Table, or ball?
There are actual flat earthers – people who believe the earth really is flat, and the only reason we don’t all realize this is because of the Giant Conspiracy.
Flat Earthers have a wide range of convictions. Some come to the movement from a religious place, others from a scientific one. But most believe in one simple principle: that NASA and everyone involved in space exploration are liars and that there is a massive conspiracy to hide the fact that the Earth is flat.
That would have to be such a massive conspiracy.
We can’t all be astronomers or physicists, of course. (I know I certainly can’t.) But I know a thing we can do: we can look at Google Earth, and see for ourselves how minutely accurate it is about everything we can see for ourselves – and that its earth is not flat. You can rotate the Google Earth for yourself. How could it be so accurate about everything and yet be lying about the rotation?
“Most of us believe that Antarctica is not a continent, but rather, the Earth is a disk, the North Pole is at the center and Antarctica is an ice wall around the perimeter,” Patrice explained. “There is no solar system. I mean, there’s a sun, obviously, and a moon and stars, because we can see them. You can also observe the flat Earth with your eyes.”
Actually no. What you can observe is ships disappearing over the horizon. Why do they do that? Because the Earth isn’t flat. If you can’t see the ocean from where you are, you can see planes disappearing over the horizon. Not a conspiracy, just reality.
One of the first people to assert that the Earth is round was Eratosthenes in 240 BCE, an Egyptian librarian who made measurements of shadows in two spots — hundreds of miles apart — at the same exact time. He found that the pillars in one city cast no shadow at noon and the pillars in the other city cast a significant shadow.
“I’m not religious, but I do believe in creation,” Long said. “If you’re coming from a point where you know the Earth is flat, you also know that Earth was created. The two are connected. You can’t be a flat Earther and be an atheist. I’ve never met one; I don’t think there are any out there.”
How are the two connected? Why couldn’t a zany madcap creator create a not-flat Earth? Why assume this creator wants a big table instead of a ball?
I think there should be some people who think the Earth is shaped like a sock, and some who think it’s shaped like a corkscrew, and some who think it’s shaped like an ear of corn.
There is no point in debating far-gone conspiracy mavens. Whenever you present conclusive evidence that their cherished conspiracy does not exist, they respond, in effect, with “This proves that you are part of the conspiracy.”
I guess. I still think Google Earth makes a good challenge, though, because it’s so easy to check it against what one knows oneself. It’s accessible. People can see for themselves how accurate it is.
Why is travel around the Southern Ocean so fast? What about Antarctic explorers? Why does the equator have the properties it does? they have to deny *so much*.
Ah, but is the Moon also flat? Sure it orbits in such a way that only one side faces us (could be a big ol’ disk), but its phases are the result of its spherical shape lit at different angles by the sun. Looking through a telescope, craters near the edges of its circular shape are foreshortened just as they would be if they were on the surface of a sphere. Are the sun and the Moon in on the conspiracy as well?
Who am I going to believe, my lying eyes or The Word of The Lord?
They haven’t asked the most important question. What sex is the turtle?
It’s in the Bible (sort of, depending on interpretation). In Revelations 7:1 [Yes, the book that should have been left out of the biblical canon b/c it’s written by a madman, madder than the others by miles] : “After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree.”
If there are four corners of the Earth then the Earth can’t be a sphere. Simple geometry. Spheres don’t have corners.
This verse (psalm 75:3) less successful in trying to prove it: “When the earth totters, and all its inhabitants,
it is I who keep steady its pillars. Selah.”
I mean, you can’t really rest a sphere on pillars (not securely, anyway), therefore Earth = Flat. there are a few other mentions about God drawing a circle (but not a sphere) when he created the Earth.
This is, I think, the reason why the original poster might think one cannot be an atheist who supports the flat Earth Theory.
The conspiracy would have to include not only NASA and present-day scientists but every geographer and astronomer (or, I suppose, every historian) back to Eratosthenes. Including Christians, Jews, Muslims, pagans… In all the wars, quarrels and schisms, how is it that no-one spilled the beans?
The willingness to swallow any claim that invokes a conspiracy, instead of proposing actual evidence, is now the intellectual norm among Americans.
Someone wrote that in Egypt, a newspaper can’t print a recipe without an accompanying conspiracy. So maybe we aren’t on the cutting edge for credulity.
If i remember my (Newtonian) Mechanics right, you can not reliably rest any object on more or less than exactly three (3) points, in an Earth-like field of gravity. (Unless maybe turtles;) )
Believes in Creation = Religious. End of.
Anyway, what’s their point? What are they actually selling?
Ants, only less organised. Barking mad ants. (Hey, a new band name!)
Actually Eratosthenes did more than demonstrate that the earth is a sphere, he calculated its circumference. The Greeks understood that the earth is a sphere long before Eratosthenes. There is also a myth that even educated people in the Middle Ages thought that the earth is flat, they didn’t.
Some demented Nazis thought that he earth is hollow.
Flat earthers are more or less harmless, climate change deniers are definitely not harmless.
The Google Earth Challenge is a simple and powerful counter argument. Perhaps I’m a little old school, the first thing that pops into my head is the fact that it’s impossible to represent the Earth accurately on a 2D map. Or are cartographers in on the conspiracy as well?
From 50,000 feet you can see that the planet is round (and that space is black). But what would a flat earth look like from up there? is it flat/round or flat/tetragonal? if you got to the edge and looked over would you be able to see the elephants standing on the turtle? so many questions for science to answer; come on science get started!
I’d like a flerfer to explain the following:
How come my brother-in-law flies West from NY to get to Japan, but my son flies East from the British Isles? Surely they’d both have to fly North?