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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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Flat Earth theories are nonsense. As every thinking person knows, the Earth is really hollow. The Garden of Eden is down there, together with the lost tribes of Israel, Vikings from Greenland, and escaped WW2 Nazis.
https://www.gaia.com/lp/content/hollow-earth-theory-is-the-subterranean-...
https://www.ourhollowearth.com/
I've been thinking about this for some time now. I wonder what the flat Earthers think about an eclipse. It stands to reason if they see the curved shadow of the Earth projected on the moon that they could SEE with their own eyes that the Earth is round.
They say there's an invisible moon sized object that blocks the moon during a lunar eclipse.
Wow, that was actually hard to type. It's so stupid it makes me go into convulsions....
@Apost Re: Invisible moon-sized object
I... I.... uh.... *nervous tick*.... er.... *corner of mouth twitching*.... How, uh...... what the...... *blank stare into nothing*.... *droooooool*..... *eye twitch*.....
When they stand on the coast of an ocean, but can't see the lands on the other side, shouldn't alarm bells be ringing? Then all they'd have to do is watch a ship sail away out of sight, and wonder where it has gone. Why do they think ships have crows nests at the top of the tallest masts in order to see farther over the ocean if it flat and not curved?
Bless em, like creatards who don't seem to understand that any star more than 6000 light years away would be invisible to us if everything was only 6000 years old.
Exactly Sheldon. The distance a person can see is around 26 miles. The reason is "the event horizon". In the military, the event horizon is effective cover for an amphibious invasion.
Are you sure it’s not just “horizon“? An “event horizon” is very different than the visual horizon one sees on earth.
The event horizon refers to black holes mostly.
http://www.ringbell.co.uk/info/hdist.htm
This page has a horizon distance calculator. Just enter your height above sea level in feet or meters, and it will tell you how far away the horizon is. Hint for flat-Earthers: However far you walk, that horizon just keeps moving away, just like a rainbow.
This is a hilarious article from the May 15, 1876, edition of the New York Times about the "Flat League".
It's in a PDF format with two columns so you have to scroll down to pick up the first column on the left side of the page.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9803E3D8143FE63BBC4D52...
I personally enjoy conspiracies. People tend to become offended easily by them, or use them as an opportunity to flaunt their own intellect.
I see them as the opportunity to question my reality and make sure I can defend it. As it pertains to this, discovering that the earth was round was not an easy step. Mankind had clever ways to deduce it, which most of us don't know how to recreate. Something so simple as the earth being round, and my best defense for it is duh, everyone knows it is. The truth is that from my vantage point, I can't defend it on my own. The best I can do is refer to other people who say it is so. I'm not going up in a rocket any time soon, to see the earth with my own eyes. Nor am I flying a plane personally around the earth. I could easily have been lied to my whole life, and would have no tangible way of verifying it.
We don't ridicule the people from antiquity for not knowing. They had an excuse. It's the people of 2018 that proclaim as fact that which is evidently not true that are deserving of ridicule.
Right, but what's the difference? People from antiquity didn't fly off into space and neither have you. We are just as ignorant as they are. We just pretend to know more because we read it somewhere.
I mean, just take the claims seriously for a second. Pretend it truly is a conspiracy and the world actually lied to you. Pictures are fake, planes fly in circles, etc. What can you do, what observation or experiments can you personally make, to prove to yourself that the earth is round?
We can do what scientists do and take their model and prove it wrong in each and every way. Then, since we did that then we can try to prove the oblate spheroid model wrong. And since nothing that we can do does that it must be the truest model we have so far.
You can do it without ever leaving the house. There are certain assumptions about our world that we must make if we are to be functional... Such as I exist. I don't spend my time wondering... Or find it necessary at all to prove it. Science has done most of the hard work for us. It's consistent enough to justify accepting the fact that the earth is round. And until such a time as it is proven to be otherwise it just goes on my justified true belief category.
I tell myself that someone out there loves me everyday, to remain functional. Assumptions are assumption at the end of the day, regardless of any pragmatic benefits. You also place a lot more trust in science than is warranted. Which is strange considering that since hinges on doubt more than trust.
Don't forget science progresses upon its own carcass. Behind every successful theory is a road filled with its deceased and failed compatriots.
I am aware of the scientific method. That is why I was careful with my wording. Notice I didn't say that we have proven the globe... Only that it hasn't been proven wrong.
(I can't believe I'm actually having this discussion. This is wild.)
Well you did seem to go from 'knowing' the earth is a globe, to now saying its a 'justified true belief,' because it hasn't been proven wrong.
I suppose that if you never claimed to 'know' the earth was round, then that was the source of my confusion.
I usually say "know" for the sake of brevity. But I say justified true belief now for the sake of clarity.
You were going all the way epistemic for a minute there. Just know that every time I say I know anything that I mean that it's a justified true belief. Otherwise I say I think or that I don't know.
"Don't forget science progresses upon its own carcass. Behind every successful theory is a road filled with its deceased and failed compatriots."
This remains untrue no matter how many times you repeat this lie. Science is not built on failure, it simply has the intellectual strength to acknowledge errors, unlike religions and creatards. Ironically their shrill propaganda cliches seem only to apply to science and then only when it contradicts parts of their superstitious myths.
How many scientific facts do you deny that in no way contradict any part of your religious beliefs?
That's called selection bias, look it up.
John 6IX Breezy,
Here are some links to articles that explain how you should be able to prove to yourself that the Earth is a round ball =
1. https://gizmodo.com/how-to-prove-to-yourself-or-shaq-the-earth-is-round-...
2. https://www.space.com/38931-kids-can-prove-earth-round.html
3. https://www.popsci.com/10-ways-you-can-prove-earth-is-round#page-16
4. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/7-diy-experiments-b-o-b-the-earth-i...
"What can you do, what observation or experiments can you personally make, to prove to yourself that the earth is round?"
Stand on the coast and look out over an ocean, then ask yourself why in clear weather you can't see over the horizon. Seriously why do you this to yourself?
No, there are many ways to prove many facts. One does not require expensive equipment, just simple math and the powers of observation. Look for yourself, make up your own mind with data you have directly observed.
Ok, what are those simple powers of observation? A long time ago I feel like I was taught that some Greek dude, maybe Pythagoras, measured the shadows at noon, from like two separate countries. Something about the angles implied a curvature. I do believe they overestimated the size of the earth too.
I've never been able to find that story again. But that seems like my best bet, and I never have the time, resources, or energy to execute.
The round Earth model makes predictions that match experiment; the flat Earth model makes predictions which don't match experiment. That is the only difference that matters.
@John 61X Breezy: "no tangible way of verifying it"
That might apply to relativity, microorganisms, or the shape of our galaxy. We just have to rely on smart people to tell us those things are true, and on other smart people to check and confirm their findings. Of course it could all be a giant conspiracy by the Nobel Prize Committee.
But gravity and the round Earth are two things that we can easily confirm for ourselves with just our senses and minds. To see gravity in action we just need to drop something. To confirm that the world is round we just need to watch ships coming up over the horizon. Or we can get on a ship and keep sailing in a straight line. Whichever way we go, the horizon will always be the same distance away. That's only possible on the surface of a sphere.
I don't have my books with me. But I remember learning about the looming effect in one of my perception classes. You'll actually see a ship as if it were hovering over the ocean. In other words, images that should be hidden behind that curvature, are refracted above the horizon.
Given that such is the case. I would discard ships coming over the horizon as uninformative.
I haven't sailed around the globe, have you? Perhaps that might work, but since its impractical, I have to discard it too. Not to mention you can't sail in a straight line, you would need to zig zag around continents, and have some reliable away to untangle such zig zagging.
@John 61X Breezy: "I haven't sailed around the globe, have you?"
I've sailed halfway around, from London to New Zealand. A distance of about 12K miles. We traveled in more or less a straight line in a southwesterly direction, across the Atlantic to Panama, and then straight across the Pacific. The horizon was always the same apparent distance away in all directions. The time when the sun was directly above was about 30 minutes earlier each day according to London time.
I'm aware of refraction over the horizon. You also see the sun before it rises (or rather before the Earth spins around sufficiently for it to be visible). But that refraction wouldn't make any difference on a flat Earth. There wouldn't be an obstacle to refract around.
Here's the problem though, observations always have the problem of underdetermination. Its never enough to distinguish between two similar theories. Clearly these observations could imply a round earth, but they could also imply many other things. For example, even a flat earth has mountains and rolling hills. So we could instead deduce something about water, maybe water isn't level after all. Put water in a beaker and you can see it curve at the surface. Place drops on a table, and it takes the shape of a hill. You observations at sea could be accounted for by instead suggesting water has the unique property of curving, or maybe you discovered something about the suns motion.
When the heliocentric model was first proposed, it wasn't much better than the geocentric model. In fact, it even failed to account for the absence of a parallax in the stars. So in my opinion, yes we can imply the earth is round from such observations, we just can't confirm it.
John 61X Breezy
Surface tension on that scale would be something to see. Do you that explains the parting of the Red Sea?
Indeed it would lol
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