Flat Earthers

[Legs]

You may have missed the parts in my link where he explains why even a solid interpretation of raqia is not necessarily an issue unless one wants it to be:

I missed nothing, including the Westminster paper the article you linked is based upon.
What you seem to miss is this part.The debate exists because of the assumption made by some Christians that the ancient biblical description of the world must be compatible on a scientific level with what we know today.

The debate exists because some christians reject science because it is incompatible with a literal interpretation of scripture.
It is not something new. It goes back to the early years of the church, on through the inquisition periods, the reformation...and now today and over the past 2 centuries with the ongoing evolution "problem".
If you look at the first site you posted you will see Ken Hams muppets rejecting whole fields of scientific study to try and make reality fit their interpretation of scripture just because of their problems with evolution.

Seems to agree pretty much with what Seamus said.

Metaphoric? Allegorical?
That would be in tune with Theistic evolution, but not with literalists which are the ones who reject evolution and believe that science must be wrong because the bible must be true.
If they believe that science is proved wrong because the literal reading of the book then must accept the flat earth theory too because that is from the same book.

It also seems a bit strange to me to rate an entire religion based on the interpretation of one single word and all the assumptions that come with it

One single word? like evolution, thats one single word isn't it.
Does criticism of the literalists rate an entire religion? After all Christianity is a bloody big tent.
Come to think of it isn't that another word used, the tent that covers the (flat)earth.