women. This has resulted in the development of movements such as womanist theology, focusing on African American women coined by the works of Alice Walker, Asian feminist theology, and mujerista theology, introduced by Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz concerning Latinas.

The term Christian egalitarianism is sometimes preferred by those advocating gender equality and equity among Christians who do not wish to associate themselves with the feminist movement. Women apologists have become more visible in Christian academia. Their defense of the faith is differentiated by a more personal, cultural and listening approach "driven by love".

To learn more about feminism in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, go to this article.

Some advocates of liberation theology will refer to God as "she". This is particularly true of many of the faculty at Union Theological seminary which is a hub of liberation theology and even Senator Rafael Warnock referred to God as "she' in his exegiesis of John 3.

See also: Unity Church, Christian Science, Christian theological praxis and Postmodern Christianity.

Islam
Islamic feminism is a form of feminism concerned with the role of women in Islam. It aims for the full equality of all Muslims, regardless of gender, in public and private life. Islamic feminists advocate women's rights, gender equality, and social justice grounded in an Islamic framework. Although rooted in Islam, the movement's pioneers have also utilized secular and non-Muslim feminist discourses and recognize the role of Islamic feminism as part of an integrated global feminist movement. Advocates of the movement seek to highlight the deeply rooted teachings of equality in the Quran and encourage a questioning of the patriarchal interpretation of Islamic teaching through the Qur'an (holy book), hadith (sayings of Muhammad) and sharia (law) towards the creation of a more equal and just society. This is done through the advocation of the female autonomy in line with the guideline of the Qur'an. Feminist theologians like Azizah al-Hibri, professor of law at University of Richmond, founded KARAMAH: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights. Feminist theology and Islam is also used to strengthen the spiritual connection to the women of Islam when they undergo severe trauma, to promote human rights especially those of women. Fatima Mernissi's book, The Forgotten Queens of Islam, is a crucial piece in feminist theology for Islam and how it relates to a non western state. Other theologists include Riffat Hassan, Amina Wadud, and Asma Barlas. This theology has been used to educate, re-frame religion, pose as a building block for peace, and the advancement of women's rights, in legislation and in society.

Sikhism
In Sikhism women are equal to men. The verse from the Sikh scripture the Guru Granth Sahib states that:

"From woman, man is born; within woman, man is conceived; to woman he is engaged and married. Woman becomes his friend; through woman, the future generations come. When his woman dies, he seeks another woman; to woman he is bound. So why call her bad? From her, kings are born. From woman, woman is born; without woman, there would be no one at all."

According to scholars such as Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, feminist theology in Sikhism is also the feminization of rituals such as the ceremonial rite of who lights a funeral pyre. Singh further states that this is the reclamation of religion to inspire "personal and social renewal of change" and that these theologians are seen as gurus rather than simply women or scholars. The teachings of Guru Nanak focus on the singularity between men and women, with anything that differs denounced. He cites the example that origins and traditions stem from women as supervisors and in control, as well as engaged in history, such as Mai Bhago, who rallied men to fight against imperial forces alongside her in the battle at Muktsar in 1705.

Hinduism
Within Ancient Hinduism, women have been held in equal honour as men. The Manusmriti for example states: ''The society that provides respect and dignity to women flourishes with nobility and prosperity. And a society that does not put women on such a high pedestal has to face miseries and failures regardless of how so much noble deeds they perform otherwise.'' Manusmriti Chapter 3 Verse 56.

Within the Vedas the Hindu holy texts, women were given the highest possible respect and equality. The Vedic period was glorified by this tradition. Many rishis were women, indeed so that several of them authored many of the slokas, a poem, proverb or hymn, in the Vedas. For instance, in the Rigveda there is a list of women rishis. Some of them are: Ghosha, Godha, Gargi, Vishwawra, Apala, Upanishad, Brahmjaya, Aditi, Indrani, Sarma, Romsha, Maitreyi, Kathyayini, Urvashi, Lopamudra, Yami, Shashwati, Sri, Laksha and many others. In the Vedic period women were free to enter into brahmacharya just like men, and attain salvation.

During Hindu marriage ceremonies, the following slokas are uttered by the grooms, yet in recent years their importance is understood less frequently with no active desire to analyze them in depth to come to the conclusions that was being portrayed:

"O bride! I accept your hand to enhance our joint good fortune. I pray to you to accept me as your husband and live with me until our old age. ..." Rigveda Samhita Part -4, sukta 85, sloka 9702

"O bride! May you be like the empress of your mother-in-law, father-in-law, sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law (sisters and brothers of the groom). May your writ run in your house." Rigveda Samhita Part -4, sukta 85, sloka 9712

This sloka from the Atharvaveda clearly states that the woman leads and the man follows: "The Sun God follows the first illuminated and enlightened goddess Usha (dawn) in the same manner as men emulate and follow women." Athravaveda Samhita, Part 2, Kanda 27, sukta 107, sloka 5705.

Women were considered to be the embodiment of great virtue and wisdom. Thus we have: "O bride! May the knowledge of the Vedas be in front of you and behind you, in your center and in your ends. May you conduct your life after attaining the knowledge of the Vedas. May you be benevolent, the harbinger of good fortune and health and live in great dignity and indeed illuminate your husband's home." Atharva Veda 14-1-64. Women were allowed full freedom of worship. "The wife should do agnihotra (yagna), sandhya (puja) and all other daily religious rituals. If, for some reason, her husband is not present, the woman alone has full rights to do yagna". Rigveda Samhita, part 1, sukta 79, sloka 872.

Moving on towards the Monotheistic era of Hinduism when such ideals such as Shaivism and Vaishnavism, a specific deity for feministic worship was brought about under the Shaktism branch. From a Hinduism point of view women are equal in all measures to men in comparison, historical texts have stated this and is the basis of Hinduism, recognizing women as valuable and interconnected between men and women. Shakti, the name meaning power and referring to the female counterpart of Shiva, possesses connected powers that do not belong to just male or female but rather works together, equally dependent upon the other. Hindu feminist scholars also go beyond the reconstruction of texts but also the reestablishment of society and Hinduism in practice.

Neopaganism
Some currents of Neopaganism, in particular Wicca, have a ditheistic concept of a single goddess and a single god, who in hieros gamos represent a united whole. Polytheistic reconstructionists focus on reconstructing polytheistic religions, including the various goddesses and figures associated with indigenous cultures.

Wicca is a duo theistic belief system. Members of Wicca will work individually with both a God, the son and partner of the Mother Earth, and the Goddess herself. The Goddess is commonly referred to as the Triple Goddess in Wicca. She is also commonly addressed as the Mother Goddess or the Mother Earth. The Goddess represents creation, strength, destruction and the Earth at once. Wicca's common theme across its beliefs is the feminist movement of the Female Goddess, which honours the importance of the female body.

Wiccan Feminism demonstrates the strength of women within the faith. Wicca's history of leading women begins with examples of members such as Zsuzsanna Budapest (1940), who founded one of Wicca's first feminist covens, has formed further feminist traditions within the faith over time. Wicca encourages a balance in power between men and women, regardless of gender and does not favour one gender over the other. Wicca does not shame femininity, but rather embraces and uplifts the female body. Members of the practice acknowledge the menstrual cycle as a powerful form of creation and life. Women are not shamed for being open about their sexuality and individualism, as Wicca considers menstruation, pregnancy and menopause to be manifestations of the divine feminine and a source of creation.The faith's feminist approach and emphasis of a female deity creates an appeal to women, which has led to the majority of the Wiccan population being primarily female over the years. Wicca has a feminist approach to life as it encourages a theme of balance in power between men and women, highlighting the importance of equality in the faith.

The term thealogy is sometimes used in the context of the Neopagan Goddess movement, a pun on theology and thea θεά "goddess" intended to suggest a feminist approach to theism.

The Goddess movement is a loose grouping of social and religious phenomena that grew out of second-wave feminism, predominantly in North America, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand in the 1970s, and the metaphysical community as well. Spurred by the perception that women were not treated equitably in many religions, some women turned to a Female Deity as more in tune with their spiritual needs. Education in the Arts became a vehicle for the study of humanitarian philosophers like David Hume at that time. A unifying theme of this diverse movement is the femaleness of Deity (as opposed and contrasted to a patriarchal God).

Goddess beliefs take many forms: some people in the Goddess movement recognize multiple goddesses, some also include gods, while others honour what they refer to as "the Goddess", which is not necessarily seen as monotheistic, but is often understood to be an inclusive, encompassing term incorporating many goddesses in many different cultures. The term "the Goddess" may also be understood to include a multiplicity of ways to view deity personified as female, or as a metaphor, or as a process. (Christ 1997, 2003) The term "The Goddess" may also refer to the concept of The One Divine Power, or the traditionally worshiped "Great Goddess" of ancient times.

In the latter part of the 20th century, feminism was influential in the rise of Neopaganism in the United States, and particularly the Dianic tradition. Some feminists find the worship of a goddess, rather than a god, to be consonant with their views. Others are polytheists, and worship a number of goddesses. The collective set of beliefs associated with this is sometimes known as thealogy and sometimes referred to as the Goddess movement. See also Dianic Wicca.

Buddhism
Buddhist feminism seeks to advance and understand the equality of men and women morally, socially, spiritually, and in leadership from a Buddhist perspective and within Buddhism. While some core beliefs in Buddhism may cause friction with Western feminism, Buddhist feminist theology strives to find the common ground and balance between tradition and the goals of this movement. In carrying the teachings of Buddhism, feminist theologians critique the common feminist ideology as "other-ing" males. This idea is in conflict with Buddhist beliefs of interconnections between all. The enemy is not the "other" but the idea that there is not a singular connection and being the same. Buddhist feminist theologies take into consideration religious ideologies, challenge Western feminist views, and reclaim what Buddhism is at its core, interconnected and accepting.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Feminist theology


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FSK

FSK may refer to:

 * FSK (band), a German band
 * Federal Counterintelligence Service, (Russian Федера́льная Слу́жба Контрразве́дки; Federalnaya Sluzhba Kontrrazvedki) of Russia
 * Fiskerton railway station, in England
 * Forskolin, a diterpene
 * Forsvarets Spesialkommando, a Norwegian special forces unit
 * Fort Scott Municipal Airport, in Kansas, United States
 * Francis Scott Key Bridge (disambiguation)
 * Francis Scott Key High School, in Union Bridge, Maryland, United States
 * Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle der Filmwirtschaft, a German movie rating organization
 * Frequency-shift keying
 * Friends School Kamusinga, in Kenya
 * Kosovo Security Force, (Albanian: Forca e Sigurisë së Kosovës)

title: FSK


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Freeware

Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines freeware unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the freeware it offers. For instance, modification, redistribution by third parties, and reverse engineering are permitted by some publishers but prohibited by others. Unlike with free and open-source software, which are also often distributed free of charge, the source code for freeware is typically not made available. Freeware may be intended to benefit its producer by, for example, encouraging sales of a more capable version, as in the freemium and shareware business models.

History
The term freeware was coined in 1982 by Andrew Fluegelman, who wanted to sell PC-Talk, the communications application he had created, outside of commercial distribution channels. Fluegelman distributed the program via the same process as shareware. As software types can change, freeware can change into shareware.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the term freeware was often applied to software released without source code.

Software license
Freeware software is available for use without charge and typically has limited functionality with a more capable version available commercially or as shareware. It is typically fully functional for an unlimited period of time.

In contrast to what the Free Software Foundation calls free software, the author of freeware usually restricts the rights of the user to use, copy, distribute, modify, make derivative works, or reverse engineer the software. The software license may impose additional usage restrictions; for instance, the license may be "free for private, non-commercial use" only, or usage over a network, on a server, or in combination with certain other software packages may be prohibited. Restrictions may be required by license or enforced by the software itself; e.g., the package may fail to function over a network.

Relation to other forms of software licensing
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) defines "open source software" (i.e., free software or free and open-source software), as distinct from "freeware" or "shareware"; it is software where "the Government does not have access to the original source code". The "free" in "freeware" refers to the price of the software, which is typically proprietary and distributed without source code. By contrast, the "free" in "free software" refers to freedoms granted users under the software license (for example, to run the program for any purpose, modify and redistribute the program to others), and such software may be sold at a price.

According to the Free Software Foundation (FSF), "freeware" is a loosely defined category and it has no clear accepted definition, although FSF asks that free software (libre; unrestricted and with source code available) should not be called freeware. In contrast the Oxford English Dictionary simply characterizes freeware as being "available free of charge (sometimes with the suggestion that users should make a donation to the provider)".

Some freeware products are released alongside paid versions that either have more features or less restrictive licensing terms. This approach is known as freemium ("free" + "premium"), since the free version is intended as a promotion for the premium version. The two often share a code base, using a compiler flag to determine which is produced. For example, BBEdit has a BBEdit Lite edition which has fewer features. XnView is available free of charge for personal use but must be licensed for commercial use. The free version may be advertising supported, as was the case with the DivX.

Ad-supported software and free registerware also bear resemblances to freeware. Ad-supported software does not ask for payment for a license, but displays advertising to either compensate for development costs or as a means of income. Registerware forces the user to subscribe with the publisher before being able to use the product. While commercial products may require registration to ensure licensed use, free registerware do not.

Shareware can be freely distributed, but the license only allows limited use before paying the license fee. Some features may be disabled prior to payment, in which case it is sometimes known as crippleware.

Both freeware and shareware sometimes have a limited evaluation period, after which the software is automatically disabled or starts displaying a request to pay a registration fee. In the latter case it is colloquially known as nagware.

Creative Commons licenses
The Creative Commons offer licenses, applicable to all by copyright governed works including software, which allow a developer to define "freeware" in a legal safe and internationally law domains respecting way. The typical freeware use case "share" can be further refined with Creative Commons restriction clauses like non-commerciality (CC BY-NC) or no-derivatives (CC BY-ND), see description of licenses. There are several usage examples, for instance The White Chamber, Mari0 or Assault Cube, all freeware by being CC BY-NC-SA licensed: free sharing allowed, selling not.

Restrictions
Freeware cannot economically rely on commercial promotion. In May 2015 advertising freeware on Google AdWords was restricted to "authoritative source"[s]. Thus web sites and blogs are the primary resource for information on which freeware is available, useful, and is not malware. However, there are also many computer magazines or newspapers that provide ratings for freeware and include compact discs or other storage media containing freeware. Freeware is also often bundled with other products such as digital cameras or scanners.

Freeware has been criticized as "unsustainable" because it requires a single entity to be responsible for updating and enhancing the product, which is then given away without charge. Other freeware projects are simply released as one-off programs with no promise or expectation of further development. These may include source code, as does free software, so that users can make any required or desired changes themselves, but this code remains subject to the license of the compiled executable and does not constitute free software.

Free trial
A free trial is another related concept in which a product or service is offered in a small quantity, or for a limited period, without the need for payment.

When a software monopoly has a strong network effect, it may be more profitable for it to offer a free trial. Also, customers acquired via a free trial have a much lower customer lifetime value as opposed to regular customers, but they also respond more to marketing communications.

Some factors that may encourage or discourage people to use free trials include:

 * perceived usefulness
 * perceived ease of use
 * perceived risk
 * social influence
 * gender

title: Freeware


text:
Flat Earth

Flat Earth is an archaic and scientifically disproven conception of the Earth's shape as a plane or disk. Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat-Earth cosmography, notably including ancient near eastern cosmology. The model has undergone a recent resurgence as a conspiracy theory.

The idea of a spherical Earth appeared in ancient Greek philosophy with Pythagoras (6th century BC). However, most pre-Socratics (6th–5th century BC) retained the flat-Earth model. In the early 4th century BC, Plato wrote about a spherical Earth. By about 330 BC, his former student Aristotle had provided strong empirical evidence for a spherical Earth. Knowledge of the Earth's global shape gradually began to spread beyond the Hellenistic world. By the early period of the Christian Church, the spherical view was widely held, with some notable exceptions. In contrast, ancient Chinese scholars consistently describe the Earth as flat, and this perception remained unchanged until their encounters with Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century. Traditionalist Muslim scholars have maintained that the earth is flat, though, since the 9th century, Muslim scholars tended to believe in a spherical Earth.

It is a historical myth that medieval Europeans generally thought the Earth was flat. This myth was created in the 17th century by Protestants to argue against Catholic teachings. More recently, flat earth theory has seen an increase in popularity with modern flat Earth societies, and unaffiliated individuals using social media. Despite the scientific facts and obvious effects of Earth's sphericity, pseudoscientific flat-Earth conspiracy theories persist. In a 2018 study reported on by Scientific American, only 82% of 18 to 24 year old respondents agreed with the statement "I have always believed the world is round". However, a firm belief in a flat Earth is rare, with less than 2% acceptance in all age groups.

Near East
In early Egyptian and Mesopotamian thought, the world was portrayed as a disk floating in the ocean. A similar model is found in the Homeric account from the 8th century BC in which "Okeanos, the personified body of water surrounding the circular surface of the Earth, is the begetter of all life and possibly of all gods."

The Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts of ancient Egypt show a similar cosmography; Nun (the Ocean) encircled nbwt ("dry lands" or "Islands").

The Israelites also imagined the Earth to be a disc floating on water with an arched firmament above it that separated the Earth from the heavens. The sky was a solid dome with the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars embedded in it.

Poets
Both Homer and Hesiod described a disc cosmography on the Shield of Achilles. This poetic tradition of an Earth-encircling (gaiaokhos) sea (Oceanus) and a disc also appears in Stasinus of Cyprus, Mimnermus, Aeschylus, and Apollonius Rhodius.

Homer's description of the disc cosmography on the shield of Achilles with the encircling ocean is repeated far later in Quintus Smyrnaeus' Posthomerica (4th century AD), which continues the narration of the Trojan War.

Philosophers
Several pre-Socratic philosophers believed that the world was flat: Thales (c. 550 BC) according to several sources, and Leucippus (c. 440 BC) and Democritus (c. 460–370 BC) according to Aristotle.

Thales thought that the Earth floated in water like a log. It has been argued, however, that Thales actually believed in a spherical Earth. Anaximander (c. 550 BC) believed that the Earth was a short cylinder with a flat, circular top that remained stable because it was the same distance from all things. Anaximenes of Miletus believed that "the Earth is flat and rides on air; in the same way the Sun and the Moon and the other heavenly bodies, which are all fiery, ride the air because of their flatness". Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 500 BC) thought that the Earth was flat, with its upper side touching the air, and the lower side extending without limit.

Belief in a flat Earth continued into the 5th century BC. Anaxagoras (c. 450 BC) agreed that the Earth was flat, and his pupil Archelaus believed that the flat Earth was depressed in the middle like a saucer, to allow for the fact that the Sun does not rise and set at the same time for everyone.

Historians
Hecataeus of Miletus believed that the Earth was flat and surrounded by water. Herodotus in his Histories ridiculed the belief that water encircled the world, yet most classicists agree that he still believed Earth was flat because of his descriptions of literal "ends" or "edges" of the Earth.

Northern Europe
The ancient Norse and Germanic peoples believed in a flat-Earth cosmography with the Earth surrounded by an ocean, with the axis mundi, a world tree (Yggdrasil), or pillar (Irminsul) in the centre. In the world-encircling ocean sat a snake called Jormungandr. The Norse creation account preserved in Gylfaginning (VIII) states that during the creation of the Earth, an impassable sea was placed around it: "And Jafnhárr said: 'Of the blood, which ran and welled forth freely out of his wounds, they made the sea, when they had formed and made firm the Earth together, and laid the sea in a ring round. about her; and it may well seem a hard thing to most men to cross over it.'"

The late Norse Konungs skuggsjá, on the other hand, explains Earth's shape as a sphere: "If you take a lighted candle and set it in a room, you may expect it to light up the entire interior, unless something should hinder, though the room be quite large. But if you take an apple and hang it close to the flame, so near that it is heated, the apple will darken nearly half the room or even more. However, if you hang the apple near the wall, it will not get hot; the candle will light up the whole house; and the shadow on the wall where the apple hangs will be scarcely half as large as the apple itself. From this you may infer that the Earth-circle is round like a ball and not equally near the sun at every point. But where the curved surface lies nearest the sun's path, there will the greatest heat be; and some of the lands that lie continuously under the unbroken rays cannot be inhabited."

East Asia
In ancient China, the prevailing belief was that the Earth was flat and square, while the heavens were round, an assumption virtually unquestioned until the introduction of European astronomy in the 17th century. The English sinologist Cullen emphasizes the point that there was no concept of a round Earth in ancient Chinese astronomy: "Chinese thought on the form of the Earth remained almost unchanged from early times until the first contacts with modern science through the medium of Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century. While the heavens were variously described as being like an umbrella covering the Earth (the Kai Tian theory), or like a sphere surrounding it (the Hun Tian theory), or as being without substance while the heavenly bodies float freely (the Hsüan yeh theory), the Earth was at all times flat, although perhaps bulging up slightly."

The model of an egg was often used by Chinese astronomers such as Zhang Heng (78–139 AD) to describe the heavens as spherical: "The heavens are like a hen's egg and as round as a crossbow bullet; the Earth is like the yolk of the egg, and lies in the centre."

This analogy with a curved egg led some modern historians, notably Joseph Needham, to conjecture that Chinese astronomers were, after all, aware of the Earth's sphericity. The egg reference, however, was rather meant to clarify the relative position of the flat Earth to the heavens: "In a passage of Zhang Heng's cosmogony not translated by Needham, Zhang himself says: 'Heaven takes its body from the Yang, so it is round and in motion. Earth takes its body from the Yin, so it is flat and quiescent'. The point of the egg analogy is simply to stress that the Earth is completely enclosed by Heaven, rather than merely covered from above as the Kai Tian describes. Chinese astronomers, many of them brilliant men by any standards, continued to think in flat-Earth terms until the seventeenth century; this surprising fact might be the starting-point for a re-examination of the apparent facility with which the idea of a spherical Earth found acceptance in fifth-century BC Greece."

Further examples cited by Needham supposed to demonstrate dissenting voices from the ancient Chinese consensus actually refer without exception to the Earth being square, not to it being flat. Accordingly, the 13th-century scholar Li Ye, who argued that the movements of the round heaven would be hindered by a square Earth, did not advocate a spherical Earth, but rather that its edge should be rounded off so as to be circular. However, Needham disagrees, affirming that Li Ye believed the Earth to be spherical, similar in shape to the heavens but much smaller. This was preconceived by the 4th-century scholar Yu Xi, who argued for the infinity of outer space surrounding the Earth and that the latter could be either square or round, in accordance to the shape of the heavens. When Chinese geographers of the 17th century, influenced by European cartography and astronomy, showed the Earth as a sphere that could be circumnavigated by sailing around the globe, they did so with formulaic terminology previously used by Zhang Heng to describe the spherical shape of the Sun and Moon (i.e. that they were as round as a crossbow bullet).

As noted in the book Huainanzi, in the 2nd century BC, Chinese astronomers effectively inverted Eratosthenes' calculation of the curvature of the Earth to calculate the height of the Sun above the Earth. By assuming the Earth was flat, they arrived at a distance of $100,000 li$ (approximately $200,000 km$). The Zhoubi Suanjing also discusses how to determine the distance of the Sun by measuring the length of noontime shadows at different latitudes, a method similar to Eratosthenes' measurement of the circumference of the Earth, but the Zhoubi Suanjing assumes that the Earth is flat.

Greece: spherical Earth
Pythagoras in the 6th century BC and Parmenides in the 5th century BC stated that the Earth is spherical, and this view spread rapidly in the Greek world. Around 330 BC, Aristotle maintained on the basis of physical theory and observational evidence that the Earth was spherical, and reported an estimate of its circumference. The Earth's circumference was first determined around 240 BC by Eratosthenes. By the 2nd century AD, Ptolemy had derived his maps from a globe and developed the system of latitude, longitude, and climes. His Almagest was written in Greek and only translated into Latin in the 11th century from Arabic translations.

Lucretius (1st century BC) opposed the concept of a spherical Earth, because he considered that an infinite universe had no center towards which heavy bodies would tend. Thus, he thought the idea of animals walking around topsy-turvy under the Earth was absurd. By the 1st century AD, Pliny the Elder was in a position to say that everyone agreed on the spherical shape of Earth, though disputes continued regarding the nature of the antipodes, and how it is possible to keep the ocean in a curved shape.

South Asia
The Vedic texts depict the cosmos in many ways. One of the earliest Indian cosmological texts pictures the Earth as one of a stack of flat disks.

In the Vedic texts, Dyaus (heaven) and Prithvi (Earth) are compared to wheels on an axle, yielding a flat model. They are also described as bowls or leather bags, yielding a concave model. According to Macdonell: "the conception of the Earth being a disc surrounded by an ocean does not appear in the Samhitas. But it was naturally regarded as circular, being compared with a wheel (10.89) and expressly called circular (parimandala) in the Shatapatha Brahmana."

By about the 5th century AD, the siddhanta astronomy texts of South Asia, particularly of Aryabhata, assume a spherical Earth as they develop mathematical methods for quantitative astronomy for calendar and time keeping.

The medieval Indian texts called the Puranas describe the Earth as a flat-bottomed, circular disk with concentric oceans and continents. This general scheme is present not only in the Hindu cosmologies, but also in Buddhist and Jain cosmologies of South Asia. However, some Puranas include other models. The fifth canto of the Bhagavata Purana, for example, includes sections that describe the Earth both as flat and spherical.

Early Christian Church
During the early period of the Christian Church, the spherical view continued to be widely held, with some notable exceptions. Athenagoras, an eastern Christian writing around the year 175 AD, said that the Earth was spherical. Methodius (c. 290 AD), an eastern Christian writing against "the theory of the Chaldeans and the Egyptians" said: "Let us first lay bare ... the theory of the Chaldeans and the Egyptians. They say that the circumference of the universe is likened to the turnings of a well-rounded globe, the Earth being a central point. They say that since its outline is spherical, ... the Earth should be the center of the universe, around which the heaven is whirling." Lactantius, a western Christian writer and advisor to the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine, writing sometime between 304 and 313 AD, ridiculed the notion of antipodes and the philosophers who fancied that "the universe is round like a ball. They also thought that heaven revolves in accordance with the motion of the heavenly bodies. ... For that reason, they constructed brass globes, as though after the figure of the universe." Arnobius, another eastern Christian writing sometime around 305 AD, described the round Earth: "In the first place, indeed, the world itself is neither right nor left. It has neither upper nor lower regions, nor front nor back. For whatever is round and bounded on every side by the circumference of a solid sphere, has no beginning or end ..."

The influential theologian and philosopher Saint Augustine, one of the four Great Church Fathers of the Western Church, similarly objected to the "fable" of antipodes: "But as to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the Earth, where the sun rises when it sets to us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours that is on no ground credible. And, indeed, it is not affirmed that this has been learned by historical knowledge, but by scientific conjecture, on the ground that the Earth is suspended within the concavity of the sky, and that it has as much room on the one side of it as on the other: hence they say that the part that is beneath must also be inhabited. But they do not remark that, although it be supposed or scientifically demonstrated that the world is of a round and spherical form, yet it does not follow that the other side of the Earth is bare of water; nor even, though it be bare, does it immediately follow that it is peopled. For Scripture, which proves the truth of its historical statements by the accomplishment of its prophecies, gives no false information; and it is too absurd to say, that some men might have taken ship and traversed the whole wide ocean, and crossed from this side of the world to the other, and that thus even the inhabitants of that distant region are descended from that one first man."

Some historians do not view Augustine's scriptural commentaries as endorsing any particular cosmological model, endorsing instead the view that Augustine shared the common view of his contemporaries that the Earth is spherical, in line with his endorsement of science in De Genesi ad litteram. C. P. E. Nothaft, responding to writers like Leo Ferrari who described Augustine as endorsing a flat Earth, says that "...other recent writers on the subject treat Augustine’s acceptance of the earth’s spherical shape as a well-established fact".

Diodorus of Tarsus, a leading figure in the School of Antioch and mentor of John Chrysostom, may have argued for a flat Earth; however, Diodorus' opinion on the matter is known only from a later criticism. Chrysostom, one of the four Great Church Fathers of the Eastern Church and Archbishop of Constantinople, explicitly espoused the idea, based on scripture, that the Earth floats miraculously on the water beneath the firmament.

Christian Topography (547) by the Alexandrian monk Cosmas Indicopleustes, who had traveled as far as Sri Lanka and the source of the Blue Nile, is now widely considered the most valuable geographical document of the early medieval age, although it received relatively little attention from contemporaries. In it, the author repeatedly expounds the doctrine that the universe consists of only two places, the Earth below the firmament and heaven above it. Carefully drawing on arguments from scripture, he describes the Earth as a rectangle, 400 days' journey long by 200 wide, surrounded by four oceans and enclosed by four massive walls which support the firmament. The spherical Earth theory is contemptuously dismissed as "pagan".

Severian, Bishop of Gabala (d. 408), wrote that the Earth is flat and the Sun does not pass under it in the night, but "travels through the northern parts as if hidden by a wall". Basil of Caesarea (329–379) argued that the matter was theologically irrelevant.

Europe: Early Middle Ages
Early medieval Christian writers felt little urge to assume flatness of the Earth, though they had fuzzy impressions of the writings of Ptolemy and Aristotle, relying more on Pliny.

With the end of the Western Roman Empire, Western Europe entered the Middle Ages with great difficulties that affected the continent's intellectual production. Most scientific treatises of classical antiquity (in Greek) were unavailable, leaving only simplified summaries and compilations. In contrast, the Eastern Roman Empire did not fall, and it preserved the learning. Still, many textbooks of the Early Middle Ages supported the sphericity of the Earth in the western part of Europe.

Europe's view of the shape of the Earth in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages may be best expressed by the writings of early Christian scholars:

Bishop Isidore of Seville (560–636) taught in his widely read encyclopedia, the Etymologies, diverse views such as that the Earth "resembles a wheel" resembling Anaximander in language and the map that he provided. This was widely interpreted as referring to a disc-shaped Earth. An illustration from Isidore's De Natura Rerum shows the five zones of the Earth as adjacent circles. Some have concluded that he thought the Arctic and Antarctic zones were adjacent to each other. He did not admit the possibility of antipodes, which he took to mean people dwelling on the opposite side of the Earth, considering them legendary and noting that there was no evidence for their existence. Isidore's T and O map, which was seen as representing a small part of a spherical Earth, continued to be used by authors through the Middle Ages, e.g. the 9th-century bishop Rabanus Maurus, who compared the habitable part of the northern hemisphere (Aristotle's northern temperate clime) with a wheel. At the same time, Isidore's works also gave the views of sphericity, for example, in chapter 28 of De Natura Rerum, Isidore claims that the Sun orbits the Earth and illuminates the other side when it is night on this side. See French translation of De Natura Rerum. In his other work Etymologies, there are also affirmations that the sphere of the sky has Earth in its center and the sky being equally distant on all sides. Other researchers have argued these points as well. "The work remained unsurpassed until the thirteenth century and was regarded as the summit of all knowledge. It became an essential part of European medieval culture. Soon after the invention of typography it appeared many times in print." However, "The Scholastics – later medieval philosophers, theologians, and scientists – were helped by the Arabic translators and commentaries, but they hardly needed to struggle against a flat-Earth legacy from the early middle ages (500–1050). Early medieval writers often had fuzzy and imprecise impressions of both Ptolemy and Aristotle and relied more on Pliny, but they felt (with one exception), little urge to assume flatness."

St Vergilius of Salzburg (c. 700–784), in the middle of the 8th century, discussed or taught some geographical or cosmographical ideas that St Boniface found sufficiently objectionable that he complained about them to Pope Zachary. The only surviving record of the incident is contained in Zachary's reply, dated 748, where he wrote: "As for the perverse and sinful doctrine which he (Virgil) against God and his own soul has uttered – if it shall be clearly established that he professes belief in another world and other men existing beneath the Earth, or in (another) sun and moon there, thou art to hold a council, deprive him of his sacerdotal rank, and expel him from the Church."

Some authorities have suggested that the sphericity of the Earth was among the aspects of Vergilius's teachings that Boniface and Zachary considered objectionable. Others have considered this unlikely, and take the wording of Zachary's response to indicate at most an objection to belief in the existence of humans living in the antipodes. In any case, there is no record of any further action having been taken against Vergilius. He was later appointed bishop of Salzburg and was canonised in the 13th century.

A possible non-literary but graphic indication that people in the Middle Ages believed that the Earth (or perhaps the world) was a sphere is the use of the orb (globus cruciger) in the regalia of many kingdoms and of the Holy Roman Empire. It is attested from the time of the Christian late-Roman emperor Theodosius II (423) throughout the Middle Ages; the Reichsapfel was used in 1191 at the coronation of emperor Henry VI. However the word orbis means "circle", and there is no record of a globe as a representation of the Earth since ancient times in the west until that of Martin Behaim in 1492. Additionally it could well be a representation of the entire "world" or cosmos.

A recent study of medieval concepts of the sphericity of the Earth noted that "since the eighth century, no cosmographer worthy of note has called into question the sphericity of the Earth". However, the work of these intellectuals may not have had significant influence on public opinion, and it is difficult to tell what the wider population may have thought of the shape of the Earth if they considered the question at all.

Europe: High and Late Middle Ages
Hermannus Contractus (1013–1054) was among the earliest Christian scholars to estimate the circumference of Earth with Eratosthenes' method. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the most widely taught theologian of the Middle Ages, believed in a spherical Earth and took for granted that his readers also knew the Earth is round. Lectures in the medieval universities commonly advanced evidence in favor of the idea that the Earth was a sphere.

Jill Tattersall shows that in many vernacular works in 12th- and 13th-century French texts the Earth was considered "round like a table" rather than "round like an apple". She writes, "[I]n virtually all the examples quoted ... from epics and from non-'historical' romances (that is, works of a less learned character) the actual form of words used suggests strongly a circle rather than a sphere", though she notes that even in these works the language is ambiguous.

Portuguese navigation down and around the coast of Africa in the latter half of the 1400s gave wide-scale observational evidence for Earth's sphericity. In these explorations, the Sun's position moved more northward the further south the explorers travelled. Its position directly overhead at noon gave evidence for crossing the equator. These apparent solar motions in detail were more consistent with north–south curvature and a distant Sun, than with any flat-Earth explanation. The ultimate demonstration came when Ferdinand Magellan's expedition completed the first global circumnavigation in 1521. Antonio Pigafetta, one of the few survivors of the voyage, recorded the loss of a day in the course of the voyage, giving evidence for east–west curvature.

Middle East: Islamic scholars
Prior to the introduction of Greek cosmology into the Islamic world, Muslims tended to view the Earth as flat, and Muslim traditionalists who rejected Greek philosophy continued to hold to this view later on while various theologians held opposing opinions. Beginning in the 10th century onwards, some Muslim traditionalists began to adopt the notion of a spherical Earth with the influence of Greek and Ptolemaic cosmology.

The Abbasid Caliphate saw a great flowering of astronomy and mathematics in the 9th century AD. Muslim scholars tended to believe in a spherical Earth from this period.

The Quran mentions that the Earth (al-arḍ) was "spread out." Whether or not this implies a flat earth was debated by Muslims. Some modern historians believe the Quran saw the world as flat. On the other hand, the 12th-century commentary, the Tafsir al-Kabir (al-Razi) by Fakhr al-Din al-Razi argues that though this verse does describe a flat surface, it is limited in its application to local regions of the Earth which are roughly flat as opposed to the Earth as a whole. Others who would support a ball-shaped Earth included Ibn Hazm.

Ming Dynasty in China
A spherical terrestrial globe was introduced to Yuan-era Khanbaliq (i.e. Beijing) in 1267 by the Persian astronomer Jamal ad-Din, but it is not known to have made an impact on the traditional Chinese conception of the shape of the Earth. As late as 1595, an early Jesuit missionary to China, Matteo Ricci, recorded that the Ming-dynasty Chinese say: "The Earth is flat and square, and the sky is a round canopy; they did not succeed in conceiving the possibility of the antipodes."

In the 17th century, the idea of a spherical Earth spread in China due to the influence of the Jesuits, who held high positions as astronomers at the imperial court. Matteo Ricci, in collaboration with Chinese cartographers and translator Li Zhizao, published the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu in 1602, the first Chinese world map based on European discoveries. The astronomical and geographical treatise Gezhicao (格致草) written in 1648 by Xiong Mingyu (熊明遇) explained that the Earth was spherical, not flat or square, and could be circumnavigated.

Myth of flat-Earth prevalence
In the 19th century, a historical myth arose which held that the predominant cosmological doctrine during the Middle Ages was that the Earth was flat. An early proponent of this myth was the American writer Washington Irving, who maintained that Christopher Columbus had to overcome the opposition of churchmen to gain sponsorship for his voyage of exploration. Later significant advocates of this view were John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, who used it as a major element in their advocacy of the thesis that there was a long-lasting and essential conflict between science and religion. Some studies of the historical connections between science and religion have demonstrated that theories of their mutual antagonism ignore examples of their mutual support.

Subsequent studies of medieval science have shown that most scholars in the Middle Ages, including those read by Christopher Columbus, maintained that the Earth was spherical.

Modern flat Earth beliefs
In the modern era, the pseudoscientific belief in a flat Earth originated with the English writer Samuel Rowbotham with the 1849 pamphlet Zetetic Astronomy. Lady Elizabeth Blount established the Universal Zetetic Society in 1893, which published journals. In 1956, Samuel Shenton set up the International Flat Earth Research Society, better known as the "Flat Earth Society" from Dover, England, as a direct descendant of the Universal Zetetic Society.

In the Internet era, the availability of communications technology and social media like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have made it easy for individuals, famous or not, to spread disinformation and attract others to erroneous ideas, including that of the flat Earth.

Modern believers in a flat Earth face overwhelming publicly accessible evidence of Earth's sphericity. They also need to explain why governments, media outlets, schools, scientists, surveyors, airlines and other organizations accept that the world is spherical. To satisfy these tensions and maintain their beliefs, they generally embrace some form of conspiracy theory. In addition, believers tend to not trust observations they have not made themselves, and often distrust, disagree with or accuse each other of being in league with conspiracies.

Education
Before learning from their social environment, a child's perception of their physical environment often leads to a false concept about the shape of Earth and what happens beyond the horizon. Many children think that Earth ends there and that one can fall off the edge. Education helps them gradually change their belief into a realist one of a spherical Earth.

title: Flat Earth


text:
Talk:Flat Earth

Thomas Aquinas does not mention a spherical earth
The article says:

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the most widely taught theologian of the Middle Ages, believed in a spherical Earth and took for granted that his readers also knew the Earth is round.

But the source which is given does not mention a spherical earth. Aquinas says that both the physicist and the astronomer prove the earth to be round, which is not necessarily spherical. Why does the text then say Aquinas believed in a spherical earth? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Retonom (talk • contribs) 15:55, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

 * The original Latin in question, rotundam, does not mean circular. It is the accusative feminine singular of rotundus, which means round, spherical, globular, just as round does in English. It’s clear that it means spherical in this context because the physicists and astronomers he refers to had demonstrated the earth to be spherical, not merely disk-like, as per the references St. Thomas himself gives. There is no scholarly controversy over the meaning of this sentence. Strebe (talk) 21:15, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Please provide evidence that the people Aquinas quotes proved the earth to be spherical. Round does not imply spherical. When I say the table is round it is clear that the table is not spherical. When Aquinas or people he quoted said it was round they could just have meant it to be a round disk. Before it has been proven that the meaning is spherical it should not be mentioned as such in the official page. Retonom (talk) 02:24, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * You're arguing English language semantics. As Strebe explained, the writing was in Latin, where no such semantic ambiguity exists. MrOllie (talk) 02:32, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not arguing English language semantics. "rotundus" in Latin can also mean circular so my argument is valid. You can find the proof here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rotundus#Latin :
 * 1. round, circular
 * 2. spherical, rotund Retonom (talk) 02:40, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * By relying on Wiktionary translation (or any translation, really), you're back to applying English semantics. MrOllie (talk) 02:44, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * This is incorrect. A translation is not English semantics. Semantics is about the meaning in a specific language. Translation is not semantics. In addition to that, Strebe said: "The original Latin in question, rotundam, does not mean circular." This is incorrect, as Wiktionary proves, it also means circular and don't tell me again, that to say what a word in another language means is semantics. Please let someone answer who understands the subject. Retonom (talk) 03:05, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The argument you are attempting to build is plainly a semantic one, and, per WP:NOR, misplaced here. MrOllie (talk) 03:07, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * In any case, I've added a secondary source with directly supports the claim as well, which I trust settles the matter. MrOllie (talk) 03:19, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * On top of that, both the physicist and the astronomer prove the earth to be round does not make any sense if "round" means a circle as opposed to a square. How would astronomers or physicists prove such a stupid thing? It was clear from the beginning that this is a WP:CIR thing. --Hob Gadling (talk) 05:35, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm making an argument and you cannot refute it. Instead you cite vague "semantics" and you invoke the argumentum ab auctoritate logical fallacy. There's is really no point in arguing with someone who doesn't have a clue about proper arguments. Retonom (talk) 06:36, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * That is out-of-context bullshit of the type a chatbot would write. There was no "ab auctoritate" reasoning anywhere here. Even if it were, Wikipedia is built on reliable sources and not on your "arguments". Read WP:RS and WP:OR. --Hob Gadling (talk) 11:14, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Article full of globe bias
This article should be about the flat earth but in fact is serves more to make assertions that the flat earth theory is pseudoscience, silly, unscientific or whatever is brought up to discredit the flat earth. This is not how it should work. The article should give an objective account of the flat earth theory and history and not state in every second paragraph that the heliocentric model or the spinning ball are the only true valid models etc. From what I perceive the people that are in charge here do not want an objective view of the flat earth to be available to the general public, since they delete even comments on this talk page that point out flaws in the article. Let's see if this comment is deleted again, which would prove my point... Have a nice day — Preceding unsigned comment added by Retonom (talk • contribs) 06:43, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Neutrality does not mean giving equal weight to "both sides" of an argument, like it seems to me that you propose. Pseudoscientific opinions should not be shown as valid statements of fact. Please see WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE for more on this topic. Sjö (talk) 06:54, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
 * The article should give an objective account of the flat earth theory and history and not state in every second paragraph that the heliocentric model or the spinning ball are the only true valid models etc. Except, it doesn’t do this. The lead paragraph is be heavy with such statements, but asserting that the entire article is that way discredits your premise for me. The lead paragraph ended up that way because a lot of other editors were concerned that the older text might give someone the impression that belief in a flat earth could be scientific. Strebe (talk) 20:59, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
 * The “scientific” arguments against flat earth use non-scientific propaganda language, which undermines the credibility of scientific claims. Consensus is not part of the scientific method. Suggest inclusion of actual scientific evidence for rejecting flat earth. Perhaps a method for measuring the size of the globe from the ground using observations of shadows cast from identical rods at various locations at an agreed upon time, sextant, etc. 2600:1702:1DC1:7120:69A9:7:436:85ED (talk) 11:18, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The Empirical evidence for the spherical shape of Earth article does that, and is linked to. That’s where it belongs; duplicating it isn’t good editorial policy. Strebe (talk) 14:18, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Then what is the value of the logically fallacious propaganda language? 2600:1702:1DC1:7120:C505:3F7A:6DE3:752F (talk) 18:22, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Isn’t fallacious, so I can’t answer your question. Strebe (talk) 18:32, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 12 April 2024
Please remove the "St." in front of "Thomas Aquinas", per MOS:HON/MOS:SAINT. His status of sainthood in the eyes of the catholic church is wholly irrelevant here. Thanks, 35.139.154.158 (talk) 00:57, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * ✅ RudolfRed (talk) 01:03, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Why does this article take a stance?
The flat earth belief may, or may not, have credence. In either case, is it necessary for the article to reveal the stance of the author? Would a neutral presentation of facts not better let the reader reach the correct conclusion?

Throughout history, there have been many, many scenarios in which the "consensus" was wrong and the minority was correct. While I personally do not believe that is the case with flat earth, what is the benefit of wikipedia taking a stance? Reading this article, I do not care what the authors of the article think (yet I am battered by their beliefs). 71.247.12.176 (talk) 20:07, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

 * Hi. Wikipedia goes by what reliable sources say and they do not support flat earth theories. Check out Encyclopedia Britannica - they say the same stuff . Ramos1990 (talk) 20:19, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
 * But why not state what the reliable sources say (with links) and then state what the flat earthers say.
 * Reading this article, I wanted to understand what flat earthers actually believe in, and why. I could not do that when the article, from the onset, says they are wrong and unequivocally dumps on them. It means I need to go to some other site to learn the context / history here. 71.247.12.176 (talk) 20:35, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
 * As an encyclopedia, it is obligatory for Wikipedia to describe utter nonsense as nonsense, and not to pretend that it has any credibility or basis in fact.  Acroterion   (talk)   20:48, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Because fringe beliefs are not given equal time for the obvious reason that people should not be led to suppose that a false belief could be right. The shape of the earth is not a matter of belief; it is a matter of fact as much as anything else is. We don’t give “neutral” presentation to alternative beliefs about the temperature and pressure at which water boils, or any of millions of other facts. What we do is report that some people believe false things. When we say “fact”, we do not mean an assertion that could not change regardless of how reality is constructed. It is true that the earth might not be spherical if existence is only a dream or if we are some kind of highly controlled simulation. It not true that the earth is flat if the normal assumptions about existence are true: There is no rigorous experiment that could demonstrate such a thing, and limitless experiments that demonstrate otherwise. Strebe (talk) 20:55, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, no one actually does dispute the temperature at which water boils. If some large group of people did, i would expect (want) wikipedia to present their views without stating, from the onset, and in wikipedias voice, whether wikipedia thinks they are right or wrong.
 * That does not mean both sides are given "equal weight". If one side has the overwhelming support of science and consensus, the sources will show that and the reader can naturally reach that conclusion himself.
 * You said wikipedia has an obligation to describe nonsense as nonsense. But why? Can the reader not make that conclusion himself? 71.247.12.176 (talk) 21:00, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
 * There is so much nonsense out there, if Wikipedia operated in the way you suggest it would be choked with irrelevances. The article on the Moon will not seriously entertain the idea that it is made out of cheese, because Wikipedia's core mission is to summarize the best available sources, not the best available sources and then also all the cranks who happen to disagree. MrOllie (talk) 21:15, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
 * But this is not an article about the earth; it is specifically about flat earth belief.
 * Similarly, i agree moon article should not mention cheese theories; but an article about cheese theories would... 71.247.12.176 (talk) 21:23, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Proof for the curvature to be removed since it is wrong
The box states that: "An image of Thorntonbank Wind Farm (near the Belgian coast) with the lower parts of the more distant towers increasingly hidden by the horizon, demonstrating the curvature of the Earth"

The towers in the foreground are only partly hidden, whereas those a bit further away are almost completely hidden. The towers in the front are not very far away from the towers in the background, this is evident from the size since they would have to be much smaller if they were much further away. This cannot be due to the curvature since the curvature could not make objects so close to each other disappear in such a way. If it was the curvature the effect would have to be much smaller. This is therefore no proof for the curvature. Either the picture is fake or it is some optical effect. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Retonom (talk • contribs)

 * The further ones are several kilometers away from the nearer ones. At any rate, we cannot take action based on your personal analysis, see WP:NOR. - MrOllie (talk) 02:55, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

 * The earth's curvature is much less than what is shown here. It can be calculated here: https://earthcurvature.com/
 * The towers are 157m high. Even if the towers would be 10km apart it would only account for a curvature drop of 7.85 meters. This makes it very clear, that the claim presented here is not proof for the earth's curvature. The towers cannot disappear like that due to earth's curvature. Quod erat demonstrandum. Retonom (talk) 07:14, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

 * Anyone that uses the phrase "ball Earth" when they aren't joking can't really be taken seriously. There's a reason that site doesn't allow you to account for any other variables.  -  Sumanuil  .  (talk to me) 07:19, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, refraction might be a noticeable factor for the whole distance of 50km from the observer. But we are talking about the distance between the towers. One tower is 1.5km apart from each other. Even if we take the distance from the nearest tower to the farthest tower we get only 9km. Over these 9km the curvature drop would be only 6.36 meters. The rotor diameter is 126 meters. On the picture half of the rotor of the tower on the left is almost completely hidden. This means that there should be a curvature drop of around 63 meters which is 10 times more than the curvature drop would be for the whole windfarm from front to back. Refraction only makes very slight difference on such a distance. You can calculate this here: http://walter.bislins.ch/bloge/index.asp?page=Advanced+Earth+Curvature+Calculator
 * On 9km this would be less than 1m. Retonom (talk) 08:09, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I forgot to mention that you can see the complete rotor on the tower of about the same size on the right side. So the curvature drop from this tower to the tower on the left should be about 60m but in reality it can only be about 6m for the distance of the whole windfarm. Retonom (talk) 08:12, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * You forgot that the surface already started dropping in the first 50 km, so the drop is more than that. See Horizon for the formulas and an explaining image. Sjö (talk) 07:51, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * No I didn't forget this. I'm only speaking about the difference between the towers and how much the curvature drop would have to be between the towers and this should match the image but it does not. Instead of around 6m for the distance of the whole windfarm the picture shows a difference of around 60m which cannot be accounted for with curvature. That is why this picture does not prove the earth's curvature. Why this exactly happens I cannot tell. Retonom (talk) 08:18, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * And to be able to say something about the whole distance to the farm we would need to know the observer height. Otherwise the curvature cannot be properly calculated with a calculator like this for example: http://walter.bislins.ch/bloge/index.asp?page=Advanced+Earth+Curvature+Calculator
 * The picture only gives the distance to the windfarm and is therefore is not suited to serve as proof for the curvature since it cannot be verified. Retonom (talk) 08:22, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the link. When I plug in an observer height of 40 m, an object height of 150 m and the distances 50,000 and 60,000 m I get a difference in hidden height of about 50 m, which fits pretty well with the image. Of course we don't know the exact distance or the observer height but I can find no reasonable combination of values that will give a difference of only 6 m. Again, thanks for the tool that proves you wrong. Sjö (talk) 08:40, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The reason behind the different numbers is that you ask the question "how much does the curvature make the sea drop from 0 to 10 km" when you should be asking "how much does the curvature make the sea drop from 50 to 60 km". Sjö (talk) 09:15, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * See above. Your reasoning is irrelevant because Wikipedia is based on reliable sources, not on what you think. You are in the wrong place; go to some forum or publish in a reliable source. --Hob Gadling (talk) 11:17, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * It's not what I think. I showed it to be true based on calculations. The image also does not say how much the observer height is. The curvature drop cannot even be reliably calculated for the 50km. Furthermore, where is the reliable source for the image and the claim? There is nothing. So it is like that: according to my demonstration the towers are a max of 9km away from each other. The curvature can only account for about 6m drop for 9km but we can see a 60m drop. So the image is probably fake. My evidence stands against an image with a claim with no evidence, no reliable sources, no reliable picture and you have the impudence to call my reasoning irrelevant. Because of people like you Wikipedia is based on unverified claims like this, the exact opposite of what you claim. And my valid objections you just brush off with "irrelevant reasoning". Retonom (talk) 14:33, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Flat Earth