FE is a belief system.
EDIT: FE can't even settle on a model. Only thing they have in common is "it ain't a globe".
Global Earth is a forced belief system.
No, the Global Earth is a system developed from observations and measurements performed from around 500 BC to say 1100 AD. Nothing was forced on anyone.
That Global Earth was assumed to be stationary because that explained most of what was observed and the Heliocentric Solar System came later.
Look how "the early English monk, theologian and historian, the Venerable Bede (673–735)" described this:
We call the earth a globe, not as if the shape of a sphere were expressed in the diversity of plains and mountains, but because, if all things are included in the outline, the earth’s circumference will represent the figure of a perfect globe. … For truly it is an orb placed in the centre of the universe; in its width, it is like a circle, and not circular like a shield but rather like a ball, and it extends from its centre with perfect roundness on all sides.
From his book On the Reckoning of Time (
De temporum ratione).
And before the period from Copernicus to Kepler and Newton most believed that the Earth was a stationary Globe at the centre of the Universe.
Up until the mid-1800s, few in Europe and probably the Middle East and India thought the Earth to be flat.
The current flat Earth ideas are comparatively modern but there is no single Flat Earth System. Rowbotham came up with his ideas but he made numerous mistakes and straight out errors of fact.
Current flat Earthers are a group who for some reason or other, possibly seeing that the horizon looking flat, choose to ignore much of science, even on the 1800s.
But having come to
believe that the Earth is flat simply cannot come up with any single model that explains even the simplest things about what we observe.
As a result, there are a plethora of quite different flat Earth models with many different:
continental layouts (maps),
paths of the Sun, Moon, planets and stars,
explanations of why objects get "hidden" by "something" with the most extreme "hidden objects" being the Sun, Moon, planets and Stars,
explanations of space flights and satellites
and more recently, explanations of many long-distance aircraft flights and polar circumnavigation.
A common explanation of many of these things is to simply deny them and claim that millions are lying to the rest of the world "to hide the true shape of the Earth".
So flat-Earthers come up with one "model" and one "Map" that work and people might listen but until then you are "Whistling in the wind!".