After my post on the persistence of flat-Earthism in the U.S. (“Flat Earthers are still with us!“)—a form of delusion apparently connected with religion, anti-Semitism, and other conspiracy theories—I got several comments from what seem to be genuine flat-Earthers. Now there’s no telling if these people’s beliefs are genuine or they’re just trolling (I suspect that at least the last two are genuine), but I’m letting these comments through (and moderating the commenters) so you can reply if you want. Genuine discourse will be permitted. I for one am curious to see how these believers rationalize their faith in flat-Earthism in the face of solid evidence for a spherical Earth. I know the creationist arguments, but not the ones for a flat Earth.
I’ll reproduce the comments below and link the names to where the comments appear on the original thread. The names are given as they appear in the comments, and I haven’t changed the wording or anything else.
From reader Deon Hurter:
I believe the word of God not what scientist think they know.Read “Fifty reasons Copernicus or the Bible by F E Pasche (1915).God bless.
*********
From reader Hayden:
In reply to JonLynnHarvey.
Biblical Cosmology is true. Calling on all Jesus people to make a stand and discover water will not curve in non-fisheye camera lense. GOD PULLED THE FIRMAMENT OVER THE EARTH LIKE A TENT.
*********
From reader Gary Greenfield, who gives a link to his own strange website on his “structured water” products, reminiscent of homeopathy. The site includes a video showing Mr. Greenfield.
For those who care to inquire while enduring the mockery they will find overwhelming evidence in favor of a geocentric universe with an immovable Earth as a flat plane and the stars, moon and sun all contained within the firmament. The sun and the moon and the stars are thousands of miles away and aren’t nearly as big as what science tells us. The Ancients all understood the engineering of the universe and it is only in modern times that we have rejected what is plainly visible, logical and reasonable. Most news agencies today prop up Flat Earth organizations that embrace bizarre ides mixed with truth to discourage the masses from even considering an alternative to the heliocentric system that is taught throughout the world today.
*********
And, finally, this from reader Kris Sherwood (I couldn’t help bolding two sentences). “Gravol,” by the way, is a drug used to treat nausea and motion sickness.
It makes me very upset that I have to read all of these people criticize others that have actually questioned the bullshit spinning ball nonsense that the media NASA and the government shoves down our throats . Especially when. They take everything the media and the government and NASA tells them at face value and then tries to criticize others without even doing any in I mean any of their own research. One of the definitions of ignorance is blindly believing something when there is evidence to the contrary and you still don’t even take a look. I didn’t believe a lot of different so-called conspiracy theories either. But thought I should at least research it for myself like an intellectual does. You shouldn’t criticize something without first looking into it yourself. You can easily look up all this information for yourself but most people suffer from cognitive dissonance and will believe whatever is handed to them through the media or government. Make sure all of you Flat Earth critics take your Gravol today and everyday because the Earth is spinning and moving so freaking fast that you are going to become nauseous. The Horizon is always at flat eye level. If it was curved at all the Horizon would be going away from us curving away and it simply does not anywhere you are on this plane. Please just do your own research before criticizing these people and me who have actually done real science which includes experiments not basing everything on mathematical equations. Please listen to what I have said today thank you
*********
I have no responses, but I hope readers might query at least some of these commenters.
If the stars are thousands of miles away then their size would indicate a mass far below any possible point that fusion could begin… how do they shine, 100W lightbulbs?
God does it. Haven’t you heard? 🙂
At last, I understand. What a fool I have been…
Does anyone know how to remove a tongue that is jammed in a cheek? It’s really starting to hurt.
As Jesus said “When tongue in cheek hurts, place tongue in other cheek”.
“100W lightbulbs?”
Nope, those have been phased out.
25W LED’s
You are dabbling in quantum there, stick with white hot metal (it glows because of angels, GaAs uses devils).
…how do they shine, 100W lightbulbs?
No, bio-luminescence.
Seriously though, flat-Earthers are 22 centuries behind the curve (no pun intended).
Eratosthenes figured out the Earth was round—and accurately calculated its dimensions—over two centuries before Christ:
I refer you to the flatters FAQ:
Did Eratosthenes Not Prove The Earth Was A Globe?
No. Actually Eratosthenes assumed the Earth was a globe to calculate the circumference of the Earth. Taoists performed the same experiment much earlier and came to the conclusion that the Earth was Flat. This was independently conceived much later in the 1800’s by followers of Samuel Rowbotham.
Their website is a hoot, if I didn’t know better I would label it as parody 🙂
Thinking about Eratoshenes observations it seems to me that if the Earth were flat the Sun would have to be very small and not far away. This seems to be in accord with biblical scripture. If only there were some way to determine how far away the sun is we could solve this apparent mystery. Ah well….
This seems to be in accord with biblical scripture.
One of the phrases in Genesis that tipped me off, when I first read it, to the extremely limited worldview of its author was its reference to the Sun and the Moon as “lights in the sky,” without any further elaboration.
And when I say “extremely limited,” I don’t mean in comparison to modern science; I mean in comparison to other cultures of the same period. “Lights in the sky…” I mean, how intellectually lazy can you be?
Notice how there’s no attempt to analyze the *argument* Eratosthenes presented and why it would go wrong if his assumption (they’re right about that) was wrong.
“so-called conspiracy theories ”
Have to agree. The over-used term “conspiracy theories” is a terrible label. In case no one has noticed it yet – people do conspire. All the time. And often, they get caught.
When I hear someone dismiss something as mere “conspiracy theories”, what I have learned to hear is intellectual laziness and a willingness to follow the herd.
Often people will dismiss actual conspiracies as “conspiracy theories” which they seem to take to mean proves their absurdities.
Why, it is as if they are part of a giant conspiracy to cover up conspiracies! ;>D
The fact that these guys think denial of a flat earth is a conspiracy is itself a conspiracy theory (and it must be the most wide-ranging conspiracy in all of history)!
You’ve just crossed over into…the twilight zone.
Incorrect. “Conspiracy theory” actually has a quite specific definition which sets it apart from actual conspiracies. A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or events that responds to evidence against said explanation by widening the circle of supposed conspirators.
Take, for example, the moon landing. When it is pointed out that the Soviets had every ability to verify the moon landings and never raised a peep of skepticism, those who think it is faked have no problem adding the entire Soviet government to the circle of conspirators, for of course some unknown, utterly stupid reason. Or how 9/11 truthers had to add the entire staff of Popular Mechanics to the conspirators. This Flat Earth stuff has had to add the UN, and every government, and every airline, in the world. Etc.
It is a useful, explanatory label.
Also, just because conspiracies exist it does not mean they are socially dominating. As a proxy I tend to use corruption figures. Admittedly some are prone to corruption themselves since they are self reported. 😉 But they are somewhat indicative anyway, and global corruption is 25 % of economical transaction at most. In some societies they are in the low %s.
Any reply to goddidits is wasted. They have no more free will than I do.
Yes. You can’t argue against magic with science.
Here’s a question one could raise to the flat-earthers: Do you know of anything special that will happen across the US on August 21, 2017? How about specifically in, say, Charleston, SC? If so, how do you know this? Could you show us your maths and/or drawings that support this expectation?
If you do not expect anything special to happen on that day, would you be surprised if I told you that the sun will briefly disappear from the sky? How would I know that?
Wouldn’t the easiest test of the theory be to travel to the edge of the earth and document it, perhaps on an Instagram or Twitter feed? Sadly, Flat-Earthers must never leave home.
Exactly! It should be very easy to provide evidence for the ends of the earth.
Something like this would help:
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/freedhearts/files/2014/04/flat-earth-society1.jpg?w=276
No one has mentioned 4 Elephants and a Turtle yet .
Turtles all the way down?
The illustration is wrong, you couldn’t get the ships over the giant Ice Wall that surrounds the Disc of the Earth, come on, do your research people.
But there are ice walls at the edges! Cold and dangerous, hard to get over. (Those people who think they reached the south pole — they’re all deluded.)
Not.
The simple problem with the ice barriers is that for it to work the distance to circumnavigate Antarctica would need to be far greater than the distance around the equator. This is something that could be easily checked, but the flat earth folk either don’t wish to check or ignore evidence that contradicts their reality:
https://ncse.com/files/resize/flatmap-407×275.jpg
Sure, but since the invention of airplanes they could easily fly over them. So that has not been a valid excuse for a very long time.
And according to them it wouldn’t be possible to fly from Australia to South America via the South Pole. Well, that’s a testable prediction right there.
They believe there are people out there stopping that from happening. In fact (!?), they would be risking death at the hands of the Jewish organisation that rules the world to attempt it.
CoolHardLogic estimates the need for a fleet of 10,000+ ships from the DiscWorld map periphery. Where is the money, shipyards, crew and crew families? And what happened before UN – the usual “culprit” – was instated?
Just here to recommend checking CoolHardLogic’s entire series on the flat earthers and geocentrists. It’s quite the hoot!
I’ve since watched the first in the series of videos debunking flat earth ideas and saw that. It was good and fun. I will watch the others. I hope the flat-earthers do too.
These four people, if they aren’t advocating actual spoofs, need mental assistance to get over their cognitive dissonance.
Sherwood spouts about evidence to the contrary and then ignores the voluminous evidence of the facts.
I watched Greenfield’s video and was more informed by the energizer bunny video that followed.
I wasn’t aware of cognitive dissonance actually being a mental disorder. It’s just people refusing to accept that their desired state of the world, and the actual state of the world are different. Which is plainly stupid, but not, AFAICT, a mental disorder.
I had a Passat driver (VW car, not sure if it is in American market) exhibiting cognitive dissonance about the legality of overtaking on the left and then veering across in front of the car you’ve just under-taken. But that was an act of stupidity, not any mental illness, and if I hadn’t stamped on the middle pedal, he’d have been the one facing charges, not me. I doubt the court would have accepted his plea of mental illness.
Seriously, why dress stupidity up as mental illness? I’ve got friends who are seriously mentally ill, and it does them a great dis-service to be lumped with people with shoe-sized IQs (an insult that works uniformly well for any region’s shoe-sizing terminology I’ve had to use.)
Oh dear. I knew the country was in trouble but I had no idea ow much. I now associate with being a Canadian – my new citizenship – and no longer feel responsible for partaking in the idiocy that passes for American Culture.
Um…I hate to break it to you, but this is not confined to the US. You don’t magically escape stupidity by crossing the border 🙂
Though that would be nice.
The density of stupid may be lower across the line.
I agree, but though stupidity is not confined to the U.S., it is much more prevalent here than in Europe or Canada or Australia or…
I reallt don’t think that’s true. It’s just that, especially when you live in the US, you tend to hear good and bad things about the US, and mostly the good things about the other countries. Also, confirmation bias.
As an observation about the US as opposed to the UK & Europe, would it be fair to say, it is big bold and brash, nothing is taboo, it is essentially a free society, it is wealthy and live dreams other nations can only dream about, wacky or not.
The current President case in point, it seems nothing is ‘sacred.’
This is not a bad thing, would NASA have gone to the moon? Mars? it just means sometimes “your brains fall out” when you have a collective open society.
The UK & Europeans are on the other hand are fairly conservative and flat earth types would tend to stay on the fringe and very much on the outer (unless violent) the sad people in the corner.
Keep it to yourself and feel a little special.
What this leads to IMO is in the US if you have any bent at all (Flat Airheads in this case) you can take it to the hilt and not feel the least embarrassed. It is your right to make a noise about it.
Here in NZ you would, i think, be mocked so badly that silence and secrecy (if you wish to hold these views) is your only choice.
Do we really need to give these people the time of day if no harm is done?
Charles P. Pierce,
Esquire Magazine, 11/1/05
Could also have been said 100 years earlier by Charles S Peirce.
I think it might be education rather than stupidity that’s the problem. In much of the US, education is under-funded – it’s dependent on property taxes (so wealthy areas get better state schools). Further, whole states are fixated on things like teaching Biblical creationism over evolution, and denying proper sex education.
AMEN…I mean +1
That should have been one of my caveats. Just an off-hand remark as it is. I’m an angry usian dammit.
I knew that really – it’s not the sort of thing you say.
🙂
OK, let’s just deal with the final two, since the first two are barely even comprehensible and contain nothing even warranting a response (though saying the last two warrant a response is being generous). When Mr. Greenfield and Mr. Sherwood write long paragraphs telling us that the truth of their claims exists if we just do the research, this does not constitute a rebuttal. What is this research, exactly? Saying things like “hey, look at the horizon, does that look like it’s curved?” is not research.
Another question: if Kevin Sherwood is correct about the stars, how does the sun provide us with enough light and heat? It must be very small.
And if the earth isn’t spinning. nor orbiting the sun, what accounts for the changes in seasons and the changing angle of the sun over the course of a year? And if the earth is a flat plain taht isn’t orbiting the sun nor spinning on an axis, why do different places have different seasons, or even differing amounts of heat from the sun at all?
While this next question may seem mocking, I’m genuinely curious: why do these people think the sky looks blue? Is it because there’s a big blue piece of paper that god taped to the dome above the flat plain that is earth? If not, what is the reason?
There are so many other questions, but I have a feeling we’ll never get any answers. In all the times you’ve posted comments like this so we can respond, Jerry, I can’t remember a single person actually coming back to try and answer questions.
By the way, most of us here have seen all the supposed information you think we would find convincing, but we find it…well, let’s just say not particularly well-informed.
Didn’t Terry Pratchett answer all these questions? And isn’t the answer “magic”? “Magic,” of course, is the translation into flat-earthese of the creationist word “goddidit”.
I had a nice walk along a cliff on Friday, beside a very busy shipping lane. You can see the curvature of the Earth’s surface with any pair of eyes that are not poor enough to be considered as “visually impaired” (given a passing boat with a mast, or 5-story crew quarters). And the Greeks knew it at least 2500 years ago (feel free to add twice the duration of the United States if you want to count the Phoenicians ; and considering the distribution of Denisovan genes in AMHs, I bet they knew the observation too, even if they struggled to express it geometrically.)
I infer that Sherwood lives a long way from a coast, and has probably never even seen an actual horizon (as opposed to trees, hills, buildings that obscure his view of the horizon).
There is a popular calumny that “the ancients” all believed that the world was flat until Columbus probed them wrong. This is weapons-grade bullshit, invented around 1870 out of whole cloth by, IIRC, an astronomer called Simon Newcombe, who had some psychological need to belittle the Catholic Church, and chose this way to do it.
What people disagreed with Columbus about was not that the world was round, but that he’d calculated the size (and therefore how much water, food, spare sailors he’d need) ; and in that, they were right. If he hadn’t accidentally bumped into “New World” islands, his crews would have probably hung him from the yard arm before much longer, and turned back. Because they could count water barrels and mouldy loaves just as well as their Phoenician predecessors.
I would sincerely like to know what it is that the flat-earthers think that NASA, all the world governments, all the world’s scientists, and most of the people alive for the last few hundred years hope to gain from the “conspiracy” of a round earth?
… and everyone who has actually seen a boat coming in over the horizon.
You can take a 12 1/2 hour non-stop flight from Sydney, Australia to Santiago, Chile. The flight is a bit briefer than a flight from Mexico City to Berlin (13 hours +).
If the Earth was a flat disc with the North Pole at the center and the southern continents toward the outer circumference, the shortest flight from Sydney to Santiago would take at least three times as long as a direct flight from MX City to Berlin.
Equally: why is the centre of the disc cold, the outside of disc cold and the ring in the middle hot? Of course, the disc could have a saddle shaped profile, but that’s not what I call flat… and all the water would run to the edges 🙂
A recurring theme among the believers is the notion that we accept what government or media or some other unnamed authority has told us. This is little more than projection.
As it happens, on this forum at least, a large proportion of the participants are actually part of the academic world. We can make the observations, we can do the math, we are part of the culture that actually live and work with the tools required to test claims about the nature of reality.
You would do well to think about Larry Smith’s question above. If the earth was flat, the derivation of predictions for such events would be entirely different. Please provide some evidence of this.
Personally, I would rate the four responses as Fundie, Fundie, Crank, and Poe.
I’ve tried reasoning with one of those FE: Male, university degree chemistry, quite clever, difficult in communication.
So I asked: “Why don’t you guys rent a boat and explore the rim of the Antarctic? Use drones, balloons, whatever.” (Might be hard to do without GPS… no globe, no satellites, no GPS)
The answer: “We can’t. The rim is protected by military, as per the Antarctica treaty.” All those tens of thousands of miles? Yes.
It gets worse. Some believe that aliens are not from outer space (there’s the dome!) but from behind the ice wall. And so on, for instance:
Vulcanoes? Furnaces in the earth.
Tectonics? False
Gravity? False
NASA? Lying scum.
Measuring distances on their flat earth model? No money.
Motive: not able to deal with the insignificance of earth and humans.
I got into debate with a FE recently, and he said there’s no such thing as gravity. Okay says I, then why do things always fall downways, and not up? He said it’s because air is less dense than ‘ordinary matter’. I pointed out that whether it’s denser or not makes no difference, it still needs a force to act on it to propel it in any given direction. He never commented again.
Ultimately the biggest nonsense of the flat earth belief isn’t scientific, it’s human nature. How many thousands of people are needed to support the conspiracy? And not one of them has blabbed the truth!
The gravity disbelief is likely a curtain, since they know they would get into trouble with the law of gravity and hydrostatic balance of spherical planets (if massive enough).
More troubling is that they do not seem to grok forces, and so are pre-scientific in the horrid sense. In the same manner they do seem to believe in “electromagnetic waves” so that they can pretend they know how light and computers work…
Dear me, I am disconcerted that a person with a Chemistry degree should espouse views like that. Even some of the Biochemists I met while studying for my two Chemistry degrees would never have gone that far.
Are you stating that biochemists are less rational than, er, standard chemists?
The answer: “We can’t. The rim is protected by military, as per the Antarctica treaty.” All those tens of thousands of miles? Yes.
But this still doesn’t answer why they don’t make any effort to show THAT is the case.
They could get in a plane and if their claims are true they will either get to the rim, or if there is a military presence STOPPING anyone from doing so, they will be stopped and they can demonstrate THAT claim.
I get that these people are looking for any idea they can to keep hold of their flat earth belief. But presuming they actually believe it, and given the time some put to trying to convince the public, you’d think they’d have the courage of their own convictions. If they really believed the earth has an edge, protected by the military, I don’t get why they don’t say “look I’ll show you” and get out there with cameras to prove their claim.
Why does a ship sailing away from port disappear first at the waterline, then progressively up the ship’s hull and superstructure, until the tip of the mast disappears over the horizon?
Why, because it DOESN’T: everyone who has “witnessed” this is lying, and is obviously part of the conspiracy!
I’m afraid they dispute this argument by stating that diffraction makes the ship appear to disappear in that way. After all science tells us that the sun is actually below the horizon when we can still see it at sunset.
This is not a good argument without other supporting evidence to use a gainst a flat earther. Although no argument is very good as most are incapable of change.
Sorry make that refraction.
@Dionigi I WAS GOING TO WRITE THIS
What is important is to do a Wallace & compare the TOP POINT of each of a series of identical objects [minimum three]? The conditions being the objects are set on a horizontal plane, in a straight line, receding into the distance. Top points identically 3 metres [or more] above the foot
It is then irrelevant whether…
[1] Flattard claim: “the foot of the objects remains visible”
[2] Baller claim: “the foot disappears with distance” [or Flattard invoking atmospheric this & that]
BUT I’VE JUST WATCHED A YOUTUBE VIDEO WHERE A FLATTARD DISMISSES THE ABOVE TYPE OF EVIDENCE IN A RECENT EXPERIMENT. BECAUSE ELECTROMAGNETISM LOL…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k5PtjcLeVw
NOTES FROM the BEDFORD LEVEL WIKI
“The Bedford Level experiment is a series of observations carried out along a six-mile (9.7 km) length of the Old Bedford River on the Bedford Level, Norfolk, England, UK […] in 1870, after adjusting Rowbotham’s method to avoid the effects of atmospheric refraction, Alfred Russel Wallace found a curvature consistent with a spherical Earth. […] by virtue of his surveyor’s training and knowledge of physics, avoided the errors of the preceding experiments […] The crucial steps were:
[1] Set a sight line 13 feet (4 m) above the water, and thereby reduce the effects of atmospheric refraction
[2] Add a pole in the middle that could be used to see the “bump” caused by the curvature of the earth between the two end points
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford_Level_experiment
There are 2 reasons anyone would say the Earth is flat;
1) Mental illness
2) They’re pulling your leg
I don’t think you can win an argument with either faction.
[..] 3) Stupidity that gives normal people a headache to contemplate (the Marvin Syndrome).
4) They were brought up to believe [some bullshit] as children, and have transferred that credulousness to some person (book, website, man in a sandwich board) who preaches the Gospel of Flat Earthery.
I’ll drag point # 4 around to evolution : credulousness in children (believe what your care-givers tell you, instead of conducting every necessary experiment yourself), is probably something that has been strongly selected for in all except the last handful of generations of humans (and other primates ; and all mammals I can think of).
5) Below average IQ.
The UK’s flat Earth Society seems to have a website (and a Face
palmbook page), who’d have thunk it. The link is to their FAQ and highights the futility of arguing with them… they have a view and your evidence is wrong or fabricated, end of:-)According to Kink the Cat the Earth couldn’t be a flat disc because cats would have knocked everything off the edge by now.
He’s right, you know.
+1
best answer to idiocy yet – thank you. dealing with whackos
does take humor – and cats.
Have any of these flat-earthers ever tried to build a scale model of the earth as they see it, dangle a light bulb overhead to simulate the sun, and explain sunrise & sunset, solar and lunar eclipses, tides, seasons, or why the distance to the horizon is so limited? Because there are scale models of the — you know — real solar system that explain all of this quite neatly.
“Goddidit” also explains all of it quite neatly (to some people).
We certainly do not have to guess who these FE folks voted for last time around. I mean last time flat.
LOL!
Double LOL!!!
Mr. Greenfield wrote, “The Ancients all understood the engineering of the universe…”
Could you be more specific about exactly what was understood, by whom, when and where.
Are you talking about specific individuals? Do you include the observations used to calculate the circumference of the earth, rather accurately, by the ancients. The observations were made without expensive, special equipment. You could easily repeat what was done and check the accuracy of the calculations and reasoning used, in ancient times, to demonstrate that the earth was a globe.
Cue “no true Scotsman” definitions of what constitutes ancient wisdom.
You dug a 30m well between lunch and supper yesterday? Or did you only get down 30 cubits?
It may not be complicated equipment by our measures, but I’d challenge the regular readership of this website en masse to make the tools and dig a well deep enough to replicate Eratosthene’s argument.
Or, if you don’t like that, try building an obelisk large enough instead.
These were serious pieces of equipment at the time, and the study was published about half-way, time wise, between the building of Cheops’ Pyramid and anything taller.
So here’s my own conspiracy theory. These flat earthers are angling for a free visit to the international space station.
But seriously, you should ask a flat earther (like you should ask a creationist), “What would it take to change your mind?” In other words, tell the world what would make your theory falsifiable. For example, you could demand photographic evidence. You supply the camera in a sealed glass container. We fly it to the ISS, take photos and record video. Will that be sufficient? I’ll wait…
What About the ISS and Satellites?
While one can see satellites in the sky at night, it is generally agreed upon that they are not actual satellites but pseudolites or stratolites put there to fool us.
Not according to their website… sadly, they don’t explain who put them there and why ghey wanted to fool us.
YouTuber CoolHardLogic has the best, most throughout debunking of Flat Earth and Geocentrism, going at it from any angle imaginable and showing on the way how all the knowledge hangs together.
Of course, it’s easy to debunk, but he goes the extra miles, through cosmology, maths, what it mean if geocentrists or flat earthers were right and more.
Flat Earthers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLmWeueTF8l82GItQhl7vTP_WM43B4ebNq&v=JgY8zNZ35uw
Geocentrism
Oops, didn’t it would also parse playlists. Feel free to replace with links.
Those a good videos. In addition to all of the overwhelming evidence there, how to Flat Earthers explain the Coriolis force? It has been measured by military men ever since ships were firing cannons.
Seems to me they do not understand forces (or pseudoforces such as here). Lack of education.
Anyway, while they would not be able to explain weather system spin preference, they also do not accept gravity so would not appreciate what the Coriolis effect is.
Well worth reading wikipedia.org/wiki/bedford_level_experiment which describes 19C work on this waterway in the UK. Our hero Alfred Russel Wallace was involved.
Well, I learn something new. I knew of Wallace, of course, and I’ve paddled canoes around in that part of the country. But that as a whole remains news to me. Nice one.
And yes, you can’t convince a Flat Earther.
With a nickname like “boggy”, I bet you’re a Fensman.
You can read Samual Rowbotham’s book here – he did seem to somewhat obsessed with an experimental distance of 6 miles. A bit more about Hampden/Wallace is <a href="http://www.cantab.net/users/michael.behrend/ebooks/PlaneTruth/pages/Chapter_03.html"online here – I haven’t read it all yet.
Sorry, mucked the link up
How do flat-earthers explain time zones? When I, on the west coast of the US, call up my sister in New York, the sun is still up here but has already set there. And this is because … ?
My question too, when it’s daytime in the U.S. it’s nightime in China. The above video posted by Aneris, in the second part, explains flatearth theory and dissects that problem quite neatly. Fyi, flatearth theory involves the sun following a circular path along the equator, and acting as a spotlight.
Another issue, On December 21 the U.S. has the shortest day of the year while in Argentina it’s the longest day. Also, dead of winter in the U.S. but middle of summer in Argentina. Must be magic.
Despite the time stamp if my comment, in Nz it’s 6.35am in 10 July.
Whoa! Must be time travel!
So much to get one’s teeth into here…
Gravity is real (and you can measure it between small objects with a torsion balance), so a finite disc would not stay flat and its gravity would not be perpendicular to the surface. An infinite disc avoids these issues, but then the strength of gravity would not depend on height. There would be nothing to stop the Sun and Moon falling to the surface (except magic). No gravity from the Sun or Moon means no tides.
The observed tides are inexplicable with this model, since there could be only one tide per day.
Simple devices such as gyroscopes and Foucault’s Pendulum show that the Earth is spinning, as do Coriolis effects. It’s just too slow (once every 23hours 56min) to make us travel-sick.
Good luck explaining solar eclipses, lunar eclipses, transits of Mercury and Venus (just how tiny would they have to be!?), etc.
I can see satellites (ISS, Iridium etc.) passing overhead. There are apps to predict their appearances, and I can’t believe they were crafted just to present a deceptive NWO view to little old me. And, satellite TV dishes! How can they explain the fact we point our dishes at geostationary communication sats?
The idea that the Sun illuminates a portion of the disc falls down during the northern hemisphere winter, when there would have to be an oval patch of darkness in the north and the rest of the disc in daylight.
“We don’t even have a full shot of the Earth rotating from space!”. Yes we do, here.
I tell students that the sunset is the product of spinning backwards at something close (where I live) to 1000 km/hr. The general response is to laugh a little and then stop.
Well, since Hayden directly answered to me, I guess I have to have a go here.
Two arguments- one arcane and abstruse, one simple and straightforward.
1) The drift of gyroscopes over time in a moving plane is best explained by the rotation of the earth. It is always faster nearer the two poles of the earth and can be predicted by the equation ω sin Latitude, and this happens in every plane. (Then there is Foucault’s pendulem.)
2) Here in the Bay Area, we have the Farillon Islands 7 miles of the coast. On a perfectly clear day, you can never see them from the coastline of the Great Highway. But climb San Bruno Mountain or San Pedro Mountain or go to the top of the mountain in GrandView Park, and you can see them quite well. The explanation is obvious. They are below the horizon.
As for the Bible, many early Christians viewed it as full of symbolic metaphors.
The famous monk Bede (c. 672–735) wrote in his treatise, “The Reckoning of Time”, that the Earth was round.
Bede explained the variance in the times of days from “the roundness of the Earth, for not without reason is it called ‘the orb of the world’ on the pages of Holy Scripture and of ordinary literature. It is, in fact, set like a sphere in the middle of the whole universe.” (De temporum ratione, 32).
Also, the sun sets at the base of San Bruno Mountain, or any mountain, sooner than at the summit.
I’m Catholic & many early scientists were Catholic clergy.
https://cruxnow.com/life/2015/01/24/priest-scientists-are-at-the-crossroads-of-faith-and-reason/
http://stmva.org/blog/Catholic-News–Perspective/Catholic-scientists-discuss-faiths-role-in-work-
https://www.coraevans.com/blog/article/5-influential-catholic-scientists-you-didnt-know
I have ALWAYS looked at science as proof The greatness of our Creator all the scientist are doing is discovering and naming things that were already in existence when we came to be .
I believe in a higher power that created the universe. I don’t know if we humans have it right, maybe God is something we can’t understand fully so we put our little petty grievances, bigotries, false pride, etc into religion , make God in our FLAWED IMAGES & beat each other over the head with it and start useless stupid wars instead of enjoying the wonderful universe we have been given . It’s the greatest of damn shame’s .
As is customary, I ask believers when posting for the first time two questions:
1. What is the evidence you have for the existence of God?
2. WHy is your Catholicism a “truer” religion than, say, Hinduism or Islam? That is, you believe Jesus was the divine son of God/God, and Muslims say that’s heresy. Why are you right and they’re wrong?
The really hard to understand statement you make is – All the scientist are doing is discovering and naming things that were already in existence when we came to be. Surely you cannot believe that? The airplane, the car, electricity, typewriters, computers, steel, telephones. Maybe Meteorology? The weather was already here.
Also should have asked – did he create the flu? If so, I have a bone to pick with him on that one. He created the flu so the scientist to discover the flu shot?
Hi legadema37 What is your opinion on the Flat Earth? You don’t mention it at all. I am fairly sure you have followed this site for quite a while [I know you love cats!], so why is your first comment on this particular post of all posts?
P.S. In your last link: “5 Of The Most Influential Catholic Scientists You Didn’t Know”, it has Fr. Robert Spitzer. He has degrees in… Business Admin, divinity, theology, scripture & two in ‘philosophy’ [from the Catholic University of America & from SLU – a private Roman Catholic university]. He has produced no scientific, peer-reviewed papers that I can find.
Not a scientist
I can tell you why your analysis rubs me exactly the wrong way:
First, that scientists can be religious,or historically was religious by default, do not prove that religion is useful. Due to stress many doctors are smokers. Do you see the problem with claiming that therefore smoking is acceptable?
Moreover, being skeptic in science do contribute to less religiosity. The Pew statistics is that education and science correlates with non-theism or anti-theism.
Second, like the imams and others that pretend Islamic terrorism do not present an observable facet of the damage religion does, you seem to pretend that your religious, unsupported opinion on religion can cover up the christianist roots of many Flat Earth sects.
Third, your sect is pretty much pre-scientific Flat Earth behaving when it comes to biology. Despite that we now know that human populations were never less than 10,000 breeders, that there never was a biological or symbolic sole pair, your sect leaders are equally eager to reject that fact as opposing their core beliefs. When science threatens catholic religion, science is thrown under the bus. (And I wonder what they will do with the LHC evidence that now shows – to the usual standard of beyond *reasonable* doubt – that everyday miracles cannot be? That ‘prayer’ cannot work, and that humans cannot have a ‘soul’ or ‘life after death’? That practiced religion is pointless except for keeping company? My guess is: unreasonably throw science under the bus yet again.)
To be clear, I was referring to the 2012 completion and subsequent confirmation of the small gap for exotic physic (or magic) interaction left. No enough for interaction with all synapses at the same time in a human brain, even less with cell masses in organs (re healing, transsubstantiation and other superstitions).
2012 standard (everyday) particle physics completion.
I’m reminded of an old, “Hagar the Horrible” cartoon that my mother had taped up inside her kitchen cabinet door: Hagar asks Zook, the wizard, “OK, so- if the world IS round, how come people don’t fall off?” The next panel shows the Earth with a tiny figure flying off of it, as Zook replies, “Some DO!”
All the arguments used above are valid, but will be denied.
I only want to point out to Sherwood that he van leave NASA out.
Eratosthenes of Alexandria not only proved the Earth to be spherical (by measuring the length of the shadow of a vertical pole in Alexandria at midday and comparing it to the length of the shadow of an equal length vertical pole in Aswan at the same time of the day), but did even calculate the Earth’s circumference, quite accurately too. No NASA needed.
I haven’t paid any attention to flat Earthers. How do they explain why no one has found the edge?
They imply that the plane continues indefitely with a circular wall of ice forming a ring… no explanation why, though.
I was actually over at the CoolHardLogic youtube site and commented yesterday. What I can understand they operate on the creationist principle of not admitting that anything would change their mind. Specifically they have taken the Amish path to a pre-scientific culture in that they do not understand forces and deny gravity. (So smoke is raiding because “density” instead of a density gradient due to gravity.) Which is an excellent example of a cop out, since even a Disc World riding in a space faring turtle would crumble to a sphere under self gravitation.*
So nothing I can say here will change their mind. Else, an empirical based response would be:
Deon, Hunter: Insults the reader with their own, unsupported magic.
Greenfield, Sherwood: Asserts, again untroubled by evidence, that skeptic criticism would not accept modern science and education.** Notably, organized skepticism generally accept the latter, but so does the general public too. A fringe notion is fringe *because* people question and become educated, these do not feed unsupportable notions. It is a pity that these believers do not trust themselves to question their belief!
Below,the details:
*) Under gravity it does not matter if a Disc Worlder adds disk thickness.
On the other end they need at least 10 km to explain the Mariner deep. Assume a quadrant for simplicity, it would need to be 10,000+ km from pole to Disc World circumference as Earth is 10,000 km in diameter.
So much more than 10*10,000^2 or 1000^3 km of solid. Already a 1000 km diameter ice world is spherical due to hydrostatic balance. You do not even need to solve for compression stresses versus rock strength to see the problem!
**) Under gravity it does not matter where the spherical horizon is in relation to an observer. Obviously it moves around, “going away from us curving away”, as anyone having taken ocean ship or continental airplane travel knows! So spinning is not a problem, since the local atmosphere and you inner ear moves with due to inertia and drag.
Spinning on the surface of a spherical planet is what is observed as a Coriolis effect, which is seen in the statistic of low pressure regions such as hurricanes and the way they spin. They spin clockwise on the Northern hemisphere, anti-clockwise on the Southern [ http://hurricanescience.org/science/basic/coriolis/ ].
Another thing a Disc Worlder could check out themselves, besides travel routes/compass directions discrepancies, if they traveled long distances.
I forgot:
Greenfield had an argument that stars are close, on the order or the size of the Disc World. That does not work, since then a star would be seen at different height at different places on a Disc World. If you, again, bothered to take those long enough plane trips!
@Torbjörn I don’t think Greenfield cares about logic, rationalism, science. He cares about keeping his uncritical customers happy – selling them his bullshit water purifiers. [I’ve found three websites of his with ease & it’s likely there’s more]
I put him in the same category as Gwyneth Paltrow – selling ‘well being’ crap.
/Users/bethpurkhiser/Desktop/19756563_1755069121200470_1172705091043739116_n.jpg
@Beth You can’t publish images to WordPress from your desktop
Put your jpg on an image hosting site that freely allows you to link to it here [I don’t think photobucket allows this for free anymore]
There’s a list of sites here:
https://www.thebalance.com/top-free-image-hosting-websites-1357014
So why don’t flat earthers simply charter a plane, fly to the edge of the earth, and take video of what the earth really looks like at its edges? They can do that nowadays you know.
Disturbing comments. Delusion, plain and simple. It’s not worth the time to refute such nonsense. It’s actually quite sad, how adults—living in the 21st Century—can believe in such things.
To all of the commenters:
You are guilty of one or more of the following:
– ignorance of the evidence
– confirmation bias
– mental illness (as defined by the DSM, not me)
– intellectual sloth
With all that is currently happening in our country and with what appears to be a retreat to the Dark Ages I am feeling, daily, that I am losing my mind. Seriously. This blog and other reason-based essays help me stay grounded but I’m dumbfounded and disturbed by the deluded epistemologies of the American masses. How do the rest of you feel/deal?
One step at a time, that’s the only way to deal with it, and yes I am mentally ill, as defined by the DSVM, but it doesn’t a
ffect my ability to reason.
I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid.
Wow
Okay, here is how you determine if the Earth is flat, the Egyptians used this method since they had an abundance of flat ground to test it on:
Find a plain , flat, no rolling or dips in it, desert is perfect for it.
Have a friend stand in a beginning spot and walk out about five miles or so, Put a straight, graduated pole roughly 3 meters high (a little over 9 feet for those non metric thinking people.)
Go back to your friend and then use surveying gear to determine how much of the pole can be seen from the ground. Do the same from a platform 9 meters high, then 30 meters high.
If the pole appears longer at the different heights, then you have proof of the curvature of the Earth.
The Egyptians weren’t stupid, they knew the Earth was round, r at least there was an unaccounted for curvature to it’s surface, as did the vikings and other sea going people.
And Greenfield LOOKS so normal.
…”If it was curved at all the Horizon would be going away from us curving away”
exactly what you see at forty thousand feet
Morons…
If I could, I would take these people to the San Juan Islands, in Washington State, on a very clear day, stand on the SE part of Orcas Island, right above the shore, and direct their attention to the SE.
What they will see is Mt. Rainier, rising up out of the sea, with the sea apparently cutting off the mountain about halfway up.
When I saw this for the first time, I had, for the first time ever, a visceral, immediate perception that, Hell! The earth is curved! Look at that! Mt. Rainier is way over that hill (the curve of the earth).
Yeah, sure, a flat plane! Uh-huh! Silly, silly people.
Isaac Asimov put it best:
http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
My message to Mr. Greenfield:
You should know that the spherical earth “theory” is over two thousand years old, adopted by the best minds of antiquity, including Aristotle and Ptolemy. Check out Wikipedia for the history. Has something happened since then to cast doubt on “sphericity” ? The answer is no.
Sailors of the world are hard-headed realists; survival is at stake.
Since before Columbus, they have used the “theory” of a spherical earth to navigate. A flat earth does NOT compute.
It would never occur to astronomers to doubt the spherical earth “theory”, because observations of the night sky from different latitudes do not make any sense if the earth is flat. It is a simple matter of geometry and the fact that light rays travel in straight lines.
When the entire world adopts a scientific theory, and you are adopt the opposite, who do should I expect to be right?
My apologies if you have suffered a physical or psychological injury that makes this reasoning unconvincing.
Sincerely, Warren Johnson
From Gary Greenfield’s website:
“This dynamic toroidal vortex is the means by which energy flows and is the foundational basis for all life.”
Who doesn’t wish they knew this before now? It answers all my questions.